Smoke in the Place of God

A shivering whoosh of wind, sweeps across
The valley of ashes; the sky ignites like an apocalypse.
“Oh, please,” cries the maddening crowd, “let it be the end.”
Silence from heaven.

March sings his villanelle of summertime, orchestral swells: 
“Smoke climbs into the place of God
And we crawl below like ants.
Fuel the fires with logs, our brother’s arms, and any ends, and any odds.
And those same insect men stand awed
At the twirling majesty of the mist enchanting.
Smoke climbs into the place of God.
Us bug-eyed beasts begin to applaud
Falling into our timeless trance.
Fuel the fires with logs, our brother’s arms, and any ends, and any odds.
All the slime of the soil stands drop-jawed
Feeling from the raising smoke a pleasure like romance.
Smoke climbs into the place of God.
We kiss at our skin where the smoke leaves a layer like pomade.
We hurry about our scurrying chores, eager to please the stuff that enchants,
Fuel the fires with logs, our brother’s arms, and any ends, and any odds.
Smiles creep, none sarcastically, across our cheeks, when we guffaw
Our pure joy at the warmth of black smoke. We raise our chant:
‘Smoke climbs into the place of God;
Fuel the fires with logs, our brother’s arms, and any ends, and any odds.’ ”

A bird flies, caught on grey emulsion.
She sticks to that sullen sky 
Where grain is made from electric wires
And stains the edges of the frame
Like the grime of a window pane.
She tries to bat her eyes to rid her whites of the skies;
She tries to flap her wings to sweep the smoke from her sides
But the air is so thick she can just glide down,
Until she hits the hard ground, and on the way she
Hacks out a tune from her over lubed tubes:
“My vague outline caught in smoke
I am the untreatable cancer of poor folk
With all this lasting black lung from too much dope.
I am the embarrassed audacity of hope,
Caught and coughing on my own rope.”

Listen:
To the puffed up gags of black raises, 
The rosined pipes that stick 
Out of the ground like kitchen knifes from red meat;
The mundane murk of a humming engine
Fond of led-like air and an over dose of toxins;
The murmuring of the swomee swans’ 
Hacking as they fly over the smoke stacks,
Their backs all twisted up like the spines
Of old snake bones who’s alabaster skulls lie in piles
Alongside the thorax of blackjacks,
Covered in ant tracks, darkest zinc lined roads curbed with poor rats
With clubbed guts, gobbled leather boots, gobbled leather hats,
And the preserved human skin laced with ‘I Heart Mom’ tats,
Where dim skins rest on coat racks,
With the pale face of the ghost man
Chopped with an axe in the neck until he could relax.

But here are the facts:
The dark clouds hang around like the black swans down
In the oil ridden bay where the mayday drills if BP lay
And we’re destined to drown in this lice ridden town
With our neck-ties tied tight until we can just about see that lovely light 
We’ve heard so much about in the bible at church,
Heard so much that it hurt when the handsome priests
Told us about what we‘ve got here on earth in that smoke in the heat
Like a second smack on the other cheek. 

But here are the facts,
It’s what you got for your tax money;
The chance at some fat gunnysack 
To hide away all your lonely nights
And the days you tried to forget;
No, no, it’s that first finger on the horizon
Fucking the sky, and the dried sun,
And the Earth like a barrel full of hot gun;
It’s that big metal penis that pops off
Hot tar and the fresh scent of anus 
Into the long stretch of days we’ve got left before us,
While we’re breathing more in us, while its festering in us;
It’s the hard pound of gears inside my chest,
The ones the burst out of babies breasts
Like a mutant with vile breath, it’s the cogs that
Count logs to burn, and forests that count only as fags to earn
A poignant penny; no, no, it’s the dull sky.

October rings out on her cold hornpipes with Harold:
“The important pieces of the world rise from those pipes
The ones with the tin pollution plates and the iron bellows.
The fire burns, the smokes raise, the world dies, and that is my life.
The song of the world squeaks out like squawking bagpipes:
‘Yellow fog rubs its muzzle among the clouds and other minnows;
The important pieces of the world rise from those pipes.’
The grunge waddles out like waste from broken drainpipes,
And the act is praised by violins and cellos:
‘The fire burns, the smokes raise, the world dies, and that is my life.’
Coughing tubes stain the sky with brown stripes.
The inferno of their stomach makes nature’s fateful gallows.
The important pieces of the world rise from those pipes.
The green tree and the garden gripes:
‘We singe our souls in the heat wave that flows where the smoke stack grows.’
The important pieces of the world rise from those pipes;
The fire burns, the smokes raise, the world dies, and that is my life.”

The peaks of the Wasatch wash out into a frown.
And God exhales one last mouthful of ash,
And says: “the bowl is cashed, that last hit tasted like ass.”
A hesitant slap of wind, sweeps across
The valley of ashes; the sky ignites like gas soaked soil.
“Oh, please,” cries the suffering smoke, “let it be the end.”
Silence from heaven.