Those terrible gods triptych (all three parts)

Jesse S. Mitchell

Plate 1.
This is how we all move, like clockwork, craftwork, piecework, sewn tired calluses, wretched hands in waterlogged tenement rooms all by humid moonlight, Hell’s kitchen midnight. And so, swollen orbits and gaped mouthed awe-inspiring swings and death defying flings around that grey, that listless sun a’slumber in forever perpetual motion and never failing and never drowning in old yellow starlight tides, the random, the raucous, the red-hot iron, the neon gas, the sleeping, the never ever sleeping, but by dreaming, but by wishing, the stiff limbed reverie, rowing languid across the mottled skies.
Plate 2.
Let there be light,
Singular.
And then we are born, were born, straight away alive
Young things, beings on masturbatory journeys of total endless discovery.
And then the wind blows.
And there is nothing of us but billowing ash, quaking ash, birch branch
Lipstick stains on old teacups and conversations we never seem to finish.
And there is nothing remarkable anymore of this world except that it is remarkable and still it remains that way.
A hair’s breadth between monotony and divinity and profanity.
Extraordinary.
Plate 3.
Lines and lines of small plastic action figures, icons,
Made in China
In dedication to Biafran martyrs.
So, sizzle went the sun as it fell,
And flare went the hundreds of votive candles, all red.
Pyre like the moon, thin sliver light,
Sati, the wife-church, thrown on the flame.
Self-immolation as indigenous rebellion,
The peasant revolt,
The clinic entrance,
The trumpet blow, the car park,  and the total
End.