The Arsenic Sunset

The Arsenic Sunset Eden now knows what it meant When corruption took flesh as a Serpent— For all things alien Narrow to a tendril A twist of black sap A rune of bloody syrup against tissue-paper tides Winking crudely among the starved sluggish currents Of emerald and sapphire Like a clay-red foaming artery. A root seeking an oasis not yet tainted Among jeweled whitecaps and glassy heat. Eden now knows what it meant When the urge to ruin something Stole form as an apple That could be devoured into A constellation of seeds withered on your palm; For the ruin of anything has a stiff-grained pleasure to it— Not much separates a grimace and a smile. The brackish wave And black-slick shore Ache— With want, with memory For the reign of a firmament not yet singed with sulfur breath And a sky yet unbound by the rainbow venoms That richen the arsenic sunset. The thrum of myriad hearts Sounds the confusion And the agonal forward trudge Of a world unfertile Bathed in alien minerals, and haunted by The loss of its oceans’ poetry.