The Flood

 

photo from Pexels by artist Miles Rothoerl

 

poem by Joshua Brown

 

Run faster
They're going to kill you
With small cuts
For decades
Until nothing's left
But skin lesions
And puss.

They took your life
Consensually
As you breathed
In meditation
And thoughtfulness
Contemplating
Every move
And feeling.

While ticks tocked
And little birds
Peeked out
From cupboard
Clocks. Hello!
Repetitive smiles
And chirps
Echoing
Through time.

The empty cavern
Dips into eternity
As you scale
The walls carefully
Ever into adventure
Adrenaline coursing
Out of your wounds
Into emptiness
Forever.

I AM ALIVE
I scream into the abyss
Unafraid of the dragons
Hidden in the crevasses
Waiting to devour the prideful
I AM ALIVE
I scream into silence
No children
No evolution
No name

And the wisps cower
Afraid of my demons
Afraid that Jesus may attend
To my scripts
And cast those programmatic errors
Into their empty zombified ghosts
And they find themselves drowning
At the hell of the gorge.

I slipped.
And as I fell into the cool embrace
Of the End
I began to fall asleep
The painful sleep
Of inbetween
And choked
And twitched
And tensed

If this were death
I knew not: but felt safe
As my gravity grew
And my convulsions betrayed
My own sobriety.
My eyes opened
For only a moment
In release

And I saw
A great host
Of armed soldiers
With fabric wings
Casting towards me
At greater speeds
Their eyes of steel
Pupil-less stares
Their feet of quartz
And their expression
Of intense focus.

In a moment
With my convulsions
Ready to tear me apart
They grasped my shirt collar
And tare against the current of gravity
My head wildly thrust
Into painful contort
Before the rush
Of wind
As we lurched from
Altitude to altitude
Wings forcing

The gray faded into red
As the flames came into view
Assailing the precipice
Consuming the very rocks
That I descended from
Only hours earlier.
Heat brushed us in waves
As we soared
Past the flames
And embers
And smoke

And with my deep shaking
And my eyes failing
I felt each wingstroke
Bear me higher
Beyond the mortal earth
The judgement of God
And His fierce wrath

For my descent to hell
Was an escape from Wrath
Upon a violent place
And a violent people
And their violent thoughts
And the frustrated rage
Of retribution
And revenge
And sarcastic devolution

#poem #poetry #religion #angelology #superstition #death #childless #celibacy #bitterness