Poem: 2020
The gods woke up.*
They animated paintings.
The blue goddess posed
In a living sea shell womb,
In the back of a pickup,
Abducted for a drive
On a sunny winter day.
Hermes saw her and jumped in.
Statues started walking.
Shape shifting,
We blended into each other.
All the eggs had two yolks,
Fertile in the opening of time.
Fire grew in books written
About you before you existed.
We, all of us, fell in love with something:
Poems and citrus,
Singing hymns to Demeter.
Athena became our spirit guide,
Trickier than meets the eye,
Destined to dash your spirits
If you made a wrong move.
Meanwhile, Hermes jumped out of the truck.
He got a laté
At the punk rock coffee shop.
His winged helmet turned heads.
Flame radiated from his holy cup.
The gods woke up.
In response to the hymns,
Demeter came down,
Wearing another name,
Like another flaxen gown.
Apollo shot his arrows
All over the town
When he had an archery competition with cupidity.
Artemis, annoyed, strolled in forest groves.
Zeus in lofty rhapsody,
Hera drinking boxed wine, casting penetrating bets.
They were watching but were not impressed.
Chaos came through too,
Aries stirring shit.
He did it for the fun of it,
Blood hungry and Venus deprived.
Hades sat and watched,
Holding Persephone’s immortal hand,
His dark clouds killing in masquerade.
In 2020, the gods woke up.
*Medium destroys my formatting.
