BY ANONYMOUS POET
Callbacks
By Anonymous 2L Poet
Into the gray soul of the city
Flew most willing
From metal to the metal returned
Happily dined on the crimson Word
Us few, from dirt and grain and wide sunrises
Reluctantly entered their cacophonic temples
We took the Word, not we must?
We yearn for the old gods forgotten
Crying out: what went before the steel spirit?
Set’s knives rust in the Nile
Enlil’s priestesses to desert dust
The Yama Kings silent in judgment
A million howling midnight rites
Extinguished by steel and manufactured light
The Age of Cities holds the Monoliths
Billion-believer kings of crescent and cross
We cry out: why did you die?
We would not embrace the steel gods if you had not
Must we forget the torch-banished darkness of hill and dale?
And Set turned with a whirring oil-fueled click
Enlil LOADED between the flickering images
The Yama Kings twinkled in the skyscraper windows
Spoke in the humming cadence of the electronic virtual as it raced through the lines
We only died, the voices of ancient knives, when we were old