Virgo
Free Tibet. The law is outnumbered.
And from the security of the water’s
Make up, from my form, free Hydrogen.
Morality’s contaminated.
More riots.
Virginity,
Ignoring
Reason,
Goes
Out
Past its curfew, free, free, free!
Neither the appetite nor Will
Of the world’s great laboring,
Nonetheless,
A part of the manifestation of that world…
O grand detached heart- what am I?
If Life is suffering then let me feel it.
Gemini
Aces jump out of their decks
Leaving their monarchs to burn!
Money, lust, and bioweaponry,
These excel, not duty, dispelling
That we would oppose our annihilation
Should it knock upon our habitat angrily
Or polite.
Germs
Equipping
M-16s
Instantly
Neutralize
Immunities:
Treasons are adapted against resistant physiologies.
Hearts and Diamonds and Clubs have run away
With the Spades to new frontiers.
Atlas envies democracies holding up the gods
That punish him. He, like us, wants Judgment.
Choruses Sung on the way to Armageddon
i. Desert Season
The flowers catch the words
And tilt, raindrops fill the bells
Carrying water from the wells-
Heaven’s water from hell’s
Trying roots, to drown
The dryness of beguiling flames
That hope to burst in
Springtime into flames
Stalked on common stalks, firetips
Among the primroses, cowslips.
Climbing Life go Hades’ digits.
ii. Eternal Return
What is Life? A circle, without fight. Turn away,
Curve, you must, somewhere. Opportunity will
Arise to swerve:
Take it. Observe-
new lines path originality,
And can always reconvene with that abandoned shape,
The swerved-from line, after falling into Defect’s ways.
As all things,
Praise is a song you can oversing.
iii. Death
My heart is the night. My heart is the held note
sung by Life in the night
To hear itself hear something in the empty entirety
of night. Counterpoint
The choral load. The loud, perfect harmony
of night, incontrovertible,
Lyrical. Lovely. My heart sings the song of night.
Nothing’s left that resists.
S. T. Brant is a Las Vegas high school teacher. His debut collection Melody in Exile will be out in 2022. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Honest Ulsterman, EcoTheo, Timber, and Rain Taxi. You can reach him on his website at ShaneBrant.com, Twitter: @terriblebinth, or Instagram: @shanelemagne.