Poetry by Serafin Borgia ⊗ Art by Jacob Schulz

Not Saving Grace

Dedicated to the spirit  of the (recently poisoned)  Animus River

Our world crumbles

under the weight

of  such cruel stars,

as distilled clouds,

surging  tangerine at dawn,

tuck  oracles of deception,

in the dark  wizards’ cloak.

What haunts us isn’t memories

It’s the present:

Forced Baptisms

in the polluted  river

of  approved  words.

One by one

we are

dunked.

What now Animus?

If  god is nature- seems her gospels  slipped away

while we tinkered

with our instruments.

Reburying and satiating

the demons  won’t help,

since the remaining  angels

are  sick junkies

sweeping  our boneyard  for hieroglyphics

&  the fairy dust of humanity,

chasing  cheap fixes

& competing for slivers of  sun

to warm the darkness

they can’t  keep

from spreading.

While the  sun and moon sways,

to  death rattle echos,

sprinkled with toxic stardust,

austerity zigzags the imagined boundary

of a pudgy, oatmeal sky-

reflecting  the  ashes of a burning world,

waiting for the noble  grace,

we thought was due,

believing  our  search

was more than its  shadow

swinging  from a  tight  noose

tied on  the high, dead  branches-

beside   the fresh ghosts,

feeling an unspeakable

type of thing,

hanging with the phantoms

just  for  a  moment

before

tumbling down ,

&  cracking

wide open,

then settling in the crypts,

&  flooding the  mausoleums

our complacency built.

Check out Jacob’s Schulz’s Mechanical Toy Company