Angel In Death Canyon

Angel In Death Canyon
© Surazeus
Seattle, 22 July 1991

Exquisite sound of Angels clapping
as apes learn to walk and then to fly.
The exquisite sound of Angels laughing
as hairless apes get trapped in steel cages.
And they weep at the sight of their eyes
so big and round and scared behind glass
as the children of the dying gods
race down the highways of ambition and war
in search of the magic potion in the grail
that when drunk shall make apes into gods.

We are driving down the highway to hell,
and we are hurtling toward the abyss
of hunger, the grand canyon of desire,
the pit of despondence and despair and dearth.
I love living on this party-mad Earth.

The exquisite sound of flapping wings
as the sparrow hawk glides over the canyon,
listening to the silence of the hot dust.
His yellow eyes search the details of the ground
for the motions and gestures of rodents.
Claws unsheathed, beak glistening in sunlight,
short wings snapping in the hard wind.
The hawk descends like lightning at the sight
of a rodent, and this courageous rodent
who leaps into the hole of his palace,
he shall become the ancestor of a mighty race
of hairless rats at the dawning of the new sun.

For one brief shining hour at the end,
humanity, the heirs of the kingdom of the gods,
stood tall in their towers of cold glass
and they watched the creation of a sun.
The creation and death of the sun candle,
exploding on the field of ultimate battle.
On the Mountain of Geddon the fire
burned gold like the eyes of a sparrow hawk,
for in the end is our new beginning.
Do you weep and gnash your teeth at the death
of animals who lived with us for millennia?
Do you shout in the halls of the White House
that our factories are destroying the wilderness?
Weep not, for this was decreed by Apollon,
this death of our brothers in the forests.
As the dinosaurs were destroyed by the asteroid
sixty-five million years ago which cleared
the field of time for the rising of man,
so we shall be cleared from that same field
for the rising of a new race of creature,
the higher being which shall rise from the ashes
of our passion like we rose from the ashes
of the Dinoids, the lizard men who lived
and thrived in the shadows of the past.
I saw their faces in the lake of ice,
and I saw their faces on the televisions,
and I saw their almond eyes of gold
in the whirling disk of the star-ships
that descended from the clouds like lightning.

We are born, we copulate, we consume
the flesh and souls of animals and plants,
and then we die and our bodies crumble
back to the dust of our ancient beginning.
Weep not for the death of our race.
Weep not for the white terrified eyes
behind the glass of star-ships and computers.
Weep not for the ranger on his stallion
and weep not for the wife at the hearth
of the house built in the palm of the hill.
Weep not for ourselves, for we are alive
now, and now we shall dance on the Earth,
and now we shall sing and build monuments,
though they crumble with the gnawing of time,
and now we shall stretch our aching hands
to Heaven and touch the glory of the gold sun.

The old man with a shock of white hair
rests in the shadow of the twisted tree.
Plucking the fruit with his right hand
and clutching his staff with his left hand,
he smiles and bites into its juicy flesh.
Thunder cracks the silence of the heat.
The desert sand shall blossom with blue-bells.
Can you hear them ringing in the pink dawn.