The Molloch Ballet

Near the sheer shore
where Poseidon's symphony
floats over dusky night water,

factory gears twirl
and push
concrete and lights up, up, up
into the smog-orange sky
where frozen they stay
like aesthete Narnian heroes
frozen in the witch's winter

Conduct us, moon, bright as snow,
conduct we these shuffling, shoving, shuffled masses
above and below
high on Hollywood or Narcocktails
and low, low, low

Nurses in white
come and go like clock-hands
or opium-addled swans
from the tube-swaddled bed-sides
of the wan fallen dancers

Machine gears twirl
like blown-glass windows
pushing concrete and lights up, up, up...
into the smog-painted sky
to needle the spaced-out listless clouds

enter the warheads

intermission