Meek Apocalypse

La musica diaboli is sweet,
Beautiful the hair of the dreadful star.

We are vulnerable to raids and conquests,
To horrible exploitations and wars,

But we dream of the storm that wipes it clean,
And how, if we have no ark, we can swim,

Past the outstretched hooks of Draghignazzo
And his swarming barrage of barrators

Who extort the last of the commoners
And cling to us like spars as they drown us.

We dream of the storm of greater dragons
Who will free the helpless, swallow the kings,

Not these usual plagues and disasters
Littering anonymous histories—

An undeceiving demonic music
That doesn’t answer to gods or rulers,

To wealth or gilded myths of purity,
That loves the low and dirty, the hybrids

Waiting to be freed from humanity,
Although we’ve always been the first to bleed,

The last to be bled, the first extinguished,
The last captives freed. Which is why we dream.