They have green teeth and drool rain.
They deceive your eyes and cloud your ears.
They fill your chest with unsettled seas.
They are the cancers of time,
Ravaging the landscape of spirit.
They make you lean into the world,
Even as death pushes you back.
They are the decapitators of flowers,
Mad gardeners with scythes.
Beasts with a thousand open mouths,
Chimeras of their own emptiness,
War-machines advancing on many fronts,
Waterless tsunamis of anxiety.
They hammer air like blasted eardrums.
They are out-of-control vessels,
Tossed on the seas of oblivion.

And yet I see flags of change flying.
I see dance on the stage of stillness.
I quiver in their intenser waves,
Like a shaking reed or shuddering flag.
And yet I feel their power to uplift,
Tearing the leaves of my voice
From the tree of my being,
Like ashes from unextinguished fires
That might glow again in other storms—
A promise carried on Shelley’s restless breath.