The Fires of New Atlantis
The Greek Empire fell
On August twenty-fourth, 2006
When the boy was told he could never go to a planet that
Shared a name with his bloodhound.
The Greek Empire fell
On August twenty-fifth, 2006
When he was told it was actually the Byzantine Empire that fell
In 1453.
The Greek Empire fell
On August twenty-sixth, 2006
When Atlantis was drowned with Plato
In the sands of maturity and nominal ethnicity.
Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman,
He, a gas lamp that craves the renewal of his nature,
Was chained together with
Nero, Justinian, and Suleiman.
One bit the others’ necks and they writhed,
Breaking each other’s spines one by one, bit by bit,
Until all that kept them afloat was
An unsteady ocean current,
Legs swaying loosely like hairs.
The golden glow of a moribund candle
Was consumed by the already defunct flotsam,
As it drifted in and out of the deadly nightshade prongs.
A goldfish belonged in the Atlantic Ocean
As much as a Portuguese Man of War did,
Slowly drowning together
In the macabre dance of death to the bottom.
Through the abyss, manatees and manta rays
Stayed clear of the gruesome illusion
Of a dead angler, sinking to where only his light could illuminate
The interminable evening.
In a flash of bravery, the goldfish miraculously escapes,
But I’ve heard that not even light can escape a black hole
Once it’s passed the event horizon.
The tendrils of submission wave with empty taunts.
From a distance, it looks as if that fishbowl fire had decimated the Portuguese Man of War with a single blow.
The colony of polyps sink, like Nero’s Rome, incendiary at dawn.
By morning, even Troy
Could see the fires of Rome
Burning on the horizon.
Nero did not run, and neither does the goldfish.
The omnipresent pressure of an ocean’s empire,
Flattens the goldfish to his will.
Swallowed by darkness,
Like that of an angler’s stomach,
The goldfish even loses sight of the Man of War,
The antagonist that dragged him
To this eternal resting place.
Even his flame, is quenched by the blue.
Nero’s fire: reversed.
Focus through the silence
Remains tenuous.
All that sustains the constant interval of time,
Is the beating of the dead Man’s heart,
Floating just a few feet
From the fish’s face, invisible,
Because light can’t escape a black hole.
But I’ve heard that at its center
Is a crystallized treasure,
A pearl of light,
That can fuel a submarine for centuries,
Or a candle for millennia.
Most people drown facing up,
Because they only focus on where they came from.
The goldfish does not drown,
Because he charges head first into the darkness,
And finds a pearl at the heart of Plato’s sunken city.
The ocean floor is the brightest part of the sea,
Because in open water, there is no surface
To reflect where the light has gone.
Rainbows of kaleidoscope cameras
Flash about the goldfish,
Making him more radiant than
The golden age that fell just last week.
The ocean floor is the safest part of the sea,
Because in open water, there is no surface
To spring off of and propel yourself
Into the air
With the pigeons and eagles
That fly so close to the golden sun
You so long for.
The ocean floor is part of the sea,
So why deny what’s outlined in the void
of golden starlight
reflected on
our pupils
like the fire
so close
on the horizon
to our bloodhounds, and
to our ancestors?