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2.

God gathered his followers sadly few

in numbers together, in defeat nearly
and desperate, for another Council of Peace
after arguments vainglorious with His Enemy.
"Evil victorious wages relentlessly upon men
fallen too well, and far fron us, Dear Friends,
for songs of reason or sweet persuasion
to recover from the errors of our former
Justice when I gave men the choices of angels
and failed. I was wrong. Earth was vulnerable
to create Life at all in Her noble efforts,
and failed. She was wrong. Saturn the Son
deathly Grimness reaps Demeter's harvest
of anger unmotherlily told by Homer and I;
as if She knew all along the fruitlessness
of the harvest on barren souls barren of judgement,
and daughters of Persephone's ilk like Eve
shallowly picking the flowers and fruit of Eden
or else. For pleasure Cronos and Adam
reached with her for the apple blossoms fragrant
on Mount Atlas, apples golden in twilight
and guarded by the infernal goddess, a serpent,
many-headed Argus and many-eyed Apep
the pets of lascivious Isis, most juvenile of girls.
O, cursed is the day Nu began Nu.t
in Thoth's African River before memory!"
Thus spake Zeos despairing, God mournfully
alone in his thoughts and The Abyss.
Before He could go off alone, the Solitary
Sovereign, as He often did on black promontories
where mountains prehistoric bordered Oceans
of forgotten galaxies, where worlds of flesh
never intruded on isolated perfection,
His Mother, immaculate Rheia who saved him
from her rampaging husband, spake sternly too,
stronger than all of them gathered sorrowfully:
"Quit sulking. You're acting like you did
as a boy when you couldn't get your way.
Mother Earth is not wrong, for all her faults.
Bear with the Elderlies and you will bear well
the burdens of leadership you took on eagerly,
as I remember, a cocky little bully as a lad,
I recall. Obey the will of your Grandmother
for awesome results of promise, I promise,
and the thunderbolts Cyclopean will fall
in place too, upon the Opponent Titanic,
to be sure. You won before, once upon a time,
didn't you? Don't you remember? Why lose now?
Have you lost the Sun's fury at last, Son?"
Grumbling greeting the Queen Mother's admonitions
in the lower reaches of Heaven's higher realm
hiding the Fugitive Band, where they hid
like the Ram who'd once been shorn of his Fleece
by another brother of Old; Old Set of Egypt
who'd foiled Lord Osiris of the Sky
his brother of power and champion of Peace
tricked into death, seduced into a coffin
of an oak sacred from Dodona and Colchis,
then sealed alive to suffocate in his coffin;
a boat thrown in the Nile by Set deformed
to sail the Argonauts' stars of doom forever.
Mercury spake next, to explain the true poem:
"Great Father and Brother, our Sister is right.
The Ram like Thee was shorn and sheared indeed,
Heaven of his hope, Uranus of his loins,
unlike Thee. Jason was a Jesus Iasius
of the histories whose mariners fished
for Grandfather Sky's seed reaped grimly
with that sickle as sharp as autumn's New Moon.
Yes, Uranus is wounded and eternally bleeding,
unnaturally butchered like Osiris by Set
and Uranus by Saturn, our rampaging Sire.
Such curses often on sons by fathers
are visited by Earth's every effort and birth,
in blood. It is an agony of the Abyss
only you have earned as Our Sire we can't;
that is which, what, sacrifice, makes you King.
Not even Saturn Titanic with invincible Force
can match the vision of Injustice repaired."
Solemn weeping silently greeted his sweet words.
God lovingly put his hand on his son's handsome
shoulder, athletic and proud the pride of men.
"Good Mercury, Hermes, and Thoth inscribed
One of cultures All nations matured by verse,
thank you for your faithfullest support and
love. I know full well how well we are
loved, and blessed, Blessed! are we, all,
All in our tribe surrounded and free.
But it does not mean we are to be.
The seasons of this greatest planet are decay
that bring every fruit to waste and shit.
Time will tell the survival or not of Us.
Surely I know what we know what you say -
to fight on helplessly must follow of course
in our course of Peace argued immortally
by Buddha Siddhartha and Francis of Assisi,
most beloved disciples worthy of Isis
and Eve after their adolescence and sin.
There is no waste and nothing gained
in war if philosophies and poems like these
oppose all that is cruel and greedy until
overgrown, virtues over-ripe with life
until the truth fails and falls like Angels
who flew too close to the Sun and Moon.
Perhaps we must not dream too well, My Son,
nor remember the youthful indiscretions
lost in time upon boys on men, Mother.
Remember, you married my Father, not I,
no matter how petulantly I argue reality.
I know you all want action, not philosophy,
all ideas fuller of deeds by deeds undone,
however, and our former wars all in vain.
So now you say what we know that I see -
provoke the enemies upon each other,
instead of us. Let the killers kill each other,
leaving us free of their crimes and violence
free of Satan's guile, Saturns' twist to turn
Me Judge condoning murder and rape as well.
No. It was Zeos who killed no one at Troy;
provoking only Greeks murderously Trojans,
and Trojans Greeks, Apollo and Athene taking sides
perhaps as God against Allah today, but not Me;
if the Torah and Qu'ran are true they'll know
not to kill and end the wars. If not they'll not.
Flying Saucers? Let USA's Titan Missiles
and television empires compete dishonestly
with each other in Special Effects,
Public Relations, Gross International Economics,
and see if Lucifer's forgotten his Sin
Original, of steering too close to Me.
Watch him melt with too much Power
like Icarus or Venus to the Sun, arrogant
like Adam reaching for Eve's nakedness.
Forlorn, I have not forgotten the forlorn
success myself, and the failure of Peace
for all its goodness today, upon us, brethren.
Forsake victory, even if it comes impossibly,
unless we temper action with heaven's poetry.
Look to the mutilation of the Sky finally
for our greatest danger, eventually, inevitably.
So now you know what cannot be known.
To Battle. To Honor. Go! And take heed."
No cheer arose of the assembled faithful
too few in numbers and tiny for Great Epics
sung by the Bards. Resolved they turned
to the task incredibly confronting them at hand.
Billions of people and vermin were against them,
led by an Archangel titanic and immeasurable
who wielded Air Forces on Earth of weapons
ne'er seen before by generals Alexander
and Hitler who conquered whole continents,
good men too the first Caesars in temples of Art;
equal improbably to empires of underseas whales
and anarchies of insects by the trillions
eating away imperviously to all the pleas
of rainforests breathing the gasps of last resort
for oxygen, air, and water impurified
in plankton, kelp, bacteria, and microscopic
germs that proliferated in the waste of a virus,
a strain of disease, deadlier than uranium's
high-level radioactivity eating into the water
itself, Earth suicidally cannibalistic as always
gleefully eating itself away in pure madness.
What hope could a few cloud-dwellers have
in the face of indignities indivinely seen?
Spaceships, too, had become hope forlorn
of otherworldly promise, after years of inaction
except for comedy sneering at them, and
rumors of abduction, torture, disappearance
impossibly in psychosis or profit, of souls
and minds taken possession mistooken myths;
stolen like Persephone by Hades of Hades
the older brother of Zeos detected himself
a chink in the Titans' armor, loyal as he was
to Zeos, the accused mastermind by Homer
of the plot. "What's Cronos doing," Hades
explained investigatively, rhetorically, "blaming me?
Making Hades Osiris, the Lord of Hell, at
Underworld Tartaros, what does that mean?
Hell, I would never hurt Demeter's daughter,
my sister, my neice, loyalest remaining of
our small tribe. Why should I - for sex?
Adam and Eve already had plenty of that,
legally, and fully approved by a generic Jehovah,
nakedly in the Jewish pleasure garden.
It's the Serpent's infernal trick on a trick.
He raped Eve. He is Adam's cock, penis
severed of Osiris and from Grandfather Sky,
not me, not Osiris abducting, kipnapping Kore."
Mercury nodded. "'Original Sin' is a lie,
a lie not as sin itself, but the Serpent posing
as God. An Impostor sits at the Bible's center
on the Throne. On Job it pulls the same twist."
Debate ended, the discussions all but over,
the gods flew off in formation to battle holy
with millions of Saucers meteorically
unholy, outnumbered thousands to one
by Crafts empowered by Thunder stolen
in an Age long past; a propulsion told
from earlier tales waiting later to be told.
For now, for hate, captains and admirals
organized well their Attack Fleets of the air
shunning the ineffective Angels scattered
against them, mere rumors unthreatening
like a crippled Adam or an Eve disgraced,
to them. More perilous by far were
Muslims massing with petroleum wealth
suicidally bombing Jerusalem the sacrosanct,
and the Devilish counterattack strategically
obvious of Israeli Defense Forces retaliating
on Persia, Babylon, and Ishmael's deity
sheikhdoms of Mecca, abomination of Abraham,
idolatrous remnant of Egypt's awful Ka n' Ba
Muhammad the Prophet tried futilely to replace.
Into Lord Set-Saturn's planetary assault
batteries of Christian units cowardly famous
pumped trillions of dollars from merchants
to protect their soft soldiers on the boiling sands,
adolescent killers in ultimate armor protected,
airmen in machines that flew themselves
blindly. Saturn saw clearly Jupiter's game
to see himself clear to a way to win
the globe without fighting. It was laughable
to an Emperor ruthless and all-seeing
for pacifists without guns or money.
Osiris had always been a trusting fool
to his Udjat Eye inspiring the infinite designs
of the Argonautikal moon-boats; crescent,
grim sicklers with a Soviet's hammer flag,
shipping, skipping o'er electromagnetic seas;
dead pharaohs mummified energetically
also powering the Palladia ultraterrestrially;
Palladia meteors the umbilical Omphalos
of an almost-dead God-Pharaoh systematic
propulsion of Star Power far better than Solar.
Saturn's stolen Darkness could travel at speed
of Thought far hotter than Ra's inefficient fusion.
He could visit Sirius on an ancestral whim,
Orion as the arrow's bow and Pleiades
the arrowhead; Constellations cargo Airplanes
for civilian passengers. Jupiter was obsolete.
Allah's 3 Armies were making short work
of anthropomorphic Heaven in 'The War of The Books',
and the future was anything but a prophecy
idyllic. His Fleets raced confidently forward
haplessly upon New York and Singapore where
educated men knew the end was at hand, very well,
"very well, it is so," they sighed, and rushed
into the hearths of the inevitable phantoms
patrolling everywhere, laughing in disbelief.
The Priestly Saucers controlled the B-2 Bombers
on the flight-paths and currents of thought
flowing in christian pilots and gunners jewish
in the jetstream, upper High Fronts of ideas
where men mixed with the dizzying winds,
storms, stratospheric images reflecting
on glass and cockpits of orbiting Shuttles,
F-117 skyhawks, Sabers, Cyclones, Apaches,
National Aeronautics and Space Administrations
of Mir for Peace, cosmonauts and Apollo crews
circling the Moon, circling, circling, circling;
Discs spinning coolly and clean as Olympic
events in the discus and javelin of sports
heroes, fliers, aviators imams in the heavens
stealthy as light. They broke the soundless
barrier over and over again, over and over
many times, many times faster than computers
pitched higher and higher than the Stealth's
painful whine, screaming past the decibels
not even dogs couldn't hear into Outer Space.
The Wind was silent too, in its own way.
Saturn was especially proud of that technical
accomplishment, for Sound was his especial gift
given carelessly Eons ago by his brother.
He knew he'd manufactured it specially
in his first ships upon Argo's first prototype
from dodona oak, ably crafted by Athene,
built inherently in the beam of the prow
by master craftsmen, mastered by Vulcan
Hephaestos, Ptah, foremost among blacksmiths.
In 'Iliad' Homer wrote of his "Golden Wheels"
spinning perpetually at the base of his tripods;
Apollo's perpetual motors moving like the wind.
The Saucers moved, breathed, by Vulcan,
a misshapen god among Earth's many
disloyal to Zeos in their loyalty to Earth.
Apollo and Athene however plotted carefully
to follow a plan to capture an Aegis-Shield
of an Old Disc and penetrate the Air Fleet
of the Enemy, every night, and many locations
at once. "When," Athene whispered mightily,
goddess scornful of adolescent romance,
"conspiring sleep overtakes the Alien Horrors
at their wheels, I will axe the first keel
of the Fiftieth Squadron's command ship,
incapacitating them. I can make it crash
as I did when you were at Roswell in 1947
born, steering it to collide with one
or two others of its Wingmen escorts."
Apollo frowned, "That's what happened, sister?"
"Yes, they were after you, on a Shooting Star."
He nodded, more beautiful than ever she
could be, a warrior she greatly admired.
"In my mother's womb, Leto a Titan,
the omphalos rocket Hera tried to prevent Artemis
and I coming to term, God's holiest twins.
Hera hated Zeos I heard, after Earth helped
Leto in her long pregnancy bloody and wild."
Athene impatiently interrupted him. "Let's go.
I'll fly invisibly under the First Ship unsuspecting
while you fight them openly in diversion, as
lightning, in the sunset red with slashing rain."
Over New Mexico again the Fourth Generation
of invulnerable Nature swung aggressively
at Forces repellant to the deities attracting
gravity and electricity to them in magnetic poles;
magnificent shapes of cloud overly paranormal
for the science of men, rushing wind at twilight.
Inside a Saucer overconfident Fiends
steered deceitfully toward more victims
on hoof in fields and afoot in towns
snarling, superior technicians of acoustics
above human range and pilots automatic
controlling remotely, malevolently, engines
perfected by Vulcan's scientists in caverns.
They could make optical delusions go
forth from the imaginations of engineers
unscrupulous, ambitious, well-rewarded and
provided with every benefit of every convenience
necessary to their application and experiment,
testing, funding, construction costs successfully
in The Field. Newer and better prototypes
were built routinely on budgets annually
inspected by corps of lawyers and analysts
underground, hidden in Top Secret facilities
in plain sight of all but scrupulous accountants,
regulatory agencies, Watch Dogs, and omsbudsmen
paid off through the rules blandly of merchants.
Tonight, an unsuspecting Ship zoomed on by,
escorted by two smaller corsairs on its flanks.
Out of a few gray clouds ahead, suddenly,
a red burst of lightning shot faster by them
and at them, through them, in the blink
of an unlidded Eye blank with black spite.
The schooner-class Cruiser pitched and yawed
out of control not because of any damage
to its hull or magnetic systems, for Apollo's
thunderbolts borrowed from Zeos benevolently
were forbidden to initiate offensive action;
but in the yeoman steersman's panic
suddenly disoriented by the lightning's red
vectors, in dusky horizons west of the bridge,
dusky apparitions also seen from cockpits
of a cloudy Apollo-like a man great
in the clouds, great as a terrible gray storm.
Regaining his Captain's chair the pilot
a-righted his Cruiser and re-aligned
his Escorts drifting off and away, at speed,
handling his controls at his left and right
starboard and port computers automatically.
"Damage report?!" the captain barked
like a cross of an owl with a jackal,
to the panicked steersman wretching dry heaves
on the olive-drab floor, in the bridge
above decks. "No damage reported, Sir!"
an Ensign below replied in a slithering tongue.
Was it an accident, the owlish jackal
wondered, his skin gray under a uniform
skintight to keep hyperspeed travel safe?
He decided not to call in the routine weather
to Headquarters, when the Ship took a violent
360 roll in a split second and dove straight
down towards the ground only 5,000 feet away.
Athene had axed the rudder of oaken rods
immemorially built into it with one blow
stupendously aimed, underneath the superstructure
routinely welded in Vulcan's assembly lines.
Unlike Apollo, She'd no compunction against violence.
Kirtland Air Force Base radar in Albuquerque
picked up the Bogie hurtling at them at speeds
phenomenally like lightning, with only seconds
to spare, before the Heavy Cruiser hit the airport's
Flight-Line and destroyed four new F-22s
and hangar 19, exploding like a mushroom cloud
on the edge of the city. The sonic bomb
and the concussion killed hundreds of civilians
and Air Force personnel immediately, wounding
thousands more in the electrical fires and
Panics that spread farther in the next minutes.
There wasn't a window or an eardrum
that wasn't shattered or shredded within
a fifty mile radius of the initial explosion
at the Air Base, or dozens of aftershocks
and explosions of gasoline trucks, power grids,
chemical railroad cars, and the bacteriological
Weapons Labs at nearby Sandia Mountain.
The Boom and black clouds were heard and seen
by terrified Americans hundreds of miles away
in El Paso Texas, and then TV news cameras
showed the world the "Terrorist Attack"
within an hour, of a "Great City in Flames"
like New York had been, Baghdad, and Tel Aviv
in recent attacks by "Islamic fundamentalist maniacs."
Christians screamed for obvious vengeance,
Muslims denied responsibility as usual, Jews
went on High Alert with hundreds of nuclear
weapons, and the rest of the non-nuclear world
held its breath: What had happened, and Why?
Trident Submarines each readied hundreds
of megakiloton warheads off the coasts of China,
Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Antarctica.
But men didn't matter, it seemed above
in the skies beyond skies where gods materialized
out of the Inanimate, Immanent existence
of Being, reproaching the repellant Attraction
that Satan had become reprovingly imposing,
usurping God's stratospheric Reign long ago lost
in the interest of men in a newer Redeemer,
a Savior to them to correct eternity's endless
mistakes. Satan rampaging might have been above
if instead he wasn't laughing at God's ludicrous
plans. "Fantasies of future annihilations
and unreal like these, they're the best you can do,
Apollo, reckless boy and fictional loser? Crashes,
sonic booms, bacteriological warfare is all
you concoct in myths of imaginary idylls?
It means nothing, and does even less to me.
Wars you cannot make me lose fictitiously."
Prophetic Apollo somewhere did not answer
his jeering uncle-grandfather of the Sickle,
in th'Ethereal Thunder; exceptional Ace as he was
and hawk whose aircraft Satan'd also stolen
from former times contrived mythologically
He Flew! Back into annals of men historically
he took his talents of the electronic arts
to communicate upon deeds so recent and timely
that not even atheists skeptical of science
would doubt the deeds of Adventurers,
or true, calamitous, facts undisputed in the blue
and wild Yonder.