Anthology of Rapture by James Scully

What are they looking for
running to the summit of lost time?

Hundreds of people vaporized
instantly
are walking mid-air

We didn’t die
we skipped over death in a flash we became spirits

Give us a real a human death
as if we’d existed

not that this is less than a field of paper cranes

the shadow of a man among hundreds
engraved on stone steps

Why am I printed on stone?
Where did my flesh go, without its shadow?

Where will shadow go
no way up
no down
shadowing shadow on stone

The 20th century is a myth
frozen in fire—
a woman’s fingers
flare like candles,
who will blow them out?

Who will free this stone
from its shadow?

It isn’t that the threat of the bomb is great
but that the earth is small

how is it the 20th century passed
. . . leaving behind
a rag of skin, on which
the victim’s face appeared

I’ve shed the face of a human being
I’m stuck to a piece of gauze
but that don’t stop me screaming

Between my teeth uranium seeds
In the dark of my nostrils
cockroaches run to hide
Back of my eyes helium glares

The world is no more than a small rock
soaked with the downpours of raging poisons

the centuries are withering behind us
as if they never existed

I, too, am a tatter
of burnt human creature
tranced in strips of gauze

beyond the horizon I hear
my lost remains calling to me

galaxies burning at the stake

http://www.jamesscully.net/