I
A gentle breeze blew coughs
through busy streets.
The skull-god descended on ebony wings
whispering into the dim sunlight
against its skeletal embrace
in the ashen winter.
Before long, this snow-whiteness,
rheumy & noiseless, blanketed
the entire school.
I yearned to save, save, save.
Planet R, as a neutral coalition,
merely recorded & observed.
The skull-god grew gradually
In the interplanetary space,
feeding on humanity’s voracious desires.
People, chasing after money,
had raised the dire-wolf,
whose name was Planet X,
crawling out of the X interior
a flying lizard-like skull-god.
No human sin.
No Skull-God.
My master told me.
II
Coughing echoed everywhere.
People spat blood everywhere.
I witnessed
Shrouds spread like clusters
of white sausages
in these hospital corridors.
If one gazed down
from the boundless sky,
crimson as a sharp blade,
meanwhile, would shatter
every night for everyone.
I saw
blood flowing like a fucking
snot, steaming of all.
Anxiety, marble-like,
sprawled and clung to me
among the bare palm trees.
No authority had I to act.
My master of Planet R
prophesied to me:
when the skull-god comes,
three colors,
three judgments.
A faint fire
a long time ago ignited.
Born, born, born of heats that
cultivated hatred.
Typical for a red craving
& voracity & impulsion & ecstasy.
Those baptised and those were not.
Those with turbans and those without.
Those with different colored-skins.
Some branches were torn down
by the fierce wind.
Arms, teeth mingled in dis-warmed
bodies upon grass.
Until TV commercials for food
turned out to be a bitter dream for anyone.
As green vines encircled the Earth.
Green — The final Judgment Day,
I donned a uniform of Time.
What
the
skull
-god
said.
I heard it.
III
The League of Nations received my report.
They went to Earth.
They marched as fast as the griffins flew.
IV
I walked on the frozen river on Planet R
after doomsday.
Nameless flowers bloomed,
a heavy stone sinking
to the bottom of the lake
with my grief.
My master,
in a yellow flying machine
gazed at the Earth
nothing said.
Yucheng Tao is from Nanjing and an international student studying songwriting at MI College of Contemporary Music in Los Angeles. His works have been published in Wingless Dreamer(2024 contest), Synchronized Chaos, Moonstone Art Center, and Spillword.