We’re rushing headlong to revisit past glories

To reconfigure the memories of classical stories

Corporations hope comic book characters will replace

Zeus or Athena or Hermes – A green monster

Now plays Hercules for swooning geeks who

Don’t know a damn thing about ancient Greeks.

This current batch of heroes is defective

They’re all bloated, crying, full of racist invective.

We need a new Pantheon but forget how to cut marble

we have to build it out of sticks and mud bricks

and watch as it melts from the ground up.

You see, mud is porous and weak, the whole thing will

come down in a heap even as we ascend on ladders

to lay a new course.

There will be blaming and incriminations

The great cultural politicians all will say that

The geeks weren’t open-minded enough to accept:

That old gods were easy to swap for new ones.

The pulp gets prepped for paper

Pressed under ten thousand pounds of pressure

Ready for the blade, pages reaping in a thresher.

“Bring me the new issue of Thor! What? The planet

Is melting down? No more Ice Giants, no more magic?”

I could start to cry, but this, this is much too tragic.

I suppose we’re rushing headlong into the pit instead

The chasms are opening, ripe and ready

Nothing left to do now but turn up the volume and let it R.I.P.