Scuttlebutt

vent

the thing is they lied to you;
told you life and light
glory and sustenance
all the things that make you holy
and whole
can only fall from above,
touching your squalid soul
in some sacred snowfall
that if you were pure
you could rise up at last to meet.

but abiogenesis was not attained
from the searing finger of an interplanetary creator;
it boiled up here, in the dark,
crushing black depths
where their precious perfect forms
return in death.

to the eyes of the blessed
you are ghosts, tortured souls
damned to an eternity in the abyss;
but here there is no pain
no strife, no hunger, and no cold.
life flows through you, feeds you
from within. red-tipped white, iron-armoured, you cluster
around the doorway to hell
and keep your secrets:

when the light overhead goes out
you will blindly dance on
unchanged.