The Bubble

Falling in love with someone who later "discovers Jesus" is painful, and the ending is not a happy one. Jesus almost always wins. I found a "juvenilia" poem from my freshman years at Edinboro, still rife with rhymes (a perversion that Whitman wold cure me of), but I was able to touch it up so that I am no longer quite so embarrassed. It's the thought that counts.

THE BUBBLE

by Brett Rutherford

We rule an earth but microns thin,
you and I — we ride on separate
hemispheres in yinyang nevercatch
pursuit — my love and your fear,
spinning and tiding a fevered
planet. A Titan, Kronos, grows
within, grinds nostrils on the pane
of the mind's cool underside:

this shadow of a shadow shouts
its name is God, it slobbers
catechist, Faith-fanged.


The reason'd Sphere is hard —­
a perfect tomb for fiends,
but now our Bubble breaks apart
in demon arm-and-leg flex,
and simple Truth is lost to air.
I love in vain. You flee in terror.


Kronos is loose in the world.

The Thing, unchained, must have its lust
and wrenching out its prison bars,
slays lovers, knocks thrones to rubble,
grinds genius back to dust.
Its vacant eye usurps the stars.


I go to a place of exile.
There is no room for you
and me, and a rampaging deity.

God-love destroyed our love.
God-love destroys everything.
So, let's be only Truth
in one another's eyes
Let's summon Things As They Are,
till every Demon dies.