Poem: Nyx and Neon
January 21, 2024
The darkness and its dreams
have been tossed out like bottle caps,
or plastic wrappers, illuminated
into nothingness. Old goddesses
swapped for this new electricity,
these garish sharp scars flashing.
Neon is the worst, an intoxicating
brightness. He was recently elevated
to a minor god. I curse his vulgar
yellow slaps upon the face
of the sleeping earth, his bold
assertion of light when all
should give themselves to rest.
Newness needs to be won,
rebirthed at dawn, not lost
in this glut of fluorescence,
snarling through the black.
But I am Nyx, and I know —
Neon can never reach
the human’s rest of death.
There nothing disturbs the mud,
except the damp, and the quiet,
thorough recycling of the worms,
palest pink yet avid.
PS Cottier
Nyx personifies night, and was the goddess of the night. Neon was discovered in 1898, and is a ‘noble gas’, although Nyx doesn’t see it that way in my poem.
PS Cottier 