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.
Tuesday poem: Crying over spilt light
August 3, 2015
Crying over spilt light
About one-fifth of the world’s population can no longer detect the Milky Way with the naked eye due to light pollution. (Reported in Cosmos magazine, August/September 2009.)
Obesity of light blankets black,
clogs the arteries of recognition.
Blindness comes from the stroke
of too easy ignition; the fatty candle
of conjoined cities chokes imagination.
No matter; search the lost skies
by screen’s unblinking gaze,
and rediscover what Neanderthals
once mind-wandered quite for free.
Erasure of night by carrion globe,
pecking out eyes of speculation.
P.S. Cottier
I wrote this one back in 2009, and it was published in The Specusphere. I thought I would republish it as this year is the International Year of Light.
It struck me as ironic that the light we use to free ourselves from darkness in fact blinds us to the stars.
Have other poets have been writing about light?
Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here.
PS Cottier 