OF ARCHETYPES AND ARCOLOGIES
Bruce Boston
In the walled city,
the tiered and domed city
we never deign to leave,
in the hermetic metropolis
of our dreams and ideation,
there are a thousand faces
to choose and choose again
from a changing pantheon
of instant adulation.Vivid light and flesh are
the terms or our equation:
the spermatozoa of heroes
are frozen by the million,
the multicloned gametes
of goddesses preserved,
so those of us who hunger
can impersonate celebrity
in our own procreation.As the city mines each myth,
as the fashions cycle past
in a boomerang progression,
as the streaming photons
light our darkened habitats
and purl our perfect cheeks
with a ghost illumination,
we embrace the endless tales
of our holograph fixation.In the shadowed and deserted
reaches of our hemisphere
moisture gathers, an oily rain
descends, yet nothing sprouts
from this tepid condensation;
while beyond the sealed dome,
far across the shattered plain,
ancient scanners long embedded
send back a dim reflection.Our arcology resembles
a decapitated head resting
upright on its severed neck,
fault lines lace its skull
like a nesting spider's web,
and we are fading neurons
of a failing cogitation,
attendants to illusion
and its inbred deifications.
Art by Joseph Greenwood
