The Presbyterian Scholar
by Marsha Myers
Rip down his cosmic zipper.
Watch him shrivel like a nightmare ending.
Appearances of living, walking,
breathing, vaporize.
An ashen shell emerges,
exuding peevish contempt
of life and beauty.
The vacant hound tracks soddenly
through empty marble halls.
There is no light on here.
The hound moves down the concrete stairs
shuushh.
He makes no noise.
He moves, a lifeless form on empty air.
He and his brothers crucified the goddess.
And would have crucified all life,
Extracting essence for their fear,
nullifying sweet beauty in the name of
manly virtue.
In this dark hall they call learning
rests a cynic illness redefined to
suit a domination so profound and
absolute, it ripples sight unseen
through lives like hemlock.
Swift, soul-killing death.
Contempt oozes from bad blood,
poison distilled from lifeblood
sucked from earth and yes, from
women they disdain. How better
kill than turn a thing on itself?
Transmute life energy to dust.
The viper writhes.
The astral shell stalks forth with
no emotion, no thing to give or to
define it but vacant, vast
contempt.
Drawing by Sidra
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