Trinity* (Renku Collaboration)

1945

A boy sits and ponders as
A boil explodes

Radiation burns scarring
Soft faces and bloody skies

Patches of sun burnt
violet massage
the tainted air

Come! All you disbelievers
Praise in the name of science!

Splitting the atom
yields the thunderous applause
of our fearful land.

Explosion defines the earth.

Flames destroy its surface.

An odd cloud appears.
Somehow, I know I will die
Or count my blessings

Atomic, verdant crater
Melted into a glass bowl.

Thunder howls in pain

Screaming out thousands

of bullets in one voice

Men in masks stare at a girl
as she excretes destruction

Planet-cracking force
shakes the scales of Gaea's skin;
Tectonic thunder.

Fumes of reaping metal cling

To the planet’s scarred flesh

Numbers chant in sync.
The ritual melody
Adds tones of despair

Binary screaming heralds
the gallop of four horsemen

They helplessly trot

through sands splashing specks

of glistening ash

Shards of green glass and crystal
Bond; Earth’s radiant smile.                                   

Gaea smiles no more.
Blood spattered on melted sand
Countdown to sorrow.

Drowning in a Hennessy

intoxicated sun

John and Blanche made love,
And drank chilled rum and Cola while,
“Don’t Fence Me In” played.

The atom's atomic dance
in a throng of thrashing force

Destruction is the

Weapon that fizzes

Fumes furiously

My skin tells me that it’s time.
One day this is how we'll die.

Festered barnacles
of irradiated flesh
pockmark her children.

Leaving them exposed to the

Poisons filling into their land

“Please take the children!”
Cries the father, as the lumps
Begin to surface.

Dark splotches on milk white skin
Sunspots mark the dusk of man.

Tarnished land feeds on

memorable sunken souls

lost in gloom disguise

Solvents now find themselves in
A realm without alchemy

Lead and Mercury,
Archaic elements now
Obsolete witchcraft.

Divine power unraveled
Behind masked western science

Director Kenneth Bainbridge,
Said, “Now we’re all dead”
To Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer said, “Now I
Am Death, destroyer of worlds.”

And so the sky said,
“Bienvenue!” to the newest
Fungal Phoenix.

God missed the divine rainbow,
Trinity’s "bulbous fireball."

White sands melted green
Glass grows molten in the glow
of nuclear lamps

Light burns the atmosphere

illuminating radiance

Manhattan, borough
many boroughs into one
Secrets in shadow

A breathe of dusk protects

the camouflaged agenda

The Atomic Age
heralds the dawn in the shade
of a mushroom cloud

Pieces and particles prance

In the public’s pupils

Gotta get 'Gadget'
Secret names for omega
Hark! The end of days.

Twisted conclusion of a

demolished beginning

There goes the blue-sky
atmospheric deletion
or complete dud.

Red smoked gray’s beauty

as the mountains just watched

Flawless disturbances

abandon civil

beings in wreckage

Raising blemished questions

of broken moralities

The Allied gamblers
Toy with the apocalypse
The horseman called war

War it was. Shock waves rippling

Riffles through distant echoes

Verdant glass a scar
forever on the white sand
the new age cometh

An Impatient generation

yearns for new science to come.


* Note: This poem is about the July 16, 1945 Trinity nuclear test. This test resulted in creating the world's first atomic bomb.