Mars Opposes Pluto in Cancer (2025)

I pour myself a shot of spiced Ukrainian vodka,

ice clinks like the gears of centrifuges

spinning deep below Natanz--

beneath the salt flats, under the world.

What are they refining?

Enrichment, they call it--

but can the soul of a teddy bear survive in uranium?

. . .

America's Mars is bleeding again.

It's retrograde, it's lost its compass,

it's turned its rifle inwards and then back out

toward a lake of nuclear fire

spilling from Tel Aviv to Tehran.

The headlines write themselves:

atomic terrorism suspected,

but whose God lit the match?

. . .

The maps keep changing their borders

like a liar reshaping the truth.

Is Palestine dying?

Gaza is gasping, Beirut is blistered.

A boy in Jerusalem

prays beside a broken wall,

not for peace but to be spared the next wave

of sky-borne steel.

In Kyiv, the bells ring backwards.

In Moscow, a soldier forgets his own name

becomes an orthodox monk

and remembers only war, hunger, and violence

in Ukraine, histories of trauma and persecution

reinvent themselves among newer generations.

. . . .

This is what Mars opposite Pluto feels like:

a tactical nuke buried in the chest

cavity of a poem

disguised as a missile defense system.

It is 2025

and our country's Pluto return is complete--

we have inherited the curse of empires.

. . .

The sky glows falsely with auroras of doom.

Satellite footage shows

a bright flash--

"just a malfunction,"

says someone in Langley,

but the shepherd in Isfahan

heard the lambs scream.

In Rafah, a mother folds a blanket

over a child already gone cold.

In Tel Aviv, a drone buzzes past

a couple drinking coffee in tense silence.

. . .

We are all implicated.

You, me, everyone

who scrolls past burning bodies

to like a video of someone dancing in Canada.

There is no innocence

in the age of algorithms.

Only curated ignorance.

. . .

They say the Mahdi will rise.

They say Christ is coming.

They say peace is at hand,

as the warplanes refuel over the Caspian.

My palms sweat with starlight and prophecy.

I sip my drink.

The ice has melted.

. . .

When the nuclear apocalypse comes,

it will not come in a rush.

It will be a slow forgetting--

a trauma too large to hold,

leaking out in memes and sarcasm.

The Second Coming will be televised,

but only to those who paid

the subscription fee.

. . .

And still--

the children draw suns in yellow crayon.

And still--

the dogs bark at nothing in the dark.

And still--

Mars opposes Pluto,

and no one knows what that really means.

Only that it hurts.

. . .

Amen for the wounded.

Amen for the blind gods who made us.

Amen for every particle of love

lost to a tactical calculation.

There is no victory left to claim.

Only the smoldering facts

of being human, robot, and beast

beneath a burning sky.