UVM Poets and Cynic illustrators created pieces inspired by the words ouroboros, synthetic, venom, statue and bludgeon.
Canto 13
Kaelin Lensink
The trumpets sing on Judgment Day,
Their harmonious shrieks bludgeon my senses
In the chaos, my limbs sway
And angels descend upon my kind
There is venom in my roots,
Sappy, synthetic blood,
Weeping wounds of broken branches
A pathetic interpretation of a life once lived
I am planted, still as a statue,
My body hanging amongst willow leaves
Like Ouroborus, I have bitten my own tail
And ruined any chance at redemption
Infinite Fight
JD Books
The venom seeping through
The statue of this state
Copper copying the natural beauty
But tarnished in the synthetic pathetic
Rivals in the senate
We are all tenants
Waiting for their ruling
Throwing the bludgeon down freedom undoing
Here my retort in court
For the nation will resort
To amend the 2nd
And we wait to beckon
The blackened ouroboros
Hidden in the dark toros
Awaiting to strike
The chiseled house
White, in tandem bike
Infinite or finite?
A fight in broad daylight
Crucify the future torture
Shrouding the sky
And the remains of our culture
Being left to die
I am, I was, I am
Ari D’Aconte
I am apologizing for sins of past lives
An unbreakable cycle of guilt
An ouroboros of karmic energy
Let this be my effigy
I was the hero
Bludgeoned all my foes
Took to task the villains of my age
Locked them all in an iron cage
I was atlas
The world on my shoulders
A statue, perfectly still
Never needed, until
I was the knight in broken armor
Couldn’t keep the demons out
Or my desires in
Stuck fighting a war I knew I won’t win
I was Liar
Smooth as the silk screens
Venom coursed through my veins
Let the devil take the reigns
I was the creation
Synthetic, artificial
What was the world thinking
When it made me
I was forgotten
A tomb, that lay unread
A skeleton, dead
A memory, shred
I am a fighter
I didn’t do anything to deserve this
I lived right, I lived well
Cursed to toll my own bell.
The Reptilian Party Program
Jesse Flora
Ouroboros grows numb to the taste of tail
But the extraction machine is endless on both ends
Machine got me searching for an authentic belief in an ocean of artifice
Water abound
Death more so
Every dollar a soldier, every soldier a penny
Electric bills rising, lights going out
Neon sign saying “do not build the torment nexus”
In the blackout, “do not” lost power
Cattle too covered in mud to notice the texture of shit
They generate whatever synthetic demand they’re told to
A cow can’t eat its own tail but it can pretend
Sucking on a plastic straw to play at being part of the big club
Uproar when the bread and circuses are too brown
Reactionaries with torches and pitchforks
Revolutionaries with New York Times subscription
A statue of Old Major sits in the university, a pit of gold plated turds
Free thinkers line up before the artillery, waiting to be crowned with implants
This sundown syndrome, this foggy malaise
This venom that courses through blood and soil
This disease for which there is ostensibly no cure
Must birth a mutation with resistance
This is synthesis
Communication with no algorithm
Vanguard with no security codes
The hammer of dissent is forged to bludgeon every bot
The house falls down
When you’re inside the Ouroboros, there’s no leaving the way you came in
You kill or be killed
Steal of get stolen
Do not allow steel to replace beauty
Pierce through the scales of justice for all humanity
Before the meat grinder swallows every last ideal
Cow and snake alike
Strewn upon the factory floor
