titl: Decline Of the West

A late dark on the quiet west
A confused cadence wrings the
sky, & hangs strangely on the crest
with a dangerous hunger: fifty
crystal-teeth bite
(and the crust twitches)

Slower eyes lose it,

everywhere they stir, the criers
the passers-by

Teething newborns slouching
to the municipal mother
wrung dry
ossified

grinding
on the indigestible
the inexhaustible

‘til the morning of the mighty sun
strikes them invisible -

Early twilight for the East
Ancient song she sings
above the rank starvation

You Leech
You King
with no tongue
to wet your
thumb with

come now.
climb that

Great Wall she built
with a white bone
to leave herself
there
all alone
amongst the edges of her Self

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You know...that first paragraph brought to mind the glare of a thousand street lamps with semi closed eyes after a huge yawn. Yep...white crystal shards in the dark. I might steal that little tidbit for later. James
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Thank you James, I love bringing the "Image Made Real" to others....especially phosphenes. So, no need to "steal"...you've made that yours now .
-Sy mn
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By phosphenes...do you mean glow in the dark?
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I must add, in that regard, and perhaps interestiung to you by the way of your poem, that diamnonds, being crystal, also glow in the dark. James
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What are you on? Diamonds don't glow in the dark. Poor verse btw, and almost certainly pagarised, in common with 99% of the stuff on here. ~Raptor~
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I use my diamond ring for a nightlight.

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They do glow in the dark. I used to work in a jewellry store...I know these things....ahem...if yours doesn't glow I have nothing to say about that.
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If a diamond glows in the dark, it's probably fake:

pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2703diamond.html

"PAUL SPEAR: This is a very intense short-wave ultraviolet lamp, and what we see here on the left are four synthetic diamonds and on the right four natural diamonds, and we're looking at the luminescence which is given off by the diamond. And you can see that on the left the four synthetic diamonds are glowing very brightly under the action of this very hard ultraviolet light, but as the four natural diamonds are almost inert under the action of this ultraviolet light. And of course from synthetic diamonds you see phosphorescence when the lamp is turned off - the diamonds glow in the dark."

"CARTER CLARKE: When you send one of our diamonds to De Beers, right, the only way they can detect that this is not a natural diamond is really through phosphorescence. They take this, and they put in, they hit it with a UV light, and after the UV light goes off, this thing will phosphoresce for about three to five seconds. That is typical of a synthetic diamond versus a natural diamond. Something you would not do in a jewelry store, for an example. However, we have a way to overcome that."