tonight, the gods are sick of being gods.

aphrodite drinks your worship straight from your lips
and chases it with a scotch, crashes a cigarette,
flicks the ash on the floor and leaves
without so much as a thank you.

you find apollo in a nightclub on 55th and 3rd,
his prophets writhing in the intermittent darkness,
bassline pounding in their ears, liquor coursing in their veins,
smoke and strobe lights clouding their eyes.

you watch as ares starts a fight in a dive bar, takes
a knife from his pocket and uses it without flinching,
smiles as he wipes the blade on his thigh,
smashes a bottle on the floor and lights a match.

artemis spends the night in a jail cell,
blood on her knuckles and on her shirt and in her mouth,
the smell of metal lingering in the air.

athena chainsmokes in an alleyway,
waits for a boy with dark eyes and a mouth like sin.

dionysus shoots up in a basement in the seedy side of town.

hades stalks the streets, hazy in the fog of the streetlamps.

tonight, the gods are sick of being gods
and somewhere in the city
their forgotten divinity waits for morning.