Not a single cloud,
no stars were seen
in that pitch-black unholy sky.
The moon looked grotesque,
swollen and glaring.

Though offensive, it was striking
and addictive too.
Disgust gave way to curiosity,
and not just me
everyone looked
and kept looking.

As time went by,
more eyes were drawn to it

Then it began.
The moon wobbled,
expanded,
split into two.
Those two became four
a bit too quickly.
I rubbed my eyes in disbelief,
opened them cautiously
to see twelve more,
making it sixteen.
And it went on,
ceaselessly
the replication.

Shaken and stirred,
thoughts turned into a cocktail
of amazement, fear, and disbelief.
I stopped counting
it didn’t matter anymore.

Sometime later
the multiplication stopped.
One ahead of the other,
the moons lined up
and began moving
one after another.

And through the dense darkness
slithered a snake
a luminous and white

People gaped,
bowed their heads,
and zealously prayed
at the altar of darkness.
The avatar they had hoped for
had finally arrived.
“It has answers to everything,”
they said,
“even questions no one had ever raised.”
“Most of the questions,” I said,
“were not right,
nor were they
asked right.”
Intoxicated,
no one bothered.

The sun never multiplies
never has.
The moon did,
and I realised
how reflected luminance multiplies:
charlatans deceive,
politicians lie,
warmongers set fire to borders,
and sense dies
common, uncommon, and otherwise.

And I wait,
with trepidation
and a little hope,
that the head might, in the end,
bite the tail.
That’s how in the dumb
Nokia phone
it met its death
the snake