I.  Mercury

Like a moth, he flies near the flame,
For while the light is a finger’s length away
Everything else is bodies and bodies far.
So he soars, around and around in repeated, brief orbits
Around the same ideas.
They all return to a darkness on all sides but one,
And his unreachable dreams
Glimmer like fruit on Tantalus’s trees—
Just beyond his reach.

II. Venus

She is like her sister
In the crescendo and swells of her body,
But they’ll never choose her.
As, she is shrouded in white clouds
A fog Excalibur and Arthur could not pierce,
For if he tried, the rot within would wither
Even the kings and swords of legends.
So she watches from her highlands
Above, outside.

III. Earth

She is Helen of Troy.
The woman who will incite wars.
The woman who will be behind the fall of each era’s Achilles.
The woman who will protect them all with her beauty.
The woman who turns in time to the heartbeat of the universe.
She will enchant them all,
Compelling them to turn from reason,
To open their hearts to emotion,
And leave their souls to fate.

IV. Mars

His veins run dry, devoid of what they seek.
But the rivers are there,
Patterns of paths and pinpricks and pain
That tell deeper tales
Of life’s blade and the scars that remain
Once water has whispered
Its unspeakable truths,
And then washed away.

V. Jupiter

He is the maelstrom and the battle,
The winds snapping at the sails
While men gut each other and grin.
He’s the giant and the hand of God.
Whispers of his size travel, near tangible,
While he plucks smaller beings like flowers
To plant in his own garden.
He’s the storm always brewing, the child always screaming, the gusts always going—
But they don’t see that, no.
They see a damn hurricane.

VI. Saturn

He is the romantic,
The Romeo scaling the balcony for his Juliet.
Rings of precious materials are in his hand, ready for her hand.
He is encircled by them, paired with the bands,
Like they are one in the same,
Because underneath that, there isn’t much more.
Nothing substantial, at least.
But men can be that way, sometimes:
Known for the objects with which they surround themselves.
For what is Romeo, truly, without Juliet,
But another man doomed by the quill of his God?

VII. Uranus

He’s nothing but a joke to some:
Off-kilter, slow, and there’s not a solid part to him.
God, he isn’t even beautiful.
But still, there’s a magic in his movements,
A meticulous meter that magnifies his moods and skies,
Clouds clamoring to be close, to be illuminated
By his lopsided mind.
And there’s something mathematical
About his rings and moons,
So much so that most can acknowledge
That there was a method when the universe made him
Even if they’re unknown.

VIII. Neptune

She is a phantom, found by the predictions and perseverance
Of the men who seek her for reasons of pulchritude.
But she is distant, wisps of blue and green,
A ghosts who emerges for guests,
Love them,
And retreats back into herself,
So brief that most are left wondering
If she was really there at all.

IX. Pluto

He sits in the shadows of his brothers and sisters,
But he is neither angry nor discouraged,
For he is hope.
Hope for the weak, hope for the small.
Proof of courage and strength.
And a sheer demonstration
That even the smallest of men
Can endure the tribulations of time
And the universe itself.