Saturday, June 5, 2010

The state of affairs

Unsequenced Poem

You caused these burnings.
My hands shrink and crack

like a cat creeping into the fire,
a silhouette kindling copper fire

in the fingers of the paw.
And you knew,

Old God of kerosene,
of ether,

that the scarlet worm,
flame of devastation,

had slunk into your garden, strewn with embers;
fruits, knowledges,

afloat like paper lanterns.
He came, as I came,

bearing roots of feathers,
embryos of scales,

and the coal, still warm and lit,
which we kept, deep in the chest,

on the cold nights.
And as we built our Enoch,

we dug for that spark:
tongs between our ribs, extracting

slowly, slowly,
the germ of our beacon,

to be set on high for our children,
not yet come.

Who sees it, and does not wonder,
has drank deep of the chemistry

of inhibition. He has cast
aspersions on his birthright

of paper and straw;
he has sold himself for water.

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