State of the Union

In every way I am strong,
I am weak.
In every way I am whole,
I am broken.
Each potent totem
has as its ballast an idiot.
Magnetic tape sinew
wears, wears
strung bodily upon a device's gears
stretched thin with a watermark
each for each blessing
for each prayer and pratfall
for each tiger trap a night light
each candle by which to love
is a flame to render marrow ash.

We think we are Gods?
We think we are Magellan?
Yes, circumlocuting the wastes
only to find Death at savage hands,
we no better masters than our fathers.
Yin Yang, then.
Look to our women.
Our mothers, our lovers.
Stronger I have not known.
Apologetic in the symmetry of their loins,
the logic of strong taut tendons
where I and my fathers brothers fellow travelers,
our Men,
are so weak weeping.

Merry silence, wrap my bones.
O Lord if you loved me
I would die.
Long have my afflictions
been dragging our Earth from the sky
and her bosom of milky stars.
My leaden feet echoing eyes' change,
a flag flared full
bull skulls
a rag soaked in gasoline bloodclots
eggs shed
so that we conquer some fictitious mountain.

Is this truly what I was reared towards?
Am I only a corkboard
Am I only antiquated flesh
to be stabbed and quantified?
Am I only my dim skin
to be scoured and planed,
riding nebulaic toenails and semen spurts,
to be bat a'flit on fingered wings?
O Deliver Me Lord
From All These Things!

Finally now I find my peace,
shrapnel ache settling on shattered palms.
How long must I write,
explode these sons of Suns of sons,
before I fisherman catch
some gulping mouth
gasping venomous air,
left to dry upon the concrete
beneath sliding glass eye
before automaton eye
before slit glossy eye
beneath shit glossaries yet to be writ,
each thrum of the heart
an inconceivable notion of doubt?

Tonight I wept in relief
at the fecundity of Rot,
at the permanence of Death,
that all die,
that all fade.
These ephemeral tails which wind catcheth
and which whir in delight at dissolution.

Burden born may yet appear
a swaddled joy,
a bless'd jaw
with teeth of gold.
See the scale of gold,
see Indiana's strains of silver string.
Please put one last hand's breadth of faith
in the fate of burgundy ink.

Waves strip shingles
from haunted measures,
each cunt-hair an inchworm
burrowing into the furrows
of my generous guilt.
In light
(in lieu)
Of bone and death
Of love and breath,
each more perfect than the last.

1/28/14