A poet moves between missiles and minerals, geological time and imagined futures, transforming the page into a site of planetary and bodily encounter.
A Human-Animal with Ten Phalanges Worships Omnipotence
a
fragile
flesh being
a human-animal
born with ten phalanges
worships insatiable omnipotence, a
visionary of singularity, of brutality
beyond its utility for survival
molds the arc of planetary
history into the
shape of a
puncture
unhealed
bloodletting
turns contagious
before long all beings
bear marks of unnecessary wounding:
a humpback whale deafened by sound bombs
a famished seal exiled at op a fugitive polar bear
the African elephant evox lves to be born without
tusks, the dugong navigatesx naval mines and oil spills
xxxxwhilst dolphins reach xzx the Black Sea’s shores asx
corpses. in thishere year our planetbeing is
circumscribed by a halo of debris:
Resilient Missile Warning and
Tracking constellations
with nuclear powered
infrared sensors
detect ballistic
and hypersonic missiles
perch in outer space
alongside thermal
blankets and
bags of
human
waste
**
*
in
the
archive
of gravity
and orbital
debris, future
generations will
discover primitive
instruments of obliteration
discarded amidst extra terrestrial
voyages undertaken in the
long interval before
unilateral
disarmament
before our
species
finally
agreed
to portion
resources
according
to need
rather
than
g
xxr
xe
exx
dx
LITHOSPHERE
acacia grove embalmed in phosphorous gauze
beneath it a girl’s school buried with open eyes
sleeps in child’s pose upon the pulp bedding of a shrine
husked by AGM-114 Hellfire, in the continental crust
mycelium spores rehearse the weeping fits
prophesized after the freedom still yet to come.
*
in the mammary river of milky light we yawn
traveling aboard the sentient winged chariot
of lapis lazuli and moss, circling the slow death
of a life-giving star, the stallion of cells
who memorize and split themselves,
on thishere Earthbeing the precondition
of every cruelty is a burgeoning vine,
offshoot of the sacred miracle of minerals
begetting life, flesh married to spirit,
along the Nile’s third cataract oyster shell,
drum hide, guinea fowl, and river clay.
*
before mitochondrial eve, meteors are our earliest
ancestors, the ones we share with the baobab trees,
pummeling the earth, a blizzard of cosmic debris
declares I am your first and last mother.
*
the untouchable chakra at the center of the earth
burns effortlessly as our ten finger predecessors
descend the mangroves in search of sandstone
and white musk, in the dust veil of noon glare
children stack cowries to form a minaret,
our predecessors invent cryptograms, carve codes
in caves, crush beetles for pigment, etch sacred canoes
into the ossuary ceiling, wound blue stars into cheekbones,
collect ostrich feathers, convey water in ochre
ox-shaped jugs, pierce holes into the left thighbone
of a young cave bear, four notes in F-major
—Do, Re, Mi and Fa.
*
in the third millennium of annihilation we invent LiDAR
to peak beneath the crown of dense forest, gazing
into the once bare scalp of a continent, we glimpse
geoglyphs and begin to grasp that the scalp is a garden
deliberately tended by its first guardians,
that the gardener is a sculptor of human destiny
shuffling seeds at the playground’s clavicle,
the school is an altar of parallel epochs
where our child descendants learn that once upon a time
faithlessness personified hellfire as automated
—not autonomous—bursts, that families gathered
in cemeteries to sleep above caskets whose fledgling
inhabitants tore the way of the moon.
If We Must Have War, What Ought War to Achieve?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*
xxxxxa child xis xa
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxsoldier questioning
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxthe abacus of history
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxif xwe must xhave war
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxwhat xought xwar
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxto achieve?
xxxxx
xxa
child
xxis a
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxt xxxxxxxxxxxx *
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxr
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxs
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxi
xxxxxxxxxxxx*
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxe
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxt
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxe
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxixxxxxxxxxxxxxi
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxg
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
on
course to
metamorphosis
the answer to which
war is a question remains
unfound, unresolved, dissolved
and reentered into the texture of
historical time in allegedly new | old forms.
