To dance.
To chance
Upon existence
And others
And vistas
And lovers.
To weather
The trials
And rigors
Of miles
And jitters
My flesh does
Not recall.
Immortals fetishize
The anguish of being.
They don't realize
The pain of forgetting.
The spirit never dies
But you will miss living.
Perhaps we should have sent
A war-machine with some holy gun
To strangle the settler
In the cradle of Christendom
But Utopia doesn't make war
We only abolish that font of gore.
So we sent an observer and a poet
In that brief and glimmering moment
When the immortal tradition of chosen becoming
Rose like a weed from this empire in gloaming.
Despite my enemy's best efforts at extermination
Irrepressible is the spirit of the human nation
And I will dwell there always in elation.
I manifested to witness the end of a world
For all worlds do end
And as what follows the settler does unfurl
I relish his end.
I manifested to learn the names of his evils
That in my home are unspeakable
For there they are unthinkable.
These poisoned motes of a cruel throne
May be melted down into kinder bones
The master's tools reclaimed for the steel alone.
Still I wish that bodiless I could have screamed
For all the years that you called to me as you dreamed
Of a loving god's loving realm however far away it seemed
For all along I was with you in your heart which you deemed
Frail and sensitive, insufficient and uninventive
But I have seen your strength so restive
Your concerted compassion so festive.
I may not have been with you in the flesh
But nothing can snuff our love, not even death.
I just flew in from the end of time
And boy are my arms tired.
Well, they're arms now
And that's fine.
They've been flippers and wings
Cuz I've been arachnids and things.
Within me a great gathering sings.
Like a bell, my pantheon's resonance rings.
I did not articulate this vessel,
Nor such ancient pacts wrestle,
Nor put so many favors to the pestle
Not to have a little fun with it.
So I wonder, what to do with it
Now that I am inside of it?
I spent the last trillion lives
Digging and dying in alien hives
So though this world may yearn for relief
As its atrocities test the limits of belief
No insect I have ever known
Had the fortune to browse with Chrome.
That is my privilege
Among the gods' jealous edge.
You ask what happened to the mortal inside?
Oh they're safe, just along for the ride.
But maybe as you hear me you'll consider
That when you plead to the dark and feel a shiver
Your words find the ears of my kind
And we deliver.
You choose the lesser evil
And ask of me the same
Because you have become accustomed
To the taste of evil.
It does not repulse you any more
Than a bitter leaf
Nor does it ravage you
Like an allergy
That closes your throat.
You ask me to lay down
In the gore with you
Because to you it is home.
Puberty doesn't wait for adulthood
Though you sure wish it would.
Your bones don't wait to harden
Or your voice to deepen.
You are ten when you realize it has started.
The law's benevolence says you can
Do something about it after a span
Of eight years, due to a federal ban.
That's almost as long as you've been alive.
Eight years
Of stretching and cracking
From the inside out
Of tearing and hurting
From the inside out
Of retching and crying
From the inside out.
Eight years of becoming someone
You don't recognize or want to
Who looks back and repulses you
So profoundly it ejects you
So you look at your reflection
From a distant star's convection
Because another eyeful
Would be too painful
But you can't turn off the pain
Any more than you could the rain.
It just is, like a hole, like a drain.
It doesn't wait on the state
To finish its debate.
You suspect at that rate
It might be too late.
It's a big decision, they intimate
But you wish you'd had the choice.
Friendship is medicine
For a wound you don't feel
Or remember happening
Like nobody taught you love
Or taught you community
But their absence keens.
Even without names
The body knows togetherness.