11 November 2012

The Embers Within Us. pt 1

Mark with a circle of stone the place where I fall
And
Let me lie. 
Upon the ground
Bare your feet and sink into the grass and soil
And mark with your reflection another circle
This of the clock's hands.
  
  'I don't want to live like this but
   I don't want to die
   I just don't know how to live like this
   Like them those even who
   Are my friends.'

We are taught to wait, my people
Like Clytemnestra we might waste away
A decade or  more and for our efforts
In hesitation find rewarded our
Just lusts with loss of lover and 
Self, taking with us merely 
Vengeance which thereafter is
Not even memory but myth and
We are lost then even to understanding
Remaining in caricature
Solely - 
 
  'But the king is good and 
   The king is just and the wise
   And goodly countenance 
   Desires for our sakes.'

In my youth I feared my fire but
In marginally later years I
Stoked it and drew it to steadiness
And forged brands of bones bent and
Fused to my purpose - 
Charred like forestoak trembling before lightning
I set out with these brands and 
My blood-inked, bone-needled skin from our village and
Its thangkas, our bonobo companions wild and
Perched to watch their hairless cousin
Set out for love and war.

I must fall but first I must prepare from
The spines of those lost in both age and 
Its absence, drawn from the field
Which is our corporeal memory - its
Right angles marking our declaration
Of an inorganic and uncalled-for presence
It is thus only mine.

For the morbidity from which we fetched
The ink and needle 
Staff and sinew rope for those implements
Most holy and therefore
Detestable to Life whose whole
Is demarcated not by those straight lines 
But by its convolutions which
In metaphor we set out
And which draws me to this contest
So I may singlehandedly repopulate
The empty houses and huts
Marked by thangkas
Which no hand in generations has penned
No hand present has authored instead
Drawing on the fallacy of myth to enrich
The imagination and compel identity.

There is a prizefight which I seek the prize
  being to break open before a throng of
Ten thousand savage and starving eyes and ears with
No responsibility of attachment their
Sheer response is in the moment which reduces epochs of twenty
Thousand civilizations and roaring judges and kings through the scrim
Of their modern-day descendants - 
The prize being
Being devoured - 
I shall meet them in their den for only then
Are our fates equally proportionately soluble in
The face of one another our ferocity mends the
Remnant vestige of our civil origins or humane origins
For we are wild again and naked and armed.

  'If you are going to challenge me
   do so by being right
   not by
   being anything else or less
   and beat my skull into 
   a cube compounded by succeeding blows
  
   - this is the fee for entry -
   
   and dissolved of its natural
   resistance by the sweat
   from your face and with this
   gift present to one who is their Chief
   Adjudicant one who sweats
   charisma and marks his masculine 
   leavings on the bodies
   of those who succor unto him - '

I have my bone brands and they are
Bleachblack, starksharp, contrast in measure
Dry and hard in hands soft and tough
The color of summer peach 
(Yes, they will I've done this before)
And weapons they shall bear alone, I know not but suspect
That among their many implements will be
The severed portions of my kinfolk who like I
Had in their time no country and thus their parts - as mine will be - 
Are scattered and I am among vultures who design for themselves
No such marks which cohere a past which none now recall
Or even through inked signs interpret
We are lost - not yet.
We have no birthright no such manifest locale
Either having been of our birthright rent or
Lost as I am soon to be
That is the prize - is it not
Do I know it not already seeking
The end of my existence.

  'And today you shall learn how to fight and if you
   Do not die it will mean you have also learned
   To kill and claim flesh of strange foes fallen
   Under the scorched bones which in their  twisted
   Welds and convolutions declare the home I leave
   I have left for so long as it takes to not die - '

A biography written in charred lines across the planes
Enveloping tones equally peach or
Thereafter chartreuse - whether like olives or 
Treebark they fail to uphold their dignity
Under these gracile charbone brands - 
Mere closeness marrs and boils flesh for a lifetime
Bank these wounds they are the interest which 
Your values will and on which your values shall rely when
You are old and arthritic and your flesh is 
As grey as my beard was when I beat you
Into submission that would have been bloody
Save for the cauterizing seal with which I brand
My ownership of you -  

  'I have grabbed your deity the one and only your
   Poor religion has and exacted my tension on
   His glorious testicles and his answer is
   Muteness or whimper - for trying to make it make
   Sense I have rendered you a pariah and
   You shall know only extraordinary pain of
   Being left but it shall not be your departure
   Merely your absence which passively 
   Marks the victory declaring (always declaring!) the validity
   Of those charmarks on your back and
   Shoulders - my copyright - 
   Diametrically opposed to the growth of your being - 
   I am the deity now who shall govern your breath 
   My goodly countenance your insufferable abuse
   Hell is easy by comparison so burden yourself and
   Expect elevation and forever this contradictory
   Yoke shall be your lamented salve - 
   My legacy of when I came from the place where 
   Bones are kindling and you shall ignite
   Your carapace all being left of you
   The fires which feed your children
   Have you nothing more to say before
   We bare teeth and rattle - '