I got this letter

Dear kid,

Was it so long ago that we used to play? You prancing in my meadows and battling my ogres, and I a glass bauble-world that would shake to stir the winds of change if ever you grew bored--

Through carelessness or trust I let you see me to my edge.

Let you glimpse your reflection on those deepest walls
the concave secrets of my root

____sky____and perimeter.

But it did not deepen our intimacy
Instead of understanding the depth of my caress,

The first thing you saw was your own mask, magnified in the curve of my accidental looking glass.

Entranced, you stood fixed
Gaping at my womb, and yet seeing only your shadow outstretched

First you worshipped that great shining man-image, offering to him whichever of your brothers and sisters were close at hand until

One day you saw that man to be yourself; and you rejoiced in your hugeness.

Still you stand, still you stare, dreaming that you are him on the other side of the looking glass; that you have outgrown me; that I sit as a globe on your mantel.

Quit this silly thinking, child!
You will never fall back through my sex.

Your actual body is wasting away by the pond!

Come play.

We also can make love in the meadows, and fighting ogres.

Love,
Your original true face

palimpsest

Mark me, scar me, burn me as you will
When I turn back inside out
The throbbing inner walls of my holiest of holies
Will be covered in fresh poetry
and stinking of life.

blood-cousin

Pneumatic heart bodies
crackling lights

All your latest corpses
Are made of my corpses

Just try to wash your hands

----

(I was thinking, if washing soul is like scrubbing a tile to make it a mirror, then washing hands is like scrubbing a mirror to clean it of your face)

for the bugs

From dusk until dawn
thousands of grasshopper bugs
converged by deepest consensus of migratory instinct
to worship in the cold light of that electric sun
above the sink near my bedroom

In that sterile glow, some revelers launch themselves aimlessly
and with great force
raging in silence with their tiny power

while others dive headlong at the machine
again and again
Maybe trying to meet god, if I could aim my body just right this time
But only as iron filings are drawn to total and mindless attention
again and again
when compelled by the greater charisma of an equally mindless magnetic rock

Anyway, down the hall, another god. Across the street
yet more. In this town, billions of moments swarm around each indifferent idol

In the morning, spent
they carpet the floor, walls
and ceiling above the sink near my bedroom
all dead.

the bottom of the ocean

What is powerful and alive, warrior?

A pain wraps me around her finger.
___Splash into the liquid ground beneath us
___fall backwards
___sweeping gadgets papers money off a cluttered office desk
___into the ocean
___tip the desk and office in after

An enemy appears: tension, release, embrace

Threads like bubbles in a hose
try to pull me toward the surface
but their stickiness is gone
my stickiness is gone
they slide through me, and I sink on like a rock

The colors are clearer here, at the bottom of the ocean
Now that I'm blind
I have to feel them with my own two hands

Crossing the Ganges

Crossing the Ganges on the train out of Varanasi, sunrise. Windy open windows train. One of the most glorious moments:

-------

Sky shining
mist made of light

Ganga shining
masks thrown to the sea

A rowboat glides silent
through borderless intimate

Silhouettes bathe
at the shores of God