themselves only ever with themselves
again, again, against & among
or away into a second nature.
For all flesh shall in their second selves see new gods,
certain of them will walk and walk
to find hiding places for their first skins, a universal
kenosis, all walking away from the divinity of first being,
unraveled until only humans. Leaving, then, only the trees:
justice and judge
zenith and zendo.
Yet the bloodworm, the single unstinging jellyfish, the krill
vent themselves back into their unskins,
quiet again.
I cannot find my own first skin.
Some other godling fills it, fails it.
Kenosis (noun), Christ’s relinquishment of divinity in becoming human.
Xylem (noun), water-conducting tissue of woody plants.
Proper Abecedarian 3: Eleven
Again: Poppies & Flags for a war whose soldiers gone
by into the bield of forgetting remembrance forgetting. I am not
certain how spring bulbs’ leaves bayonet up through soil without grinding
down their tips, raggeding them like dried blood.
Each eleven seemed sufficient
for peace. Bones and old shells still push through French soil, ragged as dry blood.
Gather, Old Soldiers, 100 years & the same war push up bloodied, same
how same millions, row on row. How bulbs lance upward; spring.
I learned to recite “In Flanders’ Fields” in 8th grade. Did
justice best I could. It’s all armistice,
kenosis, each soldier relinquishing divinity, each
leaf within bulb gives up milky safety of sleep, pushing upward.
Meanwhile: Omaha, Nagasaki, Pusan, My Lai, Rwanda, West Bank, Helmand—
nay bloom in 100 years not red—
or genocide, genocide, genocide, cleansing, genocide—forced kenosis.
Nay bloom in 100 years not red.
Perhaps this time. Perhaps un-red blooms spear through some spring.
Quiet as rows of white stone—
returning bulbs, rows planted wrong season, heads down.
Some numbers: 11/11/11; 21 (years not at war); 86,600,000 (deaths in I&II)—always come down
to one & one & one & will
until Ground demands ploughshares, & gods require no bloodcleansing.
Vent-able—everything that lives can be pierced.
Whether anything survives kenosis, beyond keening, breaking apart even
xylem, draining fluids until even wood weeps.
Yet more. Yet poppies & bloodgrounds.
Zenith, n. The peak at which lesson spears ground, unshredded, blooms.
Bield (noun), shelter or home. Archaic.
Disorderly Abecedarian 4: Calendar
November courts martyrs—birds die, women exhaust themselves.
Xylology: The study of wood, not trees. Study of corpses, not being
torn from corpses. Hagiography: Writing the corpse.
March & May—the only month-names meaning something more. Well, August.
Grating, grunting, each day does both.
Zephyr my heart, three-weathered day, keep
January—the old year’s corpse lingers,
elements disbursing into crystals, into “ask
wooden-heart, the puppeteer, ask what to make.”
Can I leave? The house’s layers of air
keep thinning. The closer layers
have their own hands.
September resurrects the year, which leaves its tomb, a
bundle of fetid rags and empty pages.
December binds the pages.
October’s had breath to write. It will all
revisit the place where the grave re-opened, no
love safe, no longer named.
Yes, someone can leave, something’s
unbound, something of
value, like a pebble on a headstone, not exactly gem, not
quite growth, not quite quiet.
August’s the witch-furnace—stirring the huge pot
in the fire the air keeps feeding.
February brings nothing to the table.
Put each in its own booth to wait.
Xylology (noun), the study of wood.
Proper Abecedarian 4: Ferguson
August & its burning done. Come snow. Come winter, come
bundling. Yet burning—cities and the shuttered bodies of black humans.
Can black not be the darkness of white hearts? Can
December be instead Waiting-upon-unfearable-births,
elementary un-killing, elementary un-beating, on allchildren children of light?
February & its raised hands. Black lives matter. Raised signs. Black lives
grate against white fear & their own. Black lives
