I measured my days by increments of truck stops
the trailer door split wide open
as though the word of god had willed it
(see Aslan’s broken table, exhibit A)
and out poured a veritable army of snakes
( See Mother Eve’s first plight, Snakes vs.
( See Mother Eve’s first plight, Snakes vs.
Humanity, exhibit B)
We tried calling Medusa
but she said all her babies up and left
the nest as all children must do
and so here I am, left with
the most glorious temptation of the ages
to allow an infestation that slithers
into the very crevices that make up
the cliff against the ocean mirroring
Self
a populous reference for my new profession
as snake handler
and the miracles I have to give are less
about rebirth
and more of how the serpent swallows the lion of Judah
not out of spite or sport, but sheer hunger
This my children, is my gift to you, that one day
the maws of the cosmic basilisk will come for you,
and will you but submit and feel the wonder that is
the caesura
of your
verse
but a whole new saga for the beast we all ride upon
but one day, inevitably, tumble off of, and must feed
The meaning of life is a cup of wine laid next to
a cobra fang,
knowing that they are one and the same,
my daughter-son, is the mark of wisdom
Will you, with dignity and the grace of Eve,
take your dose when the sun sets on your
adventure?
No one who enters the forbidden is allowed to take its fruits
back to earth and live to tell the tale
we already know the serpent eats its own tail
but no one really knows what it’s actually weaving out of itself
the colors of motion that rock makes in orbit
a mobius strip loom out of which the rest of the world
tries desperately to reinvent the scarf of life’s ellipse
