Stars in the Cell

      Deep in the wandering ways of the blood
      Drill my veins to their dust mouths;
      Stars in the cell say "Love" and burn
      The kin-kept eons out of hand;
5     Talk of the body may bless the tongue's lie
      And all the interminable blisses;
      Funneled by birth to a burning chalice
      I drink my red liquors though I am dust;
      Crabbing life outwits death but once
10    Then scrabbles back to its sea-sucked hole.
      Thirty stretched years touch me to the poles.
           A Mardi Gras grin spins at my lips
           And the moon grins crazily down.
      Much I wonder at the bleeding need for love
15    The mission of kisses, assignation's hours,
      When we meet and pair off to die;
      Both tongue and groin I wear like a star
      And walk star-struck to the place of ashes.
      Much I wonder at the wrinkled sun,
20    Amoeba or man, no blind difference given,
      His acid shine drives all wases to once;
      Much I wonder, at my death-ripe age,
      Of the worded brine spit from the wasted lip,
      The low tongue's lie that sums us up:
25    The fairy tale told down the bone.
      Much I wonder at crossed hands' touched cup
      Bowing the long faces together to kiss;
      When the heart-drum kicks in another's stomach
      Much I wonder at the restless licks;
30    And still I move both tongue and groin,
      Rear star and eye out of one cracked joint.
      Prayering hands and downturned head,
      Circle-earth globed in a robing womb,
      Flood and world of farenheit waters,
35    Dive their deep ends in a watershed birth
      Flumed down the shallows of her thighs.
           A mardi gras grin spins at my lips
           And the moon grins crazily down.
      And then I wonder at my crawling luck
40    That spreadeagled hopped the flaming bush
      Fingering luminous maggots in the meat;
      Spurred on by the spine's insistent dusts
      Into the whaled oceans of another
      The burning bell tower went clanging mad
45    Under a star-mad sky in my scarring eye
      And all the parishioners jumped ship to die;
      And, a drowning wick in its wax ruins,
      I told myself twice the lie of life
      Among the rafted congregations of my blood
50    That swam their red ways to death.

 

From the collection "Divine Revolt"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.