Begin, Again, Finally

Begin, Again, Finally

Begin

Organic bodies. Competitively divergent,

Striving to maintain

Separation. First creature, Rat.

Disgusted, self-hating, heart-horrored.

Ties a string-taut wire around his skinny neck

And kicks the stool.

Begin again

Second, Vulture. Stupidly well-fed on pride,

Invests heavy in guns,

Gas, nightsticks and, supercritically,

All the plutonium he can lay his talons on,

Ending in his own atomization:

The birth of stars.

And again

Snake. Slim, extremely good-looking

Distracted by sex.

Repetitive thoughts. Tan-thighed

Legs and a basket of hair implore his eyes.

He is risen, erects an assault,

Smears her body,

With a eucharist of blood and semen.

Spent and serpent-smiling,

Unhumanly scraping his swelling belly

In reptilian fashion,

He makes it to the far side of a grassy knoll.

But sulfuric grumblings,

Like the unfurling rush of molten fire,

Erupts and splits him in two.

Finally

And finally, from the mess, a foetus,

The boy Adam, puking and wailing,

Nistarot tattooed in Hebrew

Behind his left ear.

The look on God’s face was lustrous.