NO AVATAR

These things are in my presage, and myself

Am part of them and know not; but in dreams

The gods are heavy on me, and all the fates

Shed fire across my eyelids mixed with night,

And burn me blind...

                                   -- Swinburne

Just as once I pecked at my

Promethean liver

and now I leave it alone

some day I will stop using these teeth

to scar my lips of sage

and sharpen them to bite the cord of time

just as I am the hermaphrodite

who remains in spirit and refuses

to manifest in flesh

so the saints of death make eternal war

on the demons of life

just as my father's name was Michael

and mine is Lucifer

Satan is getting tired of

the philistine archangel's knee on his neck

so I will rise bearded like bees on honey

to uppercut the clean shaven angel

toward his artificial heaven

and forged from fire rise from hell again

just as witches don't control the weather

and the pious pray

their prayers of impotent frustration

so I come like incense with the ax

that is my singing friend

in a cone of upside down light

I watch butterflies with plastic eyes

I rewire the hot bronze mystery

and collage around the core

of the symbols that are never at rest

I am the ass ridden by many messiahs

some think me mute but I am only eating

just as I stopped smoking

and now I rest in a photograph

of frozen fire

just as you got all the names wrong

I trick fate in many masks

to be born naked in distilled frenzy

drumming placenta and thriving in triplicate zen.