& I Loved You for the Monster You Could Become --

December 2009

This is a poem about eggs. Eggs and metaphysics. And yes, the title is a bit strange.

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I.
An egg, hatched from the skin of an egg
and an egg sitting on it,
or an eight from two zeroes:
ex nihilo ovum, ex ova nihil.¹
-- Eggs over easy.
Egg-birth of an oviraptor, how
is this allowed?
Imagine these cracks appearing in the womb
and having to destroy the whole world
for a wider one, or only having
to destroy the divider, of one
world from the next, giving birth
to an exit.
II.
City on the edge of the volcano, they say,
"World the ever-hatching egg",
standing on the widening cracks
forced apart by the scratching legs
of the hot iron beast inside the world --
but his blood was stolen from wicked gods,
who burdened with a curse of eternal unbirth
the molten dragon in the hollow earth.
So they walk upon eggshells,
for fear of the mercy of the gods, fearing
the release of the innocent.
Releasing doves & reading stony entrails:
blood-red, they say, when the blood is cool;
blood-red when the blood is hot.
In legend they speak of his crystal wings,
of shimmering patterns on his scarlet form
uncurling in sinuous whorls and rings --
if ever such beauty could dare to be born.
Yet who can explain such a people, who build
in the shadow of destruction? Courage, trembling
on the lip of disaster -- Though I myself spent
seven months living in the barrel of a gun,
seven months playing with flint and steel,
seven months praying for a spark.

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¹An egg from nothing, nothing from an egg