O Heraclitean Fire
“ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή”
O Heraclitean fire!
body
breath
and seem
returned to me
like cockroaches in my breadbox
when the plum trees bloom.
Not like the raccoons,
twenty-fingered bureaucrats
who export my cat food
and make small copies of themselves
and lamentably
the neighborhood children
have lost their predatory instincts.
But if each mote
be sublimated
let their shit feed the grass
where crickets will chirp
feeding my musicianship
where dogs will run
feeding my childishness
where cows will graze
feeding my natural cruelty
so that I
and several thousand friends
can build a Rocket
to take us to Antares B
where we will found an extrasolar colonial society
where the big-toed enslave the smaller-toed
and listen to the archons
recite the space sagas
beneath the stained glass
pressure domes.
And when our star is spent
and its photosphere swell
two-hundredfold
pending supernovaic collapse
we will be incinerated
in one hot flash
and I will be returned to you
where I always was
and was bound to be
O, Heraclitean fire.
Body
In effect,
an incomplete grade
purchase the official cook-
book
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my thighs too radiant
for the storage
locker
I would
make my doggybiscuit
hard and spiny or
the texture of sandpaper
Boy Scout knotted
(rabbit, tree,
rabbithole) and
buttery pink as a
nineteenth-century Teutonic Christ
and as
irresponsible
Organs are members
are proper
which is to say spiderwebbed
tho'
with a certain solidity
I Had a Mother And
I
I had a mother and
there will be a mother. There
are friends and almost
no friends. Now
is mostly not
what happens.
II
Seers iterate plausible
histories
There will be new histories –
III
In an infinite sedimentary expanse
tadpoles hold three-day colloquia
where every third is chosen by lot
to colonize the pond by the stand of ashes
when their mud puddle dries up with the spring
Ryan Cunningham lives in Brooklyn. He does whatever he can.