Self as star

August 16: I imagine that I was born under the Perseids,
long hairs drawn from the heavens shining over my hospital nativity,
even though I know that the timing was not quite right
for the skies to have poured that bright sand over my fluid-filled lungs.

The Perseids peak again tonight, the nineteenth bout
to burn themselves above me, as I slather mud on my acne and stew
in my now-scarred wrappings like some ungulate upon
some far wild grassland, alive only in documentaries, or in dreams.

The steppe underfoot unfurls to a tapestry of night
studded with stars and brushed with a velvet warmer and darker
and heavier than any possible comfort of man, and I,
sorry rhinoceros, am beautiful in constellation in this storied sky.

And I, beauty be, I am burning and turning, meteoric
in the heavens of my earth, falling towards that unburnt star seamed
in golden strands of life. And I am gloriously bright
now, my long track streaming behind, a golden unbranched bough—

I am ripe and falling, a leather rind charred crisp without
and untouched ice within, and I am every toothy beast that man
has feared and will fear. My gluttony is no sin too great
to forgive. I am wonderous nourishment just as I am acid itself.

And there is a beauty and a grossness in this stone
of a heart in the peach of my flesh. And there is a smallness and
a greatness in the pit of my brains, in the everything
and in the nothing that I compose: dually compost and composer.

Truth be, the stars fall tonight as they always have
and always will, till no woman walks those dream-cities and no beast
runs those dream-plains and ever new comets grate
fresh hairs of light and ever new I unravel, grow old, become entire.

---

self to self

Perseid nativity: lungs of amnion. stew of dreams.
hairs darker and heavier than a story: meteoric.
within a sour fruit hides a pitted stone of golden seams.
upon this earth I am all there is. then I fall: euphoric.