Who can I charge
with making this all up?
Bruce, the butcher,
With his delicate hands
pounding the meat?
I have my doubts even
with this aching mandible.
Who am I?
Who are you?
A Sasquatch?
A song? A fact?
A ventriloquist?
A collection of atoms?
A painting? A rock?
An advertisement
for love? A god?
A weeping willow?
A hermaphrodite?
A shaman with mask?
A nuclear reactor?
A tattooed fiction of marks
on the empty skin?
I left one mother, large,
arriving at another, small–
I left her too, sweaty, to walk
on without her hand, mine
in another or not, an empty
hand, dark wide and deep,
made of stuff I don’t know,
I don’t know if I’ll go back—
will I go back after I’m wise
and stubborn and diapered?
You’re an old soul
but you can be anything.
Grandmothers can be so
paradoxical, I can’t remember
when I lost whatever it was—
like our Virginia sinking in
her river— too much of me
or too little has its hardships,
a core’s unity eroding in time’s
odd bed— was there ever a time
without time?– it wasn’t a soul lost
I don’t think—a soul old or not
what is that? I am still
setting the goals to be set,
rearranging cranky DNA,
trying to be other things—
a professional arm wrestler,
a sacred CEO, a kind assassin,
an emperor in trousers, a model
cross-dresser, the holiest
of fools, a perfectly forgiving
Adjuster, a sane Hatter
at 6:01, a martyr with a lyre,
a mannequin with the most
brilliant IQ, a master healer
always in pain, a smiling Inquisitor
with a Beautiful Truth– beautiful
grandmothers can never be
wrong, this little life squared
by your incoherence and clear
ambiguity contained by my many
selves—but I’ll put all that aside
right now so I can finish with a bow
and a sharp arrow for my next kill