Greg Scaff
www.succubusarts.com
FAMILY
There was that night, on Clearwater beach,
In the dark & flickering wisdom of the moon,
Where I crinkled my toes in the harlot sand
At the Gulf's foamy & pelvic shore-
The celestial & embryonic edge of Forever.
There was that night when I was dumb,
Awestruck-overwhelmed, stunned into
Humility, surely, like others before me-
Like Neandertals or Australopithecines before
Me-& I, the naked savanna ape gazed up, up,
Shrunken ever small, like Alice, where I was
Gnostic & irrelevant as a fleck of sand.
Two four eight sixteen thirty-two sixty-four-
Each generation of my bloodline doubles
Backwards & again, into dreamtime, when each
Is mine times over-when I encapsulate the Earth,
When I contain us all; even you & you & you-
O bountiful Raquel-you of the risqué
Latin verse & The Portable Kama Sutra-
Each of us blossomed from the same
Tender pair of Paleolithic thighs.
Hallowed my mind sparked incandescent, my third,
Flashlight eye reveled like x-rays in the sequoia thicket
Of our genetic lake, in the chromosomes & the
Sagittal crests, in the brow ridges, the Occipital buns,
& the rampant bonobo sex;
& while in that Olympic pool,
I saw Africa-Mother Africa-hug her
Myriad babes to her tawny breasts;
I clasp you to my chest, may I kiss each
Teary cheek over & again into Serenity-
& there too I saw Calypso's kidnapped
Lost of Tahiti & Tlatelolco; a bed & a
Dinner awaits you all, for here, here I am;
I am every Zulu, every Arab, every Cushite,
Every Chin, every Greek, every Gaul, every
Goth, every Hun, every Hebrew, every Huron,
Every Khmer, every Mongol, & every !Kung San.
I am every lord's scion, every mewling
Peasant brat, every slave's price-tagged get-
Chinggis & Boudicca, Amalasuintha
& Ragnar Hairypants-the weight of
Nations indents my newborn shoulders,
I have fallen through the keyhole of
Genetic rectitude, I am history's fodder.
Homo sapiens sapiens-the name
Resounds stronger than a thousand lines
Of Shakespeare.
I am Humanity-
I & I,
I eclipse the world.
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