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.