Thanksgiving For My Skin

 

I am grateful for my skin. Though it is edgeless

and, at the farthest fractal of its holobodygram,

merely blinding diamond consciousness,

with neither form nor color, still,

I am grateful for my flesh in all its hues,

roseate, brown, wheaten, peach, mahogany,

crow's feet and frown lines.

 

I am grateful for my lymph nodes, sinews and fat,

for bonefulls of dark energy and their marrowy burrows

which shall be the feast of earthworms and larvae.

I am grateful that my plasma will coagulate

into the crème brulee of magots.

 

I am grateful for the live volcano of my basal ganglia,

for the reptilian gangsters who dwell in my hippocampus,

for the neuroplastic salamanders of my intuition

flicking out their twin sulfuric tongues,

for axons and dendrites copulating in my caves of fire.

 

I am especially grateful for my crevices and pits:

Romanesque intestinal corridors,

the pagan granaries of my belly,

my windpipe snoring Buxtehude,

the chthonic spiraling mollusk of my inner ear

which contains the ocean of listening,

and the infinitesimal sky within a synapse,

pregnant with unbegotten constellations -

the Dolphin, Unicorn, Moth, and Griffon.

Stillborn, starless, they will yet be connected

by threads of hope, and I will surely see them

when I gaze beyond darkness.

I am grateful for the aurora borealis in my belly,

I give thanks for the kindly sun who shines

in the firmament between my nipples,

for the Christ jewel rising in each inhalation

over the horizon of my diaphragm, sparkling

through the rain forest of my alveoli.

I Am not God, but what God Is.

 

And I am grateful for the domed cathedral in my eyeball,

rose window latticed with veins of second sight,

where fugitive tomorrows find sanctuary, bearing

witness of a world to come.

 

For my wounded skull-cap I am grateful,

unhealed infant softness where a beam of Me

still floats upward in a milky braid

pouring backward into night; and still I climb

hand over hand over mind into the moon,

to the sun, to the raw chocolate whirlpool

of Andromeda, cauldron of sweetness,

holographic portal that welcomes me into a waltz

with clustered nebulae, unnumbered sparks

of the impossible - for I am not God, but what God Is -

waltzing 'til I fall, and fall into myself again,

remembering the flesh, remembering that all

this light is nothing but my body.

 

NASA photo of me as an embryo, Antennae Galaxies