abiku (2)

abiku


awareness comes with wetness...

in a dark watery deep
a heartbeat, organically cadent,
keeps mechanically cadent time,
an oxymoronic rhythm
life-ticks, death-tocks
mutedly in amniotic space.
muted too, the song of
shapeshifting
from
not-so-human to
all-too-human;
from worm to man
from not-i to i.
the phylogenic music of growth;
the melodic fetal interplay
with the counterpoint &
polyyrhythms of rushing blood,
another's breathing & the drone
of organic life internal.

awareness comes...

not through eyes sealed shut,
neither through stopped ears or
tasteless tongue,
nor water breathing nostrils,
but from without
through skin bathed
in birth juices; through the
life sustaining umbilical,
through the press of heaving
placental walls & wave
after squeezing wave
of contraction.

then
with the suddenness of
insight.

light, floating free,
telescopic vision viewing down,
a bluish white cord
scintillating with flashes of
color, trailing down, down
into the bloated, yellow-brown
belly of a woman.
sound, the scream of labor's
pain, a husky male voice
of command shouting
"bare down, push!"

awareness...

cultural memory & more.
i am.
i am abiku, the oft born,
who to the same family briefly
visits & leaves;
leaves the stink of death & grief.
i am that.
i am, too, that bloody issue
breached & veiled
forcing again the fleshy gates
of the world
causing pain only a
mother can forgive;
this mother
to whom i cleave;
whose spirit holds
me fast.

vertigo...

is it love or need
this force that pulls me
down,
into flesh, into life,
into the pain of
lungs filling with air;
making me scream,
making me sing...


©Joseph McNair;2009