I walk upon my sacrifice
the body always stealing from the earth,
being spilling over the lip,
the chalice forever overflowing.
The blood turns brown
the green sock sticking to
the bled through gauze
gifted with the warning and
the wait, the heavy press,
pain singing along to
this stumbled dance,
this humbled glint of cognition,
the engine turning over in the dirt.
Ants seethe about the roots,
doves squabble upon the crown as
dead leaves cling to their undoing,
each limb a crowded precipice,
every tree a sutra keeping to the law.
Looking up doves scatter
a John Woo mosaic between
branch and firmament,
the gospel circles in the soil.
The moment is always burning through
the Bonanza map made again, this mandala
I bleed into the once was, the day goes away—
the world’s only work is the turning.