The Gift Of The Wound

(for my son, almost 2)

Don’t see me now.
It is not your world.

There is no Herakles
here in my cell with me,
not the Nemean’s wild gold
to blaze upon your back,
and not the potential for the battle
in which to win it.

I am so far away from you
and I do not want you to know
that your gold corona is the fierce horizon of joy
that spills into the belly through this monster’s mouth
where I would surrender without such light.

While you are remembering your words –Yeah, and Again! --
I am recovering my silence,
that sorrowful liberation of the powerless,
and gasping in the boundless vacuum of desire for the sun
that surges through your skin when I touch your body.

It is only now that I am inside
the beauty seen through glass on the roadside --
it circulates like a wind under my skin.
(it is god)

I will keep that beauty for you --- from you ---
until you reach my cell and realize
that it is the gift of defeat
and no prize of conquest,

and we can walk through such beauty,
together,

toward our deaths,

as brothers.