I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking

Through the rotating shell, strong

As motor muscle on the drill, driving

Through vision and the girdered nerve.

From limbs that had the measure of the worm, shuffled

Off from the creasing flesh, filed

Through all the irons in the grass, metal

Of suns in the man-melting night.

Heir to the scalding veins that hold love’s drop, costly

A creature in my bones I

Rounded my globe of heritage, journey

In bottom gear through night-geared man.

I dreamed my genesis and died again, shrapnel

Rammed in the marching heart, hole

In the stitched wound and clotted wind, muzzled

Death on the mouth that ate the gas.

Sharp in my second death I marked the hills, harvest

Of hemlock and the blades, rust

My blood upon the tempered dead, forcing

My second struggling from the grass.

And power was contagious in my birth, second

Rise of the skeleton and

Rerobing of the naked ghost. Manhood

Spat up from the resuffered pain.

I dreamed my genesis in sweat of death, fallen

Twice in the feeding sea, grown

Stale of Adam’s brine until, vision

Of new man strength, I seek the sun.