conch shell

part one. shell


this caramel streaked conch shell
is life nudged out a self-sustaining core
twisting and kneading forth
a tiny boiling line of living bone
lava edging and oozing
deep in the plates shaping to its image
as it inches tectonic worlds apart

each scintilla of a push is there
through wizen claw tips burnt browner and browner
pointing inward at life's secret pocket
the folded porcelain middle peeled back upon Herself
by the raw force of Time
barely clinging for the sheer pull
it reaches down into cell fragments
first pearly inklings of water meshed together
half smooth, half wave
inbued with tidal rolling, drenching
washing from Her mouth chattering fragile swarms
self-similar and Life all consuming
growth churning under and without
a million punching gravities torn violently through a hole
yanked by a DNA grip of rope
nervous strands dangling down Earth's tunnel

a small personal worm
brain hotter than the sun
mind blinding endlessly

harnessed to the pounding sea wakes
twisting submachines cutting against sleep
endlessly sifting and crystalizing the sand
for more genetic zipper munching grains
sowing calculator planets with shucks of echoing stars
denser, denser, spinning with evermore arms
sentience amplified from but a molecular glint
into an edifice lifting eyeward from the sky

Us trapped in bodies
locked into the bottoms and tops
but another speck of light coming on
through our own enaction in the galaxies' weight
brought swirling around and swaying on its curling end
by every force ever everywhere
cloudy with interlocking fog
impelled through the ground of Her Earth
muscled through a sandy birth canal
through the grimy penis ape
a hungry mouse and snails eating each other
matched with disruption and dust
some sitting, some standing
as to a death as digested sand: for ever Here.


part two. reenaction


it fits so well into this ridge-marked hand
this knotted residue of Time
inverting still toward its reaching and unfolding
to a ragged gist, ripples ripe with torque
with myriad bends larger and smaller
erupting wave upon wave upon wave
rolling over as Self in this field of life

a conch shell clenched in my damp hand

Me this sighted jelly, netting fingerprints
wrapped round undulating armor
dripping and salty and me with craning fingers
conch, held and holding firm
on this corner of a spitting rug
we a collective buffer to the waves
Life oozing together

one holy retina to the years
nervous biomass wide as the sky
each false one a gatekeeper of coincidences
God-decoding enzymes, sinews serpentine
self-organized Here and outward tied
part of a tumbling pattern of overlapping embryonic windows
stretching out into space
with each crash hinting at another full tide
and so i clench across this vast unfolding split
so dark and solid is its grip as Time is old
for every fold upon fold upon fold

Life only a dampening shape
made of turbulent eddies pushed through pebbles
nature self-entangled in its clumsy rush

as the Sun and Moon go lollygag around