Fred LaMotte
​
My Ancestry DNA results came in.
Just as I suspected, my great great grandfather
was a monarch butterfly.
Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.
My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.
Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
but I didn't get his dimples.
My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
My uncle is a mastodon.
There are traces of white people in my saliva.
3.7 billion years ago I swirled in golden dust,
dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.
More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
joining Sweden to Botswana.
I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
I can no longer hide my heritage of raindrops and cougar scat.
I am made of your grandmother's tears.
You conquered rival tribesmen of your own color,
chained them together, marched them naked to the coast,
and sold them to colonials from Savannah.
I was that brother you sold, I was the slave trader,
I was the chain.
Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,
like mine, like mine.
You have sweat, black and salty,
like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
like mine, like mine.
 
Don't pretend that earth is not one family.
Don't pretend we never hung from the same branch.
Don't pretend we don't ripen on each other's breath.
Don't pretend we didn't come here to forgive.
 
 

​Kaboom
 
 
       You can think of it this way: nothing exists, you understand?
I mean not even nothing. Then just like that there's this big kaboom and everything's created: time, space, energy, mass. You name it.
       Okay, now it's much later and you're all tucked in alone in bed. Forget about broken or any crap of that kind. Your heart's been ripped to pieces like by some wild jungle cat.
       You find respite sometimes in sleep, it's true; but the moment you wake - I mean even before you can take a breath - the pain is there, and you're gone.
       That moment, when the feeling's full on you, before you can stop or explain it away. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I want to say. Listen: in that moment what you are feeling is all the pain being felt by everything in the universe.
       How could it be otherwise? That which springs from common seed must know the souls around it.
       You see what I'm saying? I'm saying the size of the feelings we experience is beyond comprehension. I'm saying it's amazing we haven't all spontaneously exploded.
       The chances for birth are slim at best.
       Have a little mercy.
 
Michael Shohan