If I were a man, like Jesus, Napoleon,

JFK or Harold,

then I would be already free.

Not seen in any recent photograph,

not sheltered in unconscious life.

Free with dust and branes.

It is long.

It is brief.

We quickly fill the passing time with events.

Some are tragic with emptiness,

some captured, some not.

Illegitimate and naked.

Void of all moral imagination.

Nothing left of my father now,

poisoned by life.

Nothing left but this photograph of me.

Abraham’s three sons were killers, lovers.

No creator, no preserver, the destroyers.

No noble truths.

No rights for humans.

This is life on earth.

It is all we know.

Supreme in honest reality.

Lives of billions built on faith,

unadmitted science.

It is all we have.

This strange journey began at the edge of winter.

There was a denial of kisses.

There was exquisite coldness.

There is life, stark and frank,

filled with cannibals of the land.

The weak and innocent, still brutalized,

still hesitation in defense.

No admittance of obligation,

imprisoned by this terrible beauty,

of life on earth.