Chöd

Every day I offer the mandala of my body twice.
I wipe the grains of rice from the mound of my head.
I gesture signs for every element, thinking someone
Could stretch out in me, breathe, swim, be warmed, fed.
I offer myself as a great wheel, make of my hands
Eight mountain peaks of every met need reaching out
Infinitely. When I snap my fingers, I disappear.

I may not mean it.

I also dream of consuming you, of offering up the trumpet
Of my old thighbone to blow. I’m not 16. I didn’t die
By accident as is required by such a morbid instrument.
Still, I’d make that awful drone if it meant your lips,
Your breath through me. And while I’d offer my own skull
For half a damaru, I’d want mine joined crown to crown
With that summit of you, skins stretched over cavities

Where rhyme once lived with assonance.

We could ring bass emptiness, echo space where foreheads
Slow-merged, tongues full of words, dumb for long hours
In each other’s mouths. Surely, fine buddhas and khandros
Have lent us the endless white and red feasts of their bodies.
Last night, wild wind blew through my bony dream. All my dead
And every dog swooped in. I’m scrapped, spread out in countless
Bellies, every me-filet hungry. I eat someone new every day.

You swallow my tail; this is how I pray.

2013

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Aubade of Hildegard