Red desert. A star below the horizon. The Om is a choir of cicadas.

 

This voice is a gathering call: a cry of ape, of wolf, of bird, of a vertebrate sister. Hear me, nestmates, we sailors of vessels in a sanguine tide: we are wild yet not violent; we let blood generously yet through no harm.

 

Here is the place where all flesh is mud-colored, where division is only cellular.

 

Here is the cauldron of the twin helix, and from it with palms and tongues and beaks we drink, swallow, assimilate.

 

I am servant to your heated limbs: infrared syllables that fatten your fingertips with ruddy elation. A word is a sugar spike, a metabolic kick. Your hips are gripped with the crook of my vows.

 

The will of this beast is a curling tongue lapping rock-salt, a member which strokes and engages the sleepy adrenal buds of muted youths like wet pups. It speaks in animal language and shapes the vowels of instinct and primal heritage

.

The drums are falling rain. The innumerable dead hear the beat and are made to dance from their casements of sediment.

 

Know this: extinction is an open door.

When the great serpents died, the rats grew tall.

 

Awaken.

 

Your eyes open to reveal contracting pupils that take every shape. The pregnable glove of skin is a metamorphosing integument: you are scale, fiber, feather, and fur.

 

Inhale.
 

I make clear the firmament and common ground. The smell of earth is an addictive inhalant, your sinus as open as the eyes.

 

Exhale.

 

I am the shaman, the guide, the wind that cleaves the grass to form the path. Word and image become trail cairns.

 

Imagine.

 

Flight is a dream achieved by downy crawlers on the limbs of trees. First, we climb.

 

Run.

 

Breathe in oxygen, the prolific toxin, the excretion of herb transformed by the blood into life.

 

Persist.

 

I propose this example to be followed:

become the alchemist who transforms word-as-excrement into word-as-creation.

 

Rest.

 

If you swivel your ears my deer you will hear the secrets of the stones.

If you pause your paws from running you might dig and find wealth where you stand.

 

Speak.

 

In the bright and holy moment of forming a word from the mouth exists truth. Not a lasting truth, but a brief aperture through the veil of a moment into eternity.

The sum is chaos; the singular is perfection.

 

The I becomes an eye becomes many. We writhe we rise, dwelling in that warm place between terror and delight: the white crest of adrenaline to be ridden until exhaustion. We have yet to be conscious of the limits of physical being, but the flesh herself knows intrinsically her power.

The machine grinds and spins and leaps into view.

 

The beast within the helix!

 

Her temple is a spiraling tower, her grin a zipper of chemical fangs.

Hear me and you will hear her returning cry from within.

 

Love this animal. Know it better than the human.

Neocortex is prototype-- impossible to master.

Do not forget its imperfection. Improvise.

Remember the plumed tree-climber’s dream of flight.

 

Strive to change. Extinction is an open door.

Shed skin, metamorphose.

Become a vessel fit to penetrate the heavens again, and return to that stellar seed so carelessly shot.

Black desert. Stars on every horizon. The Om is the electromagnetic hum of the earth.