The Poetry Project

Ancestors

Bruce Boone

These ancestors who are indescribable beasts

Begot us beneath waves but one knuckled under

And the rest of us got smarter. The stars

Have never ruled a natural love. We are always

Inversing ourselves for them and signaling death

In a vain hope for less intelligence.

One knuckle always gnaws another. It’s so lucky

Something’s not left. Or nothing. You take the bait.

It’s casual. The galactic primal. Alien bodies recovered

At Roswell. Grime.

As the blood washes off one knuckle eats

Another. These are natural loves. It’s on you

To embrace them. For the time being of course

This will never recur. For the time being there

Will be no pain. For the time being nothing

Will recognize all the delusions separating us

Each from the other as the methane waves

Of my planet Neptune wash over you. Let

Them take you and you will rule with us ancestors.

The smoke and mirror of darting starlight

Can safely be ignored. And you are home free.

Death is only the rejection of unnatural love.

We distort you. Us proto parents. Look up!

At the lacy filigree called Milky Way. Your

Shit eating grin. When you smile for the camera.

The extrusions are lips to suck out the waywardness

That fell by the wayside. Chomping tares not

Wheat. Going down curved mucus of alimentary

Canals. Martian in the extent. When you beg

Us to allow you to weep, I don’t know if then

You will taste like steak. Or the flesh sack containing

Spirit will challenge our patriarchal rule. The ruby

Eye of Sirius constellation. Contain what you do

Not understand. Our descendants fail us. What

Is the way, they ask?

Stars caught in black hole maws, timeless! The

Height of beauty! Oh desired nothing of the spirit!

What shapeshifting pretenses abstain,

Each placeholder for an entangled photon

Beckons the cycle to repeat, and it does. Don’t

Doubt what you can’t yet conceive. You will.

Each disgorged past airman from the Spielberg

Movie Close Encounters ascends the DNA

Ramp leading back to us, your ancestors,

The ghosts of a being that once was but is

No more the source of repulsion it once was.

You begin our spiritual path with that revulsion,

Repetition in worlds that don’t stop, don’t start.

Our worlds. Punish the unruly. Displace the

Troublesome offspring. Please us. Inside the

Gullets you’ll know yourself. So knock it off!

Resistance is futile. Doors will be bared.

The transponder lets you out. Fricatives hiss.

Ignore them. Have no truck with language as

You know it and wait for the new one to teach

You its syntax.

I love you in the burp of satisfaction when I eat.

You are my dead body. And must step over it

To find the spirit. The stink of connection interferes.

The transparent, the neutral, the tasteless.

When you imagine the other shoe dropping

You will communicate in ways you can’t now

Begin to guess.

Hope to become it. The ancestral glows in

Blackness beyond the event horizon.

Submit to erasure and we will recede. Kith

Will then follow kin. And it will now be able

To start up again. From where I left off.

Crumple like an old gray double breasted

Suit. The shoes will follow. Return of the

Out of fashion, the unhip. Winners never lose,

How pointless my words are to guide you to

Your doubles. I said, Copy that.

Does the commodity match the manifest?

Try the larger. “Copy that.”

#276 – Spring 2024

Elsewhere