I was swallowed in my sleep by the last exile of my revolution.
I am telling you now that it was not my fault.
Just because I wandered down the wrong path in the bone-wood is no reason
To presume that it was, though forcefully it was my throat
Which received my tail.
Mine and mine…
This is something which I understand.  But I might have slid out from the spaces
Between my fingers, and you perhaps might have seen more
Than I care to allow.
But, like I said, I was asleep.  And I, unlike others, am incapable of controlling
My dreams.
I am not, as they say, “lucid.”
So as I was saying I walked out through the bone-wood, which is white and smooth
And just past the tangles of the nerve-brush—
The nerve-trees are not un-beautiful, no, but they keep you.  They do. 
Sweeping languidly,
The violet children—and who was it, child, who strung up the Celts?
No, I’m sorry.  That was the other way.  It still got in, you understand.
Everything else gets in, regardless of the direction of my intent.
It’s the same as when my brother… well, he denied three times
That he pushed Jesus down the stairs.  He threw Him, actually,
So in the best sense of the word he wasn’t lying.  His bone-wood was known
For suppurating the blood of Christ, and a lot of priests came and said
It was on account of his guilt and his desire to repent for murdering the Savior
Before he could be hung up by the Romans.  Or the Jews.
And then the priests didn’t come back anymore.  Done slew each other
Out of argument, I say.  That’s what I believe, anyway.  And I didn’t tell them
Who it really was, although it would have been funny,
To lean into one of their faces—stigmatic with sympathy for themselves and the sake
Of their illegitimate sons—and say,
"Hey boys, that wasn't Jesus up there.  It was just his stunt double."
It’s too bad that they wouldn’t have heard me.
I would have laughed.
My bone-wood does not bleed.  Though sometimes it's easy to believe that
's bleeding tree came from somewhere about my left hand.
I'll believe anything when I sleep.  Tell me that I’d killed myself with the
Divine Spatula of Amida and I’d believe you.  So if I believe in my sleep
That Christ was crucified on my ring finger, is it real?
I’d rather not, in truth.  I’d rather not think about being crucified with pushpins
Through my fingernails.
You understand, I’m sure.  Even if I’d be more like
To enjoy it.
But here is my question:
When I took this wrong path, ending caught in a tangle of marrow that I did not recognize
Even though it was a product of my own body and my own body which I know
Better than any creature living or dead,
When my intent was to follow after the Right and I instead ended up crawling
In the path of the Variant out of the eternal knot and into something far less
Complex and far more difficult, this place which I only cannot know because my eyes
Are filled with earth, because I am dissolved by the contemplation
Of a fifth second
Before or after something inevitable which will nevertheless never exist,
And my hand against this curve is
Incomprehensible,
Directionless,
Heretical,
If five seconds before waking I know exactly this empty bell-cage where I’ve curled
And turned to empty sound against the dirt with the conspicuous absence of anything
Metronomic,
If you can tell me,
Where they raped the prophets,
Can you likewise,
Where they ate my heart?