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{poetry}

Blood Magic


She said give
At the blood bank, if you wouldn't mind
I said Is there any other kind?

Life for a life, from all or one
The money worth of nature's sons
​
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​All this of dying for another
But just watch every other mother
They bury themselves, spoon by spoon
Underneath moon after moon
Living just to die, and give
A chance for someone else to live

With all respect to god-the-son's myth
A martyr's death's over and done with
Like trapping beach sand in a sieve
A parent dies and has to live
It's what our magic blood demands
Every single grain of sand

And that's what every bank is for
And every penny's made of
Blood to hold and take and give
The due that flesh is paid of

Blood is all that we can do

But mother's magic gets us through
​

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​This lightning bolt plunged through the earth
Everlasting proof of worth
The sight of heaven's stubborn beams
On faces of our children's dreams
The need to give them everything
Like highwaymen or puppet strings
It's not a choice in not our voice
The only reason to rejoice
That nature made us slaves to life
A dutiful obedient wife
Because the magic's in our blood
We rose up from primordial mud

And now it's for us to achieve
A balance to our holy cleave
As life is drained away from us
As round go wheels on the bus
We keep it only if we find
Some other blood to hold our minds
A bank to serve so we can own

Or better yet, savings and loan
​

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​Blood spread out on fertile earth
That's all that can preserve our birth
There's desert seeping loneliness
Paling dark dirt's holiness
Sun-bleached and exsanguinated
Overly illuminated
Stretched by magic to exist
On something no life can subsist
Though magic may be shining through
Blood is all that we can do

And if we never pay the price
A life alone will not suffice
We die as long as we're alive
And whatever we must survive
The muffled pageantry of days
Made hollow as our blood betrays
And draws us into labor's pains
Till less and less of us remains
And skin that makes us who we are
Recedes beneath the burning star
And we become as blanched as stone
And caked back to the earth alone
And all we learn as rising mud's

That blood is magic, magic blood
​

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​I miss you child, away from me

Forever bouncing on my knee
Like you I was born in December
But I can no longer remember
What you have is what I was
And what I am is just because
You're here, and living, safe and small
Whatever I gave, I gave it all

My blood, my magic, child alive
I will go on and seek and strive
I can't conceive what you have cost
If everything, there's nothing lost
But maybe there's more blood to find
And the future will be kind
I may be rising yet anew
And if I do, it's just for you

And not because of magic
And not because of blood
You're more than I ever had to give

If I gave all, there's more to live
3/25/2017
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