{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
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
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
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
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
