"Begotten" by David Sherry

“Like a flame burning away the darkness,
Life is flesh on bone convulsing above the ground.”

    Innocence is lost when it is destroyed by the rough bark of dead trees. I can see what is not yet left in this forest of nothingness. Coming into focus of harsh blacks and whites is a cabin that does not decide anything even in flowing robes of clouds. God sits and he is nothing here. He is discontent as drip drip he feels it fall to the ground in pools of black. Why is he gushing what he has created to spawn life? His hands are wet and he gropes the cracked walls, smearing what is left of heaven. No longer white, all that is now is streaks of black. Worms of forgotten prayers wallow in discarded sand. He is deaf and all He knows is being ripped from his open emptiness. The foot is dead and the second flood slips down and covers the flesh that is on the bone. Wet, damp, and soiled, he knows nothing. But from the ashes and the drippingness of mortality rises a beating heart. A Mother Earth that is blinded by her father’s image. Wet black on flowing white releases her to the sun. She strokes the Father’s dead manhood, becoming the woman: fertile and pure. White spray tendrils waterfall and cover her with steam. In the life of dead anything makes what virgins keep. She has become the mover as she spreads the seed over her being, impregnating her once disregarded womb.
    A field of desolate expanse with sliding coffin, wooden and hollow. Stand up, I say, and it becomes me as Mother Earth strokes her distended belly. She is big with him, the Son. Arteries, veins, sky of endless clouds and He is born. Son of Earth is purged from the womb as a full grown son. Ropes of infidelity in the land of Nod, he is taken by nomads and dashed against the stones. He gives them gifts of flesh from his mouth and they eat of his abundance.
    But raped once more by nomads of old, Mother Earth cannot fight as her body is entered and impaled repeatedly by the wordless mouths of utterance. We known not from whence they came as their violence speaks of days of old. Pulling apart the bodies of the weak. Limb torn from socket and pounded to the earth with withered sticks. Mother and son are destroyed. Destructed into the ground of Creation. But forthwith flowers spring forth into life on the ground of the dead.