Who I Am began low, in abstract before concepts
and passed upward
leaving solidity.
The concrete things
named themselves porous
for my rising through them.
My rising inspired them and this
they called breath-'It was good.
They used it discriminately
in time, to make each other strange.
I went among them
meeting some who called themselves mighty
some who called themselves reaver, or
king. I went among them
and came up looped with the sweat
of sundered adjectives'-
bestial antediluvian
famished blood sated'-
my grin was tusked, incarnadine
my limbs were willow bent
sap strong my eyes
festered nut gems, salty
crystalline
my aspect preternatural.
This is how I rose, descriptions
pendulating like medals.
But did I say sundered?
I meant it; they were truly
not my adjectives. I collected them
like ears, from the fey.
They fell and I took their fetishes
whip coil sinewed, serpentine hewed
thunder spawned, profligate
diademed, encrusted with splendorous modifiers
and yet everything remained
unmodified. It still rose
not bold or brazen
not mystery cowled, occult
nor foreordained, not fated, ineluctable
nor inexorable, neither ineffable nor taboo
indescribable nor inexpressible.
These were all descriptions
to which it was immune.
It rose. It was itself.
It was the last sight
my dread beweaponed, anointed
ghastly and god glamoured foes beheld.
As they fell they cried How?
I trailed my death spelled fingers
in the spirit plagued and dust cursed
field of slaughter, snagged a word
that they might know and there and then
in that time and place the seed was sown.
What was that word? What arcane spoor
revealed my name?
In the marking I left you
misled, available to opinion, to perspective.
Which was that word? Ask the fallen
ask the Opposer, for it was The Word.
I'll not say it again.

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