And I Am And I Am And I Am

Duryhodhana caresses me against

his chest, his babe - last rest of a bygone

head against the swordfest of a battle gone astray.

He presses a crippled finger

against the clouds - raises the battered

sword against sky and says

"Ashwatthama,

look at my thighs."

They are broken bison and their calves, creatures of the wilderness

chewed by a god who knows no upper bound but for

the Sun come too soon across the plains of Kurukshetra.

They are a bloodied mess baking under a bloody noon.

Cracks across his chest, strewn stretch marks strawmen fingers

highways on a pregnant earth. He dies in my arms

like an infant suckling a deadened ribcage as I

rise and smear the stuff on my own.

Part One: I am the part

two, the knotted recluse on the sanded

floor under reddened boots; we hide in

forests, eyes narrowed throats hoarse as

the god swims like an adder (Krishna) against

the winds of a east wind

(naga!). His straightset lips part

like a shooting scar (rakshas!) aiming for the moon

but snuffing out the stars and puffing smoke beyond ribcage bars

like the scars on Drona's back, my father's jaw resting in two

next to his chest.

I hate him like flies on Drona's corpse -

the king's ears picked off by the

birthed stork as his heart (still aching for his son,

my sin) sours against the midnight heat

of bodies pressed against each other on the battlefield

like hands. Namaste. I pray to you

to keep another day away for the god to die

because I will kill him like he severed my father's

skull from the feathered body dancing on the field,

sweltered sunray, full from blood and bloated like a fattened

flood crying down upon his legs so that

they blistered away into nothingness and left me

right at the crossroads of the Sun and the Moon. I

stand breathing, the eye sockets a dead man's

grievance succeeding the fleet of the Kaurava brood

but

they say that I will scratch out

my temple in abrasive days - that

I will wander the earth like a warbling

panhandler bruising against the rocky

terrain as three thousand years go by and fade

away into the nothingness blight.

I am prepared to die, back against the wall of sea

and sheath raised against a backdrop of sky.

Bloom me brilliant so

that they will see Ashwatthama like the morning

rose - that they will hear

Ashwatthama as if the morning rose so suddenly

in that their drunken slumber they were blinded

by the Sun and will be slewn, for

this mask tightens

against my face like sweat as I spy a regret as

small to my mind as the midnight moon. Crush it like

a firefly in the night so that the camp will be silent,

owls flying overhead to knight me as this torch sails home

and rips the infant from the womb. I will be

the tomb of the traitors, the men slewn to quench hunger and

satiate thirst as crows croon and warily watch a world upside down, strewn -

the enveloping darkness of the lightning storm swoons as the third eye opens

in my beating heart and guides the rushing torrents of arrows to their rightful

place, crowned on the heads of the snakes as they sink into

the sand of the seconds, bones bleached and spirits beseeching

the galaxies and stars around Brahma's head, orbiting like vultures -

pale tongues, sallow cheeks mirror mine as eyeless grins stretch

forward in time and beggars slink as beggars do

against the cacophony of a comet battering its

forehead against a wall of stars; I seethe, a

skeleton propelled forward by the jet of swords and

spitting words like rain against the shield muddied

on the battle ground. I seek and feed on midday heat, grasses

under my feet growing frightened as they shrink with summer's

hammer pounding against the gong of a God as

meteors across the fury of the light, homeless shadows clinging onto a body -

pry the babies from their dead king's body under

a Kurukshetra sun, pregnant stretch marks given way

on the alter to pray the part of this lonely wolf dragging

skulls down into the horizon, panting.

Their part won; but I play the part too.

(and tonight,

tonight the Gods will see the soul of that wicked god

fleeing and know, though throes of

stillborns that I am

Ashwatthama and

I am as

bitter

as -

My name is Ashwatthama and I am bitter and my name is Ashwatthama and I am bitter and my name is Ashwatthama and I am bitter and I am bitter and I am bitter.)