Worship Smaller
Poetry by Brian Stephen Ellis
In the stories of the gods, in the god journey they will
sometimes run across an older god that the poet will mention
as a matter of course, no explanation
oh, that’s just the Old Stump,
another generation still holding on
another generation reaching back
origin requires origin, repetition
in place of shape.
The old gods always ended up
being a random rock, this dried up well,
a stingray on the ocean floor,
a spider in a knot in the tree of the world,
a bullfrog that could burp heaven.
Like these gods were just memories
from when we were tadpoles. Memories
from a time when humanity was
a scum of algae on a pool of salt and protein.
The claw of a crab scraped some sand
and a civilization sprang up. Worship smaller:
the crab is god, the crab’s claw is god,
the scrape is god. Worship smaller: this heat vent
is god, this fetid slurry is god,
this flash of cum is god.
Worship smaller: this grain of sand, this grain of sand,
this one, this one.
I just want to be a broken perfect evil thing
laying supine in the muck. I want each of my bones
to scurry out of my meat to worship them
one by one. I will climb below the basement
of my human-ness and fuck the crab.
Memories hidden in my peptide-chains
speak of the poets before the poets,
the origin of origins, the burbling slurm
of the first religion. Goddess mitochondria penetrates
the cytoplasm. The note of that bell
is ringing still.