The blood recognizes
the blood in another, knows well
that the best way to control one’s

surroundings is to control one-
self not others, wisdom’s
revealing lies not in

its telling but its feeling, un-
derstanding’s nodding ack-
nowledgment remaining

concealed enough to impart through
dark arteries what needs
to be said without the

movement of tongues or opening
of lips, what Missal whose
rubric is written in

     the blood of martyrs with the bones
     of saints, a mystery
     whose ritual initiates

devout heretics without a
word, energy itself
what encourages growth,

an unspoken name what sticks and
breaks stones, an underly-
ing current of myth what

thunders through cultures our restless
routes clash with, a twisting
of glances leaving two

left eyes chances discovery
and perceive-veers, circum-
stances its way through the

grapevine of enemies whose ears
fire without cease flames of
whines their ignorance hopes

     they will hear, those simple little
     neophytes fear rules and
     obscurity endears, this is

for my brothers whose beards from a
distance of centuries
our shared heritage draws

near, those raven-haired bards whose ra-
venous hearts hunger
not for truth but knowledge,

touching our Selves to each other,
Stoic philosophers
offering their minds on

altars as lovers do bodies
on pillows, the solemn
as-above/so-below

the idiom on which we throw
what I pick up and hope
you will, too, if my eyes

     have not deceived me into be-
     lieving you are, indeed,
     one who knows, who can read this look,

winking without the sting of weeping,
opening slowly my
book, my memoirs-cum–

grimoire, all my life broadening
minds, my grenade of a
brain a goldmine for knives

whose sharp tips rob me of my wit
fuckers of mothers whose
tits milk and chuck this wealth

or would if they could just wrap their
thieving tongues around it,
this secret I can tell

you get, that you and I
have the same rhythm and skill,
that we both are magicians.