I strike a gong
summoning Kali
queen of the underworld
She hops in my lap
She’s been living with me a long time
Kali
Since the day I was conceived
(which was always and never)
Kali was the egg
and Jehovah the sperm
Callie a purring ball of love
Kali is death
and Jehovah life
Jehovah is a myth
and Kali the eternal truth
Death is life is life is death
Kali is Jehovah is Kali
Mistress of life mistress of suffering
naked shimmering black and blue
too gorgeous too horrific to glance at
We pass on our sperm
pass on our eggs
to be immortal
donate an infinitesimal part of our bodies
to the multiverse
Our spawn will die
our species too
but we will live forever
and never
This seething breathing loving suffering corpse
we call self
will rot
We are empty husks of corn
scattered to the winds
since before our conception
our lives laid out
our deaths long past
We die first and are born
Kali knows intimately
that death and life
destruction and creation
are an illusion
a bitter reality
Knows time forward and backward
sideways and upside-down
she exists yet doesn’t exist outside time inside space
twisted pretzel
maze with no beginning
invoking Jehovah
I summon Kali
already here
always never existing
She is no Indian goddess
she is he is they is I
transgender and cisgender gay and straight and binary bent and crooked liar and truth
they is mother goddess of life
His wife Shiva
his husband Kali
its spouse Kaliva
their horde of significant others Shali
Saliva
a drop the universe
Destroyer of worlds
guardian of the multiverse
comes to me
at the echo of a gong
Saliva echoes with universes
the instant Kali spits it
spits herself
from his mouth
scattering them to the five winds
The instant of creation
the eternity of Ragnarok
preordained by the demon Jehovah
created within my destructive self
created by the universe despite my pitiful pleas
a mewling dying kitten freshly born
Shrödinger’s Rubik’s five dimensional cube
Callie simultaneously alive and dead everywhere and nowhere
I strike a gong larger than the universe
the size of a hangnail
dangling from my left pinkie toe
Callie is there
a familiar from eons past
from an unimaginable future
a gift from my mother
Shiva comes from the next life
to torment me with kindness
We cannot escape
Cali
Kallie
rubbing against I
purring and soothing
tiny circle of life in my lap
She springs up
startled by a distant gong
disappears into the multiverse
leaving bloody skidmarks
in our soft flesh
I strike a gong
a gong strikes me
Ethan Goffman’s poems have appeared in BlazeVox, Bradlaugh’s Finger, Burgeon, The Loch Raven Review, Mad Swirl, Madness Muse, Ramingo’s Blog, Setu, Under the Bleachers, and Winedrunk Sidewalk. His first volume of poetry, Words for Things Left Unsaid, is just out from Kelsay Books. Ethan is co-founder of It Takes a Community, a Montgomery College initiative that brings poetry to students and local residents. In addition, Ethan is founder and producer of the Poetry & Planet podcast on EarthTalk.org.
