Blasphemy isn’t a bad beginning. I became myth

when I wanted Him to say: I love you most, Lucifer.

 

As if a being of light could ever not also be God,

as if Venus had a choice in being the morning star.

 

As if click beetles in a black field could find

each other without their bodies’ blinking luciferin.

 

As if the lovers in a cave could see each other

without the glimmer of the glow worm’s luciferase

 

making green petroglyphs in dayless spaces—that

stone, those beings of clay, lit by a fireless light.

 

With this camouflage/attraction/warning system,

a body can say what it needs to without the sun.

 

Don’t you ever wonder why he asked you to suffer

for him? He stays in the milk-and-honey glisten

 

of heaven and makes a meat of you. It’s scary 

as hell to be chosen, singled out as light-bringer.

 

Take the love and the fear that makes it possible.

A man is a unit of power. A god is a unit of fire.

 

All this could be yours—this kingdom, this breath

and bloody pulse, that city on the hill, the shining one.

 

Be mine. I would never ask you to die for anyone, 

my little anglerfish, my sweet squid, darling firefly.