Reverse Bastard

Do not go down to sorrow
Or fall too deep into despair 
Even as all around you
The lake of fire
Flares up in solar crowns

Tongues of flame
Licking their lips
A brutal theatre
Reproduced. 

And you have walked 
Through that fire 
Multiple times 
The smoke curling from
Your burning effigy 
Dispels old magics
Drives stale spirits
Out of the room.

Fire blooms in your spine
You bend your back 
You get a good look
At all the blood spilled 
On the kitchen floor
At all the generations 
Spun and churned
To fuel this lingering curse.

This curse that 
That breaks the bond 
Between father and son 
Turns blood pressure
Into a fever dream
And a lashing out
Of paralyzed hands.

This curse that
Creates bastards 
Sustains them, even
In floes of 
Frozen histories.

 
A curse of space and time
That can only be reversed
By transmuting the 
Traumas of the heart
And the body's alarms
Into beacons of a new
And brighter future.

You scrub the blood off the kitchen floor
Hear the pot of water 
Writhe and simmer on the stove
An augur of purification
Scrying for proof
Of that second life.