So much blood has spilled...so much deep
red warm thick blood has seeped through
skin and delicate veins and has coalesced
in pools on floors in forests on hands -
touched tongues with taste of cold metal.
Iron forged in bellies of distant stars, dynamic
cosmic ovens, swims in the hemoglobin
of each human being, membrane body.
kytos: hollow.
Only less than 200 years ago did we peer
closely enough to see the individual
biconcave discs with no nucleus, a hollow
center, and scarlet miasma searing through.
Each second, 2.4 million new blood cells
are birthed in you. 60 million died
in the second world war and in Rwanda, 800,000
in the second world war and in Rwanda, 800,000
in only 100 days. No one knows how
many were killed in the Crusades, or
for countless unimaginable reasons.
20-30 trillion corpuscles navigate the thin
channels that traverse organs and tissue in
the field of your body. They carry the exhale
of trees to each part; they speed so that
each minute the cells cover the meandering
path three times. Tiny membrane-bodies that
coagulate into miniature rivers and streams ripple
and teem with your Life, are journeying those
halls of your mysteriously confined figure.
We forget that we bleed the same color, that
erythros-red is what we all are on the inside,
and that each cell is hollow at the center,
save for that mesmerizing sphere of light
that glows on every level, in each smaller
piece that comes together to form something
greater.
