they know not what they’ve sown

buried
in the warm meat of his brain
rested the seed
of a heretic, waiting
to
sprout fully
to
overshadow
the god
of his parents

he had avoided madness
only by chance, with
trancelike hours spent
disassembling their
oratories about
miracles of judgement,
spent lives,
souls lost in barter –

they insisted on
reanimating conversations
that had dropped dead
long ago,
believing
that some
lurching new form
of their creation
could carry logic,
as well as their child,
beyond the
horizon of promise