The Machine

You were created of
a thousand eggshells, for bone,
a thousand tiny birds systematically
hatched, plucked and sacrificed for your hair,
your skin;
their blood is lighter than our blood and so you float
but never will you fly.

And narrowly prophets passed you
for beauty worthy of sin
and sought an engineer to construct
a device of kinship
that you might calculate our miracles.

When you found her she was shining
radiant amidst the blacks of metal,
against the rough cloth she would lay against;
and where your veins were light
her lungs were heavy, her heart
the pounding of
inefficient diesel in search of
sun and wind.

You plucked her young and coughing
from the cataclysmic womb of factories
and asked that she build your machine.

Stumbling, she understood, and you worked her
through the unwarranted summer
and soft comforters that settled over her quietly like snow
over the sleepy doped backdrops
to be preached against.

Shaking, she eased it foreword
until she couldn't feel it under her hands,
and in the following headlights she swayed like a deer
in her reflection, immune to the acceleration.

In one final and quiet act of suicide
you sacrificed the creator to the creation
and your machine was born
A test of chicken blood and miracles.