In lightning flames my quiddity;
My lightning grounds each day;
In lightning smokes Euripides;
His Bacchae swim my way.
quid·di·ty
[kwid-i-tee]
–noun,plural-ties.
1. the quality that makes a thing what it is; the essential nature of a thing.
2. a trifling nicety of subtle distinction, as in argument.
write with lightning 
April 11th, 2010 at 18:02
the lightning image again. with the bacchae does it personify your elemental need to write?
more familiar with hecabe and medea types, myself. :p
April 13th, 2010 at 09:04
The dictionary poems were too often speedily written, but I did spend slightly more time on this one. The idea is that lightning (rather than the four elements represented in the verb in each line) is my essential creative spark, but it gets grounded in daily life. Among those flashes of lightning I see my famous influences – Euripedes in this case – sitting back, smoking smugly like Alice’s caterpillar. I write as a referencer of others, and the maenads attack me for it, tearing me to shreds.
April 13th, 2010 at 10:58
then another word you might like is quintessence, the fifth element, but there’s an inescapable alchemical mystery to it. that’s why this poem seems to go so well with “the magician”.