(You have to read this one out loud)
Take a Deep Breath
.
And speak the memory of a foreign shore
Where pastels spilled on water stroked your back
In slow exhale to revisit once more
The visible eyes in a bedroom of black
Amazed that they loved you before
The lips found the words that they lacked.
If you are ever in Taipei, do not pass up the chance to visit the unique Museum of World Religions. You will have to leave the comfort of the English-friendly subway system and take a shuttle bus from an unmarked-in-English bus stop to the mall where it resides. My Lonely Planet Southeast Asia on a Shoestring promised that it would have depictions of ten of the world’s most influential religions, but with a street-front entrance attached to the side of a mall, the museum did not look like much. I had faith in my yellow bible, and I’ll-be-damned if it wasn’t right. Continue reading
I captured lightning after years
Of trying—pulled the trigger when
Nothing was in my sight but fears:
The wandering fear suspended in black night,
The fear of women, fear of men,
The fear of failure, fear that fate
Had wanted clockwise circles then
When I instead passed right.
So I in darkness hoped the gate
Of gods retired from careers
Of rage would not unlock too late.
They turned the key—gave me this light.
With lightning skies above an open field,
Do you lie down in loam or hide beneath
The ash tree planted on the tumulus mound?
Do you take comfort in the soil of life
Or in the grafted branches fed with death?
I risk the tree, to hang in Odin’s wake
And face the fulminations of the wronged—
Of those I buried with Time’s eager spade
To wall them off from memory, to free
The limbs to hold another, while entombed
The dead await this rise to punish me.
So now, with lightning skies above, I let them.
\FUL-muh-nayt\ , intransitive verb;
transitive verb:
In lightning flames my quiddity;
My lightning grounds each day;
In lightning smokes Euripides;
His Bacchae swim my way.
[kwid-i-tee]
write with lightning 