I wanted to write something beautiful and wild,
Something true,
A sentence with an original face,
Words like angled stones
Sharp edged, chipped from newest ground.
I wanted to write something never before written,
Like when God stood in darkness vast
Spoke the original word:
It was a puncture wound in space,
A first, creative and primal sound.
I wanted to write something that was almost impossible to achieve,
That yearning that we can't express but all of us feel,
The mortal wound that aches in fading light.
Something torn from the soul of the world
But without blood-
To see all of it at once and survive,
To look upon the face of God and not die.
As if existence itself was a flower
A blossom that we could see:
Then I would seize it by the stem and pull it up
From its long root whole
The earth would still cling.
I know it is wrong to desire,Let alone desire this.
To let emotion rage, To free the Nagas
The demons of wild and ravenous fire.
To want something so badly
That we strike it down.
To fall from burning heights of blistered blue
A Hawk that hurtles to a hapless target,
A bullet fired from a speeding gun,
An explosion that obliterates both
Pursuer and the pursued,
A maelstrom of mingled feathers.
Forsaking stealth,Swift ripple of a lion's biceps and triceps
The curling rhythm of its back
As in hungry bounds that eat the ground
Un-poised and unleashed to sudden speed
It becomes the impact of a ton of hardened tissue,
A living locomotive that is flung
A rock from a catepult
A self directed arc of mass + velocity:
Teeth and outstretched knives
Muscle-corded bone
Verb that consumes a noun
The collision of an iron anvil with fragile sticks robed in fur.
A single instant,
The deer crumples to the ground.
But for you a metaphor:
A metal bat through a wine-glass,
Deconstructed crystal
Seen frame by frame in slow motion.
The tiger that hunts in a grove of bodhi trees,
The Eagle with talons
That wings through halls of gleaming stars,
Yet, in this massacre
This possession and this pain,
There is a measure of Satori,
A flicker of the divine flame.
The reaching hand of a bright-eyed god
A fist that held a flaming torch
And slung it towards the earth.
On the mountain in the coldness,
His body as it writhed in chains;
A liver that bled,
An eagle's black and staring eye
Its bloody beak.
Through pain,
He saw the world.
He saw that it was wicked,
Yet that also there was good.
There was the flower,
The dangling root.
Pain,
Ecstasy.
He saw this,
He closed his eyes.
There were no words.
There was nothing he could say.
I wanted to write something beautiful and wild,
Something true,
A sentence with an original face,
Yet I could not find the words.
So I wrote about it's shadow,
I traced a silhouette instead.
Something true,
A sentence with an original face,
Words like angled stones
Sharp edged, chipped from newest ground.
I wanted to write something never before written,
Like when God stood in darkness vast
Spoke the original word:
It was a puncture wound in space,
A first, creative and primal sound.
I wanted to write something that was almost impossible to achieve,
That yearning that we can't express but all of us feel,
The mortal wound that aches in fading light.
Something torn from the soul of the world
But without blood-
To see all of it at once and survive,
To look upon the face of God and not die.
As if existence itself was a flower
A blossom that we could see:
Then I would seize it by the stem and pull it up
From its long root whole
The earth would still cling.
I know it is wrong to desire,Let alone desire this.
To let emotion rage, To free the Nagas
The demons of wild and ravenous fire.
To want something so badly
That we strike it down.
To fall from burning heights of blistered blue
A Hawk that hurtles to a hapless target,
A bullet fired from a speeding gun,
An explosion that obliterates both
Pursuer and the pursued,
A maelstrom of mingled feathers.
Forsaking stealth,Swift ripple of a lion's biceps and triceps
The curling rhythm of its back
As in hungry bounds that eat the ground
Un-poised and unleashed to sudden speed
It becomes the impact of a ton of hardened tissue,
A living locomotive that is flung
A rock from a catepult
A self directed arc of mass + velocity:
Teeth and outstretched knives
Muscle-corded bone
Verb that consumes a noun
The collision of an iron anvil with fragile sticks robed in fur.
A single instant,
The deer crumples to the ground.
But for you a metaphor:
A metal bat through a wine-glass,
Deconstructed crystal
Seen frame by frame in slow motion.
The tiger that hunts in a grove of bodhi trees,
The Eagle with talons
That wings through halls of gleaming stars,
Yet, in this massacre
This possession and this pain,
There is a measure of Satori,
A flicker of the divine flame.
The reaching hand of a bright-eyed god
A fist that held a flaming torch
And slung it towards the earth.
On the mountain in the coldness,
His body as it writhed in chains;
A liver that bled,
An eagle's black and staring eye
Its bloody beak.
Through pain,
He saw the world.
He saw that it was wicked,
Yet that also there was good.
There was the flower,
The dangling root.
Pain,
Ecstasy.
He saw this,
He closed his eyes.
There were no words.
There was nothing he could say.
I wanted to write something beautiful and wild,
Something true,
A sentence with an original face,
Yet I could not find the words.
So I wrote about it's shadow,
I traced a silhouette instead.
