Poetry

I found it burning in at my sacred center

like a homey hearth

whose tongues of ruby flame

bled into my billowy blue soul

sank into marrow

and radiated outward

like a heavenly opiate

free of lingering chemical destruction   

 

I used to do it habitually;

            it was sugar on the taste buds

            of rambunctious celestial innards

 

when it flowed the worst

it gave me the most pleasure

quaint, rhythmic blurts of childish whimsy

woven into the spiraling shadow sea

of confusion which filled me

fed me, felt in me deeply

 

            later, when it became more polished

              corruption of worldly realizations

            descended like vultures

            I became a whorish vulgarian

            I abused it

there were rock star visions

of shapely, blue-painted, women

scantily dressed in thin animal skins

crawling to me across marble floors

in an off white Victorian domestic dream

 

            once I realized it was as much black magick hex

            as white magick blessing, I buried it for a time

            a long dark sleep in a frontal lobe grave

            fermented it into a full-flavored love

            with a brickbat finish

 

and it rose again!

my stony, straight-line lips rolled away

and it strolled from my open grave mouth

swam through my flooded catacomb veins

seeped from every cell and pour

of this understated, dilapidated temple

like ambrosial milk and honey

like crystalline laughter from fluttery cherubs

like viscous napalm from a metal dragon

and, what’s more, it became ingrained

in these double helix columns

that keep this bipedal universe from implosion

 

           

            now, it is the quiet familiarity

            who reinforces mental and spiritual stability

            like the commonplace miracle

            of waking from slumber to the face

            of a sweet, inexhaustible love

            purveyor of warm smiles

            balm on old, grisly scars

            collected moments that make

            Life more treasure than detritus

 

it is the wonderful, terrible

pulsating explosion

which has become the finest

jewel mined from the deepest depths

of my cavernous soul

 

     it coos without being fondled

     dances long after the music has ceased

     and dreams, nonstop, in all directions

 

it is a visceral mudpit

and a holy baptismal

a screened confessional

and a wide open sky

it is oxygen on some days

carbon monoxide on other days

 

     it is the essence of what I am

 

the immortal chunk of me that understands

what Forever means

 

 

Reviews

[Ed Hart]

yes, i abused it too, and now understand what forgiveness means...to my mind, this is as immortal a piece of work as your everyday Michelangelo

[Larry Dyson]

Do you think REDIRTREVIEW would publish this.. it is a surreal down south prose..

[Emily B]

poetry is . . .