In The Dark Tent

A dust storm raged and spat
angry mouthful of bitter alkali against
the walls of the swinging tent. Outside
my family worked, hard
trying to break camp
so we could return to the world.

Inside I sat, hunched, gripping
a flashlight in my teeth madly
scribbling what I could recall of the night
my heart burst open. They entreated me
'help!' but I glared beastly at them
baring the few teeth I had left
unobscured by the light.

From then on we worked
silently, all smudged, breathing
frantic particles, they furious while I
madly
came into being.

Night I

Last August, among crowds
of refugees from our culture, among the hum: their
third eyes nodding in syncopation
to the rhythm of the music drifting from the colored bus
the chant of the wandering monk, o
the guttering midnight wind and
the pulsation of a secret:
one inward heart beating through the machine
and briefly painting flames across the sky
it stained black by infinity,
by the letters describing each possibility
they ran together to form
a bottomless sea, a spiral void, a tube;

it was among this I burst open
alone
and the lotus within me flowered.

In The White Tent

There was
a moment
in which I stood transfixed
and watched colored lights
shimmer in and out of one another
and explode on the back walls
of my eyelids they watched
those things inside me
empty out
into the white tent
that dim room and disperse
like smoke among the linens;
they shrouded others, and in
the moment before I lost my
balance, I hung there
truly empty
like a star.



written 4.16.09
edited 9.3.09