Muse

how
do i know
what i mean
till i see
what i say
quoth
the quixotic
artist provocateur

catch
an image
a word
a dream
thumbprinted
with truth
to ride
like a pegasus
like a dragon
like a phoenix
(like a fish)
to revelation
absorbing
the essence
of
life
death
sex
birth

shamanically
dis-integrating
to  zero
point
(like a 10-foot mackerel
surrounded by cats
in a feeding frenzy
on the living room floor)

chaotic
shapeshifter
truth
emerging
remorselessly
from wreckage
like a beachball
rocketing out
from
downthrusting
child hands
plunging naked
as a cliff-diver
from a despairing
precipice
to scrape
bacteria
from abyssal stones
probing
vents
to the planetary
core

flaming
out
clothed
in lava
raining
slithering
down to

halt
crystallized
black
and
clear
and
sharp
as dakinis’
knives

–August 2012

(with appreciation to quixotic artist-provocateur M. Richard Kirstel (1936-2007), who relentlessly pursued truth in art, who taught his students that “dark is art,” and “space is a place with a fish in it,” and from whose wisdom I stole the  first 13 words of this poem.)