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Edited on Mon May-05-08 01:59 PM by BlueIris
"The Spark"
Once you were immortal in the flame.
You were not the fire
but you were in the fire;—
nothing moved except
the way it was already moving;
nothing spoke
except the voice in back of time;—
and when you became your life,
there were those who couldn't,
those who tried to love you and failed
and some who had loved you in the beginning
with the first sexual energy of the world.
Start the memory now,
you who let your life be invented
though not being invented had been more available
and remember those
who lit the abyss. The boy in science fair.
You were probably hall monitor at that time weren't you,
and you admired them;
on their generator, the spark bounced back and forth
like baby lightning
and you saw them run their fingertips
through its danger,
two promising loops stuck up to provide
a home for the sexual light
which was always loose when it wasn't broken,
free joy that didn't go anywhere
but moved between the wires
like a piece of living, in advance—
then later: how much
were you supposed to share?
The boys sat in front of your house at dusk,
the ones who still had parents.
Sometimes they held Marlboros out the car
windows and even
if they didn't, sparks fell from their hands.
Showers of sparks
between nineteen sixty eight and the
hands were sleek
with asking sleek with asking;
they had those long intramural after
the library type fingers
they would later put in you,—ah.
When? well,
when they had talked you into having a body
they could ask into the depths of
and they rose to meet you
against an ignorance that made you perfect
and you rose to meet them like a waitress of fire—
because: didn't
the spark shine best in the bodies
under the mild shooting stars
on the back-and-forth blanket
from the fathers' cars—
they lay down with you, and when
did you start missing them.
As Sacramento missed its yellow dust 1852.
When did you start missing those
who invented your body with their sparks—
they didn't mind being
plural. They put
their summer stars inside of you,
how nice to have. And then:
the pretty soon. Pretty
soon you were a body,
space, warm
flesh, warm
(this) under
the summer meteors that fell
like lower case i's above
the cave of granite where the white owl slept
without because or why
that first evening of the world. The sparks
of your bodies joined the loud sparks of the sky—
And you carried it, a little flame,
into almost famous cities,
between the ringing of shallow bells,
pretty much like some of that
blue tile work,
walking the bridge of sighs until you found the spark
on quilted bedspreads
in small villages, as if
the not-mattering stitching coming
all 'undone' in the middle
stood for a decade. You barely
burned then;
sex grows rather dim sometimes
doesn't it but it comes back.
Yourself half-gone into those rooms, yourself, a stranger.
You who happened only once:
remember yourself as you are;
when he comes to you
in the revolving dusk,
his full self lighting candles, a little smoke
he sings, the fire
you already own so you can stop
not letting him:
all love is representative
of the beginning of time. When you are loved,
the darkness carries you.
When you are loved, you are golden—
—Brenda Hillman
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