conducted
In the clouds of consciousness
brews a bolt,
readying to be hurled down
from the white and gray and deep, old blue
We can’t know the higher mind
of the temper-mental titan
poised at the mysterious thunder-forge,
deciding to deign
the delirious deliverance of an idea
in that frictious fraction of a moment
before striking us with ionized inspiration
Then the collision of furies hot and cold
as the icy hammer of clarity falls hard
on the fever-dream anvil,
singing silent smoke skyward,
and a spark stream tumbling down
at the speed of impulse,
descending with invisible speed
Though we can’t yet see,
we feel respiration taken,
breath from bone and thump from heart
to fuel the perspiration spike,
now gathered in electric fervor
among our fine hairs and pores
Then there’s the hearsay
of the triumphant and terrible blast
roaring echoes of aha! and eureka!
across the gorges and furrows
of the word-wound mind
At last the wooden poles and encased wires
Of hands seize and grasp
for our own smithing instrument
to complete the circuit,
and as pen hits parchment
paintbrush hits pallette
printed finger hits string or keystroke synapse
transformers burst forth
It’s only then,
on this journey of return
back into and around
the crackling mountain-mass
of a cultured, concretized crucible
that we begin to perceive, sky-blinded,
the molten river that sweeps us up
in its sizzling neural current,
the lingering light-shadow of lightning
throbbing our vision with black and blue
And now we return again
to this pregnant pulse
before the vast preponderance
of that wild, cascading tempest
we call creation,
to this ethereal time before time
when the unspeakable is coursing
from heaven on high
to tip of the tongue
It has already
brought down the plasma gavel
of its verdict – we are
charged, conscripted,
conducted into the channel,
shock-bound conduits
of the storm-shrouded artful force
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