gushing thunder
the rasp of a voice making rain
tonguing the catgut of the throat
strange laughter engulfs the mitochondria
the electro-convulsive shock therapy of sin
a fluid fever
envelops
with
the
odor
of
your
hair
drums lullaby you to a place where breath slows
energy flows warmly from you to space and mind
energy caresses all of you with rarest tenderness
looses the clenched grip on your aching shoulder
the spasm in your neck releases to become muscle
muscle again not hard and unyielding as bare bone
Coltrane's sax slides whole notes down your neck
into your back and glissandos and tongues vertebrae
each assumes its place in line with Jupiter and Mars
you feel immersed in a silk soup of Aquarian logic
the amniotic velvet of this moment's words and rhythm
the headiest broth of you and your wettest cells
Motionless and silent in the dark night,
and then came the word.
—The Popol Vuh
Words are stars in darkness
Inconsistent glimmers mere
meaninglessness until received
from the mouth to the ear
mythos from the mouths of prophets
the story tellers' and singers' history
astonishment before light's glory
the body's reaction to its own
ineffectiveness of expression
its failed descriptive mechanism
sound is the intrinsic dynamic force
only the visions count and the dreams
the dark speech now called poetry
words used to approximate only
the insemination of sounds spurted
into the innermost rhythms of dark
words giving birth in the mouth
fully realized only by the ear
the future remembered backward
unchains us from meaninglessness
the nothingness of corporeal existence
a search for the ineffable namelessness
some external force introduced
the god machine seduced
Existence found only in words flung
the penetration of silence by utterance
the seeds of sounds in the mystic seeing
words that give motion and then meaning
to the rapturous darkness
Donna Snyder is the founder and coordinator of El Paso's Tumblewords Project, which has been presenting creative writing workshops and performance events in the Texas/New Mexico/Chihuahua border region since 1995. She has been a featured performer at literary events throughout the Border region, and has published in a variety of small magazines including Puerto Del Sol, NuCity, Sin Fronteras, and Chrysalis.