Prayer 1

 From the desk of Vitasta Raina

Time: Irrelevant

Dated: The end of ends and the beginnings of beginnings.

Note: Forward is the only way. When down and out, dig. 

*

For Whitman, and the unknown poet.

*

Oh terrible! Free me from this longitude, this latitude, this degree of light,

Let me deviate, let me proceed from this frigid idea 

To the next thing that does not coalesce, give me a tempered sun. 

And give me the grass, I’ll add my own blades, and let my fat indolent fingers 

Taste the blood of my own lunacy, scorching, volatile, tense.   

Let my burnt umber brain stem dictate to the willing

Passages of my passages and incantations! Oh being!

I pray 

To become 

An utterance. 

Such nonsense in the halls and universities, 

Such Faustian horrors, such roads to hell, tree lined avenues

Such corruption of tongues and languages, bleak and untidy

I pray, oh nothing!

I pray 

To become 

A poesy.

I pray to you, Oh Truth, I pray for all days, 

I pray to the winter’s cold and to the frost lidden lintels

Of decorated doorways where the sunlight glimmers sometime, 

And I pray to keep the soul of the librarian, Spark in me, 

Lead me to the dust, to the odours of foul words, to the stranger’s bootstrap

Lead me to the grass, damp beneath my feet, I’ll add my own blades

Let me bleed. That rush of vermilion in my brain, that skull, that horror, 

Let me bleed out entirely on your pages, and take my yellow. 

Give me your fervent fever of green, your jolly, your tribe, your flowing grey, 

Let me 

Become.

Let me, Oh infinite!

Let me define thy hidden. 

Let me think soaked in battery fluid and ethane, 

I pray

Oh Poet, you, us, each other and never finished, 

I pray

And I reach

And I pray again

And I seek 

And I seek 

And I seek

And I see…

I

Oh cosmic drop of plasma, Oh jeweled, glittery drops of sun-split oceans,

I have walked, barefoot and humble

On blades of grass. 

*

Ripple in Still Water. Vitasta, 2021