Watching a Movie, July 25, 2012

I congregate here and fall quiet,
One of many in the dark,
Awed before the dazzle,
The quicksilver ecstasy,
The glorious aching craving of my people,
This magical moving stage,
This opera cast in colors across a screen.

This dancing image blown large
Is our body,
Our breath,
The tender net without substance
Covering us,
Our cultural capillaries.

You broke the sacred silence.
You spattered my temple floor with blood.

We are red and afraid,
The webbing cut,
So much,
So many lost through the tearing.

We are shaken utterly,
Completely,

Yet we are not so easily corrupted

Even by your calculated horrors.
After the days flooded with flashes of fury,
This bottomless sorrow,
And the cautious eyeing of strangers,

We return our best.

We hush the hoarse calls for your head,
Learn to unlearn you,
And put our fragile bodies of flesh and bone
In the pews,
Starving the fear,
Watching ourselves
Flawed and glorious,
Large,
Projected light.

- 7/26/12