Perfect Moment

Galaxies coalesce
dispersing in bone marrow
while heart keeps time with paisley chaos

for the scantest of moments
the universe murmurs every messy secret
into overflowing vessels

causing breath to catch mid-gasp
as we collectively forget
how the melody ends

and anyway,
perfectly half-baked
and fully-formed was our jam

that was the half-beat
just after her stunned silence
and teary-eyed smile

before whispering what I already knew,
a chorus of rhythm and rhyme
without words

yet somehow, I had always felt them
long before our pride and shame
muddied things and anyway,

no spirit, green-leaf or opioid
will ever hold technicolor candle to
the perfect twinkling
of her raspy, first-time ever

“I love you too.”

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Written for NaPoWriMo Day 1 Prompt:

“Sometimes, writing poetry is a matter of getting outside of your own head, and learning to see the world in a new way. To an extent, you have to “derange” yourself – make the world strange, and see it as a stranger might. To help you do that, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by this animated version of “Seductive Fantasy” by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. If you don’t feel after watching it a little bit like the top of your head’s been taken off, and your thoughts given a good stir – well, maybe you are already living in a state of heightened poetic awareness!”

NaPoWriMo Day 1 Prompt

Well, I don’t know about heightened poetic awareness, but that song and video was a whole vibe onto itself. I played it on repeat and allowed it to take me wherever it wanted me to go. I embedded the video above.