Today's poem is by Heather Kirn
"Free Bible in Your Own Language"
Call me doubting Tom, but have you heard
my language? How I pepper the day
with oh shits of running late and road kill?And does a book on your table filter fables
through nineteen-eighties pop lines? Shout, shout,
let it all out. What about shunyata,that wide bowl of a Buddhist wordemptiness
splattered flat on a blank page like a smacked fly?
In my bible, several vacant pages follow.Let’s shut one. Like a musical greeting card,
open it again. Any monks chanting
muddled nirvana? How about a bongoand a flute, a hermaphrodite rapping
the precise number of steps it took
to reach now? Only text: Adam’s rib and howEve was turned from it. This is wrong.
In my language, God takes two of his own,
blows bone-dust across a fieldlike seeds, plants trees. Roots grow into legs.
Upon what, you ask, would the book
be written? Give me some space,a quiet walk in the grass unburdened
by your kiosk of Korean, Finnish, French….
With my footprints bending the blades,I’ll write a faint psalm of unknowing,
knowing the sun will erase it, will call
it back into straight, green, speechless strands.
Copyright © 2008 Heather Kirn All rights reserved
from Cimarron Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
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