She has seen lizards sprout wings,
goddesses raped by gods,
limbs torn from every variety of body.
She has felt the plates of the earth
redistribute mass and mountain;
fissures become rivers—it took so long, that one.
How she laughed when Shiva met Kali,
bit her nails as Persepolis, Alexandria burned,
predicted rightly Rome would sever it's own head.
Each cliffhanger left her anticipating the next:
pharaohs, emperors, dictators, evil queens,
cruel kings, warriors—of course she had her favorites.
Enlightened and transcended,
existential, emergent—O the complexities!
she branded herself an idealist for centuries
and defended the inherent good against
slavery, holocaust and common genocide.
Throughout, she kept notes and wrote:
She marveled at the congruence of fate—
the intersection of lines and paths, points on a graph.
That evening, she wept at the Café Bohemia
swallowing whole, the sounds of Miles and Coltrane
Out of breath, she awakens to search the earth
that she may stay longer, until the very end.
An infinite resource, an essential commodity
the rise and fall of her chest, air in, air out.
Better her than some other witness, she reasons,impartial to vagrancies, willing to barter with man.
How stupid he is—by the book, a stickler for rules.
Jealous and resentful, he withholds the best:
the steady and shallow, the kundalini lion’s,the deep sighs of contentment. “I have only this.”
She thinks she has made his day and
thanks him in wheezing, emphysemic gasps.
She who never dies must take what she can get.
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