Receiving the Lightning

At a time when I had nothing
When I wasn’t saying anything and nobody was listening,
I begged for a bolt of lightning.
To be ridden by the spirit, by ecstasy, inspiration

To be gripped by the chin, immobilized,
While a sacred mouth whispered in my helpless ear,
“I am here. And you must hear me.”

The Muse or The Divine, Jeebus or The Universe
I didn’t care who the voice belonged to —but—
I needed to hear it.

When I asked for it, though, I’d envisioned something else.

I was remembering my elevated friend,
Placid and blithe and chaste,
alone in her duplex for months, blissfully painting
the lofty images her divinity revealed to her.
And I longed for such a gift.

I was imagining my wisest friend,
Withdrawn and smoldering and consumed,
alone in her shack for years, drawing and writing and painting
the celestial images her divinity revealed to her.
And I ached for such a gift.

But when my revelations finally came
I wasn’t prepared for
The images my divinity would reveal to me.

I’d envisioned something else.

The visions I receive from my unnamed deity
are base and profane and, frankly, confusing
Unless you’re attuned to the joys of divine filth.

I recognize the salacious spirit in my cells, in my stardust,
incontrovertible and sacred —but—
It’s not easy to describe a spiritual epiphany
When it arrives through your pussy, throbbing and slick.

And something else:
In the moment I begged for the lightning,
I also vowed that if it arrived, I would embrace it wholly

I would listen to what it had to teach
and carry it wherever it rode me
and we would not stop at the boundaries of the mundane.

Because what would be the point of that?
If I backed off from a divine gift — one I’d pleaded for —
because I couldn’t explain it politely over dinner:
Where would be the grace in that?

No. Instead, I wandered into the path of the whirlwind.
And I found it filthy.

The revelation I receive is not pastoral or cosmic
or made of any images you could hang over the dining table.

My divine revelation is made of
cunts and cocks
and juice and heat
and force and surrender
and release and power
and darkness and joy
That have no place in the proper, productive, upright world.

The revelation I recognize requires a remove
from daily humanity to interpret it, to accept it,
To believe that anyone could surrender to it
And be made whole.

So, like believers of every stripe for millennia before me,
My commitment has painted me into a corner:

Because I’ve felt its power,
I cannot believe less than its smutty truth.

Because I’ve tasted its abandon,
I want nothing less than everything it has to give.

And if my admittance to beatitude
Comes through orgasms
that rip the fabric of the waking world
And separate me from those who will never know it

Then I’ll choose divinity
And never punch a clock again.