“almost mad with ecstasy” ~ Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation

A man of limbs, a man of limbs and limbs

Who cut through limbs and cut through life, appeared

As if theophany, he requiring hymns.

Not quite theophany he disappeared

In lightning’s flash, slashed in a river’s stream.

Transfiguration almost like the Christ

With crucial prophets, this one man could seem

The Holiest of Holies.  He could heist

Your heart, the hearts of women and of men,

Yet mostly women, women, women’s hearts

And made off with slashed organs.  Needing then

He wanted women and their central parts.

  His thoughts were mystic in his spirit, yet

    They turned to female flesh that he could get.

©  Phillip Whidden