That Gallant Thing

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Your destiny includes a rupture in

Your darkness.  You desire it but . . . no, not

Unless it thrusts as muscular as sin.

The holy ones have made you with a slot

To take it in, this fate, or more than one

If you are hotly willing like a rift

In Mauna Loa, nearby like a sun

In heat, but acting as your hips both lift

You up for penetration, not for streams

Of lava.  Quite the opposite.  Hips surge

To take the revelation with your screams

Against your inner blackness for its urge.

  You need the gallantry.  You need its force.

    You want explosions, course, course, course.

~  Phillip  Whidden