A Disturbance of Shen

Remember the first scream
taking stale breath
and breath not yet breath
from the cavities of memory
through the oval of an open mouth?

Unlike the daily exhale of a sigh
hurtling, hot down nasal tunnels,
heat enough to steam a window,
tears rolling in quantities
of homeopathic salts.

So unlike the comfort of a sigh,
air gurgling over the larynx,
drying teeth, the fluttering
reef slip over lip. There is a rip
and tear to it, an opening; there

in a birth or in the wail of grief
lives something more than expelled air;
when breath could slice a bauble of flesh
in two; scalpel tissue, scissor sinew,
and laser through the pores.

The throat chakra, opening
to a rocket jet tunnel of force,
a primal scream of spores to the sky.
A disturbance of Shen, making clouds
of rain to wash the skin of the body, the leaf
of a tree, where fuel toxins lie in limbo;
pathogens preparing - there to dust,
for a returning to the earth.

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