Mind is an entrance to where reading is like fire enabling flames inside the dark to torch
the breath and enclose the exchange, dependent on those who lead the underworld
into days of mists that settle on the brow. The tendency to return
can't fathom the serpent's stench.

  There are gospels, he said,
                 that read the world  as fire
                                  passing within the body,
                           enabling it
                                 to fathom
                                                 lightning.

Was it he who laughed, dichotomizing centuries of viperous nights,
their minutes a collector of scaly Gnostic throats,
even as the malting crowns of shamans were poisoning wombs given to a gospel without sulfur?

         Tell it to the ones who died wearing the dense features of an animal's vestment,
what luminous living does grounded in Cantabrian cells.