The Lightning Body Poem by Tarun Cherian

Imagine a summer storm iridescent with lightning, only it happens in your body. And the lightning we were talking about? Well it isn't lightning either. Is more the deep content of a child massaged by his mother's fingers, the wine-heady satisfaction of a Sunday afternoon, the sensual slowness of amber honey lazily trickling, the curious stirring of a lover's tongue, the rippling dissolve of a half an hour orgasm, the fierce knowing of a prophet's eyes, sprinkled with volts. It, whatever it maybe, ripples up my body with exquisite slowness. Sparkling fingers touch, turning each cell dense with orgasmic incandescence. It moves with grass-suffused slowness,

Flickering-gold beneath lily pads, one may call chakras. Now nibbling at the toes. Now hyalescent fins moving at the crown. Circles on circles, of dancing children {only you can't see the children}, of molten gold {only you can't see the gold}.

It fades. It fades, but it's there, through meetings, campaigns, arguments, like the sheen of shot silk woven into my being. Suddenly, in the middle of a discussion on the middle class housewife's idli rice preferences, the Ajna pulses, the Sahasrara opens and shuts.

The universe winks on and off.