The Change From Inside

[Robert Crisman]

I wanted to leap those tall buildings with one single bound...

I cannot tell you what it was like with that new blood coursing inside me.

I could see like an eagle, peer right through your mind and sniff out your secrets like hounds wish they could; spot Sonny Liston a hook off the jab, teach Ali how to dance; Bruce Lee was too slow; if I sang I'd knock down a building; if Shakespeare was here he'd write poems about me...

My emotions ran wild, like rockets in wartime, dusting the sky with new colors: love, hate, blood red, azure, vermillion--kaleidescope rocketry, all inside me, that reached out and grabbed the whole world by its neck.

L'amea laughed, shook her head, laughed again till the tears flowed.

I told her I wanted to kill, and she said okay...

[Sandra Davies]

Exuberance so well-defined, described.

[Gita]

Vermillion!  A wonderful color word. This whole piece reminds me of the exuberance in Gerard Manley Hopkins 'Windhover,' especially:

shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion

[Mike Handley]

Third sentence rocks my world. I'm going to look for your canines when we meet again. 

[Jeanette Cheezum]

I know he could do it all. But, for himself, because he had nothing to prove.