passion meditation

Hot blood, coursing through the veins.

The deafening din of a pounding heart.

Muscles and sinews stretch, stretch to breaking.

Every tip of nerve screams at breaking point.

Breath comes in piercing, dagger-thrust gasps.

Struggling to stay afloat.

The sea of emotion roars and rumbles around the void of an aching emptiness. Over the brink, it is swept away in total absorption, a blackness lost to the senses.

A bright spurt of blood leaps from the throbbing wound.

The prickle of sweat driven deep into furrowed brow.

The whole body tenses, an involuntary spasm, slowly to relax as the rigour seeps in.

Coldness, clamminess.

The pallor of death when the anguish subsides.

Suffering squeezed, wrung out and poured into a vessel.

In the sweet clarity, the distillation of ecstasy.

Hard nails of agony grate in the dregs.

What cup can contain such extremes of experience and not warp in the heat or shatter in the cold?

Drink, drink deep to the end.

Drain the mixture in one, all-encompassing draught.

Lift it high -
and then, in the reflection,
see my face.

Hugh Houghton 2000

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