Life Louder than a Saharan Sun

I want theatre and Venetian perfumes, opiates and Indian spices
I want rickety roller-coasters and sequined acrobats
I want to wear old Hollywood ball gowns and parade downtown
I want to bathe in holy water full of jasmine buds
I want to inhale the froth of waterfalls
I want poetry on billboards and loudspeakers
I want to love my love with all my love
I want velvet-kisses and blueberry waffles in bed
I want to sing and dance in Technicolor light beams
I want to soar away, to a kingdom of vixens and sea monsters
I want to stretch my wings on currents of chaos
I want to peer down on coastal monsoons and lion caves
I want to release a cluster of rainbow balloons
I want to see them pop, pop, pop at the edge of dawn
I want to lose all direction, run wild in the witch's hour
I want sinful sensuality and ecstatic irrationality
I want life, a fantastic, lunatic life worthy of lyric
I want life--a life louder than a Saharan sun
slapping beds of sand.


--Poem by Jessica Nash