Vision

When I was six I looked for Santa Claus.
My eyes strained into the cold stars,
Just trying to glimpse his coming-
Or Rudolph with a red nose.
At some point I went to sleep,
Disappointed and anxious.

One time a beautiful girl,
dark-haired, dark-skinned,
petite and smelling of roses,
sat across from me eating, smiling.
She was a stranger.
She fainted suddenly and fell to the ground, twitching.
Instead of helping her I turned away,
averting my eyes from her exposed panties.

In the woods I clench my jaw,
strong against the inevitable snake-
coiled, patient, potent, waiting.
I know he's there.
I refuse to see him and hope he goes away-
Like a child who pulls the cover over his head
to thwart monsters around him.

When I was a student I flipped on the switches
of a huge roomful of electron microscope.
It hummed as I whirled and twisted away
In some ways searching hour after hour for God,
(who cleverly obscured himself behind tiny
masses of waxy molecules,
giggling at my folly.)

I try to control what the cinema of my mind
reels to itself and stores away.
My life is relentlessly, passively catalogued
and these visions are me.