Writing Buddha

On chilly Tuesdays, I write according to a strict ethos. Evening light is subdued in a room of primary colors, heat on medium to ensure balance and the notes of a piano concerto flicker amongst red and white candles encircling two cream-colored half moon chairs which my mass spans from east to west - never west to east – although the manner in which I recline varies. A fairly upright position is best when writing about truth, faith or hope as my feet are distanced from my graying head, keeping things pure, clear and beyond reproach. For poems about love, sex or death, I find curling like a tomcat is more conductive, allowing a middle to form from the meeting of extremes, that place our mothers only wanted us to know about in theory, a page in the Kama Sutra with the corner twice folded. But my favorite position beyond a doubt is this one, the one I reserve for writing about poetry where I lay on my left side in boxers and a t-shirt, my length crinkled into separate stanzas, the leg bone of each connecting to the knee bone of the next, concluding with a Pictish-looking head bone adorned with a triad of black periods and a parenthesis on its side, the traditional depiction of a boat or – sometimes - a bowl, its contents only visible from above.