Wild Shiva

He’s got long dreadlocks and blue-black patchy skin
He dances atop planets and creates cosmos with every turn
His dance is powerful and wild
He widens his eyes and sticks out his red tongue.

Shiva dances with passion amid the cosmos
He can erupt a volcano with the snap of a finger
He spreads the earth apart with a hand gesture
He can overflow a mountain and give water to the foothill villages with a twirl of his hair
The people of the forest scream and stomp their sticks to hail to the god of destruction
They paint their faces with mud and emulate a tiger’s growl.

The ancient Aryans ride into the South Asian subcontinent in their horse-pulling chariots. They bring agriculture, clothes, and script.
There’s a battle between the indigenous and the invaders. A thousand and thousand year conflict and war. The sun worshipers and the worshipers of earth. The dance of the drums and the burning spear of sharpened steel. The overtaking and development of land; the formation of rice paddies and the sinkholes that consume. The massacre of children and the killing of sages. Dagger to stone clubs. Gold, silver, and pearls over a bed of flowers.
The Aryan takeover.
A thousand year more, and a thousand things more taken. Names upheld, tasks given.
Sages take cannabis to go where there’s happiness. It meditates them out of this world into the universe.

Amid the cosmos, there’s a tribal face. Amid cosmos, Shiva stomps with power and grace.

The god of all beings. The lord of sacred things. Uninhibited, unbound, unrestraint, and free. Wild, with the mighty strength of a tiger constellation.

He hithers forward; the universe shaking with each agile step.

His skin; blue-black and patchy, and there’s a snake on his neck. He widens his eyes and opens his mouth; bright and red. There’s a roar and the world is dead.

The sage’s trance is broken and he opens his fearful eyes, breaking sweat.

Outside the window there’s a civilized world filled with concrete, heat wave, and the lonesome walking dead.

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