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Jason Dec 2015
It is easy to forget
what the heart can’t bear to remember,
and every time I slip into bed
with someone new
I hope she unpicks the uneven stitching
of thread of unfulfilled promises that
“Time will heal all wounds”
(it does not).

But you are no surgeon,
your hands are not deft
but as steady as my fluttering pulse.
Old wounds gape open;
I am all bones and deteriorated sinew
old and slow
so very cold
the spaces between failing organs bleed
congealing dreams going stale.

Still you try,
with each fresh incision
slicing away diseased tissue
excising decaying matter,
believing this patient will recover.

Time might heal all wounds,
yet still,
let’s keep the defibrillator close.
Donall Dempsey Aug 2016
DEATH IS A MIRROR LEAKING LIGHTNING

Death is a mirror
leaking lightning.

Time alters to fit
around the fact.

The sunlight empties itself
of warmth

merely picks out the world
as if the effort hurt.

Time unpicks
stitch by stitch

Life’s rich embroidery.

A constellation comes
to comfort me.

It hovers awkwardly
above my pain

unable to comprehend
its tiny immensity.

I have become the rabbit
staring at me from a trap

watching the world
erase itself

second by second.

Two crows
perch upon your tombstone

gossiping about how
the world comes and goes.

I throw angry words
at them.

They caw off into
an empty sky.

A marble angel & I
standing sentinel.

The marble angel
trying not to cry.
What lightning is, and what it can do. People covered all the mirrors in their house because they can “catch and reflect” lightning…mirrors leak lightning. It was thought that lightning can behave like light and be reflected. Lightning of course is not light, but a raw, electrical charge.

When large turbulent clouds form, they build up a powerful electric charge through a mechanism that’s only partly understood, although the general principle is the same as when you make static electricity by rubbing a balloon with wool.  As the charge builds, it creates an electrical field between the cloud and the ground.  As that field gets stronger, the air begins to ionise until there are enough ions to provide a path for the electricity to discharge.  Once current begins flowing down this path, the air in that path gets hotter and ionises even more, which lets more current flow to make the air even hotter and more ionised.  Within microseconds, the amount of energy passing through that path heats the air so much that it begins glowing – not red hot, or even white hot, but ultraviolet hot.  For the brief moment that the current is flowing, what we have is a lightning bolt which is basically air heated so much that it acts like a wire in an electric circuit.  Once all that energy has been dumped to Earth, there’s nothing to sustain the electric field, the current stops flowing, and the lightning bolt disapears.  Meanwhile, all that superheated air has expanded violently, in a loud explosion which we hear as thunder.  Fun fact:  This happens somewhere on Earth many times every single second!

So we’ve established that lightning is an extremely intense electrical discharge flowing along a temporary path of ionised air.  Suddenly the original question, about lightning being reflected by mirrors, doesn’t even make sense.  Although a mirror could possibly conduct electricity (they’re made by plating the back of a piece of glass with silver or aluminium, which are both highly conductive), it certainly couldn’t reflect it.  If a bolt of lightning were to strike a mirror, it would simply blast through the mirror.
Now lightning is very bright, emitting a lot of light.  Mirrors can reflect this light, if it happens to shine on the mirror, with ease.  But the actual bolt itself won’t deflect from its original path towards the mirror simply because the light is being reflected.
That said, lightning can do some pretty weird things.  There are records of lightning bolts striking and killing a man inside a movie theatre while leaving the building intact and his fellow patrons unharmed.  Lightning bolts have been known to strike telephone wires and **** people using the phone kilometers away.  The faint electrical fields around radio transmitters (like the ones we all carry around in our cellphones) have occasionally been known to attract lightning.  So it certainly is possible for lightning to enter your home and strike your mirrors, if you’re spectacularly unlucky.  But it could just as likely avoid them.  Covering them up makes no sense, and certainly won’t change that particular roll of the dice.
Someone said the war was over,
that they'd seen it live on
social media,

I think I know what that means.

someone learns to knit a Nunchuk
someone else unpicks the seams
and someone gives a webinar on
interpreting your dreams.
DEATH IS A MIRROR LEAKING LIGHTNING

Death is
a mirror
leaking lightning

Time alters
to fit
around the fact

the sunlight
empties itself
of warmth

merely picks out
the world
as if the effort hurt

Time unpicks
stitch by stitch
Life’s rich embroidery

a constellation
comes
to comfort m

it hovers
awkwardly
above my pain

unable
to comprehend
its tiny immensity

I have become
the rabbit
staring at me from a trap

watching the world
erase itself
second by second

two crows
perch upon
your tombstone

gossiping
about how
the world comes and goes

I throw angry words
at them and they caw
off intoan empty sky

a marble
angel & I
standing sentinel

the marble angel
trying not to
cry

*

That last long long telephone conversation...three hours then my phone ran out and he called me back for another three hours. One of the topics was...what lightning is, and what it can do and the superstitions that grow up about it.

People covered all the mirrors in their house when a person died or because they can “catch and reflect” lightning.  "Mirrors leak lightning." it was believed.  It was thought that lightning can behave like light and be reflected. Lightning of course is not light, but a raw, electrical charge.

The phrase "leak lightning" really struck me and I hadn't heard it before.

As a electrician he was able to tell me in detail what lightning was and does!  All the technical stuff I can no longer remember but everything said in that last telephone conversation has now taken on life of its own..

— The End —