Love Chant

(for  K  .

Happy Halloween, Honey!)

I made the witch
A black and fine array of gifts--
Amulet, ankh, and onyx stone,
A set of keys from black bear bone,
And a potion of pine tar pitch.

Men have laid their hearts at her feet,
And they lie there still, so still--
Now this woman waits by the storm-split tree
And love the witch she will, my dears,
And love the witch she will.

The marsh spirits cautioned me and said,
"Such folly to call the crow!"
But I'll sigh her name til I am dead
And down to Hell I go, my dears,
And down to Hell I go.

Now see my witch, she wears my stone,
And her Cherokee medicine smile--
She's meant to mark me as her own,
And has done all the while, my dears,
And has done all the while.

I adore the witch and we are two,
No pasty churchman's bitch--
To make a sweet black heart beat true,
Use sets of keys from black bear bone
And a potion of pine tar pitch!

_______

Three

(Note: This is probably a crap poem, and I expect it won't convey all that I felt when I was having the dream that it describes. I think that three is probably always a crowd, in waking life. What I do know is that for a few minutes, while I was asleep, I was happy from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes.)

Did you ever see that show
That corny episode
Where astronauts land somewhere and
It's almost like home
And they're not alone?

Last night I dreamed
That I was unironically seventeen
Not old, not fat
Imagine that
And had hair that fell
Right down to my happy ass.

My blonde friend
Could finish things I said
Just like she could read my mind
And when we slept together the one time
Because we were curious and close
We were each other's mirror in the night.

When she found a guy
I won't lie, I thought it was the end
Of the thing that kept us connected
But he was funny and sweet
Swept us both off our feet
And made us feel easy and protected.

First he turned to her
Then he turned to me
It never felt like a crowd, just us living out loud
We circled and burned
A little constellation of three.

I remember someone said
That every star we see is dead
It's just that light takes so long to travel through the darkness
I looked up and saw
Then woke up and it was gone.

Did you ever see that show
That corny episode
Where someone lands in luck from out of the blue?
It's just a made-up fake
Interrupted by commercial break
And only fools and children think it's true.

______



  

and...

A Breviary For The Eager

If one is to burnish A Calling,
One must learn one's tenets and sacraments--
One must find one's rabbi, if you will,
(for was not the Savior Himself called by this title?)
And finally, a suitable catechism must be dispensed.
Consider, neophyte,
Your betters:
Saint Mark The Evangelist, dragged through the streets and beheaded.
Saint Bartholomew, flayed alive and crucified.
Saint Sebastian, lashed to a post and shot through with arrows.
Saint Barbara, tortured and beheaded.
Saint Peter, The Rock, crucified upside down.
Faith is not for the sissified, or the weekend enthusiast.
It demands...
Everything.

Behold the lecturer, at whose feet you may learn
To mold the preposterous Play-doh of your gift
Into something truly fine.
Place no stock in his appearance--
He may look untrimmed, overlooked by the campus landscaping service,
Rumpled, ridiculous;
But his work has appeared in countless quarterlies.
He has thrown in with the ravening cream of his generation,
Tearing and ripping his way into the few available publications,
Subscribed to by 117,
Actually read by 44,
9 of whom read beyond their own contributions.
Let him guide you.
A hundred hours spent kneeling may yield a flashing moment in mid-air,
And it is only the very particular pigeon who may wheel,
High above the mob.
This can be you.
You can become one of His little favorites
If you keep your ears open, your mouth shut,
And avoid the unthinking spontaneous outburst,
Or any embarrassing, sick-making tiresome end rhyme.

______

for dverse Meeting The Bar

illustration: The Martyred Saint Sebastian by Gustave Moreau

Selkie

Has she bewitched you?
She never set out to do it.
She came up from the sea to dance upon the rocks with her sisters
--wet gleaming smooth grace against hard gray stones--
Your eyes and hopeful nature did the rest.

"She would never say where she came from"
You would die there,
So you cannot go--
While she must always return,
Dying in her own way,
Leaving the antique ring upon the table.

There is darkness,
And there is cold,
And some become beautiful there.
Play your fiddle, fool,
She will come.
She is like no other you will ever know--
More enchanted,
More dangerous,
And neither by choice.

On the day when you cannot find her--
When the stony sands mock your panic with their resolute vacancy,
Will you believe that she did not love you?
She will have loved you
Until she could bear it no more.

The weakness will be yours,
And she knows it better, and sooner, than you do.
She is a beauty who will change, and see your face change, too.
She can surface, but the depths reclaim her.
She is human, in your arms,
But she is both more and less than that in her deepest nature.
You will lose each other and suffer for it;
Only the stones, in their hard indifference,
Will endure.

_________

The song "Ruby Tuesday", from which I have quoted a line above, was written by Keith Richards.

sel·kie also sil·kie (s l k ). n. A creature or spirit in Scottish and Irish folklore that has the form of a seal but can also assume human form. 

Many thanks to my blogger friend Lydia, for inspiring me this morning with this post.

 

To The Young Man Sitting In The Park

You were sitting on the ground
in the tot park
in the middle of a sunny Sunday afternoon.
You were leaned back against
the brick stand for the drinking fountain,
wearing a dark blue security guard's uniform.

You looked to me
as if you were just so tired
that you had stopped there
and fallen asleep.

I asked you if you were all right...
your head was to one side,
like a little boy who had drifted off
while watching television.
You had on black shoes, and I had the odd thought
that you may have sat just this way,
years and years ago,
when someone taught you to tie them
on some other, happier,
sunny Sunday.

I feel certain,
though I don't really know,
that somebody loved you.
I feel certain, too,
that I will not forget the sight of your bright red blood
or your things--your wallet and keys--
placed so neatly at your side.

Why did you do this?
Did you think no one would cry?
I happen to know
that the lady on the bicycle, who found you, did...
and that she wishes, quite sharply,
that you had not made such a heartbreaking choice.


_____


This is not a made-up story. Yesterday afternoon, riding my bike across the local kiddie park on my way home, I found the body of a young man who had shot himself in the chest just minutes earlier. I called 911, but he was dead. I don't know what to do with that. I keep seeing him, sitting there, looking so young and defenseless. So I wrote this poem.

 

The Succubus Athena

When I was young, and the world too loud
Too bright
My defenses thin as tissue paper
Ridden with nightmares
Blessed with visions
Hammered with practicalities
Shoved in a box,
Unfurling only in secret
After dark
Under covers like dense fog, and I the ground,

She came.

Her owl twisted its head, as if hanged and broken-necked in a gale.
She turned hers, the picture of grace and calm.
I closed my eyes, hard.
She touched me with her black glove smooth upon my face,
And my bones gathered and rose as one,
A white flock within my flesh
A firework
A soul released and rising.

"Little girl," she said in her perfect blackwinged voice,
"What has been happening here?"
Spirits seemed to peer from behind her shoulders, listening.
A blackberry bush scraped the window outside.
The door turned its own lock and breathed.

I had believed, always, that I was dust on a smooth tabletop,
A smear,
A trial sent by someone I couldn't remember,
To perform some evil that I didn't understand.
I tried to stay out of the way.
I swallowed my words.
I was the only red spark in a house of heavy dark emplacements,
A male preserve.
I set myself on fire constantly,
In shame
In silence
Sitting politely,
Going up.

I opened my eyes.
"Who are you?" I asked the woman, my visitor.
Her owl swiveled back, to stare.
The lady's eyes widened, just for a moment,
Then narrowed.
Trees sighed, swaying above the house like mourners, unseen.
Anger floated off her, like bright dead leaves, then scattered.

She looked away.

"This must be paid for," she whispered, to the dark room.
Turning back, she was calm as a frozen sky.
She leant forward, soft as a rumor.
"I am the Succubus Athena."
"And who am I?" I asked, not even realizing it or meaning to,
And half afraid I was about to die.
For the first time, she smiled--
Dark--
Beautiful--
Perfect.
Smooth as skinning a kill, she peeled off her gloves and took my face in her hands;
She kissed my hairline, soft as the falling of full dark,
In the spot where the silver still stays.
"Little girl," she murmured, in a tone I had never heard before,
"You have always been
And will always be
Mine."


_____

linked with Real Toads open link

J. Jenkins Pomeroy Considers

It takes no small talent
To turn nothing into something
The way I do,
And though everyone may not admire
The Godlike way I make things happen,
I do. Oh, I do!

You see this building here
With its ancient cheap veneer--
A false-fronted horror, how I detest it.
See the pantywaist poets inside
Drinking coffee from styrofoam cups--
They all hate me, I can sense it.

But I don't care!
And what's more,
I can already see the trendy upscale store
That is as good as built.
I won't trouble with these weaklings, or curse them;
I'll simply have the officers disperse them.
Bring in your crew, Mister Harvey,
Place good strong charges between the bricks
And let them fall on whatever heads they will.

Profit is fine and simple, but never simply gained;
People envy a man like me,
And my starched white shirt doesn't show the cum or the cocaine.
These boneless little squatters may not like
The way I get things done, it's true,
But oh, I do. I do!
_______


for dverse poetics "the other"