Becoming Light (14 page)

The first time

I slept in your arms,

I knew I had come home.

Your body was a ship

& I rocked in it,

utterly safe in the breakers,

utterly sure of this love.

I fit into your arms

as a ship fits into water,

as a cactus roots in sand,

as the sun nestles into the blazing horizon.

The house sails all night.

Our dreams are the flags

of little ships,

your penis the mast

of one of the breeziest sailboats,

& my breasts floating,

half in & half out

of the water,

are like messages in bottles.

There is no point to this poem.

What the sea loses

always turns up again;

it is only a question of shores.

We used to strike sparks

off each other.

Our eyes would meet

or our hands,

& the blue lightning of love

would sear the air.

Now we are soft.

We loll

in the same sleepy bed,

skin of my skin,

hair of my head,

sweat of my sweat—

you are kin,

brother & mother

all in one,

husband, lover, muse & comforter;

I love you even better

without sparks.

We are pebbles in the tide

rolling against each other.

The surf crashes above us;

the irregular pulse

of the ocean drives our blood,

but we are growing smooth

against each other,

Are we living happily ever after?

What will happen

to my love of cataclysms?

My love of sparks & fire,

my love of ice?

Fellow pebble,

let us roll

against each other.

Perhaps the sparks are clearer

under water.

At the furthermost reach of the sea

where Atlantis sinks under the wake of the waves,

I have come to heal my life.

I knit together like a broken arm.

The salt fills in the crevices of bone.

The sea takes all the fragments of my lives

& grinds them home.

I wake up in a waterbed with you.

The sea is singing & my skin

sings against your skin.

The waves are all around us & within.

We sleep stuck to each other’s salt.

I am healing in your arms.

I am learning to write without the loss of love.

I am growing deeper lungs here by the sea.

The waves are knives; they glitter & cut clean.

This is the sea’s surgery.

This is the cutting & the healing both.

This is where bright sunlight warms the bone,

& fog erases us, then makes us whole.

After the first astounding rush,

after the weeks at the lake,

the crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks,

the snow breaking under our boots like skin,

& the long mornings in bed…

After the tangos in the kitchen,

& our eyes fixed on each other at dinner,

as if we would eat with our lids,

as if we would swallow each other…

I find you still

here beside me in bed,

(while my pen scratches the pad

& your skin glows as you read)

& my whole life so mellowed & changed

that at times I cannot remember

the crimp in my heart that brought me to you,

the pain of a marriage like an old ache,

a husband like an arthritic knuckle.

Here, living with you,

love is still the only subject that matters.

I open to you like a flowering wound,

or a trough in the sea filled with dreaming fish,

or a steaming chasm of earth

split by a major quake.

You changed the topography.

Where valleys were,

there now are mountains.

Where deserts were,

there now are seas.

We rub each other,

but we do not wear away.

The sand gets finer

& our skins turn silk.

Goddess, I come to you

my neck wreathed with rosebuds,

my head filled with visions of infants,

my eyes open to your rays of illumination,

my palms open to your silver nails,

my vagina & my womb gaping

to be filled by your radiance…

O goddess, I would be a worthy vessel.

Impermanence—all is impermanence.

The cock rises to fall again;

the woman fills only to empty

in a convulsion that shakes the world;

the poet grows to become a voice

only to lose that voice when death takes her.

A stroke cancels her upon the page—

& yet I open her book & a chill wind blows from eternity.

Goddess, I come to you

wreathed in tears, in losses, in whistling winds.

I wrap the witch’s herbs around my neck

to ward off the impermanence that is our common fate.

The herbs dry & crumble,

as my face grows the map of my anxieties,

& my daughter leaps up like a vine

twining around the trellis of impermanence.

O goddess, teach me to praise loss,

death & the passing of all things—for from this flux

I know your blessings flow.

The extinct stars

look down

on the centuries

of the horned God.

From the dark recesses

of the Caverne

des Trois Frères

in Ariège,

to the horned Moses

of Michelangelo,

in Rome,

from the Bull of Minos

& his leaping dancers

poised on the horns

of the dilemma…

From Pan

laughing & fucking

& making light

of all devils,

to the Devil himself,

the Man in Black,

conjured by

the lusts of Christians…

From Osiris

of the upper &

lower kingdoms,

to the Minotaur of azure Crete

& his lost labyrinth…

From Cernunnos

to Satan—

God of dark desires—

what a decline

in horny Gods!

O for a goat to dance with!

O for a circle of witches

skyclad under the horned moon!

Outside my window

hunters are shooting deer.

Thus has your worship sunk.

O God with horns,

come back.

O unicorn in captivity,

come lead us out

of our willful darkness!

Come skewer the sun

with your pointed horns,

& make the cave,

the skull, the pelvic arch

once more

a place of light.

Witch-woman,

tall, slender,

Circe at her loom

or murderous Medea,

Joan at her tree,

listening to voices

in the rustling of the leaves,

like the rustling of the flames

which ignited

her deciduous life…

Witch-woman,

burning goddess,

every woman bears

within her soul

the figure of the witch,

the face of the witch,

beautiful & hideous,

hidden as the lips

of her cunt,

open as her open eyes,

which see the fire

without screaming

as she & the tree, her mother,

are joined again,

seared,

united,

married as a forest

marries air,

only by its burning,

only by its rising

in Demeter’s flaming hands,

only by its leaping

heavenward

in a single

green

flame.

Baby-witch,

my daughter,

my worship of the Goddess

alone

condemns you to the fire…

I blow upon

your least fingernail

& it flares cyclamen & rose.

I suck flames from your ears.

I touch your perfect nostrils

& they, too, flame gently

like that pale rose

called “sweetheart.”

Your eyelids are tender purple

like the base of the flame

before it blues.

O child of fire,

O tiny devotee of the Goddess—

I wished for you

to be born a daughter

though we know

that daughters

cannot but be

born for burning

like the fatal

tree.

When the devil brings him,

like a Christmas puppy,

examine his downy fur & smell

his small paws for the scent

of sulphur.

Is he a child of hell?

O clearly those soft brown eyes

speak volumes

of deviltry.

O surely those small pink teats

could suckle witches.

O those floppy ears

hear only the devil’s hissing.

O that small pink tongue

will lick & lick at your heart

until only Satan may

slip in.

A fuzzy white dog?

Name him
Catch.

A little black kitten?

She is
Jamara
.

A tiny brown rabbit?

Call her
Pyewackett.

Beware, beware—

the soft, the innocent,

the kingdom of cuddly ones—

All these

expose you to the jealous tongues

of neighbors’ flames,

all these

are the devil’s snares!

Familiar familiars—

there is hellfire lurking

in the softest fur,

brimstone in the pinkest tongue,

damnation everlasting

in a
purr
.

My broom

With its tuft of roses

beckoning at the black,

with its crown of thistles,

prickling the sky,

with its carved crescents

winking silverly

at Diana,

with its thick brush

of peacock feathers

sweeping the night,

with its triangle

of glinting fur.

I ride

over the roofs

of doom.

I ride

while he thinks me safe

in our bed.

My forehead

he thinks that scraggly

other broom,

my hips that staff,

my sex that stump

of blackthorn

& of twine.

Ah, I will ride

over the skies—

orange as apricots

slashed red

with pomegranate clouds—

He will think me safe in our bed.

He will think I fear

such fabulous

flight.

It is his bed I fear!

I will burn the clouds

with my marvelous broom.

I will catch Persephone’s seeds

on my flaming tongue.

Ah—if I burn for this,

how beautiful my ashes—

& how beautiful,

my beautiful, comet-tailed

broom!

Oh for a candle I could light

to draw you closer…

Oh for a poppet

made like you,

with your own lovely body

sewn again of cloth,

with your own pale

unseeing eyes,

with your own cock sweetly curving,

remade in wax or clay….

Oh for an herb

to place upon my tongue

to bring your tongue

to mine….

Oh for a potion

I could drink

or slip to you

at some stale

dinner party….

Oh for your nail parings…

Oh for your hairs…

stirred in a brew,

baked in a millet cake….

I would make a stew,

a soup, a witch’s mix

to bring your lovely thighs

on mine.

I would boil bats if not babies

& toads if not theologians

to make you care….

I would enter your blood

like malaria, enter your eyes

like laser beams, enter your palms

like the holy spirit

causing stigmata

to a sex-starved saint!

Oh love,

I would spell you

evol

if mere anagrams

would bring you

near….

But I spell you
love

& still

you do not

hear.

If you would poison your mind

with the bitter herb of self-hate,

nothing can save you:

not the lover who comes in the night

smelling of pitch & brimstone,

not the husband who comes in the light

smelling of hay & the golden turds of mares,

not the mother with her poisoned apple,

not the daughter with her wreaths of roses & opium poppies,

not the sister with her rosemary & rue,

not the brother with the mandrake root.

Having driven out the demons of the past

we find them now within.

No witches burn in the market

but our minds revolve upon their own spits;

no crucifixion upon Calvary

but a daily torture in the hills of the skull,

no smell of burning female flesh upon the heath,

but the acrid odor of the heart slowly smoldering.

What witchcraft will it take

to bend this world to our will?

Must we burn poisonous herbs

to kill the poisons in the streams?

Must we wear poultices of Henbane

& Deadly Nightshade

against the very air?

O take this garlic rosary,

this token of death’s breath,

this possessed vegetable,

this bulb of dried desire.

I am sick of haunting myself

from within

like an old house.

I would be happier

as a hunted witch.