To Divine You

No crystal sphere I need to see
where bitter memory still leads me.
Take my hand, my soul departs
your ghost will shatter my opaline heart.
No tokens to throw, no cards to deal
your passing, mere turning upon the wheel.
No need to decipher this ancient cabal
Fortuna upended, the tower will fall.
No mirror black I need to scry
to follow the strand between you and I -


..I close my eyes to divine you
(cast your bones anywhere, I can still find you)

Come, Holy Spirit

Let it come, not tickling like a feather
or like the fan of the temptress,
beckoning me to secret chambers
not like the caress of a lover,
a light touch to wake me in the pallid pink dawn
but like the wing of a dove sweeping sharp
or a rush of fire cutting through blind haze
brutish as a slash throat razor
and there is the truth spilling out
collecting in pools around my heels
clay bound and crumbling to dust
as I am -
Come, holy spirit, enlighten me

Disclosure

Never doubt my devotion to you
I might say
still setting a tooth edge and tip of tongue
against your neck
you've left me once too often

Please ask me where it hurts
I might point at plaster statues
aren't we all
cheaply painted stigmatists
in our garish array

If you ask me about the swords in my back
I might tell you which one is yours,
depending on my mood
it's all of them of course
but I don't want you to cry

If you check in my left hand
I still might have
sugar cubes for all the pretty horses
red white black and pale
the blood in my ears still pounds like hoofbeats

Or you may see me sometime
picking black feathers from the ground
I think these will be important later
my guardian angels, I might say
some assembly required

My purity is transparent but clouded
a veil dragged through dust
some things are better left desecrated
or scorched earth
I'd make a better widow than a bride anyway

I want to crack open and bleed
like a china vase
scattering flowers so long ago given
they're nothing but dry stalks
thorns and colored parchment

I want to walk with you in dangerous places
and with your face in my hands
shove your back against dirty alley walls
my swollen mouth catching you
between a rock and a hard place

I want to close my eyes in the pale pink dawn
cooly twined in body memory
taste of salt and anise
and the vain hope to not wake
as daylight dissolves the tranquil illusion

Book of the Dead

Cross and circle and ellipse
unbroken lines
my fingers tracing sigils
this is the spell and the sequence
the emerging into light
the transfixing
where you come undone
your skin
translucent as alabaster
a canopic jar, unopened
your heart ripe to pluck out
a succulent red fruit
in my voracious hands
my mouth ravenous
like Ammut, to devour