Merciel

Another dream reminds me what I lost-
in only sleep I hear her voice again,
I knead her shoulders, wade her milky skin,
inhale the scent of clove she flaunts when out,
and dine on that nubile visage she paints
with rich pastels that make addicts of monks
made blind by every thought she robs, invades
with ass that can eclipse the sun and chill
the sea. Medusa’s stare makes stone of hands
and feet (and more). Her eyes can crumble walls
I build, lace stumbles wills, and dreams corrupt
the phoenix flight. Dementia. The eternal night.

The storm recedes but not the damage. Words
have salted soil, silence has whithered fruit.
The trees are stones as hearts made cold by a-
cid rain from stingy clouds and selfish games.
The desert reigns this des’late place. No life
remains. All crushed by falling bridges. But

I birth new life from death. The broken bridg-
es fuel new fire and clears away old brush,
rejuvenates the frozen earth with warmth.
The wounds the plots to cast new seed, pink petals
to mend the wounded, thorns to prick the snakes
who smuggled sin inside this holy place.

The Babel tower bursts from mustard seeds
and smothers the world in its canopy.

A pitbull cannot growl as I can whenever he is near her.
Laughs too loud, words too eager, they muffle my mew
that I must shout, but the shriek unsheathed only shocks.
Reaps me little love but savage shame. What can I do to compete
with a boy who knows no scarcity in privilege or time? Damn my job,
curse the college, and woe to my muse who needles me with neediness,
demands devotion and sacrifice to a siren I can never touch,
never be, only dream to wake up with nothing as he wakes up beside her.

Alone in defeat, I recover my soul, reclaim my throne with a sacrifice,
dress the angel in chainmail, arm him with an ax, and erase Eden.
Turn my sight from her eyes to the craters speckled around her mouth,
spots peppered across her back. Up close, the Milky Way is rough terrain.
The words on which I dined I now pick for bugs and pox that spill
from piss-colored teeth chained by unkept metal wires until I gag
on every line she feeds me. Gather our treasures collected together
and burn them in the fire fueled by the specks and planks picked
from her eyes, mouth, fingers, and feet that follow anyone with meat (except me).
Then cast her into the flames for her witchery, for enchanting me.

My ethics my alibi for the crucifixion she faces for her sin
against me, an angel without heart, bird without wings, lost in the tailspin.

Oh, green-eyed heavenly angel, whose face
shames the shine of the sun, whose golden crown
became the holy Grail I drank from eight months,
whose words planted seeds in rock to bear fruit
anew, who cast away the dogs who stalked
me home, when you vanished eight years ago,
my heart, my mind, my head left on a search
for you. They still have not returned. Like you.

Each seed I handpicked and planted in the garden of Eden
before the fire devoured Rome at the end of the century.
The culprit, the Beast, did not die even after a blow to the head.
A catnap from sin, forever resurrected an undead passion
to ravish the bride with the blessed emerald virgin eyes.
The fire burns until the glisten of green is left in ash.

The prince of the sea wears the fur of the wolf and a skull
as a crown. Father to legions of abortions, renovations
from garden to graveyard, from blessing to bingeing
until the soil evaporates into dirt. The child saint born
with the fear of God weaned on fat of the lamb processed
by red light industries and made into a commodity.

Filled in the gut with a hole in the head, the prince made undead
given new blood by the sacrifice of the heavenly queen.
The stone drips with life. Merciful charity pours at the call.
The seed hatches from the shell and conceives plants with fruit,
doves with wings, trees with life, the manna she fed me.
My companion, my messiah, my love. A patch of Eden remains.

I plant each seed in patches of Eden,
handpicked first fruits from the limbs of the roots
sweetened by the wine of Calypso’s emerald sea,
seasoned with the salt of the mystic saints,
fattened with the manna of warrior cherub,
warmed by the furnace beating at the core.
The tree is chopped into a basket,
forbidden fruit is cooked into a pie,
and a lock of hair is sewn into a bow
and wrapped around the handle.
Then I throw it away when I give it to you,
not a lady, but a swine who digests it all
to the final syllable and responds to it all
with gas you shit out of your mouth.

No longer will I ask,
it’s become a demand.
The price too high?
Your pushed me into poverty.
Your debt towers heavens,
your slander will not topple it-
only your sacrifice, mutual suicide.
I died for you. You die for me.

Proclaim my debt to you.
I never crashed your parties,
I never pillaged your purses,
I never pushed you off the bed
and pulled the pillow toward me.
I made your bed, now make it yourself
along with your days and your nights
and your ride to work.

Ask for five feet of fluff,
receive fifty miles of an abyss.
Need a canyon of space?
I’ll give you a universe apart.
If you want understanding,
then I’ll give you a smile
when you realize your new boy
will not barter for what he wants.

I don’t care anymore.
Four levels of Hell
of sidestepping pits
of evading monsters,
always the same.
The oceans of fire
burnt away ambitions.
Royalty you may not be,
but I’m too tired to leave.
You all look the same anyway.

Peace, happiness, paradise: the gift.
Love, faith, obedience: the price.
I mold it out of play-dough collected
scavenged from desolate sandboxes.
Prostrate, a basin of three talents,
swallowed without breath, bite, taste. Still,
I smile
and wait

and wait

and wait.

Your face shines that expensive joy you never got as a child
as he wraps his arm around you and pulls you, close.
Your eyes drown in your reflection in the glass iris, transfixed by the flash
that preserves your beatific vision for all time, filtered of all blemish, framed
on that dusty cornerstone of your heart, once forbidden, now the center
of the universe, the point where your pale face is touched by him,
your prince, your savior, your god, who carried you from the wilderness
into shelter when you were a lowly beggar desperate to be filled
those many weeks ago. Can charity surpass him
who dresses you as delicately as a doll,
who guards you against the cruel world that wants to steal you,
who saves you from your naive curiosity that sometimes looks outside in wonder,
who suffocates those nightmares that tormented you. Solitude! Isolation! Loneliness!
Never can you suffer another moment of such nights. Never again
will you have to. You have found the one – your heart insists – your Prince
Charming, and you are the glass slipper he sits on his mantle
beside the picture of you two at the chapel: the day all your problems
went away.