An Abrasion

My lover is exceptionally beautiful and would remain thus

even if she were not mine. Each day when she sleeps

I say small unprayers that her dreams will become more pleasant

than they are. When she sleeps her claws are duller than mallets

and sharper than swords- I gash myself with them and grow drunk

with the glory and wonder of my courage. When she sleeps I whisper her secrets.

"I am dangerous beyond your ken. I would kill the sun if I feared shadow."

Because she is a woman her body is soft in the most perfect places.

She sings. If I, too, sing, then it is as if I breathe and stone, too, breathes.

I sympathize with the exultations of the ancient priests, those that tear

hearts away atop stair-stepped pyramids and send souls to a dark master,

those that move hands like knives upon the necks of dove-white doves,

the red-beard who chains the largest of his male slaves to a tree before letting

out the blood: to know a god is real is insufficient.

Ritual is the manifestation of belief.

When I lay with her and her teeth rend slightly at my flesh, she is satisfied with this.

I dare not do the same to her. How could I ever stop devouring, if allowed to begin?

I would be a madman sentenced to death for ripping her limbs from her body,

for twisting at her neck, gnawing her liver, for every awful detail of my horrific feast.

Of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Hymn to Ares

Like a churchyard left to rot, or one where the poor are buried

in the highest places, like loving a woman you cannot touch

because she is already dead or in the arms of another

is the soldier who spills no innocent blood.

Some are very coarse like my hands when I touch a woman or speak to one.

Some are the kisses that a mourner gives to death,

that a child gives to the fire that dedicates their homes to the deep night.

Some I have never seen but I have heard the witnesses.

Terrible and swift as a whip or the break of day, fearsome

as the crows lunging at the eyes of the fallen, rage like the fangs of the sun!

We have flayed men and woven their skins for your bedsheets, Red One,

lover of the goddess of love, shamed by the Crippled, defeated by the Greeks-

but are you not yet satisfied with our savagery? Was it not enough to kill

their women and children with darts that pierce as a ray of light pierces

a mountain from impossibly far away, was it necessary to corrupt our champion?

He seems so hungry for the wine in veins, even if he does not drink his fill.

He does not know how to make a sacrifice to you, except with the blood and flesh

of these our human kin: he sets them aflame. He prays wordlessly, he avenges.

Bless him, my God, for soon he is to be judged.

Revelations

Wanderer, yet again my land marches

As if to war in the far-off reaches

Of the world, to mountain and high desert,

To crush the descendents of an empire

-Oh, such splendor in that time, chariots

Gleaming like the Sun that was also their King...

Now steel and glass are the works of man,

Now none hang males from trees in sacrifice:

My land and theirs each praise a pagan god,

And in truth I have never made the blót.

I have called you here only from dire need.

Refuse this rite, and my head is forfeit;

If I displease you, sever hence my soul,

Let me never share wine with my kindred.

Grey One whose name is Fury, the One-Eyed,

The Allfather, invoked only in shouts. Odin!

Come!

The God is tall! Mighty like old forests,

A tattered wide-brimmed hat obscures his face,

A spear more terrible than flame or hell

Lays well within reach. He is older than the sea!

"May a thousand years pass before the Wolf!

May your wife's second sorrow wait an age!

Father of All, with banners my kingdom

Threatens another land. Eighty millions

Are said to dwell therein, and most like lambs.

Most are innocent of grave ills, simple

Folk who wish to find Love and worship god;

Yes, they are as all women and men are.

I fear that in a few short years, or months,

We will punctuate their nights with iron,

We will make torturous devices red

With rage and heat and make the young suffer

From disease and fear and hot, carving bombs.

Will this conflict spell the end of our time,

Or the beginning of the path to death?

Many years ago in a hospital

I brought contraband oranges down stairs

To a friend not allowed to come up stairs.

We were in prison, the doors were all locked,

The windows were all locked and thick as wrists,

She was imprisoned but had oranges

And I put the fruit inside my jacket

So that no one could see that I was stealing.

We lived together two weeks in those cells.

I never taught her chess, but I understand her.

She is alive. I am alive. Grey One,

Is my land soon to create a prison

That will comprise most men-women-children

That are not my color, my kind, my creed?

Will anyone dare to bring oranges for them?

If I see two ravens, is the decision made?

Shall I weep for starvation and cholera?

Shall I cheer for brave and glorious victory?"

And behold, the Allfather spoke, and thus he said-

Blossoms

I could quote the fifth elegy to you in Latin as the sun is rising on the world,

but I choose instead to use a different language, a primal turn of phrase.

Spring came early this year, killing a winter that had not existed:

it was warm in the evenings before the month of war came knocking at the earth.

The morning is chilling, but not excessively so. Your body is warmer than the air

and mine is colder than that, but I will forget this information in a few bare moments.

We destroyed everything and then sang it back into being;

we were the tides, the moon. I loved you the way that a flame loves air.