chapter two: Out of Ashes
Wolfman vs. Angell (a true story)
One Halloween I leapt through sweet damp dark,
spirit gum in the air, latex, make-up, crepe hair,
the wholes works capering up the ramp
on the end of a rope leash into the renowned
Angell Memorial Animal Hospital.
In reception Joan explained Fang had been shot
with silver bullets, gave the history,
while I belied my wounds, playfully sniffing
and being sniffed by waiting canines,
some friendly, some bewildered.
One pathetic piss-proud poodle wanted to fight
but Joan jerked the leash, denying me that mouthful,
dragged me down the hall to Intensive Care,
with i.v. drips and battling odors
of alcohol and body fluids/solids.
She did her best Van Helsing with a cruciform
of tongue depressors taped by the I.C.U. nurse.
Snapping, snarling, I backed into the stainless steel cage.
The door clanged shout and Dr. Bernstein’s page
echoed in the long halls. He arrived,
speaking comfort to Joan and the nurse
while filling a huge syringe
from a skull and cross-boned big brown bottle.
I wasn’t whelped yesterday, I was ready.
They weren’t, as they opened the door,
to see my fangs and hear my roar!
It wasn’t just a game anymore.
They were glad to see my back fly away…
I nearly took the too-slow doors with me.
I enjoyed excited gossip at my job, next day,
of the creature in I.C.U. who nearly
made Bernstein piss his pants.
I never thought till just now
how that role came so easy,
just waiting for an open door.
WEREWOLF
Bloody fangs bared, howling
black bottomless hunger,
after hunting, ripping, feasting
on that which no longer lives,
no longer lives for me.
Moonlight blackens blood…
I breathe the reek
of carnage, nothing left
but splintered bone, shreds.
Why does it not love?
Eyes fill with dark,
lungs fill infinity,
echo eternity.
White moon sets.
Sun glows red.
Shivering, spent, I fall,
steaming pelt falls as leaves,
sunlight works warm changes,
leaving me naked
on the mountain.
Sitting in the breeze,
breathing mountain life
saturated with green.
Gently, no longer prey,
she sits down beside me.
Children’s Crusade
The outcome of this unseen war
is far from certain.
For every lie there’s truths.
For every truth there’s lies,
family secrets held more sacred
than love and children’s safety.
My nephew’s mother visited him
on the psych ward this Mother’s Day.
She’s furious at Uncle for spilling family secrets
like a can of maggots into awareness of those
who’d help her child, her,
her husband, her other sons.
Long ago thousands of children died
trying to win the Holy Land
for parents and the Church. Today
they continue dying, inside or out,
to win the make-believe
they think their parents need.
We do not need to close our eyes,
or plug our ears, or stop our mouths,
pretending there is nothing wrong.
Truth can be a sword
and love a shield.
It’s time we pick them up.
Martha’s Rosary
My wife’s rosary is worn down to plastic nubbins
on a broken frayed length of string.
The cross’ top is broken off as is
the left arm, with Jesus’ own,
features worn, with Mary’s form
no longer recognizable. Many beads are missing,
though string is frayed precisely where
they would have been if not worn off.
The first time I saw it was in her hands.
Tears were streaming down her face as she
held it out, saying “Look! Look at this!”
The damage was done when she was little,
the only one attending church at St. Joe’s,
weight of family’s salvation like a stone cross
laid across her shoulders; she did not complain.
She prayed her rosary over and over more fervently
than any nun, praying for her family.
Wolves lived in her closet; she had seen them.
The Blessed Virgin visited her more than once.
Martha truly believed if she prayed hard enough,
was good enough, the bad things would stop.
Her brother would no longer be drugged and violent,
going after Mommy with a knife. Mommy’s
unexplained illness would stop
making her disappear into hospitals.
Screams and blunt instruments would not fly,
and Daddy would stop playing possum
in the driveway in his skivvies bellowing
his family had betrayed him.
Someday somebody would kill someone so she prayed
to make the bad things stop, to help Daddy be happy
so he would stop screaming, acting crazy,
breaking down and coming to his little girl
in her bed, weeping, flooding her with
his pain and tragic childhood. She tried very hard
to forget what happened next, succeeding
for more than thirty years, every day of which
a little girl prayed, chanted over and over and over
“Hail Mary full of grace,
Blessed art thou among all women,
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
Out of that spider’s web now,
she is very like the Blessed Virgin, a good
and giving woman with beauty so powerful
it survived monstrous evil all around her.
We watch corruption, do what we can
save the children we can; though prayer
is not enough we pray so that our children
need not feel the weight of our salvation.
Sometimes Martha still holds that rosary.
Sometimes at night she puts it under her pillow.
It was and is a child’s crucifix.
It still shines in the dark.
Vigil
My son won’t sleep unless I stay close by.
I sigh, and write, and scratch my old cat’s head,
in wonder at the power of nightshade dread
that parents disappear, let children die.
To claim such things don’t happen one must lie.
Night time terror is on real news fed.
Yet tethered to my fearful child’s bed,
I fret, forgetful of the werewolf’s cry.
If child magic lives within me still,
I’ll count my son’s fear every bit as real
as atom bombs, or daisies on a hill.
A child’s fear is terrible to feel,
despite all strength of love or father’s will.
Still, loving through it, child and parent heal.
Apology to Witches
When I was young I was my sister’s food.
An evil witch would swallow me, she’d lie.
Unless I did her bidding, I would die.
My body hers, bent to her every mood.
My soul fled off to safety in a wood.
My flesh pressed into hers, I did not cry.
I was not there but underneath a sky
where green life sang around me, as it should.
Since then witchcraft’s reclaimed my flesh and soul,
practiced by loving healers, each one true
to natural law, making the wounded whole.
Some know they’re witches; some hold no such view,
using that art regardless toward this goal:
passing love on, creating life anew.
Open House
Coming into fullness of strength
first seems like coming home.
the cottage razed to ground level,
black stubble around the pit
of concrete floored with bedrock.
Flagstones red and gray
show the way to that drop.
Desolation after cremation
of all walls which
hold all in, keep all out.
Sights, sounds, vibrant scents,
life in wind flows past all obstructions,
weaving textures of sensations
into broadcloth of existence, transition.
A good place to pitch a tent
to sleep outside of, with darkness
pierced by stars, cracked by brilliant streaks.
Meteors illuminate cement, foundation
free to contemplate the new abode,
Truly built by you, with the Architect of Light.
Well-met at a Men’s Retreat
Listening to Dave’s voice I visited the forest of my youth
to find a lost boy, and that I did, but not the one expected.
He was green as the mossy boulder on which he sat,
arms wrapped around his shins, his face within his body’s silent shelter.
Still, I knew he wept, from the movement
of his bony shoulder wings that trembled so slightly,
as I’ve seen birds do when they awake from being stunned
after smacking against the impossibility of air that’s stone.
Even before I called, before he lifted his face,
somehow I knew him and he knew me.
We looked a long while, having been lost so long.
Though I did not know what horrible impossibility
had driven him to live all alone in these woods,
waiting for someone he could trust,
I knew he had much to teach me,
as I could teach him about trusting wisely.
I had a holy promise to make and keep at that moment
which had waited so long for my readiness.
For once the right action was clear,
I walked forward, softly calling to him,
to start our journey.
Invitation
Green child, come to me.
My arms are wide to hold you.
Green child, feel human warmth.
Like sunlight my love will comfort you.
You do not need to hide from me.
I hide no hate; you need no shame.
Green child, play in the light.
Hold my hand and walk with me.
Michelle’s Table
My mind’s drawn down,
meandering like rivers,
roots, red blood pulsing dark currents.
My feelings seem stitched together
life Frankenstein’s creature, powerful,
nameless, aching to know if its crazed
patchwork self could hold a human soul.
At times my soul itself seems stitched together.
Perhaps it’s the sutures in my eyes,
and I am really whole, the fragments illusions
like the lady sawn in half to rise and walk again.
I’ve been on the table myself, bear
minor scars that somehow seem important,
signifying the removal of my gallbladder,
the excision of gelatinous material from
the intervertebral disk between L4, L5.
The small scars on my scrotum mark
ligations of vas deferens. Each time
I walked again, unsteady, but breathing,
as each time after stepfather or sister was done.
I can’t ignore invasions of my body anymore,
as well as I was trained; I still must mourn
the pierced, ripped, bruised and lacerated flesh,
no matter how expertly anesthetized, stitched, stapled.
It still remembers being raped and will be heard.
There is a lady named Michelle who helps me.
I lie on her table and listen to music charms
while her hands move over me pouring warmth,
at once sunlight and misting rain soaking
into the fields of my flesh, long past parching,
cracked with fissures, deep beyond thirst.
Sometimes I get flooded so she waits until
I remember where I am, how safe she is,
With her healer’s hands, holy oil. As her
hands connect her soft voice reminds me
of currents I’d forgotten that I had,
that I decide, I’m in charge, I love
my body and accept its wisdom.
It’s not a corpse Michelle anoints
as though for burial, or a lifeless desert
she irrigates in vain, but a gift given
by a mystery, driven by a mystery, matter
transcendent beyond understanding, animated
by forces greater than lightning,
gentler than a light spring rain.
When the rain lets up and I am left
to ready myself for emergence, I am in,
beyond my body, feeling green fields,
rooted well, and reaching for the sun.