you, who were kissed

by the maid, joan of arc

on the eve of her triumph

so long ago

held aloft by your mother

in the air wild

with bells

offered in joy

to her shining lips

were you branded forever

with the fire of holiness?

did your starved limbs fill out

with the promise of bliss?

touched by the soldier-maid

sent straight from heaven

surrounded by angels

and god, the electric

did your heart swell triumphant?

was your voice raised in song?

you, who were brushed

by the passage of destiny

kissed by wonder and joy

one bright night in your youth

held

for a moment

by the hope of a nation

did your soul grow inside you?

did it matter at all?

black

no notes

no pages

no leaves of the past

to draw an old life

collage

to paint stark madnesses

broken toys

all vanished in the diaspora

no place home

except memory

black is the colour, none is the number

surrounded by glowing abundance

i am sealed

creature of appetite, unable to inhale

or drink

all taste is gone

feel my soul wizen and shrivel

and enter the darkness

there can be no resurrection

lost under the weight of bygone

no one can touch me

no one can hear me

asphyxiation

wells of dissolution

hard judgments, self-inflicted

wandering bleak in blackness

unrelieved endless night

fade into my arms

she said

stay

I will always take care of you

you need never know

anything

Scheherazade

"I am the echo of your Dreams."

Spinning Stories

Like Straw into Gold

By night's end

A thousand tales in a thousand-one nights

Creating Light from the sunless womb

Of the Void

You are not who you are

In the daytime

but Wolf's Brother stalking the Night

Down dark halls of Dreams

Hungry and questing for One

Who will join your Fire with Fire

Who will enter your Soul in the Burning Times

Meeting you in Conflagration

Consuming your Essence and Giving Back to you

An Infinity

You are not who you are

Comfortable at Home

but Primal

Wild

What big teeth you have!

What sharp claws!

O! the Fierce possibilities!

I, frozen like prey, await the Devouring

And then that careful touch

Just hard enough

Just sharp enough

I know

In Bliss you have Marked me

Drawn Blood

You lick, you drink

You are renewed

And I live

Forever pulsing in your veins

For Days and Centuries

Wildness calls to Wild

I tell you Stories of Darkness

and the Light it gives Birth to

Tales of sweet maidens

Once Awakened, So Wanton

Spinning webs of silken Magick

To glamour Knights and Heroes

Engaging in Wondrous Battle!

Skin to skin, mouth to mouth

We stare into each others' eyes

Panting, eager to rejoin the Fray

Stories of Star-Crossed Lovers

Who prayed to be Together

Prayed to be Apart

Petitioned God! for the Burning to Cease

All the while Celebrating Fire

Like Heloise and Abelard

Forbidden

Yet Lovers all the same

Would Spirit give to us

That which we cannot resist?

Damn us to Everlasting Darkness

For Love?

I cannot believe it so

We shall shine Forever in Constellations

Watched by shepherds in the Night Sky

The Stories will always be Told

And scholars debate the Truth

Discuss the mythic properties

And this Measureless Passion will be Known

To All

Someday

Beltane

I will enter my lover’s soul

through the caverns of her eyes,

deep pools of blackness, gazing inward ---

this is the precipice and the lip of the abyss,

           the nothing

(can I face that darkness, that black hole,

bermuda triangle changing matter

            and consciousness?)

I drank blood at her throat,

In trust, she offered her throat to me.

I could not stop kissing her.

Sacred Mother –

weaned on her milk, I drank her blood.

She has always given me life.

My fingers ache to touch her skin,

this long life lived within the aura

of her breath.

Even the air must quiver, taut between us,

like the string of a drawn bow –

o lady!

where will the arrow fall?

hollow bone

for m

Sometimes you have to stop the Music

and step into the Stillness -

Breath the only sound

a Harmony of Spirit joined with Life Force

Animated by the Terror and Ecstasy

of emergence from the womb

the first fragile cry

announcing this Incarnation to the Universe

No more,

the silent muffled world inside the Waters

The dissonance of the heavens

comes un-muted to the tiny shell-like ear

Roaring like the Ocean, like the Storm

Howling winds, the cacophony of the naked Stars

Surrounding encasing

Numbing

The gossamer skin of the Soul

Cries of Love and Desolation

radiate from the core of Remembered Light

There Songs also are born

Tones belling sighing keening

from that Deepest place

And Breath, the reed,

gives Voice

as from a carved bone whistle

to those Songs of Loss and Yearning

Songs of Joy and Praise

for All That Is

Sunset Strip

“Rack up, Moselle!” the guard hollered from the end of the corridor. Moselle stepped back into the cell we shared just as the electric doors slammed shut. Nine-thirty: lights out at Sybil Brand Institute for Women. Moselle was an old white lady, awaiting trial for getting drunk and shooting up the sheriff’s car. Luckily, he wasn’t in it at the time.

My best friend, Landru, was two cells down, bunked with a little blonde girl covered in jailhouse tatts, who shot her boyfriend and the woman she caught him in bed with. “Lan! Lan!”, I half whispered, half yelled. “Shut up! Ya wanna get us all in trouble, ya stupid little bitch?” came from the cell between us. If I put my face in the lowest corner of the bars, I could just see Lan’s silver blonde hair and the “V” she made with her fingers, when she saw me. She had eaten two tabs of acid, when the cops came to the rat-hole motel where we were staying and arrested us for distribution of narcotics. She was probably tripping her brains out!

We weren’t runaways. I was 18 and Lan would be 18 next month. Thrown out by our parents, we decided to hitchhike to California, by way of New York City. We worked the streets of New York, panhandling and working in massage parlors, to save the money to get to Cali, at night trolling the truck stops, looking for a ride out of the city, headed west.

Lan wouldn’t work the massage parlors, even though the money was better, because she didn’t want to strip for the clients. You didn’t have to, but the tips were bigger, if you did. She was a whiz at panhandling, though; I never saw anyone who could talk someone out of their money like Lan! On a frosty night in late January, we finally found a driver who agreed to hide us in the cab of his truck and take us as far as Pennsylvania.

The plains were windswept and frigid this time of year and we did a lot of hitching in the cafeterias of truck stops, drinking coffee and stopping truckers over and over, till we found someone willing to take us the next leg. Including the time we spent in jails for vagrancy, in Chambersburg, PA, Weatherford, OK, and Amarillo, TX, we were on the road for three weeks. A soldier who was shipping out to Nam the next day finally dropped us on the corner of Sunset and Vine, handed us each $20 and a carton of cigarettes, said “Pray for me” and drove away.

We crashed at the Free Church and panhandled for food, but the streets of Hollywood were a lot less forgiving than New York. The take for a whole day, for both of us, was only a few dollars. We lived on candy, chips, and soda, because it was cheap. Within a week, we were completely broke and everything except the clothes we were wearing had been stolen. And I had scurvy.

My gums were bleeding and my mouth was so full of sores, I could hardly talk. Lan made me go to the Free Clinic, but they just said I needed Vitamin C and sent us on our way. “Don’t worry, Ran!” Lan said. “Look around us. Orange trees, grapefruit trees, lemon trees! Vitamin C for the taking!” The fruit was not ripe. Even an orange tasted as sour as a lemon, and it burned! God! How it burned!

The next day Black Teddy took us to Denny’s for dinner and invited us to join his stable of women. The look in Lan’s eye wasn’t to be ignored, though I was tempted, because the money sounded good. But Lan is the smart one, and I went along with her this time. Black Teddy said “Ya’ll’ll come lookin’ for me soon, no jive!”

Within a few days though, we met Cowboy and Laughing John, who brought us to a hole-in-the-wall apartment they shared with a guy named Bear and a bunch of street kids and runaways. We became part of a crew that went out during the day panhandling, stealing, tricking, and brought all the money home to share. We ate well for the first time in weeks, and there was always excellent dope. Until we got evicted. Which is how we ended up in that rat-hole motel.

“Hawaiian Woodrose; it’s totally legal,” Cowboy told us. “I can get an unlimited supply. We’ll sell it until we save enough to get a cabin in the hills. Fuck Hollywood! We can grow our own organic food and dope. We’re paid up here for a week, so let’s get out and make it happen!” At that moment, the sound of sirens pierced the air and police swarmed into our room. The owner had taken our money and then called the cops!

“If it’s legal, the lab will tell us,” a disbelieving officer said. “But it’s Friday and the lab won’t be open till Monday, so you all are looking at the weekend in jail, at least.”

I was still burning with humiliation, after being strip searched, and my fingers were bleeding because they made me file my nails down to the quick. Lan and I pretended to be lovers, protection in jail against bulldaggers and other pervs. Landru read Tarot and told fortunes. Everyone was in so awe of her, they left me alone. And Hawaiian Woodrose was legal, so on Monday they had to let us go.

The cops dropped us off back on the Strip. “What do we do now?” I looked to Lan. “Come on!” she said. “Last week, I met a guy named Tex. He said he’d take us out to a place called Spahn Ranch, to stay on a commune started by someone he knows. Manson, I think his name was, Charlie Manson”.

Life in Oz

This is a hard love to be in

Like a roller coaster on the terrifying pitch

Downward

But at least then you know

Where you’ll end up

My heart breaks a little

Every day

Because I am not delusional

It must have been as it was

It is what it is

Que sera, sera, like the old song says

I love someone who took me at my word

To Demand Much of me

Not believe me naïve or innocent

To treat me as a Woman, not a Girl

And that Woman, his Meet

Inherited from my Mothers and Mothers and Mothers

This Hollywood Dream of Happily Ever After

When ten thousand years

Have shown the work the struggles the failures

The pain and loss of Loving

And yet this Love is Inspiration!

So Erotic!

So Exquisitely Unsatisfying!

Why would I ever want to Settle

For mere happiness?

There is that emptiness

Nights of deep Midnight Blue

Mornings of unfilled arms

Vacant side of the bed

His scent, his warmth, just a Dream

This is where the Strength and Power come in

Except I feel so small and insignificant at times

Like Dorothy in Oz

Spirit guttering

Like candle flame in the wind

Flaring twisting almost winking out

Fed by Memory and Imagination

And his inconstant attention

He will not let me slip away

Though I pull, though I pull,

He senses the tightening

Moving away

And sings to me his songs of Love

Calls to me in Dreams

Caught again in his silken web

I am lost

Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

Will I ever be Home and Comfortable

Again?

His face in human guise

Looking down at me with his soul

In his eyes?

You know there is no Going Home

Here in Oz

We create our own Colours