Khoes & Aiora (A True Story In Poetry)

I weave in silence.

Purple string and sticks for the Hanging Girl,

Her sorrow is mine. God, it hurts so… the whole hopeless stretch,

one tragedy after the next, knots and hopes like crushed fruit,

screams to the heavens in the weary winding circle,

around and around, fiber to finger to form,

a head and a torso, a lasso and a name,

Oh Erigone, I never knew, I never knew.

We swing with particular passion, we graveyard girls…

Always towards the moon,

except on the downturn.

I enter the labyrinth again, wine on my lips.

It’s a choice, you see, one path or no--

You walk or you don’t.

My heart skips--

I’m already remembering the future, when I trip

on a snake...

Memory in the lake,

My yearning meets your ache.

In the ivy, oh in the ivy!

we conjure shimmering syllables, coming together

in Your cavernous name.

I am a cup overpouring, wine and blood and tears,

What all Art hopes to hint at, I stare straight in the face.

There are layers in your mask, whiskers on my cheeks,

How pantherine...

petals dilate, my eyes bloom.

You laugh.  I weep.

The music plays for keeps, landscapes and leaps.

I am the metronome of this piece.

The god in the shed. I remember my death.

In these games we play, he lets me win,

just by a breath.

Silly maenad, dear...

You’ve given away your heart to a God beyond time,

Even in your most quiet moments, you are lightning-lost

Even in your motionless moments, you

are already terribly vine-tangling mad,

suckling the sacred at your teat,

blood on your flowering honeypetal hands,

the shadows of the deepest wood in your cradlegrave eyes,

wildness in your wishes, lullabies in your limbs,

all of this, never in stillness,

both heart and heartless.

(you are my favorite braveness.)

My love, you asked for this epiphany.

I did?

This is the work of Memory.

I do.

This is the Truth.

For you.

My life is a single bloom.

I’m back to walking the labyrinth again, the circuits turn at each star,

Of course Ariadne hanged herself -- of course she did!

Surrender. Choice. Surrender. Choice.

To the tree,

to your fate,

and to all its terrible gravity,

You must choose to surrender--

Sorrow is just another sort of ecstasy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

ETA notes scribbled down in ekstasis:

"I need you to trust that your suffering is important and it's all for a reason."

"I let you see it sometimes - the whole picture. So you remember to dance, so you remember to laugh."

We are amplifying the Gods.