Katharsios

Night-Reveler, Heart-Revealer

When I slip between the warm blackness
of life-at-large and life's own solipsis,
you dance with me.
you dance
without me even knowing.
you're gathering me all about you.
piecemeal, with tender violence.
i smile, i grimace,
black and white ribbons
alternating through your fingers.
my graceful Savior
you're making mosaics from the shards of all my failures.
my despair you place into negative spaces--
two, for each eye, and they seem to see
deeper and deeper.
i'm still hanging onto you, this vine,
this song, every beat of this chest drum,
repeating by moments, fractaling outward,
fruiting for each time I've loved
and i think, in spite of my greenness
it's all so much--dark purple streaks of desire,
glittered with tears,
alchemical blood... oh my lover! I know not what I'm becoming,
yet You, you balk at nothing of mine, nothing I am,
Bright Bull, Starry Artist of my Undoing,
our interactions frame all of this in evergreens
so that, at the End (which is and is not) you might ask--
"Now, my dear one, would you like to gaze upon your own mask?"



(A response to Sannion's challenge, and to Dionysos and life in general, after an emotional evening.)