Double Acrostic Prayer for Success

I wrote this to include in a Hermes exchange that we did in the Bacchic Underground a little while back, thought I would post it here since today is the Hermaia festival in the Starry Bull tradition.  Hail Hermes!

Hermes, luck-bringer, kindly blesS

Enchant, shift and coalescE

Reality bend my will to forM

Mercurial messenger, open the dooR

Even the odds with twinkling eyE

Sweet son of Maia and Zeus on higH

Semele

I, Semele, made love to lightning,

I am the cup,

the vessel divine.

I know what mysteries are.

I have been made pure by their brilliance,

hallowed and hollowed,

aglow and growing,

the rod that grounds, the earth that accepts the seed of heaven.

He roils in my womb like a cosmic unfolding, the roaring

one, who will be savior,

shifter and shaker

He shows it to me in dreams

whispers tales to me.

Sweet child.  A mother should be the storyteller,

But this is no ordinary son.

And I, always impetuous, foolish princess,

I swallowed more sacred than I should

have, I could have

said no, but I did not

want to, I wanted it

all - god and glory.

They say my lover destroyed me, that I pleaded for proof.

but that is not my story.

Mortals born of mortals,

sometimes a hero or two.

But this bull child can be more,

In my bones, I know.

Simple enough - a sacrifice,

a mortal life for an immortal one, so it goes...

Death comes for all,

Yet I asked for this.

“Don’t hold back this time, it’s time

to burn. Tell him I chose this.

I am his first initiate.”

Play the drum

  play it for his fearless heart

     and I will go down dancing,

my frenzied ashes alight upon the wind

               to the sky I have loved

                   and the storm I’ve born.

On the Lenaia...

a girl cries in a Vineyard.
she remembers, truly remembers, why she's here.
she looks with love at the bee that lands on her hand,
which in turn clutches a glass of wine...
wine from the very earth she stands on
and from the very skeletal vines she sees,
(so selfless, so purposeful, so sublimely crucified),
wine that lingers like memory and hope on her tongue,
invigorated by the sun that still, so miraculously, burns in the sky,
and she is not afraid.
she says,
"You may sting me if you wish. I promise to love you anyway."
but it has no barbs--just a natural curiosity
for the spirit of fermented grape and the leaves of rosemary she has crushed between her fingers.