Sunday, August 21, 2022

ANTINOUS FRAGMENTS
By David M. Kohlmeier

 

I want to tell you about my Beloved, 

But you’re going to be disappointed. 

He doesn’t always make sense. 


In His dark blue hoodie, He waits by

The roaring ocean. “Seagulls are my favorites,” 

He says, eating a cheap lobster roll. “No one appreciates 

Them.” 


Sometimes, on the edges of my sight, 

I glimpse His horns. Bull horns. I turn to see, wanting

To really behold that virile minotaur-like manliness I’m sure

He has beneath the soft twink exterior, but

It always vanishes the instant I turn. He laughs 

at me. “How butch do you think I am?”

And He’s not being rhetorical. 

He wants me to answer. 

I never do. 


In church they sing hymns of the beautiful one

Who died, who was lost, but who lives again, who goes

To prepare the way to Heaven for us, and I rock and say “Amen” 

Over and over, for I know who they sing of: my Beloved sinking

Into the waves, slipping to the muck below, I cry for Him, lost,

And when the summer sun scorches my skin, when I cower and want to rush

Towards any cooler space or shaded shelter, wondering 

When will the heat grow

Too much for any of our modern magic to save us, I remember

He is there, on that blazing bier, preparing the way for me.

He long ago entered into the fury of the heart of all heat

And cools it, softens it, 

And you too will know this

when you finally know the right way to look at the Sun.


I trace my fingers in the baptismal font and raise the waters

To my brow, the waters of His drowning. He tells me “I’m not dead anymore you know” 

But I know His hair isn’t fully dry just yet.

The priest says “Enter into the baptism of His death” and so I do,

And doing so I know far more than the priest does what his words mean. 


My Beloved is fond of the smell of pine, and sometimes

In clouds of pine smoke I catch Him praying,

To Heavenly Father, but not the one I was taught about. The Father 

Of lightning, the roaring storm smasher, who also 

Sits in my cupboard, guarding the pantry. Domestic

Zeus. 

My Beloved toois far more domestic than others say,

He does His share of chores. Minds the errands, doesn’t care

If themessiness of my children clutters up what he just cleaned. 

He’s surprisingly happy in this cramped chaotic apartment. 

And He prays to Mother, othertimes to Parent;

Beloved tells me of Them, the fearful mountain

That was whole before the Gods forced Them into a binary, 

Before a conspiracy ripped off Their cock,

Agdistis.

"The only true God in the end," He tells me. 

"Even Father fears Their power" 


And when He dances in Their name I hear the songs of 

Ancient priestesses, who have cast off their bloody genitals, undoing

The curse of Parent because these priestesses choose it, for them the knife

Is freedom, shaping

Their bodies into the bodies of their true selves, long before Christians 

And their mutilating myth of two genders. 


"I was not a priestess," the Beloved says, "but I remember them. That

is what freedom means. The choice to be, even when it bleeds." 


He raises His cup of wine, pours out a libation to Father,

To Parent, and He is transfigured before me, 


Coarse goat skins on His smooth flesh, eyes feral, cruel, a smile with sharp

Teeth exposed. They say in church that the dead Lover becomes one with God, and so 

My Beloved is one with Wild 

Bacchus, 

I could be ripped apart,

His mouth

To my throat full of dagger teeth,

But I know He won’t,

I’m the safest when most at His mercy, 

drinking the dripping red from His lips.

He holds me and I should be afraid but I’m not. 

Who is Lover and who is Beloved? 

He laughs when I talk of my age. My nearness

To turning 50. 

"You realize I'm over a thousand years older than you,

don’t you?" He laughs. "So

"who is really the Daddy here?”

There is nothing greater, He reminds me

Than the One who Tops the whole Universe from the Bottom. 


And just like that, He is once more

In His hoodie, His tight blue jeans, His tossled hair,

Full lips, soft smirk, the "pretty boy." Harmless. "Gay boy." 

"Twink." But I know in His eyes endless 

aeons of wisdom, I know the supernovas

shimmer there at the edges where He cries.

Beloved falls back on the couch and lazily scrolls 

His phone,

Disappearing into the background. 


My Beloved is more than He appears.

He doesn't look up, but speaks: …

"So are you. 

It's why we get along so well."


No comments:

Post a Comment