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