zodiasterisms

(for A.K.)

lioness you said
or phoenix, you amended
vermillion ornis fierce and burning
stalking beasts among reeds

you knew
witch that you were, or warlock, full-handed gleaner of seemingly
barren fields
with your crystals, candles, pentagram-kept-in-jest,
empty room
but for pagan books, a sleeping place, and hash pipe, hemp
necklace with the yin-yang
you never studied and never needed to, it came so easy, like hunger

or did it? 'cause there was also
your ragged pack where you said you hid the tabs you'd do what-with like any nameless street-roach insulating self from nameless dangers
god only knows what was under your tidy bedskirt, boy, I did not
look
but the floors shone where your mother scrubbed them clinical
and forgot
that the world is a story writ by Flannery O'Connor:
in this one a professional mama forsakes her own bundle-uh
that she may carry instead the whole city
on her alcoholic back,
functional-like,
'til for lack of tending you hung
stabbed imbibed shot up breathed in
--what have you?

"I knew you'd be a Leo,
from the moment I first saw you"

you said that, city lamplight streaming down on me and you
(shameless for once)
through the window of the guest room in A. Wonderland's house
(her real name!)
your hands on my bare waist.
earlier you'd watched Thelma & Louise as if preparing for exegesis.

I remind you of a lion? Because I'm cowardly?
"Because you're brave, a huntress."
You only see yourself reflected back at you, not me.
"I see both of us. You and you beholding me. Each a lion, each a bird to be born again."

Nemean lioness, then--fine, hippie star-gazer. I will believe because you trembled with fear and want, guileless in your virginity and we did not fuck at any point because your ancient soul, four months younger than mine, knew better. That's why I
trust
you did not lie when you named me
Lion.
But you were no Archer like your own sign,
Nor any Hercules fated to win and wear my vacant hide, yet
You skinny Buddha, font of calmness, dark and gentle
eyes as placid pools of mu
beatific, terrible as a saint to look upon
thoroughly impressed the fear of the void
into me.

my hair was golden then
and long but i have changed it
it has changed me for i
gave all my crowns to the face-sculptors
who hollowed out my eyes and plumped my cheeks
gave me a stare
you would not recognize
me if we passed in the street,
goshawk,
they have sparrowfied my plumage
and deportment
both

i let them

and i always wondered but never found out
if it was her,
your mother,
the white-frocked one
who paddled my errant father in
his own temples
with a jovian bolt,
to slay or to awaken
(thy will be done, lord, either way)
the dragon-snake that ate us up as babes,
you and i,
while she--again--stood by, unmoved

or was she the one who wrote secret notes to herself
over crossed legs, asking without interest
beneath that painting we laughed about together--remember?--the one of a bridge
with no reflection in the water below it, so completely ridiculous
a thing to hang in a place for the already-disturbed
as if they needed prodding along in getting gone enough to be worth helping back to shore:

What animal, little girl? What animal?

A peregrine falcon, doctor x. Like in the Jean Craighead George book.
A wild-bound boy will steal me from my nest, name me Frightful, feed me
watch me fly free,
keep close 'til the day I'm killed.
But, no. No, no. Not so. Not really. Not true. Not for me.
A bug.
Yes, my final answer.
A tiny, crawly glitch. That I might hide where no one will see me.
A bug. If you so much as move your shoe I fear I will be
crushed
my broken feelers still probing the breeze, vainly,
as my guts and shards of exoskeleton wetly glint,
laid open for viewing and consumption.
For I am twelve and I do not believe in anything so fantastical as human flight, doctor x.

lies. i do believe in flight, but not of the airborne variety
instead a mad descent
scuttling wide-eyed away from your near-limitless love, Garuda,
like a rat from a broom
or as a beetle eschews the sunlight for her dank but lithic sanctuary
down below,
phoenix? yes, dear heart, we are all continually ash-rising from bleak Earth
but I did not let you attempt (maybe, maybe...) to burn me up
so--
my purpose in legend, in your own short book
aborted.

what then?

in the age of tubes in tubes
criss-crossed circuitry connecting
masses mashed up, frigid closeness,
frenzied swarming orgasmic apathy, bottomless and omni-present,
you and I
the both of us, lovers, for the nonce
walked out at separate times, for separate reasons,
from our parents' snow-packed cabin,
trecked through the wood with Gemini gait and
leapt off the edge of the map
into the memory hole--
falling faceless, songless
leaving behind no trails, no cybernetic breadcrumbs
for any circling birds