A Victor’s Psalm (chapter 2)
chapter two: Out of Ashes
Wolfman vs. Angell (a true story)
One Halloween I leapt through sweet damp dark, spirit gum in the air, latex, make-up, crepe hair, the wholes works capering up the ramp on the end of a rope leash into the renowned Angell Memorial Animal Hospital.
In reception Joan explained Fang had been shot with silver bullets, gave the history, while I belied my wounds, playfully sniffing and being sniffed by waiting canines, some friendly, some bewildered. One pathetic piss-proud poodle wanted to fight
but Joan jerked the leash, denying me that mouthful, dragged me down the hall to Intensive Care, with i.v. drips and battling odors of alcohol and body fluids/solids. She did her best Van Helsing with a cruciform of tongue depressors taped by the I.C.U. nurse.
Snapping, snarling, I backed into the stainless steel cage. The door clanged shout and Dr. Bernstein’s page echoed in the long halls. He arrived, speaking comfort to Joan and the nurse while filling a huge syringe from a skull and cross-boned big brown bottle.
I wasn’t whelped yesterday, I was ready. They weren’t, as they opened the door, to see my fangs and hear my roar! It wasn’t just a game anymore. They were glad to see my back fly away… I nearly took the too-slow doors with me.
I enjoyed excited gossip at my job, next day, of the creature in I.C.U. who nearly made Bernstein piss his pants. I never thought till just now how that role came so easy, just waiting for an open door.
WEREWOLF
Bloody fangs bared, howling black bottomless hunger, after hunting, ripping, feasting on that which no longer lives, no longer lives for me.
Moonlight blackens blood… I breathe the reek of carnage, nothing left but splintered bone, shreds. Why does it not love?
Eyes fill with dark, lungs fill infinity, echo eternity. White moon sets. Sun glows red.
Shivering, spent, I fall, steaming pelt falls as leaves, sunlight works warm changes, leaving me naked on the mountain.
Sitting in the breeze, breathing mountain life saturated with green. Gently, no longer prey, she sits down beside me.
Children’s Crusade
The outcome of this unseen war is far from certain. For every lie there’s truths. For every truth there’s lies, family secrets held more sacred than love and children’s safety.
My nephew’s mother visited him on the psych ward this Mother’s Day. She’s furious at Uncle for spilling family secrets like a can of maggots into awareness of those who’d help her child, her, her husband, her other sons.
Long ago thousands of children died trying to win the Holy Land for parents and the Church. Today they continue dying, inside or out, to win the make-believe they think their parents need.
We do not need to close our eyes, or plug our ears, or stop our mouths, pretending there is nothing wrong. Truth can be a sword and love a shield. It’s time we pick them up.
Martha’s Rosary
My wife’s rosary is worn down to plastic nubbins on a broken frayed length of string. The cross’ top is broken off as is the left arm, with Jesus’ own, features worn, with Mary’s form no longer recognizable. Many beads are missing, though string is frayed precisely where they would have been if not worn off. The first time I saw it was in her hands. Tears were streaming down her face as she held it out, saying “Look! Look at this!”
The damage was done when she was little, the only one attending church at St. Joe’s, weight of family’s salvation like a stone cross laid across her shoulders; she did not complain. She prayed her rosary over and over more fervently than any nun, praying for her family. Wolves lived in her closet; she had seen them. The Blessed Virgin visited her more than once. Martha truly believed if she prayed hard enough, was good enough, the bad things would stop. Her brother would no longer be drugged and violent, going after Mommy with a knife. Mommy’s unexplained illness would stop making her disappear into hospitals. Screams and blunt instruments would not fly, and Daddy would stop playing possum in the driveway in his skivvies bellowing his family had betrayed him.
Someday somebody would kill someone so she prayed to make the bad things stop, to help Daddy be happy so he would stop screaming, acting crazy, breaking down and coming to his little girl in her bed, weeping, flooding her with his pain and tragic childhood. She tried very hard to forget what happened next, succeeding for more than thirty years, every day of which a little girl prayed, chanted over and over and over “Hail Mary full of grace, Blessed art thou among all women, blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
Out of that spider’s web now, she is very like the Blessed Virgin, a good and giving woman with beauty so powerful it survived monstrous evil all around her.
We watch corruption, do what we can save the children we can; though prayer is not enough we pray so that our children need not feel the weight of our salvation.
Sometimes Martha still holds that rosary. Sometimes at night she puts it under her pillow. It was and is a child’s crucifix. It still shines in the dark.
Vigil
My son won’t sleep unless I stay close by. I sigh, and write, and scratch my old cat’s head, in wonder at the power of nightshade dread that parents disappear, let children die.
To claim such things don’t happen one must lie. Night time terror is on real news fed. Yet tethered to my fearful child’s bed, I fret, forgetful of the werewolf’s cry.
If child magic lives within me still, I’ll count my son’s fear every bit as real as atom bombs, or daisies on a hill. A child’s fear is terrible to feel, despite all strength of love or father’s will. Still, loving through it, child and parent heal.
Apology to Witches
When I was young I was my sister’s food. An evil witch would swallow me, she’d lie. Unless I did her bidding, I would die. My body hers, bent to her every mood.
My soul fled off to safety in a wood. My flesh pressed into hers, I did not cry. I was not there but underneath a sky where green life sang around me, as it should.
Since then witchcraft’s reclaimed my flesh and soul, practiced by loving healers, each one true to natural law, making the wounded whole. Some know they’re witches; some hold no such view, using that art regardless toward this goal: passing love on, creating life anew.
Open House
Coming into fullness of strength first seems like coming home. the cottage razed to ground level, black stubble around the pit of concrete floored with bedrock.
Flagstones red and gray show the way to that drop. Desolation after cremation of all walls which hold all in, keep all out.
Sights, sounds, vibrant scents, life in wind flows past all obstructions, weaving textures of sensations into broadcloth of existence, transition. A good place to pitch a tent
to sleep outside of, with darkness pierced by stars, cracked by brilliant streaks. Meteors illuminate cement, foundation free to contemplate the new abode, Truly built by you, with the Architect of Light.
Well-met at a Men’s Retreat
Listening to Dave’s voice I visited the forest of my youth to find a lost boy, and that I did, but not the one expected. He was green as the mossy boulder on which he sat, arms wrapped around his shins, his face within his body’s silent shelter. Still, I knew he wept, from the movement of his bony shoulder wings that trembled so slightly, as I’ve seen birds do when they awake from being stunned after smacking against the impossibility of air that’s stone.
Even before I called, before he lifted his face, somehow I knew him and he knew me. We looked a long while, having been lost so long. Though I did not know what horrible impossibility had driven him to live all alone in these woods, waiting for someone he could trust, I knew he had much to teach me, as I could teach him about trusting wisely. I had a holy promise to make and keep at that moment which had waited so long for my readiness. For once the right action was clear, I walked forward, softly calling to him, to start our journey.
Invitation
Green child, come to me. My arms are wide to hold you. Green child, feel human warmth. Like sunlight my love will comfort you. You do not need to hide from me. I hide no hate; you need no shame. Green child, play in the light. Hold my hand and walk with me.
Michelle’s Table
My mind’s drawn down, meandering like rivers, roots, red blood pulsing dark currents. My feelings seem stitched together life Frankenstein’s creature, powerful, nameless, aching to know if its crazed patchwork self could hold a human soul.
At times my soul itself seems stitched together. Perhaps it’s the sutures in my eyes, and I am really whole, the fragments illusions like the lady sawn in half to rise and walk again. I’ve been on the table myself, bear minor scars that somehow seem important,
signifying the removal of my gallbladder, the excision of gelatinous material from the intervertebral disk between L4, L5. The small scars on my scrotum mark ligations of vas deferens. Each time I walked again, unsteady, but breathing,
as each time after stepfather or sister was done. I can’t ignore invasions of my body anymore, as well as I was trained; I still must mourn the pierced, ripped, bruised and lacerated flesh, no matter how expertly anesthetized, stitched, stapled. It still remembers being raped and will be heard.
There is a lady named Michelle who helps me. I lie on her table and listen to music charms while her hands move over me pouring warmth, at once sunlight and misting rain soaking into the fields of my flesh, long past parching, cracked with fissures, deep beyond thirst.
Sometimes I get flooded so she waits until I remember where I am, how safe she is, With her healer’s hands, holy oil. As her hands connect her soft voice reminds me of currents I’d forgotten that I had, that I decide, I’m in charge, I love
my body and accept its wisdom. It’s not a corpse Michelle anoints as though for burial, or a lifeless desert she irrigates in vain, but a gift given by a mystery, driven by a mystery, matter transcendent beyond understanding, animated
by forces greater than lightning, gentler than a light spring rain. When the rain lets up and I am left to ready myself for emergence, I am in, beyond my body, feeling green fields, rooted well, and reaching for the sun.