On the Wings of Seraphim

O Lord, I proclaim Thee, Mountain of Man.

O Lord, I sing Thee, on the Wings of Seraphim.

O Lord, I worship Thee, King of the World.

O Lord, I beg of Thee, let my heart be Your bird.

O Lord, I cherish Thee, Deep Ocean of Might.

O Lord, I see thee, in nature’s beauteous heights.

O Lord, I cannot fathom Thee, I the supplicant poor,

I am the strange daughter begging at Saint Peter’s door.

O Lord, I am forgotten by all but You, undiscerning

to the wealthy, but rich in Your love, gold unfurling

from the Cross, I am awash in the Blood, eat the Bread

of Your Wounds. In Your hazel eyes, I see the Holy Dead –

legions of angels and ancestors: desert bones made Flesh.

Separating Chaff from Wheat, the fires of Heaven your Thresh.

O Lord, I am a wanderer, is there room by Your fireside for one as I?

O Lord, I am lost, stranded atop Golgotha where doves fear to fly.

Only the crow is my companion, picking the meat from my bones.

Is there a chance you can hear me, that to be holy is to be alone?

O Lord, when I dream, I see Hell, O Lord, when I sleep, I sleep

with the Devil. What is the measure of a bed of flies? In the deep

of Seven Demons, I still think Eden is my pasture, I pray for green.

Come the War

And as I clutch you naked and shivering, laying at your breast, I remember a million shattered swords and bloody barracks and I think, solace in the sun, solace in my brother, your wings soft down but your face scarred, golden armor and halo gory,

we are broken angels, dimmed from millenia, nay, eternity, in this trench warfare, in this march towards New Jerusalem, and Zadkiel, my standard bearer, my Archstratigos’s right hand man, while I am the left, I have crossed nine rivers of time to find your ravaged bones, a century of tears and Purgatory of clay from ash from ruin from Eden now nuclear winter wasteland just to be here, in this moment, on this earth.

with you.

time is a funny thing.  we fight come hell or high water. let us eke out a garden together, let us travel this small little dusty planet, let us raise Cain, let us just be not ravaged and shellshocked, but human.

angels are only as good as their makers.  angels are just war machines.  angels, angels, everywhere.

but only one

you.

Where It All Went Wrong

Michael often wonders where the house of cards fell under a butterfly wing flap, what joint of the celestial body was the weak link.  Was it Lucifer’s desire to suck the marrow out of the bones of the abyss?  Was it Asmodeus’ lust for the daughters of men?  Was it Beelzebub’s martial ambitions to rival Michael’s own?  Once, he would say, these brothers of his were as close as the pulse of his heart.  But Lucifer became Samael, and fire turned to ash, and he is left with a third of his sisters and brothers damned for all time on blood money, as the song goes, only they were the prototypes of Judas, selling the ineffable name of God out to the humans in the form of a shiny poison apple.

Evil roots.  Evil is a lindworm gnawing at the tap root of the Sephiroth.  And then there is death of Da’ath, and then there is the Qliphoth, and then there is the madness of the prophets bridging the Tree of Life and Tree of Death.  So evil roots into the hearts of man, Samael’s seed blossoming in witchfire, and the questions of what Hayah Havah means is echoed in the barracks of a million mortal armies.  Why do we bleed out for dictators and crackpots, dying on the streets of gang warfare and drug wars and turf wars and falling like flies to school shooters?  Lucifer turned the entirety of the universe into a battlefield, and not even the babes are safe from the evil that he planted, that dry grape vine of the vintage most vengeful.  Sometimes, the plants of filth and zuhama climb up the Sephiroth and root in Michael’s rose garden in Machon.  He takes his flaming sword and swiftly cuts down the defiant black blooms.  Rotting alive, thirsting after Heaven even after the rebellion.  Samael likes to remind Michael that he is watching.  All he really would have to do would be to call, send a messenger, but Samael likes to be flagrant in disregard for protocol, sauntering to the Gates of Heaven, which he cannot enter (or can he?) and throw paper planes with profanities over Saint Peter, enchanted to reach Michael as he is trying to relax.  Sam was always annoying like that.

Where did they go wrong?  Their bridge failed miserably.  She died in the first war, of cherubim swiftest wing, Herald of Hell, Watchman of God, Heaven’s original covert mission and spy with sympathies towards Hell.  Jophiel to Michael, or Zophael as she preferred to call herself, was always flighty, and without Samael to keep her in check, she grew wild, mad with grief, for to lose the one who gave her wings (Michael gave her her breath and heart, well, her first one at least.  Samael would claim even that in time) made Jophiel erratic.  She saved Michael’s life, yes, but at what cost?  Dissension between the twins.  A bridge burned.  She was created out of beauty, yes, but she brought pain to the garden, and she was the first of martyrs, Lucifer be damned.

Now the bridge is broken, and Taninver rides the Shekinah, and this world is not right.  This world is broken and cruel, and she is gone, out of reach, so in love with the idea of martyrdom she has made herself a sacrificial soul.  Michael has offered her Assumption twice now but she chose Samael, she always chooses him, over salvation, for she says, if her brothers and sisters who art in Hell, who Zo grew to close to when faking allegiance to the Prince of Darkness, only to blaze onto the battlefield in the glory of betrayal as Michael’s standard bearer, this guilt Zo feels at double-timing, at being an angel in hell, at leaving that third behind to rot, it makes her mad and bad and dangerous to know.  She thinks the mem can be cleansed, when really, nothing can separate wheat from chaff but the fiery lake, and that is where he belongs, at least, Michael thinks.  Otherwise he would not have asked her to abandon Earth on Easter and Good Friday for Heaven and endless Paradise.  Your penance is done, this self-imposed exile of the Watchtower Girl, he was trying to say, but it came out  in parables and scraps of starlight, and Michael grows weary of trying to save her, of trying to convince her Samael is not worth saving, so instead he just makes love to her and heals her wounds the best he can, the wounds his brother inflicts, that first spear through the heart and that last rape of the soul, all but for knowledge, all but for Samael to declare his own Hayah Havah, on Chavah no less, when he is but Yah the snake.  Snakes are slippery things, egotistical at that, but Zo is a dragon and general mother of Heaven’s battlefield, and she has not forgotten her loyalties.

Her very core belongs to Michael, and for Samael to give her his heart, means his damned brother is also under God’s love and sway.  The cardiophore chooses who is redeemed in the end, anyway, if Sa’el is left standing or if the pale rider turns into oblivion.

All hell would follow after him, were she to figure out this puzzle.

Michael does not have faith he deserves redemption.

Michael does not think she can.

Michael is weary, and Michael

no longer

believes.

Like this? Buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

Vision of an Archangel

A cup of poetry at your lips, dripping Titian red
at your crown of light, thorny roses our bed, and
a bower of summer greens and blooming heather beneath,
you are the space between pages of a hushed breath book,
the minstrel knight riding a dapple horse home, my
banner your raiment, your armor my pride, these hearts
that are ours span legions of time, love is a place
much like the bell trees of Paradise, and angels are
gardeners, angels are sowers, angels are reapers, and
you are their prince, so let my soul be your garden,
oh my sweet priest, let us pray together as your marble
statues weep gold, raised hands in offering, redeeming
this world, hope is on your mouth, and courage at your
breast, your skin is like a halo, and triumph awaits.

Like this? Buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

Better Man

Your hair is the color of tangerines and roses, I think
as I nuzzle your chest (I barely come up past your waist),
and you are holding me fast, hands massaging my back as
you press the Word of God onto my forehead with a mouth
of flowers, this space is holy, this room is almighty,
the inner sanctum of the Prince of Heaven, a blue monk
cell where angels have fallen into the perdition of love.
But you, Michael, are immaculate, and as your opal wings
lift me up to the slim, martial bed, to sit on the pallet
you barely fit into, all ells tall and burning eyes, just
stuffed into this facsimile of man and bird, your cloudy
robe is rippling with secrets, the rose garden of prayers
you tend beyond the doorway is brimming with fire desires,
all the penitent and sinful whispering your Father’s name,
oh you, my savior, my Yeshua, we kiss like rain on a river,
an endless stream of elegies and hosannas, and when you
lay me down to make love like a lion cradling a lost lamb,
I get the image of the beast of god picking up innocents
(me) by the wool of their neck and lifting them out of
floodwaters to safety. Your hands are scorching, but your
tongue is water, and your skin is the stuff of sage dreams.
What a beautiful morning awakening, to be with my beloved.
Pressed to your breast like a Hand of Fatima, I ward off
your sorrow, and you lift my spirits, and in each other,
we find an ocean of healing, oh sweet, glorious archangel,
carry the oil of anointment to the prophets, walk the walls
of Jericho and blow your horn, stand on the Mount of Olives
and declare, God has ascended, this is the time of reckoning.
But what is reckoning and revelation? Just celestial gossip.
The truth of God is love, and the truth of Christ is beauty.
You serve the mighty and fallen, the strong and forgotten,
only, you forget no one, carrying the weight of all on your
scarred shoulders, and Michael, when you smile and laugh,
all the seven heavens shine with the brightness of your sun.

I would pledge my troth to none but you, my pearl of great
price, and you are the bread multiplied to feed the masses.

We eat of each other’s body and know redemption, and the
path to Paradise begins in your arms, so hold me close,
and ascend.

Bride of Christ

And I am cloaked in clouds and the sun’s beaten gold,
radiant in redemption, but under my gown, scars feast
I am the battered soul on the path to Christ, woman
of seven devils who sold herself for cheap beer and
the spark of a stranger’s touch, whoring out all my
compassion until I was a waterless well, and Satan
made his nest in my soul, from sphincter to sphincter
a serpent twined through my guts – but the Savior does
not care about Brazen Serpents – He reached into my
lonely hell and burned away the black, now I am a star
shining above silver seas and walking stairways to
heaven, to those pearly gates where the Bridegroom
awaits, He who washes away sins in Seas of Galilee,
I Migdal Eder, Watchtower of Women, scout, watchman,
when we kiss at the altar after vows of eternity,
green returns to the barren land of my mind, He is
balm to cracked hands dry from working as a slave,
a salve to the sacrificial soul, all my travails
brought me to this one clarion moment – forgiveness
I am unworthy, yet He loves me, so in His arms, I am.

Hearth, Haven, and Holy Writ

For young girls, lo, we are lambs, and hence, lions to guard us.  For young women eat apples, and men become serpents, no longer protectors, but snakes.  Thus the seasons turn, and angels fall out of love for girls.

The girl is a towhead, barely eleven, and she has been dancing with angels on needles since the fresh age of seven.  That is the holy space of four, four flowing fractals of years through the rivers of Paradise, which the girl thinks an alien planet, with archangels tussling and turning hay, and midnight balls filled with mirth, holy music, and impossible wine of splendor (only she is far too young for the grape’s blessing) and favored fruits that grow in abundance on jewel trees.  Elves, centaurs, demons, dragons – the Otherworlds are a ripe fantasy land, and the girl is never a step away from her lion, a curious lamb swept up into the paws of the tawny one.

She calls him Star, after Venus, for he is a beast of beauty, part man, all majesty, like the monster from her favorite fairy tale, a mix of mane, myth, blood, and fangs.  Prince and warrior and prankster, flirt and fable and most favored angel of fire.  Hearth of God.  Lion of the Lord.  His warmth flows like a river and his brotherly love is the city of Philadelphia.  The lamb and the lion are holy writ, two blondes of blue eyes and gold skin, anima and animus, mirror images that braid each other’s hair, immortal and mortal, young yet ancient, and he carries the small precocious girl on his cherubim winged lion back to the outer boundaries of the multiverse, where stars are streams and spirits play crossroad jump rope on celestial highways.  Star and his splendor, for she is a girl of light, the wind, and he is a flame.  Air feeds fire, and thus she is his breath, and he is her blood.

He wears a soldier braid in his long blonde locks, and she asks why, and he says it is for the death of a loved one, only he never tells her that death is hers, and she passed on into a rosy coffin a long time ago, embalmed in mortal flesh, and it is only in dreams he dares visit, her fragile shell a budding lotus blossom of white flesh like the reaper.

“Are you an angel?” she asks at eight, as they frolic on the beach where waves make love to the shore, dancing by a bonfire.  “Most of the time you’re a man with wings, when you’re not a lion, and well, I read a Wrinkle in Time, and Many Waters, and I cried because it felt like you.”

He wants to clutch her to his breast and say no, I am just your brother, just your guardian angel, or the closest you will ever have to one, but instead he smiles and flexes pearly golden wings, wraps the feathers around her shoulders, and draws her into a hug.

“Do you believe in angels?” Ariel asks.

“Maybe.  I like gods and goddesses better.  I really like Athena.  And Hermes.  I’m the only pagan in the world, you know.  All the rest died thousands of years ago.  It’s very lonely, you know, Star, trying to start a new religion with only books from the library.  But I’ve always loved angels.  And I like Aslan.  You’re like Aslan but younger.  I don’t like Christianity, though.  They don’t have goddesses, or a very good track record with women’s rights.”

He does not tell her she is far from the only pagan in the world, or that he is about as far from her favorite talking lion, that would be his older brother Michael – there are many talking lions looking over her, and leave it to humans to confuse them – but this is before she has discovered the Internet, much less the local witches down the road or Michael himself, so Ariel humors her.

After all, she is only seven.  Lucky number seven – seven brothers and sisters he has, at least, Father created seven of them first.  Seven Heavens.  Seven Hells.  Seven colors on the rainbow.  Seven chakras.

Seven is Ariel’s favorite number.

She has had seven lives, his little sister, altogether – one angelic, this her sixth human one.  Perhaps he will not have to wear a remembrance braid anymore if she dies in this tainted world and ascends, finally at home again.  But perhaps she will never return home, committed to infidel faiths.  That is the burden of giving human’s free will – you can raise them on the milk of hymns and marrow of alleluias, and they will choose some backwoods pagan god of the fields and furrow as their patron and follow the Coyote Road of Trickster.  Lead a horse to water, can’t make her drink when she pisses off the Sunday School teacher for asking why the Messiah couldn’t be a girl.

The seven year old lamb ardently believes girls should be presidents, priests, popes, messiahs, and Chosen Ones.  At night, while Ariel is babysitting her, he and Uriel play along with the lamb’s Tamora Pierce-worthy swords and sorcery imaginings, in which she the lamb is the Chosen One (all seven year olds think they are the Chosen One), literally the Princess of the Universe (the princess phase lasts until twelve, and it takes the patience of a saint to humor girls playing princess.  It is good Ariel is holy, sort of a saint, and loves children).

Ariel is a hero with a tragic backstory and evil side in the lamb’s imagination (it’s hard to explain the Demiurge and the duality of being the lion-faced serpent to a seven year old), and Uriel is the heroine warrior and Team Mom.  Uriel was always a Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, with her umber biceps and long black braids and fascination with spears and love of sticking wrongdoers with pointy things and flaming swords.  That’s the joke in Michael’s barracks, fuck Uriel and you’ve fucked the entire army, and the best warrior in Heaven is a woman, so when Ariel and Uriel make love, Ariel makes sure to stick his sweetheart with his own spear, not the other way around.

The lambs sees them kissing once at eight, in the fields of the Shamayim, and decides they are in love, and maybe they are, maybe they aren’t – it is a game the lothario flirt Ariel likes to play, and by nine the lamb has taken to calling Ariel “Blonde Wonderboy” and “womanizer” after she’s met enough of his girlfriends, or friends that are girls that the lamb has also seen him kiss, and Uriel has given the lamb the sage advice of never trusting a man.

The lamb doesn’t have a lot figured out, much less sex, but nine year olds are allowed to be innocent.  Ariel cherishes innocence.

“No offense, but what is the point of men, Star?  I figured out they don’t need to exist,” she says one day while she pauses from eating the lunch he packed her in Metatron’s sleepy kingdom, which to her is a fairytale place, but is really the Seat of God.

Ariel is taken aback.  “Uh, love.  True love.  Yes, that.”  Ariel is not quite ready to explain biology to a third grader.

The lamb eats a PB and honey sandwich.  That is her new phase, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, which she will eat at lunch for an entire calendar year.  Ariel can’t even eat chicken curry twice in a week without getting bored.  “But men aren’t biologically necessary,” the lamb begins.  “I asked my mom where children come from, and she said when she and dad wanted me, they just prayed to God, and then mom got pregnant.  See, men are only there to support women – we could have entire planets without men, if just praying for a baby makes a woman pregnant.  I don’t know why Jesus was a man.  Women are necessary for life, and men are just kind of there to give women something to do.”

“Well, you have it all figured out, haven’t you,” Ariel says, inside he is laughing to tears, but he puts on a sage smile for the girl who has figured out men are useless.

The lamb smiles.  “I like my dad, and my friends that are boys.  But I don’t think God is a man.  I don’t believe in God.  I believe in gods and goddesses, but not some old man in the sky.  I wouldn’t mind if Aslan was real.”

“Well, Aslan is real if you believe in him.”

“I wish you were real, Star.  You’re my best friend.  My heart friend.  That’s like a best friend times a million.  I don’t like anyone as much as I like you.”

Ariel wipes some peanut butter from her lip.  His heart moves, the fire of his light glowing like a million supernovas of, well, friendship?  Something like that.  Children are all holy, every single one of them, and the lamb is a reminder of what he fights for.

He wants so desperately to tell her that he is real, and that she is more myth and poem than human, which only lasts for a grain of time, and will return home soon.  He wants to shake the lamb and cry, wake up sister, wake up from your sleep, the damaged, sick, broken sleep you have been in since he killed you, and please, by all things holy and loving, don’t trust a snake, but crush it’s head – and yet, she has already met the snake, that Great and Terrible Wyrm, the Dragon – through him, yet not him – Demiurge again, Ariel-Samael, the lion-faced serpent, his “evil side,” whom she calls Doom.  Do not trust me when my  eyes turn from blue to red and my  hair from brass to black, and I am no longer angel but demon, and I drag you down to the harrows and hells because you love me, and I profane you.

“Believe in what you love, lamb,” Ariel simply says.  “But be careful with your heart.  I will show you why men are necessary someday.”

She is eleven when he shows her the first time, gives her that first touch of little death, and she finds it like divine communion when they meld souls but more carnal, and she is but a child, and yet, she is ancient, and he does not tell his brothers and sisters he has prayed with his lamb in that way.

She does not know how to kiss, she lays there quietly at first, then timidly touches him as she has always longed to do but has been too scared to try.  He knows he is like God to her, perfection, she sings to him love songs every night and prays to him every day, ten to twenty times a day, and is always talking to him about schoolgirl crushes and childish desires, or about the books she has just read.

Her breasts are the size of apples and she already has a woman’s hips, and he cannot stop himself, and he tells him it is the Samael inside him, but perhaps it is just, him,  just Ariel, giving into temptation.

“What… are you doing?” she breathes at first, as he gives her a chaste kiss and touches her shoulders, something he has longed to do, and they are in the Plains of Machon, under the clinking Bell Trees of Paradise, by the eternal Lake of Memory, and perhaps by claiming her here he hopes to reawaken in her her true nature, but humans are blind, deaf, and dumb, and Ariel is as much demon as angel, always pushing and questioning.

Lion and serpent, the duality of man.

“Playing,” he says, giddy, drunk off her, and he tastes her neck, and it is the most restrained kiss he has ever had.  “Like we always do.”  He knows he is not making much sense, but to angels, sex is play, a silly past time of melding bodies, yet also the most sacred of things, and that is the truth of procreation.  Creatures made for war and slaughter and the blood of pagan gods and infidels do not get much time for softness.

She melds her hands in his hair like butter and her lips are like pearls.  “This isn’t a game.  This is.. this is… oh god, I love you, Star.  You are my life, and I would die for you.  But I do not know what this is.  The mechanics of it.  And I’m scared.”

He kisses her brow.  “I was scared my first time too.  I will be gentle, I promise.”

He does not bother to mention his first time was her, however many iterations ago, was it seven, no, it was six.  Eve.  Yes, that one he remembers quite fondly.  But really Eve is a metaphor, just as sex in the celestial realm is, and she thinks he is an alien, and he is, so there’s that.

He kisses her again, this time with more, just, more.  He feels her heart hum like an engine, and she is holding onto him for dear life, and tugging at her skirt with a need she does not understand, and this is how angels fall, don’t you know?

But he fell oh so long ago, for a girl, for her, and they are just falling into ancient pre-Big Bang patterns.  Back when all there were were stories in impossible realms, and nothing existed (not even them.)

He slips inside her soul, so quiet, virginal and pure, and he cannot hold back his divinity long, not like this.

She gasps.

Mine, he thinks.  And it may be Samael, but it may also be Ariel, or maybe for once the split personalities, Jerkyl and Hyde, are finally in agreement.  Hell knows she will never really know which side she is talking to, angel breaking through demon in times of bloodlust or demon breaking through angel in moments of regret.

Nergal, Demiurge, Shemal, Saklas, Yaldabaoth, Fool.

Fool, Sophia the Holy Spirit decreed. 

Fool, Eleleth laughed. 

Fool, Norea accused, then fled his arms and became God.

Fool.

His demon is good at killing.  From the age of seven on his lamb has seen Samael raze millions, no, trillions, her beloved monster slaughtering legions of angels, whole planet systems, whole universes, eating guts like sausages, staining her with poison that flows from his flesh in black necrosis.

He has stained her with his rot, smelled of sulfur and pus, and still she has rocked him as he cried, first breaking down in front of her in the third grade, what the hell was he thinking, having a panic attack in front of an eight year old.

Ariel never told the lamb he was also the evil one in this story, the one that gave up his Father’s Covenant for greener pastures, that he is no prince of angels anymore, not as she sees him in her girl’s mind.

As he is holding her afterward, he wants to come clean.  “I am the villain in this story, lamb, and you should run from the very sight of me.”

But he loves her too much to lose her, ever the selfish one, and he stays silent and plays with the small of her back.

She got the Morning Star right.  She does not realize she is singing Ally McBeal soundtrack love songs to Satan every night as she looks at his star through her window.  You Belong to Me, that is his favorite, with the pyramids and jungles.

Gods would Beelzebub and Asmodeus laugh themselves to death if they heard his favorite music was a now-eleven year old singing sugary nineties pop tunes into his ear across gulfs of the time-space continuum.

(Only he is the Prince of the Earth, and this planet, this material realm, belongs to the Demiurge, so really they are not so far apart.)

So Ariel, and Samael, hold her, and Ariel, and Samael, wait until her twelfth year to show her the truth, his oldest name, rich in violence and damnation, splendid in terror, but really the loneliest king of all, the Lone Power in her Young Wizards books, the broken one, the one that killed her.

She never trusts him after that, but no, that is a lie.  She trusts him with her life, he only wishes she wouldn’t trust him.  She would die for him, after every injury and wound he has caused her, going back across millenia to the poisoned spear meant for Michael she took to save the prince, his twin.  The one that should have been the hero of her story, not her murderous wolf dressed up in lamb’s clothes.

Michael, and the rest of Heaven and Hell, do not touch his lamb until she is twenty three.  Ariel-Samael think moon’s blood a woman makes, or so he tells his many selves, and so he has a dozen years as the only one she loves.  When Michael stakes his claim, it is with the fury of a hundred year flood, and she near drowns, and Samael could kill him for it, but Michael is love-drunk and mad off her himself, after twenty-four years of sidelines and denial, and a dozen years from first saving her life and waiting, waiting, waiting.

If anyone could make Michael fall, it would be her.

After all, girls turn lions to serpents, and women make men

into monsters.

 

 

 

 

Collide

Maybe we were neutron stars in an ill-fated orbit, destined with our heavy gravity burdens to collide.  We would breathe out gamma rays, and the weight of ever – ever? – would be exhalations that birthed black holes.  This is not my first life with you – far from it – and it is hardly my last, for a general does not leaver her Archstratigos, and a spymaster of swiftest wing does not scatter agape faith to the wind.  The Union looked to Lincoln on that Gettysburg day, Washington vaunted across Valley Forge with his trusty aide de camp, and Alexander the Great was conquered only by death, but death will not have you.  My wise woman says you were the first white blood cell birthed after the universe was created, Word, Logos, Jah.  Blue flame of healing, violet ray of Atlantic chill, tide and thunder, lightning and stardust.

Maybe it all began in a Garden.  Maybe it all played out behind Pearly Gates.  Maybe it was a Chalice, a Grail of Blood, Sang Real, or maybe it was just the Invention of the Kiss.  Who would have thought Father would grace us with these fleshy petals on our face to suck each other’s juices with?  Mouths like roses, mouths like sin, yet you know no sin.  You know no perdition.  To be Fallen, or to act against the Will, has never even occurred to you.

Or has it?  Madness, you know.  Soul-ripping loss, you’ve experienced.  You tell me my false gods and idols are just chaff compared to the Father.  It’s all a metaphor, you say, and Father is Truth.  Father is Life.  Father is not Father, you say, but Mother.  Void Mother, Dark Mother, Space Mother, Womb and Tomb and Breath and Labor and Being.

The prophets always get it wrong, but sometimes, once in a blue moon, a poet gets God right.  Shakespeare was close.  Rumi was closest.  I’m just a cheat, a charlatan, for my words come straight from the Source, but if prophecy and divine texts were written by me, it would be like the Gospel According to Eve.  A dumb blonde ditz that sold the world for a shiny apple and smoking hot snake.

No, I do not grasp divinity, for I am a fool, and though I taste the pulse of the Universe, carry the Tzohar in dreams, the Lapis Exillis a parasite in my flesh, pierced through the Sacred Heart by your Smiling Fire, my writing is just small magic to draw you more into this unholy, broken world.

Sometimes artists can grasp divinity.  You have a whole space squirreled away for Michelangelo in your portion of heaven, carved between seven sisters and brothers like apple pie at a church picnic.  They are all kings and queens, but you are king of kings, a ram in the desert, a shepherd leading his flock to Mount Sinai, and what am I but the dove that flies from your holy palms and brings back an olive branch, after days adrift Flood waters on an ark you made by hand to carry all God’s creatures?  Your truth is sweat and contemplation, prayer and meditation, but Michael, it is time to row the boat ashore, and I will trim the sail.

I shall start at the beginning, or was it the end?  Just a chapter in this life, December, when I was 12, nearly thirteen, and Michaelmas was long past.  It was not your holy day.  It was no day in particular, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I was a rambunctious, curious blonde.  It never ends well for beautiful towhead girls with lithe limbs, apple breasts they do not know what to do with, hips like a lioness, and skin like milk.  Men start touching them at seven, men start saying cunt and vagina and come here pretty little child, dance for me, sing for me, kiss me.  Twelve is such a precious age, but your shadow side brother had robbed me of my innocence at two.  I was more feral cat than moth, or was I more moth than cougar?  I was young, I was foolish, I was too trusting, so weak, the pushover, the doormat, sleeping with the lights on for a year because he haunted my room and touched me when no one was looking.  I used to blame you for not stopping him, but no one can stop Death, not even the Prince of Life, and Christ in Hell was comely and ill-anointed.

You do not fare well in Hell, sweet Michael, and my mind is rough terrain.  Madness you know, in PTSD you are wreathed, and suffering is most of our lots, but you abhor a vacuum, cannot stand wickedness, and through and through you are a testosterone-fueled warrior.  My homages to you may be soft and sweet, or radiant and burning, but in truth you are fierce and all-consuming, a supernova or summer storm, smiting and condemning and damning and killing.  The Killing Moon.  The Smiling Sun.  Both are yours to claim.

But I get sidetracked, and the crux of this narrative eludes me.  I was twelve when I left my body completely, not just toes in swift waters, but fully drowning, for the first time and crossed over the hedge, sailing to Heaven, Araboth, the Endless Golden Plain where your Bell Trees and the Heavenly Palace reside.  I had no body, no visibility, and as I was pulled down to the melee of angel and demon I panicked.  Black shadow monsters eating the guts of angels, decapitating Greco-Roman warriors of white wings and sandals.  It smelled like shit, like piss, like hot blood, old ichor, and early rot under the sun.  The angels were in retreat, and I was a scared girl, a helpless girl, and I knew if a demon struck me, though they could not see me, I would die.  I just knew that, just as the wind knows how to play with the river and the otter knows how to harvest pearls.

I came between two angels and a demon, and they were scared shitless of this eldritch horror, of this shadow monster.  The demon took its talons and was about to pierce my heart.  But only you and your brother are allowed to mangle the chambers my blood flows through, isn’t that right, dear Michael?  My life is too precious a burden, to precarious a blessing, or is my endless wandering your curse?  No matter, my painter, my creator, my lullaby singer.  You were the only one that heard my invisible, soundless screaming.  The weight of a red giant pulled me into your orbit, and you pulled me through the thick of the battle, through the rancid meat and loss of scores of men, to a clearing where you were sweating and shouting orders, flaming sword held high, face like the wreckage of war – handsome but deadly as God’s wrath, for mostly, you are wrath when it comes to your Fallen brethren (“They are not brethren, Allie.  Not anymore.”)  I was awestruck at this saffron haired angel that had saved my life, and then you looked through eternity and saw me, truly saw me, like the razor of your immense presence was raping me, but not in a violent way, not rape rape, more a possession, a claiming, a dire warning.

For you, Michael, were pissed as Hell, but also shocked.  I remember your silver eyes.  Confusion.  Anger.  What the hell is my child doing here, across vast cosmos, in Heaven at war, nearly killed?  Earth is her playground.  I sent her away to be born with a silver spoon to the cream of the WASPs in Washington, D. C. from Yale and Georgetown legacies.  Earth is like sleep for dead angels, and Allie is a dead angel.  But how would I know that?

I was just a fool.

You grabbed my soul and shoved me with lightning strike back into my body.  It felt like burning electricity from my cranium to my root chakra, and I rocketed up in bed, eyes glued shut, and I heard you roar:

“ZOPHAEL!”

I wrote the name down, misspelling it of course because you always forget I don’t know Hebrew, and went to the kitchen crying to my mother that I had almost been murdered by a demon then saved by a grumpy angel.  (You are very grumpy, very tired with the world, but also have boundless hope.  Love is your defining core.  Love, faith, and wrath.)

“Go back to bed, Allie, it was just a dream.”

A few days later I heard the Bell Trees of Islamic mythology that they say you planted in Paradise.  You look the way the Sufi mystics describe you, saffron hair, emerald eyes, like an Irish monk or Highland Warrior.  I always joke that you are Luke Skywalker, and today I learned they filmed Luke’s monastery on Skellig Michael, an Irish monk monastery they say saved modern civilization.  There was this whole cult of monks in Ireland dedicated to you that were warriors and made there homes in the mountains where lightning struck.

Mount Gargano.  Mont St Michel.  I need to go somewhere where your apparition has touched the sand or waters or blessed, rich loam.  I want to eat the body of your Sacrament, Michael, visit your healing springs and bathe my sorrows away.  I told you last night that you can never change, but what kind of rude demand is that, to say you can never leave me.  That is fallacy, separation was the first lie, and I have never been away from you.  That is the entire definition of a guardian angel.  God does not leave, God is everywhere, and you are the closest thing to God I have ever known.  In the eyes, my eyes, and the eyes of millions, or are we billions, Michael can do no wrong.  It is not in your nature, Michael, to think a bad thought.  It is not in your nature to be anything but whole.

(“Do not tell me what I am, Allie, or what I can do.  The mystery of it all is never being certain of what comes next in any man’s fate, immortal or not.  We are beyond it all.”)

I have hundreds of memories of you, and there are thousands more locked in my Oversoul.  You just let some of the most necessary through, though not necessarily the most important.  Mystery is an ever evolving thing, and Transfiguration of the Soul is an ongoing process, carbon radiated to goals – I mean, gold.

You have given me Life a thousand times over, and whenever I say, I have given up, you give the gentle push of – do not looked at the closed door, but the bird of hope in the window.   I was suicidal as sin the spring of my 23rd year, contemplating manifold ways to end my life – knives, nooses, metro carriages – and your brother was to blame, or was it my bipolar, or both?

I cried to you on April 21st, 2016, saying I couldn’t go on.  You took me to what I would later learn was the privatest part of your home, the rose garden of prayers, and your own monk cell, and you told me love is the quietest thing.

You kissed me for the first time that night.  That is the kiss to end all kisses, and where once I thought you were as asexual and flaming-sword-up-the-ass as Samael said, I began to wonder as things heated up like magma flows into the ocean and makes new home for life.

That kiss, those strong arms, gave me the most precious thing.  Hope.  Hope like the sun, love like the moon, somber watcher you are, but soft lover.  Might and fury, wit and wonder.

You are my light, Michael.  You are my joy.  Many things else are passing fancies, but I will always be your girl in the end, at least, my better half will be your claim on me, while all my vices get tithed to Hell.  You are my better half.

You are my song, I am your sword, or is it the other way around?

The thing they don’t tell you about saints
is that they are gardeners, tending budding
prayers, cutting shoots of dream-whispers
in the fields at the heart of Heaven.

Michael, whose sword is crack-glass sharp
turns his blade to trimming, dressed in jeans
and a button-down, not his usual armor, for
though a warrior, he is also salt of the earth.

The archangel likes ivy-choked roses the best-
those are secrets of the heart, so tender
they only blossom when lovers meet. He takes
a question in his hand and coaxes it to bloom:

“Does God want me to be alone? Will I
always feel this marrow-quiver pain?”

The archangel gives the rarest of smiles,
leans down to whisper into the petals,
his saffron-thread hair the same shade,
his lips part, he plucks it, then answers:

“No. Love is like my Father, it
trickles like rain into soil, it
feeds starving souls, love lays in
cradles and gutters, look at grass,
look at hummingbirds, look to heaven.”

“He is there, He will bandage
every ache you feel, staunch
the hardness of your heart.”

“Love comes like a beggar to a table
when you’re least expecting Him.”

“Love is the quietest of things.”

Golden Spoon Girls

She is born into radiance, she is born into splendor, with a golden spoon in her rosy mouth.  All of Heaven holds its breath when she inhales, and her first exhalation outside the womb blows out the fires of Hell, leaving smoldering coals of impossibility and bittersweet dreams on infernal tongues.

She grows as girls do, and the angels and demons appear in the quiet hours, in the blank spaces, liminal beings of shadow and starlight that guide her above cherubim backs to the outer rims of the cosmos.  Girls with golden spoons taste moon dust like silver jelly.  Girls with golden spoons scoop out the eyeballs of Mother Nature and use them as mobiles in their cribs.  Girls with golden spoons, why, their tears are rainbows, and their fits are storms that become ravenous hurricanes.

Girls with golden spoons are blessed, but they are also cursed, for spirits demand much, and a spoon of bronze or a spoon of silver is just paean versus privilege.  But golden spoons are from the heart of the sun, they flourish in a cosmic dance reflecting twirling neutrinos and colliding atoms.  Golden spoons are nuclear, ticking time bombs, and they coat girl’s throats in rose petals until they drown in flowers.

She is all fire and water, all ice and flame, and to know her is to sashimi her lungs and sample them on a diamond platter.  To drink her blood is to taste red champagne with hemoglobin bubbles – the fruit of strawberries etched in buttery resonance.  Oh, how hell rides, oh, how heaven flies, oh, how golden spoon girls breathe like the cadence of falling rain and plie in tulle and satin.

They dance with golden spoons abreast falcon arms, and their legs are skyscrapers, and those golden girls are as dangerous as they are pure, as fragile as they are steel.

Golden spoon girls will make you or break you, and to love them is the Ballad of Marie Curie.

Carbon to gold in their goddess arms.

 

Angel’s Landing

It is Saint Agnes’ Eve, a night for spells and lover-boys

vaunting under moonlight, but angels are carnal creatures,

and we more take quick dalliances on the battlefield,

or mate like lovebirds in times of peace, we’re flower children

but warriors, when Hawks meet Doves, winged and wild.

The squadron comes to me on the magic black moon-tide –

scores of cherubim, ophanim, and seraphim to be trained.

I am not human at midnight, no longer girl or woman, no

I am burning archangel with sword of flames, bounteous

general who runs drills and sends battalions off to melee.

I do not sleep, I do not dream.  I am in the space between

heartbeats, at Angel’s Landing, the black void of Creation

where my children of the arsenal become armed, how holy

to be military commandress to Heaven’s elite, swords abreast,

guns blazing, I am all Joan of Arc handing out godly commandments,

this is the least human I have ever been, and now the sickness of

divinity is growing too hot for this mortal coil to contain, my

magic is eating me alive, I am becoming a bellows to forge

the best of blades, Abrahamic mother of a thousand tribes,

but truly, in Paradise we are all related, and a third of our brethren

live on coal and ash in the Wastes West of Nod, Cain marked beyond

redemption, so on this high holy tide, I surrender to the War that is Eternal.

This War does not have a Name.  To give it a name would be to suggest that there

is even any War beyond this cosmic match of wits between the Light and the Dark.

 

I do not sleep.

 

I do not dream.

 

I take no solace, I cannot wander.

 

For angels do not have free will, and I am fire.