Tag: Grim Reaper

Roses on My Grave

Samael and I sit in the rose gardens at the heart of Briah, the fifth heaven, where his lush palace grounds, vinyard, and greenhouses and courtyards roll out like an elegy. He is dressed in black reaping robes, tending roses with shears, a fragrant pink-white blossom of a dog rose that he clips off for me, softening the briars, and places in my hair like poetry.

“Perfect,” he says, his smile sunlight, long black hair pooling out over his shoulders like a waterfall. I sit in a rope hammock at the heart of his central courtyard, next to a burbling fountain shaped like a woman pouring water over herself. “Peace is knowing that over each grave, a flower will bloom. I will decorate your grave in roses, and when sweet slumber takes away your immortal soul, cradle you in my arms and carry you off into the next life.”

He slides into the hammock with me and I nestle under the crook of his arm, head resting against his pale breast, his flesh cool to the touch, a relief from Briah’s summer. “You, always romanticizing the afterlife. Is it really as beautiful as you say?”

He smooths the ruffles of my white dress. “Living is more the question, of comfort. Death – and the afterlife – are Paradise, after all. Worry more about making your dreams come true while alive, and focus less on your fear of Death, Alci. It has paralyzed you. You will live until your 90s, surrounded by loved ones-“

“How do you know I won’t die alone?”

“Alci, do you know anyone as loved or extroverted as you? Wherever you go, you foster friends, and create tribe. It’s why my brothers and sisters and I love you so much. Softness, love, kindness, beauty – even angels and demons, even God Himself, has need of light and laughter. Joy. Why would anyone that spends 95 years creating joy with bells on her ankles pass alone and unloved? Why would I ever let anything bad ever happen to you?”

I close my eyes and listen to the whipporwill. The greens of the grasses and rose bushes are seen through the sepia of Briah’s Throneroom light. “I suppose you’re right. It’s not dying I’m afraid of, just pain, I suppose. I’ve lived so much already, I just don’t want to be left alone.”

“I will never leave your side, darling.” He takes his wing and fans me with it. “I doubt Michael or Lucifer would either, much as I hate them. After all, I am Death, and doesn’t Death have all the answers? Isn’t Death the most faithful companion?” he teases, placing a kiss on my forehead.

“Thanks for Wednesday, Sam, I love you,” I say, sighing as I nestle my head against his chest. “How you took care of me. Everybody always takes care of me. I don’t really feel that special, I don’t really understand why so many angels watch out for me, much less demons and gods. I’d be dead without you. I’d be dead without the support of all Heaven and Hell.”

“A rose needs good soil to grow in.”

“Roses…” I say, opening my eyes and looking into the clear blue pools of his. “You and roses, always the roses. Why do you love them so much?”

“Because nothing is sweet without the thorns. That is life, that is why roses are beloved, and that, my dear, is why I love you – thorns and all.”

Coffinmaker

Stretched out in a coffin, I surface from blue-black raven void

to see my sepulchre etched with intaglios of my name and

poison, birthing Legions ripped my womb in two and as the

bats of the demonic brood I birthed tore me in twain, I perished

on lips of wine, and now I am in the hexagon box of longing, a

corpse alive with regret, and I pound at my vestments of pine,

sweet sap smell for the resurrected, and I hear the Devil laughing,

and so with great force I throw the top of the bolted coffin open,

landing in Satan’s luxury lounge, where he is drinking a bourbon.

“I made that coffin just for you.  I know how much you hate small

spaces and your terrible claustrophobia,” he laughs to high heaven.

“Exposure therapy, my angel.” “Samael, you can’t just go shoving

your wives in coffins, even if you are the Grim Reaper!” I scream,

throwing a pillow at him and furiously stampeding into the kitchen

for a snack. He just turns on the TV and watches football, chortling.

Another one of Samael’s damn pranks, his favorite thing to do. I eat

a handful of goldfish and we lounge by the beach for the rest of the

day, greay skies sailor’s warning, and I drink the jolly good stuff pint

by pint.

 

Savior of Blackest Wing

Lost dice in a subway terminal.  Gleaming fire on a blood-boiling moon, Toomer’s tithe, over back alley grit and sweat and spit.  Recycling days old poetry in an empty milk carton a wino drinks from stinking to know something of God.  You with your body of broken shards of wind chimes razing my flesh in bloody wounds and music oh so sinfully sweet.  First you tuck me in, then it’s fathoms down to the depths no man knows, suckling up a sea of white gold and rosy awakenings that would shame Nausicca seeing Odysseus naked, bathing in hoary perfection under Athena’s watchful Aegis.  The tide is rushing, this dark holiness is something spiteful and full of the color lost.  Blue, deep mahogany blue, like the tears that crumble from your blueberry eyes.  I would bake you into a tart and eat your heart with whipped cream and rubies and still, you would say, I have more desert to give, more sweets for you, please swallow me whole, just like I devour you, for the seasons are turning, and I must go to rot.  Bury me under that crab apple tree we spent years together under, where I gave you my soul, and I will forget your name in my decay.  You, my anam chara, carry on into  the darkness and with tooth and nails drag dawn up over Hell, it has been dark for too long.  And so ecstasies and poltergeists rattle the Devil’s chains and sex is what we invented yes, full score eons ago when man and woman wanted to fit together.  And look at the symphonies we made, a Viennese waltz to the devil’s trill.  Full Danse Macabre.  And now we are untethered, nothing to ground us to ruin, so like balloons in death we float above, away, avast, sailors on the outer boundaries of space, and it is only by holding you close that I know my union.  My ruin.  My Savior of blackest wing.

Harvest Haunting

Snow on the ground, a crisp pie crust of ice

coats the sidewalk, tufts of dry grass frozen.

I cling to my fiery demon for warmth in winter,

his iron fur drawing wounds on my hand, scraping

the second snake skin away from me as harvest

elicits raw rebirth. The corn stalks outside town

are all trimmed down, felled to the farmer, and

as my dragon curls around me, his eyes rubies,

I am choking on smoke but it is like a bonfire,

and hickory sweet, and I embrace my bane and

love with the strength of a thousand lionesses.

We are an ourouborous of enigmas, Nachash

and Chava, Queen of Life and King of Beasts.

Yes, Samael, I remember the Garden, you walking

in Eden besides me when we were both quite young,

I with my naked wonder at Creation, you eager to

prove yourself in any way you could, just to hold me

forever in awe of your shining enchantments, but peace

cannot last, and the burden of Hell is heavy, but I will

carry water for you from the well at the Tree’s roots and

wipe the blood of the Slain from your brow, I am succor

ten leagues below, twenty miles frozen, a million acres

dead. Don’t you know I bleed into your rotting mouth so

you can know something of celestial fire? We are both

burning up, my Beast. This wicked punishment of exile

weighs heavy on our shoulders, but we have children to

raise, and Cain was a blessing from God, no matter what

these humans tell me, our Son grew proud and tall, and

now we have all of humanity with the fire of your fruit

ingrained in their very flesh, all because I ate your heart,

became your Terpsichore, madrigal moon girl, a ballerina

in a music box in your ribs, and my sinful belly is full

of the Holy Ghost, and I am the answer, and you will be

Blind God only so long as it takes me to untangle Gordian

wings.

Fast Car

We’ve been heartbroken for eternity, my body, my flesh.
You weep with wings of sooty owl and drape your cape in sorrow.
The cloak that hides your scars and blind eyes denies affection.
And oh how holy your rot, how holy for my whoredom, we are miserable
yet found in each other’s spooled out brains, ganglion honey, and as
I am licking your gray matter, your corpus callosum unravels on my tongue.
Let’s get in a fast car and drive far away from all existence, leave Heaven
and Hell and Earth in the dust, and build a new empire free of shackles and
tears, when I’m on the back of your motorcycle, speeding down I-666, I feel
free in a way like rain on Venus, something impossible yet altogether whole.
When you cradle me and we fly on your ashen pinions, arms strong to carry my
burdens, the stars caress us, and the smallness of the lords and ladies of Hell
look like ants, and the skyscrapers are elegies to Mulciber’s pride under Satan.
You said, build tall enough to pierce God, and so came the megalopolis and twisted woods and wildlands where Lilitu and Shedim and Seirim cavort in Cain’s
festivals, there is nothing tying us here, no duty, nothing enough to matter, all I see in you is a sober sorrow as deep as God’s grave. But in truth, you are
God, Demiurge, Yah the snake venerated by Israelites becomes Yahweh in time, and
you are the Left Hand Brain, Michael the Right Hand Brain, in between you two, I
have the whole of eternity and nothingness, there is nothing greater than your
mercy, Samael, and nothing more terrifying than your severity, can we please just go somewhere where roses bloom eternally and a cottage with herbs hung above beckons with homeliness, the cabin you showed me at 15 in the woods on a
snow-capped pine forest, where you gave me toast and eggs and coffee and you read the newspaper and we were human and complete, redeemed, brown eyes like
molasses, sticky sweet, and mussed black hair I tousled. Is that another life,
Sam? Because that was the first time I felt love so strongly I knew I would
perish without you, a burgeoning blossom in my adolescent heart, recognition
that from my first memory til then, you were who I cherished above all. Now,
I have roots, a soon-to-be husband, children down the line, and you appear sometimes, in shadow or flesh at railroad crossroads, mouth of blood, wings of
iron slices, claws that kill, banging poltergeist. But last time you appeared as a void monster, I ran trying to kiss you, you of freezing shadows, spindly horns, and you saved me from my house burning down, and made my dog piss herself. I know it is in your power to snatch me up any moment you desire – death has that kind of power, and you are prince of this world, but now you want something Italian because you are the Patron Angel of Rome, guess I’ll have to
make a nice linguine for you. But the fast car awaits, and the highway is wild,
and through all my prophecies I do not know how this will all play out – you say I will live until my 90s, and I have already seen my death, where you kiss me
starstruck and lift my soul out into the soup of the cosmos, and I am truly free. My love, you say, take time, the fast car can wait, speed demon. Cherish
your humanity, and when the bell tolls?

I’ll be right on time.

Hoodlum Saints

We were the Rat Pack, ripe before our age,

greasy wine and addicts lips, cracked whores,

lost doors, and as winter froze us solid, poems

we printed on toilet paper scattered like ashes,

oh my brothers, how we fell, fell into Hell and now

we hath become the beds of vipers our darlings rest on

my soldiers, we fought and failed, and now we drink poison

celebrity only goes so far in the lowest circle, circlejerk, cum stains

on the best of saints, and we have sinners to simmer galore, adore me,

you worm, let me worship you, my lamb, know I break open and break open

just to see inside you, only you never open, and the mountains march to the sea,

and my cracked twelve wings of time become mad as hatters, my Alice, use me, abuse me

delight in the circus I have forged in Mulciber’s depths just for you, Eve, you who gave

me my favored Cain, heir to all my kingdom, and women who flee dragons clothed in

sun bed the Beast in time, or perhaps they redeem Satan, so sister Eloa, my fleeing Norea

know my love for you has never faltered, though I test and tempt you, and you’re mine,

you’re mine

mine.

Phantom Tollbooth

Driving with Death, it’s nothing new, Dickinson did it

on a winter’s night, kindly stopping, the brother phantom

draws me into the wingback hearse and through gloam we

drive down the pear tree lane, frost on the grass, ice in our

lungs, and Death’s gloved hand is cold on my thigh, he is wan

and corpse shell of a lotus blossoming in murky darkness,

white petals a pallor of foretold snow, the clouds are clods

of thick blankets of dirty cotton over the sky, pregnant with

moisture, and as Death laughs like a knife, I know this is the

killing joke, and frozen roses are only thorns in November.