Ananda

O Bull of Heaven, Abel First-Slain, ice sky eyes

lolling tongue as your brain bleeds out clouds,

the Golden Calf and mysteries of first martyr,

Adamah’s alchemist, God’s golden boy, altar cloth.

You were not meant to live past fifteen, and how

a mother mourns, how Cain bore a grim cross,

and Seth never even knew your name. First was

the Son of Dragon Qayin, brother of fire, second was

the thick seraphic Ox, son of rain, third was boy of

golden light, Yeshua’s line.  And your parents cry,

and no mother should bury her child, and I grow

old and cold, and in Pluto’s Cave on Mount Shasta,

the Sefer Raziel hums with virgin blood, and I am

the Weeping Wailer.

With Dew Anointed

Rusted gold at the Garden Gate.  Poison honey on his lips.  Lion’s mane hair, scars and wounds of rubies, eyes yellow owl iris, pupils a sea of black smoke.  Smoking and choking and seething with rage in the bowels of the Earth, Adam ha Kadmon is chained in the Cave of Treasures, arcane vengeful guardian of the Sefer Raziel come to claim his burning brides.  False idols fat off the land, he calls the Qadesh and Qodeshah.  Bridal whores of Heaven and Hell.  Oh how they have forgotten First Man, and thus he seeks a violent claim on their flesh.  Eve is the Sun Priestess of beaten Io gold headdress, Fire of God, with silver bowl that holds redemption, and Eisheth is Lunar Lady, smooth platinum crescent at her brow, and he raises a hand to strike us down, but we lash back, and there is a cacophony of tears and bitter fears and sour wine.  We can’t be rid of this curse, I turned my back on our marriage and took up with Satan in Hell, chose Samael and Michael and Zadkiel and Ariel-Lucifer in the end, whore of both Heaven and Hell, and Adam turned his back too, leaving me alone and starved to retreat back to the armsz of his first wife, Lilith, and all the ladies of the night – my sister Eisheth, my soothsayer Naamah, my go-go dancing Agrat.  Spider veins, fire in my womb of the Shekinah in balance with Adam’s magic of black cloak and cowl, and we are both Damned, the original Fallen, and Abel is a head-smashed blue ghost, and my proud son Cain bleeds and cries with emerald eyes as Adam calls him son of a whore, scion of Samael, no son of mine.  Seth has eyes like garnets, afire, and collier hair.  So I passed on my demon stain to the Seth line, I who had fallen, Adam who had fallen, my eyes, his skin and hair.  And then Samael dresses in oriental garb of black silk and silver shadow and does a fire dance to hold back the Beast, Adam’s madness siphons off into sapphire tears that form rivers in Hell, he says Eve, Eve, Eisheth, Eisheth, come back to me, and Lilith says pay reverence to your first husband, this First Man, for he is forgotten, and unlike you, he was not saved, charged with guarding that first Torah of the Sefer Raziel the Archangel of Secrets pressed to Adam’s bosom upon pain of Uriel’s fiery sword, and Adam’s only magical match is Samael, master of enchanters.  I dance with bells, Adam dances with doeskin drums, and in the quiet hours we rage and gnash teeth and sob and wonder, how did first love turn so bitter?  What is left after first love when your postcards are burned that you sent your lover from Paris and the Gates of Eden are shut tight on nightmares of toil, woman’s pains, working unforgiving earth for all the eons and labor.  I say death, and abandonment, and the sun rising in the forbidden East and setting in the rotting orchard of the West.  I say you can grow again, grafted from the Tree of Death to the Tree of Life, and that no one, nothing, is beyond Jonah’s whale song of salvation.

In time, the Tree bears new fruit, and Adamah, hard as earth, softens.

 

Zadkiel

Who watches the Watchman?

Who keeps her safe at her tower?

Who gives her power upon the hour?

And reason upon the season?

And peace a golden fleece?

The luminaries turn, adrift

we have the dance of clock ticks.

And the Guardian kisses sweet

to the bones of her meat.

Lost days, long nights, heaven rain.

And never a lover without pain.

Temple of Isis

Chalk it up to archangels, chalk it up to lore

flying from brim of dusk to dawn, warriors

mighty with seraphic fire and brows black

with soot, this is the end times, our blades are

troubadour bright and emanate with God’s light.

Oh Michael!  Oh Samael!  Oh Zadkiel! Oh Gabriel!

Spectrums in the looking glass in the Temple of Isis.

We can pay homage but we cannot stray, in this

midnight goddess mission, clear lakes reflecting

burning hair and armor of the End, flying rampant

through hellfire and brushflame.  We are death squadron

of Heaven, here at the helm of the War, I cast out

Satan, now he is fire retardant Lucifer, and Michael

waits long by the hearth side, bellyful of wine, mourning.

These vespertine fantasies come with a price: wear the

four rings, hail Jesus, we are but bread of the dead

and somnabulent wanderers, when we sleep, there we go.

Avast, plunderers, we raid twilight and take all we want.

Spoils of our Crusade, nothing can stand up to the Lord.

It is strange to be a stray angel, it is strange to be cast out

yet beauteous in my suffering, and this nightswimming is

unbridled passion, I can soar in dreams, plunge my sword

into the heart of the Damned, oh ghosts by the river, tell me

my name!  All I see is Saphael, reflection of El, a mercury

of Masonic lore, President of the Moon, and that is just

a mask, where Freemasons join arms and salute the quadrants.

Funny, I find shards of myself in literature and myths and strange

footnotes in grimoires.  What is my truth? What is my quest?

That is what Parzival asked, after all, but am I Grail Maiden,

Fisher Queen, or Pure Knight?  Where is my place in this story?

God, who am I?  I Am.  I am.  There are puzzles, and whispers,

and the trappings of lies that become truth, oh Yeshua, anointer!

Oh Temptation and roses and incense, what is the grit of my soul?

I am lost in pages of some heroic journey, but I have bills to pay,

and this Alice rabbit madman hole of Hell and Heaven and Hereafter

is better left to the Illuminati, so stop it with the clues, you two.

Green lion bleeding gold from the sun, whatever, Lapis Exillis shit.

Even in sleep I am on a pilgrimage.  My wings come

with a cost, after all!  Oh please, let me dream of

ducks in galoshes and underwear at work,

I get tired of conquering, I get tired of guns

ablazing and romance and loss and mythic

tithes, my head is full of starlight, and I

am just trying

to come

home.

Flood Waters

Go to the high places, brother, where the flood

cannot reach us, and the Antediluvian watchman

posts still burn bright with seraphic fire, the rains

are choking black and as the ticket to the turnstile

turns to an armful of sparrows, and boarding the

Holocaust train means the Devil is waiting in the

shadows to kiss and caress you to death. I wore

white to my funeral, and a knitted shawl, stopping

kindly for the Reaper as he played knuckle bones

with my teeth.  It is a funny thing to be deconstructed

by Samyaza’s betrayal, to pin your hopes on humanity

only to hang repentant as Kesil after Istahar flees for

better ground, nothing holds when the Flood comes, not

our hearts, not our marrow, not the spools of brains that

crash against the tides, the bus driver is kindly, and we

go to the diner at the end of the world, the only place left

untouched by the Calamity of God. I order coffee black and

sit with Satan as we eat eggs, fried and scrambled, and bacon

with the grease of Goliath and David’s bowstring stringiness.

It’s been an awful long time since I had breakfast, dieting you

know, I want to be one of the girls in the magazines but we all

know that will never happen, and my dark angel tells me: eat.

The Flood is all there is past the City of Luz. It takes terraces and

shipwrecks and skyscrapers into its gorget and swallows lamellar

plating of the armor of the Grigori, heavy metal and purest jewels

weighting them down as they try to swim. At night, I hear the dull

Nephelim howling, eater of kings and flock devourers, as they cling

to sharp places and are barred from entering the city. I study arcane

lore and magic most Sephirothic at this between place haven, and come

evening, I curl up in the lap of Death, my  brother too far gone, and I

think nothing of the morrow. Tomorrow never comes, after all, not when

the End Times are the only guarantee a puny mortal has, fearful God.

 

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.

Maybe You’re Not the Hero

“Maybe you’re not the hero you thought you were.”

I sit with scarred, armored, war-torn Zadkiel on a threadbare couch, my twin angel and second-in-command general of Michael, of whom we are both standard bearers, I reconnaissance, he defense.  We are reminiscing about the War (there is only ever one War, don’t let mortals fool you otherwise) and Zeke’s eyes are alight with fire and rambunctiousness.  He clutches his sword between his kneecaps, driven down into the wood of the floor, and chortles like a jackal.

“Gaby kept running around delivering messages he didn’t see my infantry plowing through him.  That was the first time he died.  Oh, what a little bird flitting about, unaware he’s in the way with those high falutin messages straight from Mikey himself.”

I bring my knees to my lap and nestle against his wing.  He has a familiar face lit with fire, like the gentle soul that houses him is in vengeance mode.  The night before I fell asleep, I saw him in pointed spidery silver and gold armor with gauntlets and lamellar plating and a visor that hid darkness and burning blue eyes that would flicker to red like coals.  Zadkiel kept cutting the air with his flaming sword as if to spell betrayal out for me, only I couldn’t catch on, not in the awake state at least.

“How did you die, Zadkiel?” I ask, hesitantly.

Zadkiel gives  wild laugh.  “Oh, how didn’t I die?  I bled out in the trenches.  I took bullets through the heart.  Stabbed by an underling that didn’t like my iron fist.  The question, my dear, is that I always die, it’s only a matter of time.  Some more gruesome than others.”

I think back to my death, that first fall from grace, and can’t help but ask: “Do you remember me, Zad?”

Zadkiel sighs like wind through an empty carnival.  Like he is haunted by me, which is likely the case: “You were put on trial for corrupting demons during your reconnaissance missions, Jo. Up to scale 11, you ruined the . At the end, we couldn’t tell whose side you were on but your own. You were judged as a traitor.  Due for execution but you died anyway in one last coup d etat.  Always the wild child, Jo.”

There are tears in his eyes and he doesn’t look at me.  I can barely look at my own legs.

“Oh…” I speak softly, remembering the lore.  Zophael, the Herald of Hell, with sympathies towards the fallen.  Zophiel, the fallen angel of Maria del Ocidente’s poem.  Zophael, the one who took the side of the fallen and rebelled against heaven.  Zophiel, Heaven’s double-timing spy that got in too deep.

Three battalions met the day I died.  My own rebels, hewn from fallen and angels.  Samael’s forces.  Michael’s legions.  Three separate battles: those that would restore balance, those that would drag the world to Hell, and those that would enforce the mono-culture of Heaven.  I have met those that took my side.  They were much fewer, possibly not a third, but perhaps the neutral angels that fell to Earth and became the land, sea, and forest elementals.  Perhaps we did make a stand, however brief, and when I took Satan’s spear through the heart for Michael, I abandoned not only my post but betrayed both sides.

A traitor to both heaven and hell.  Playing my own little games.  Turning angels on demons and demons on angels.

We are not always heroes in our own stories.  At best, we might wrangle some sympathy from those who wronged us.  To fight for Satan is a noble misguided cause.  To fight for Michael is a glory train of bad choices and patriarchal fuckups that gets you nailed to a cross.

To fight for the traitor, why, that takes special madness.  You get put on Earth, in the end.

We are never the heroes in our stories, and my sadness runs deep as the liar’s grave I fill.  In the end, I hurt everyone, all because I wanted to be the architect of my own story, or perhaps I was playing both sides all along.  An instigator for the war.  Flying to steal the glory of god for humanity, too close to the sun I touched eternal fire and brought it back for those hairless apes.  Goading on Samael and Michael to rough it out over me.  I am  the only thing they cared about, at least momentarily, in the end (of my life, not there’s – there’s is a cause, a higher purpose, and mine is the trickster mentality).

Whatever happened, history may be doomed ot repeat.  Or maybe now, I finally get the chance to redeem myself.  Maybe now, I won’t bleed black ink from adamant veins.

We are never the heroes we thought we were, but maybe, on the flight of a lark, on a vespertine moon’s last rays, we can become something like God.

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