Rosemary Remembrance

Abandoned as an old religion,

The devil has my elbow, whispering innocences required

To enter heaven.

I move to the center of the wall I must climb over to exit

Escape is fluid & still evolutionary.

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DRUMS

Get UP! Get OUT!

The drums are starting again

All illusions of freedom become illusory

When anthems fill the air

When men choose their spears

Over women who want to dance.

The affronted ancestors rise up, chanting

Eerie voices staccato for conquest,

Plucking at the carts we

Break our backs to pull, babies tucked along the sides,

Rise UP! Get you gone

There is no remedy here for the wars

Brewing in the forests,

Stick to the paths, avoid the demons

Plucking at possessions.

Only one narrow corridor of escape

From the village, already flaming behind.

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Regrets rise like bubbles in a glass of tears.

I had enough of you before,

Let alone you invade me now

Begone from my beaten breast

In breaths expelled with sounds of tearing!

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I no longer believe the sacred, I do not look

For God anymore, or mothers, or husbands.

All the aggrieved virgin saints in ragged, raped glory

Flank me now, escort me

Since erasing sin

Is worthwhile for the holy.

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Being done with liars

I purvey the truth

While stuffing aces up my sleeves…

In a world victimized, weaponized,

I cannot choose the window or the door

I freeze between the kitchen & the bed

While darkness dims the lights of any yes.

It slides across a no like water across a road

Drowning out any maybe –

And cognitive dissonance reigns like truth

Rescheduled for a better time.

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You have become a contagious denial

Front & center, a denial in a matter of thinking

Shivering before me now

No longer golden, nor free, but

A bitter gourd of regret. A lost soul turning, turning.

I cannot scrape you off of me, no fingernails gain hold,

The black remains:

Your future marked with bloody handprints

The rivals of a 12-year-old’s heart in biting, feckless lies.

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Hail the Grail of my guilt

Shared unevenly

This life will suit no more

I don old shoes

And take to the roads

To meet a pilgrimage of ghosts.

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The angels themselves

Put feathers in my pockets

Wrapping me in wings of rosemary remembrance.

They stroke my wrists & kiss my forehead

Passing through my heart now clean,

Rise up, O wondrous one, believe in no one

But yourself, the all of Creation

The One they speak of in whispers

Pointing long fingers away from the paths

Over fields of grandeur

Under clouds of glory,

Move away from the serially unholy

Choosing one above the other

And burying the rest.