Red Moon

 What do you know about rolling in the deep? 

Masked Astronaut

I'm hoping that now that I have unlocked this anger

That has wrapped its serpentine and lithe essence 

Around the fist that is my heart, it's damp and musky lair

With the tail rattling at the very thought of your name 

My tongue has become forked with the tangled lies

Growing from the roof of my mouth, pointy stalactites

Of great lengths vining their way towards a soft tongue

Recoiling into a swallow and a blocked passageway 

Torturing my taste buds with the threat of piercing 

A confession: I have half-truths stuck between my teeth

Making onlookers uncomfortable when I smile  

The two Ivorian incisors as pillars keeping reality shelved

My splitting spitting tongue red with smouldering rage 

A flare of nostrils when my betraying brain airs the carpet

And memories of you rise in the beam of the light 

Suspended brilliantly before remembering their weight

With a thud, they land on the floor of my psychology

Like the elephant in the room felled by a poacher 

Lifeless, on its side, I cover it with the clean rug

Wondering what Exupery's children would draw now

The slackening anger unfurls its fingers on my vitals

And its heat rises painting walls and windows copper red

Bloodshot eyes; as the sleep I've missed goes on a bender

Waterboarding my soul, being questioned but it doesn't talk

I've lain awake keeping the sun from setting on your name

A vigil of love, I still pray for you, and your dreams 

The blood churns and breaches strongholds and progress

All seven steps of grief are rearranged like a Picasso

Square one is a puddle of emotion, a Rorschach inkblot

Losing its edges but retaining its sharpness, a test 

But my emotions have forgotten their names, I fail

In the heterogeneity of melee, the red is freshly dyed 

This is anger's last gasp numbing my arms in pain

Does this anger not yet know who I am? It has failed

Undulating my body within my phone's range of hearing

I fish for the words with my teeth tossing them into a text

Alexa! And my digital companion delivers on its promises

The screen brightens, you always respond to a text with a call

I cough out bloody phlegm on my sheets, sthandwa sam' you say

I sob and the red moon once again adorns the shade of its summer 

The Greatest Love

Nothing exists but you and I/ And if we two be not/ Then God is no more God/ And down must fall the sky

- Angelus Silesius

The demons sought to dispose of your sorry heart

Still being precious, they put it up for auction

Brittle for being broken, it didn't transport well

Sorcerers, the world over, scrambled for the pieces

They knew I would come looking for you

Hearing rustling in the wind of our great love

Relying heavily on the degree of dispersion

As further discouragement to an aggrieved heart

It became the athletic tape holding tendons together

Keeping sternum and spine upright in purpose

Like the rod of Moses in hand, not on the ground

And the voice without words offering direction

The sweat of my brow condensated into clouds

With the downpour, a portent of an unwelcome arrival

Heard my resolute footfall on the stairs of the world

Turned to Vulcan for reinforcement to temper my will

Pieces of him found in glass cases within red rooms

Indecent displays of wealth, conquests and spoils

Ordering the sand in the glass back to the sea

The reflective surface disappeared with its allure

Then there were impenetrable cryptographic safes 

Pythagoras and Aryabhata took back their inventions 

The primes were gone and so were their music

Only sound heard is the click and creaking of the door

One occasion boasted of a three-headed guard dog

Descendant of Fluffy with bone crushing jaws

The music returned in the form of flutes playing

Lulling the dogs to sleep, putting jaws out of service

They speak of a work ethic labouring for a few pennies

This labour of love is my magnum opus in the oeuvre

The work that speaks for itself in itself against all that has

Sought and sometimes succeeded to hurt me in my heaven

Taking on a new name, inaugurated as The Greatest Love

My sermon on the mount, ministering to the hearts of all 

Men by redeeming this one as though it were the only one 

This heart precious beyond estimation broken on a rock

Imbokodo: When the strength and might of a woman 

Parallels the abject humiliation of a good man trying 

I'll stand by you, even in hand-cutting smithereens

Caloused hand not heart, I'll hold you ever so close

Reduced to the grains of dust from whence you came

With drops of water, I'll thicken and substantiate you

Offer you back a rib to refashion yourself out of and a

Loving word cleaning out the desert sands from your ears 

 

When the Lord Restores by Catherine Feeny

Life cannot be repaired, it can only be recreated through symbolic repetition of the cosmogony, for, as we have said, the cosmogony is the paradigmatic model for all creation.

- Mircea Eliade

When the Lord restores the fortunes of Zion

We are like those who dream

Our mouths are filled with laughter

Our tongues with songs of joy

It will be said among the nations

Yah has done great things for us

He has done great things for us

And we are filled with joy

Restore our fortunes Lord

Live streams in the Negev

Those who sow in tears

Will reap with songs of joy

Those who go out weeping

Carrying seeds to sow

Will return, with songs of joy

Carrying sheaths with them