Becoming Light Read Free Page B

warlock
    joined by a filament of flesh,
    lover through the looking glass.
    I dream of you
    as the witch
    beside her husband’s hearth
    dreams of the grandmaster
    of the coven,
    dreams of burning stones
    that sting the flesh,
    while her good husband
    strokes her rump,
    muttering words
    of tame domestic love.
    You are my demon,
    the devil in my flesh,
    the wild child,
    the boy with eyes of flame,
    the bad seed I took
    into my body,
    the infected needle
    I craved
    more deeply
    than health.
    On every seashore
    I see you waving your arms
    out of the whitecaps
    as you drown
    only to be reborn
    in the foam
    between my legs.
    In every bed
    you appear, sexual dybbuk,
    mocking my lovers
    with your twinkling blue eyes
    and the crooked cane of your cock
    smelling of the pit.
    You are trouble, double trouble,
    triple trouble,
    the wrecker of peace,
    but you make
    my cauldron boil.
    I dream of you always
    as I lie
    in the sheltering arms
    of another.
    I dream of you
    as the condemned witch
    dreams of her end
    at the stake,
    when, lashed to the burning pole,
    she will offer up her flesh
    to become smoke,
    her hair to become ash,
    her soul to be carried away
    on the wings of the air,
    marrying, marrying, marrying
    the final fire.

In My Cauldron Under the Full Moon
    In my cauldron
    under the full moon
    thinking of poppets:
    who shall I choose
    to join
    my life with?
    The man of muslin
    with the peppermint
    heart, bleeding
    through his pocket
    underneath
    the felt-tipped pens?
    The man of plastic
    listening to jazz
    in his blue room?
    The sexual robot
    with his swiveling
    indefatigable cock?
    The yearning poet
    who would rather yearn
    than anything?
    The businessman
    who thinks poetry
    has a bottom line?
    The absent daddy
    who will only come home
    when the flesh
    is falling off his bones?
    I would
    make a poppet, Muse,
    but I do not know
    how to mark it.
    Which astrological sign,
    which profession,
    which color of hair,
    which size and shape of cock?
    Witch-woman that I am,
    I am baffled
    by choices.
    Therefore I turn it over
    to you,
    and your lunar wisdom,
    while I wait
    in my cauldron
    bubbling
    under a pregnant
    moon.

I Sit at My Desk Alone
    I sit at my desk alone
    as I did on many Sunday
    afternoons when you came
    back to me,
    your arms aching for me,
    though they smelled
    of other women
    and your sweet head bowed
    for me to rub
    and your heart bursting
    with things to tell me,
    and your hair
    and your eyes
    wild.
    We would embrace
    on the carpet
    and leave
    the imprint of our bodies
    on the floor.
    My back is still sore
    where you pressed me
    into the rug,
    a sweet soreness I would never
    lose.
    I think of you always
    on Sunday afternoons,
    and I try to conjure you
    with these words—
    as if you might
    come back to me
    at twilight—
    but you are never coming back—
    never.
    The truth is
    you no longer exist.
    Oh you walk the world
    sturdily enough:
    one foot in front
    of the other.
    But the lover you were,
    the tender shoot
    springing within me,
    trusting me with your dreams,
    has hardened
    into fear and cynicism.
    Betrayal does that—
    betrays the betrayer.
    I want to hate you
    and I cannot.
    But I cannot
    love you either.
    It is our old love
    I love,
    as one loves
    certain images
    from childhood—
    shards
    shining in
    the street
    in the shit.
    Shards of light
    in the darkness.

Love Spell: Against Endings
    All the endings in my life
    rise up against me
    like that sea of troubles
    Shakespeare mixed
    with metaphors;
    like Vikings in their boats
    singing Wagner,
    like witches
    burning at
    the stake—
    I submit
    to my fate.
    I know beginnings,
    their sweetnesses,
    and endings,
    their bitternesses—
    but I do not know
    continuance—
    I do not know
    the sweet demi-boredom
    of life as it lingers,
    of man and wife
    regarding each other
    across a table of shared witnesses,
    of the hand-in-hand dreams
    of those who have slept
    a half-century together
    in a bed so used and familiar
    it is rutted
    with love.
    I would know that
    before