7/11/2023
“On The Breaking Of The [2nd] Wheel”
I made it with the
branches of the
fallen ash tree.
Her limbs were full of poison;
I knew them well to be.
Remade from what was broken
and forged by hands immune,
hell’s deepest dark, its magic gold,
now held by heaven’s hue.
I touched each branch with fingers
immune to poison’s price;
my flesh resigned to memories
of summer’s sacrifice.
I claimed its power ended.
I purposed it anew.
I stole its magic for myself
and for a steely crew.
I stripped each branch to naked
with love’s ancestral blade.
I curved each finger, rigid,round:
a curse reforged, remade.
I laid them on steel table.
I stretched them out in kind.
I crossed them into Word they hate
and sheared their limbs, resigned.
I bound them into oneness
assigned to each a place
to carry on and keep in kind
the functions of her race.
I wrapped each side in color,
a medicine made from man;
I called and claimed each squallored shriek
to serve my spated hand.
I wrapped the west with blackness
of deepest, darkest night;
the very kind the curses find
a lacking birth of right.
I wrapped the north with whiteness
of ever-living slain;
come, wind; come, river; come mountain;
come, valley; come, prairie; come, plain.
I wrapped the east with goldness
of wisdom’s brightest day;
a hidden song where none belong
and hexes are betrayed.
I wrapped the south with redness
of the furious wrath of love;
where teeth are bared and none are spared
from the peace predestined above.
I forged its form in fire
aloft in heaven’s height.
I bore its form and elders swarmed;
the dragon took up to flight.
———
I return,
victorious,
in secret.
———
I place it on the alter;
I tie it to the blade;
a Poisoned Purpose nullified;
a Deeper Magic staid.
“Live on, live on,” I whispered,
“existence yours is this:
by right of heaven, by right of hell:
your sting reversed, dismissed.”
———
Her demons bade her journey
to dwelling not her own
to seek and find the ancient rhyme
and banish heart to stone.
She spotted new wheel resting
inside the holy place;
she surged in wrath and hatred;
her judgment now showcased.
Like she in Eden’s garden
a serpent bade her take
that fruit of tree into her own hand;
and she listened, again, to the snake.
She gritted teeth and grimaced
and formed some ancient prayer.
She called to those she claimed her own,
unspotting the dove in the glare.
She thought its magic other
than that within her trek;
her pride became the millstone
which sunk her by the neck.
I stood and watched from ether,
sad smile upon my hardy face:
“Do it,” I urged afar, “Do it. Tis
not mine, but yours, you break.”
She touched the wheel, the 2nd,
unlike the first, the One.
No words she spoke as curse she invoked;
her power, in hand, now undone.
Tetelestai.
She howled into the deep nothing,
swallowed and swamped by the sea.
“Your power is broken!-” she spat as she sank
snapping the gold of her tree.
———
~ CY
“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
– St. Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians
