An excerpt from my current manuscript-in-progress entitled:
WITHIN THIS ROSEBUD CHRYSALIS ...


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Once you stop wanting
what you absolutely cannot have
you can have
anything you want

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First Rites

I awake in a blackened thicket
of bitter laurel and thornwire.
Every day jabberwockies abduct the sun.
Every night I hear their hungry eyes
growl and hiss in ever ready circles.

Every night I hide in a concrete bunker
where virgin gobblers sway upside down
and flap mulled wine into tin chalices
dangling from the open throats.
Every night I must hang the blood red harvest
on a chestnut limb and recite
the ransom incantation ...
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ...
and each new morning, the sun is released
unharmed.

I return to the bright woods daily;
disguise my makedness in gartered-silk,
precious frills and eyelet-lace
and parade in mock celebration.
The drained chalice swings stiff in my trembling hand,
glistens like slippery quick-silver
as I slip into sunny sleep.

Every day I dream the fully-engorged eyes
in the thicket smile and whisper ...
sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.