Espresso

Dark and sultry, the goddess finds me every morning. Her sinews draw upon her tight etherflesh an erotic dance of order and chaos, so that I do not know myself.

Every morning it is like this.

I rise because I must, not because she insists she is only there to insure I do not embarrass her. Vertigo is her name in the morning. Her names change as the Greater Sun marks the time in obedience, spinning out slowly on the world pole.

She leads me to the chamber of The Dragon, her true son, who swirls and steams and hisses like jealousy at me. She scolds him and I am glad. But he sees my cathartic eyes, and marks them for later. She beckons him to a cup and decrees her will to him. Without hesitation or protest, for it would be foolish, he spews forth the dark bile that will be life to me for the next few hours. But always I see in his eyes, in his rapacious eyes, the markings on a tally sheet too long for my purse.

“Never mind that,” she says in a voice I will never disobey, a voice that stirs my oedipal loins. “Drink.”

I drink.

I drink and the dragon’s milk electrifies my plodding soul. I become rigid as the arclights leap across my dreamscape, my day keeper. My mind, like a millstone, lurches and heaves, the gears synchronize and lock together.

Momentum builds.

The goddess smiles. Smiles her new name at me.

My jealous dragon brother slinks off, scheming.

I touch my finger to my temple, acknowledgment of the self within, and I relax, watching the sun climb, rung by rung, up the cerulean heavens, like the list of making conjuring in the goddess’ mind that she bequeaths to me.

I rise, clothed in light and armed with greed, to slay her foes.

Heros

When did the cosmic dragon spit and fume so that we sent our virgins, captive and bound, to her? Why is she so jealous of virgins? 

When the plasma-lights oscillate and pulse to herald her coming, when the ground is flayed away by her ravaging wing-winds, the survivors fall from the apex of reason. Dehumanized, they shove their sacrifice objects, the girl untainted by the phallus, and shove them out the door they came in by. They toss them back across the threshold of home and hearth, the portal to safety. A door they have used all their lives. A door they would open and people there, their people, would welcome them, then, and kiss their innocent hair, and hold them while currents of affection infused the moment. Moments. Moments before the dragon came.

But now?

Why have the mothers not gone out to defend their girl-children? Why haven’t they thrown themselves upon the creatures bloody board? It’s not like it checks the hymen. Even if it does, what of it?

The liberator says, “no virgins here.”

The dragon says, “you lie.”

The liberator says, “no virgins here.”

The dragons says, “I’ll destroy your village!”

The liberator says, “fine, burn it. No virgins here,” and the dragon leaves because the whole ritual has become a waste of time.