Suzanne Grazyna
Samedi dans le cimetière avec le Baron
If he stops digging you don't die.
How many pins does it take
to form a grid
his eldritch shovel can't penetrate?
I offer him a savory Cuban cigar.
I buy him a coffee from Starbucks.
Only the best for the loa of death
and I really need this favor.
A shot of Captain Morgan.
I respect the spicy scent of the crossroads.
Our Patron of gravestones
calls this intersect home
but I've summoned him
on this grey Saturday.
Now I've sat on a cenotaph and waited.
Only he can decide that it's not worth
his time, his appetites sated,
for now anyway; or will he pull you
fast from my ephemera past,
from my present, hereafter, my life,
and accept you
into the realm of the dead?
I'll light a candle and pray
to St. Martin de Porres,
clutching my needling poppet.
I hope he finds me pretty
and not annoyingly needy.
I offer myself in the cemetery.
A black ceremony
to Baron Samedi,
a sacrifice to bring you back
inside the City of the Dead.
These Holes in My Hands are for You
Crimson drips from my limbs with the wait of a decade, century, millennium, timelessness. My white flesh long since consumed by those who knew nothing, everything, instinct, defeat.
You're a universe away and I find you. I reach out for your cord, I see its ardent fire. It passes through my palms and I grab hold, wrap in spirals round and round until it burns. These holes in my hands are for you. I have waited so long that my arms got tired. Nail guns and prison barbed wires. Golden threads weave eternal in the ether. You've set me free from despondency so many times before.
Drink of my lead poisoned blood. Wash with the soap of my flesh. My own sacerdotal love. I press my hands to your face, kiss you through the keyholes for a decade, century, millennium, timelessness.
Unforgiven
I woke up curbside, maggots in my hair,
his sticky-red head clutched in my hand.
I have to stare at my prize a moment to
remember how we even got there.
I didn't see, the Hydra had risen
from the sea in search of a tenth head.
Nine lives is never enough.
Cut off one lie and two new are born.
Cauterize stumps, pumping mechanisms,
stems abused for pollination.
Avoid radioactive afterbirth.
Another love's Labor. I breathed in his venom,
held it in my lungs longing for him to swim to me.
Head in the oven, I gassed my own chambers.
Weak corpuscular visions blurry and sweet.
Azazel bleating on the hill. Pushed, not lost.
He came with the guillotine in the night.
Vices, lack of restraint, electric shock devices,
a trusty billhook, and the migraine spark of
metallic edges biting in the fight.
I woke up curbside, a red trail across my throat,
his only immortal head stuck to my sticky-red hand.
Whore of Babylon
Only a person of virtue can stop you
Crush your skull with your diadem crowns
A decade of horns in my side
Your white wedding gown is a blasphemy
A spreading bloodletting stain should mark you
For the beast, the abortion you are
Flicking lies off the tip of a forked tongue
How I've wished you your karmic misery
The killing clots of miscarriage and lechery
The same Wormwood cocktail you once served me
Plunge a branch from a cypress tree into
Your tar pit flesh and watch you die painfully
Exquisite remedy to your reign of infidelity
Always remember me