the feminine & the feline (16)

the feminine & the feline

behold! a little cat
who is a real, live goddess:
sweet terpsichore!

goddess-queen of heaven, conceiving,
encompassing the whole of life. thrice
greater than wifemother, the horned god, or
penis envy. the summation of all other
goddesses: isis, of the flesh & queen of the
throne, who is usert, thenenet, anqet, ankhet,
sekhet, sati, sept, renenet & tcheft; broadbreasted
gaia, rising out of chaos; aphrodite,
out of uranus’ testicles; selene, lit from the
gleam of her golden crown, freshly washed
in earthwaters, journeys eternally across the
heavens as night falls; hecate, queen of the
ghosts; bloody kali-durga, ever-caring threeeyed
mother, wearing a girdle made of dead
men’s heads; nana, mother of mawu-lisa &
old woman of the swamp; yemọja, mother of
the fishes & fifteen orisa – ur different
names cresting as waves in the sea of
humanity

bieti, chaus, manul, margarita, nigripes,
silvestrus & silvestrus catus, seven offspring
of felidae, put off their slow return to heaven
& take their sweet time – not because they
want their tummies tickled, entrusting their
safety to rough & clumsy human hands or to
vibrate their throats like addicts & valve the
air flow past lazy larynxes, opening &
closing, purring – but to guard & protect us,
their charges, even the gods, with eyes afire,
morphing into gods & goddesses
themselves, sekhmet, the red-fanged lionheaded
avenger & child of ra; bastet the
beautiful, another scion of ra, who endures
no rivals; tefnut, who sprang from ra’s
ejaculate; mother of geb the earth & nut the
sky; mafdet, cheetah-headed slayer of
serpents, the flame who shines on the brows
of chaos & mau-who-is-ra.

the feminine & the feline drawn together in
living metaphor. how do i understand the
divine apart from metaphor? how do i
understand u? what metaphors do justice to
the wonder of the feminine? the feline? the
twain? how can i know these mysteries: the
slippery walls of arousal, the prodigious
blood flow, swelling & sweating – the
explosive amrita. the rending & tearing of
panthera tigris who leaps a white striped &
fanged avenger from the anguish in a small
woman’s great soul. how can i know of this
save through whispered invocations, the
carrying of stones & herbs, the tying &
loosing of sacred knots, the opening of
locked secret places or disclosing my
unspoken feelings & listening intently in a
parlor full of real & phantasmagorical cats
when a goddess speaks.

© Joseph McNair; 2009