Tuesday, October 6, 2009

pomba gira (10)


pomba gira
beneath yr sway i have fallen, not once but
many times,
drawn to u like a shark to blood
in the water, yr comeliness,
a solicitation,
a knowing brush of a playful hand against my


tumescent need; u who are spouse to the
first among òrìşà,

the one who goes whither he pleases, is bound
by neither
law nor rule, who flows against
destiny through the cracks
& crevices of fate,
along the seams separating parallel worlds
&

multiple realities, over the precipice of human
folly; who
tests us at every crossroad & punishes
us today for what we
may do tomorrow – do u
really exist apart from him or are
u just one of
his many paths?


i invoke yr aid, pomba gira, because i cynically
know u will
help the truly desperate. when no
other òrìşà will answer
the plea, yr patronage is
always for sale & u always get paid
in advance.

u have led me to wives & lovers convinced that
i
was the magical piece missing from their lives;
that i could
& would complete them. they would
dazzle me with incompar
able enticements to keep

me from leaving; to keep me from
seeing what
they were hiding – those potent secrets best
kept
away from prying eyes:

a father’s salacious abuse piled on an innocent
who kept
the faith & family secret – the serial
violations visited on
an innocent so very
desperate to belong;


or the innocent tricked into fellating a trusted
family friend
while in his care; who with fearful
infirm purpose received
a perverse prize for
good behavior.


or yet again the innocent, abandoned on a refuse
heap
beneath a blanket of flies; who seeks self
worth in real life
pulchritudinous jackpots &
episodic debauchery.


or lastly, the innocent exploratory body play
among siblings that
turned terribly serious &
sexual; underscored by the death of one
& the
overwhelming neurotic guilt of the love-addicted
survivor…


& of course i saw them, these secrets; learned
about them. these
wives & lovers had a salubrious
need to tell their secrets to me &
i heard over
their whispered confidences eşu’s raucous
laughter.
had i just listened

to them, they
might have healed on their own,
might have purged themselves in nonjudgmental
ears; drained the
poison of the past from their
deep emotional wounds. might have
forgiven
those who caused them pain;

might have forgiven themselves
. but i couldn’t
leave any of it alone; i had to help. i had to dress
my
need to control in therapeutic whites & tell
them what to do. i had
to be right at their expense
& play upon their guilt. some I drove
screaming
into the night; drove all of them all away.


how many times have i come back to u, pomba
gira, with my thirty
pieces of tribute & the same
supplications that hope for a different
ending?
are u truly a sacred harlot or merely the hand of
eşu squeezing
my scrotum?

can u translate my sexual indiscretions into a
series of
great mystical rites or do u expose me
for the fool i am?
are yr breasts, so round, so
plump & firm, the enticing,passion fruit
of love
or merely eşu’s prurient tools to plunge me into

debauchery’s
murky depths. can those lips of yrs
that so glibly lie, mouth the sacred
mysteries i
crave i? is yr well of delight a redemptive revelation
or a
cauldron of concupiscence?

are u a divine sexual road in disguise or
just a
metaphor for human hubris at best?


©Joseph McNair;2009

2 comments:

  1. This image uses the color to show love but this red is not showing passionate love but painful love. The poem introuduces the audience to an individual that has become so in love to something or someone, and cannot let go. I thimk that we all come across this point in life where we think we are in love but time will tell. We should all just let it go.

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