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 incomparable 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
