EARTH: DEATH

Day Five
Moon in Libra




You died last night
In the Fountain
At 2:30 AM
You curled up
And died

Disappearing over Earth
Under the black night
The black satin
Covering the bed in Fire

Death seized you
In the matrix
Leading you to Real World
And back

You return to the past
To arrive at the future
The nurturing of the body

Through the Venus cycles
Honored on the altar
The five mounds of matter
Containing the purified
Relics

Her pentacle shape
The rhythm by which she moves in the heavens
And below

Venus projecting the force
Of the feminine
Through her cycles
Of Death and Rebirth
As Morning and Evening Star

Aries, Gemini, Leo, Scorpio, Capricorn
The five points repeating itself
In a perfectly symmetrical
Rhythm
Absorbing the energies
Of liberation

The symbol of the labyrinth on the wall
Reflecting the Real World
Above the shrine to the New Man

The adept must travel the labyrinth
To arrive at the center
The six-petal Rosette
Symbol of the ancient love Goddess
Queen of Heaven & Earth

Myths, proclaimed the great teacher
Are created for the first time by the gods
And repeated into perpetuity by humans

You died last night
To be reborn
Into the emerald star
The alchemist placed
On your forehead

The vision filled the vessel
Emptied by five days
Of ritual fasting
A walk
Through the Mandela
Delivering Cosmos into Body
In midtown Manhattan

Taking position
On the throne
The center of
The Finger of God
Before the pregnant cow

A manifestation of a dream
When you were in the labyrinth
A cow with a coin in its belly
Lady Liberty born
From the resurrected female

Your hands burning
Yes, it is time
So much
Love from the street

Couples holding hands
Smiling
Thumbs up
You know what this means
The constellation has landed!

To hell with the art world
The media
Academics
Tentacles of the Patriarchy
Repressing the knowledge
Of liberation

You hear the voice
On the street
Climbing the stairway to heaven
Through the chakras
Spreading a new idea to the people
The body as the temple
Of a new religion

And you think about
The woman who wrote the book
On charisma
How her ideas were controversial
Not with the people
But the media
Who believed only THEY had charisma

Ha!
The serpent power is accessible to all

It is your destiny
To bypass the art world
The media
The academics
To bring this knowledge
To the people

Why else would you have chosen a father
Who went all the way to a mountaintop in India
To find the secret of the serpent power
Which ultimately destroyed him
Yet left trails for you to follow
Through the labyrinth
To find establish your own power
In the world

Last night you died
The sacrifice was essential
To make this knowledge
Known to humanity
The injustices in the world
Are simply too great

You are crying now
In the Fountain
Emboldened by the Coagulatio
As you recall Death
The earth is suffering
The pain that humans have inflicted on Her
Is immeasurable

The green light of compassion
Must flow
It begins with a conscious act
By a solitary human being
Sitting in an antique iron bathtub
In midtown Manhattan
And spreads to the world

The pain inflicted on the Native Americans
Custodians of the Earth
They invited you into their church
Where they poured their pain
Into water over the coals
Horrendous stories
Of disconnection
Alcoholism and despair

The shaman with the limp
Body used
For Polio experiments
He told you that
He died twice

Once you overcome your fear
Of death, he said
You can move
Between the worlds
You become a shaman
Interpreter

You have died so many times
On this journey
All to sit
In the center
Of the matrix formed
In last night’s ceremony

How many times
Have you shouted to the universe
Use me!
And finally it happened
Right in public

Four lines of energy connecting
Uranus and Neptune
The mutual reception between
Pisces and Aquarius
Funneling
Into the Moon
And Venus

Mars, the Warrior
The New Male
Who is grateful
To the Goddess
For making him whole
This was your experience
In the Coagulatio

During the Solstice ritual
You proclaimed
For the world to have peace
Masculine and feminine
Must integrate
And so you created the Mandela
Of the Sacred Marriage
The peace sign

Meditating
Before the cow
Carrying the seeds
In her belly

You disappeared
Into a trance state
Joined the spirits
Dancing
Inside the alchemist’s emerald star
Icon of the Conjunctio
Marriage of Sol and Luna

Peter Gabriel’s Passion raising
The spirits to dance through the gallery
Injecting the message
Into your body
It is time

You have gone through
Many deaths on this journey
The more rapid the alchemical transmutation
The more deaths you must endure

Death in the high desert
Where you discovered
A biography on Krishnamurti
And there, in a photo of Annie Besant’s inner circle
A photo of Nick’s ancestor
In Bishop’s hat

You died in the presence of your suitor
On the beach in Malibu
Where he held your face in his hands
Words like a caress
We share a common destiny

The photograph was the signal
You had to go to London
The timing was crucial
Pre-selected
By the Universe
You had to comply

December 13, 1993
You remember it well
Your passport was renewed
With moments to spare
A miracle that you got on the plane
With the infected eye
An ominous sign of disaster

You struggled to make that
That Virgin Airline flight
The hands of your destiny clock
Rapidly ticking
Like a time bomb
Detained by an Israeli security guard
There is something about you, he said
Narrowing his gaze

Such was the energy
Propelling you to London
On that fated day

What is she doing?
A knock
Can I go in there with you?
No, you reply with a shake of the head
A flash from a camera

You rush Nick through
The British Museum
Not stopping your quest
Until reaching the oldest gallery
The Mesopotamian Room
With the clay cuneiform tablets
In display cases
You travel back in time
To the origins of writing

There you stood in awe
Caressing the image of Inanna
In your good eye
Holding her symbol of the Reed
The plant that grows
In the intermediate realm
Between conscious (land) and unconscious (river)

That pregnant moment
Interrupted
By a loud ringing
Doors to the gallery swing shut
Leaving you and your suitor
Alone among the ancient relics
A bomb scare, he says

And so
This is the bomb you arrived in London to defuse!
The guardians protecting knowledge
Of the empowered Venus
Self proclaimed Queen of Heaven & Earth!

You had to leave Los Angeles
First the riots
Then the fires
The ashes still warm
When you crossed a boundary
To tour the ravaged hills of Malibu
Delivered sweets to a woman
Mourning over the loss of her English garden
Lovingly attended over 20 years
Dead
She never recovered from the loss

A knock on the window
Another camera pointed at your face
You aren’t used to smiling
When you write
But you do for the camera

After your Narcissus bloomed
On the Spring Equinox
Running to Sedona
After hearing Peter Gabriel’s command
Jump into the water
As the washing machine overflowed

In the desert
You met a woman
Who had Peter Gabriel
In her backpack

The entire body of work
You listened to as you drove
Through the labyrinth
To the sacred sites
Body blown by forces
You had not the strength, the stability
To contain

And so
You bought another Virgin Airlines ticket
Slick patent leather
Trench coat placed on
Your shoulders by a friend

There, she said, now you
Will intimidate them!
Our other friend,
Who bought you
The Chanel lipstick
Coco Red
Bought by another friend

In London they thought you were
A high-class hooker
Trying to convert you to Jesus
In the Underground
Asking how much you charge
On the street

But you were in England
On a wedding march
Or so you thought

Nick took you through the rituals
Of the Sacred Marriage
The visit to the village
May Day ceremony
To witness the crowning
Of King and Queen
Around the Maypole

The visit to the castle
To have tea
With the husband
Of Princess Diana’s astrologer

The cleansing baths
In his antique bathtub
With feet

Now, sitting in your own tub
The Iron Maiden
Vibrating to the sound
Of death and rebirth
The Passion pouring through your computer
Moving the kundalini through the chakras

You realize what you were doing in London
In that get up
You were acting out the Magdalene
Experiencing first hand what it feels like to have the Goddess given power
Denied

Prospective bride
Punished
For running off to the high desert
To discover a secret
The occult ancestry
Of the groom
Hidden

Along with his magician’s craft
As he sought
The key to fertility
Yet repressed
Woman
Keeper of the secret of fertility

The prospective bride
Not yet returned
From exile

The fated encounter
Progressing
To the inevitable conclusion
Tossed out in the cold

The only shelter a red phone booth
With the crown over the door
Another sign of the Sacred Marriage
Which wasn’t meant to be

As you stood and watched
The lights go on
And then go out
Inside his Hampstead townhouse
As the phone rang and rang
In your ear

Gathering your slick trench
Around you
In the cold of the spring night
What other conclusion could you draw?
Only the most obvious

There is no place in this world for the
Empowered woman
In the 20th century
What else could you do

But retreat from the battleground
Return to your childhood home
As the century ran its course
To work out a solution

But first you returned to Bath
Where you got caught up in another myth
The return of Venus

A procession to the Cross Bath
Pagan figures with matted hair
Raising torches and candles
An offer of a flame
An invitation
To participate
In a mythical unfolding

Winding through town
To a Georgian building
With a serpentine east façade
The origin of the Cross Bath

The foundation of the city
And entrance to the Otherworld
Place of communion with the Earth Mother Goddess
Sulia, a Welsh name meaning
An opening, gap, eye or orifice

Within the gap between worlds
The observer transforms into participant
You sign the petition to restore the spring

The procession continues
A fellow in a shirt proclaiming
Save Solsbury Hill
They are building a new Euoroute, he says
Costing 75 million pounds

A boy hands you a map
Tracing the Euroroute with his finger
It runs beside the train tracks
That is right, he says
They are destroying a sacred site
Solsbury Hill

Solsbury Hill? Isn’t that from a Peter Gabriel song?
The hill existed before the song.
You can see the city lights. That is Bath?

You are in rhythm with the Durgas
Warriors of the Earth Goddess
Protectors of her sacred sites

You lived with the Earth people in America
The Native Americans
And now, these are the Earth people of Europe
In dreadlocks
Baggy linen trousers held up with a rope
Torn woolen jumper

Eight hundred sacred sites
Ruined by technology, you are told
The collective lament
Roads are for connections
They used to bring people together
Now they divide

You travel with the Durgas
To their camp
In a cow pasture
They invite you to spend the night
You decline but agree to attend
The pagan wedding ceremony
On the hill top the next day

It is drizzling in the morning
You arrive at the base of the hill
Torn up by the man made machines
It is a dramatic site

Children climb the bulldozers
And are flung to the ground
The engines roar
Over the wailing mothers

A graffiti message scrawled
On the trailer proclaiming
A menace that started small
Grown into a monster
Threatening to destroy the whole town

A fire at the center
Of an encampment
And there you meet Tinkerbelle
A fierce beauty

In a ragged peacoat
Golden dreadlocks
Matted by mud
You are the scribe, she tells you
You are writing the myth

Armed by this information
You long for perspective
And forge onward and upward

Wandering through
Fields of violet and buttercups
You reach barbed wire
Refusing to be daunted by a physical boundary
You climb the fence
Tearing the designer trench

The embattled warrior
Armor ravaged by the tension
Of warring archetypes
Projecting onto your mirrored surface

Suppressing your dark thoughts
You cast your gaze to your journey
Solsbury Hill above you
Majestic and proud
Oblivious to the war
Raged at her foot

You arrive at the top
Flattened in the Iron Age
When the breasts were removed
From the Earth Goddess
To make her into an Amazon

You find the shrine
A medicine wheel
Beside a white flag
Waving a simple message

Surrender
Venus appears on the horizon
Filling you with a
Serenity
You hadn’t experienced
Since the sweat lodge

An inner union
Magician & priestess
Engaged in the Conjuntio
An inner experience

At odds with
Your image
The femme fatale
Lent to you by female friends
Glossy black trench with its golden buttons
Chanel lipstick
The combat boots were your own
By the way

The next day, you amble
Through the village
Entering a shop
Where you showed them
The torn coat
They laughed out loud
And you had to join them in mirth

Where could you go now?
With your image in tatters?

Sipping cider
At a bar
You hear
Solsbury Hill
Son, we are going to take you home
And you knew precisely where
You had to go
Home

There was one more sign
In America
On the marquee of the Beacon Theater
Reads Peter Gabriel: Witness

It took thirteen years of bearing witness
While developing a form
That delivered you here in the Iron Maiden
Thirteen years for the artifacts of your mystical ride in England to
Resurrect

When you returned to New York
Taking a stroll up Broadway
There you saw it
The message
The Beacon Theater
Peter Gabriel: Witness

And so, you created
The Roadmap
Through the Labyrinth
to Real World

And truly, the story is quite funny
That is what your teacher wrote
On Exercise # 5
At a Columbia Writing Intensive
Where you attempted to pick up the wreckage
The Sacred Marriage
If not in love
Than at least on paper



And here they end up
Surrounding you in the gallery
A return to that early vision of
The Conjuctio

A knock on the window
Another camera
Two
You aren’t used to smiling
When you are writing

You considered last night
During the ritual
What would have happened
If you remained in that
Mystical world swirling around you
The wounded male spirit in his townhouse
Dripping blood from the penis

Nick who promised to remove
You from the Hall of Mirrors
And placed you even deeper
Into the myth

Now, 13 years later
You are finally grounded
Enough to return there
The land where the Goddess
Is remembered

From the Native American sweat lodge
To the Cross Bath
A cry for Her resurrection
The cry for her sacred spaces
To be preserved
And what was your role
In this passion play

Tinkerbelle told you
Scribe
So you returned to the hearth
The house where you were raised
And began to write
You wrote nonstop
For fourteen years

A virtual hill of writing
About the Goddess
A stream of energy
That could not be stopped
Only controlled
Poured into the alphabet
The alphabet transformed into images
Streaked with your menstrual blood
Your passion
Flowing with the Moon

This was the gift of the Goddess to humanity
It liberated you
Perhaps it can do the same for others

Blood
There is no ritual in the world
Without it

Eating blood sausages
Under an eclipse
Sipping the blood of Christ
In a Rioja

Men gashing their limbs at Sun Dance
Lilith runs off
To the Red Sea
Sleeping Beauty has her finger pricked
Before waking
And AIDS
The horror of death through sex

Blood
There is no ritual in the world
Without it
Purified, it gives life
Tainted, it kills

Your blood
The Passion
Transforming words
Into Sacred Matter
The Great Work
To be completed
At the Fall Equinox

The rest is up to the Universe



THE LAB GALLERY IN THE ROGER SMITH HOTEL PRESENT ALCHEMY OF LOVE: III AIR (SUBLUMIATIO), SEPT 23 - 30