The River Styx 7/25/14

The River Styx

crossed the Missouri

three miles from where ever I was

at the time when I grew up

before heaven knew I existed

and hell did not matter

only in minds of grey men

in sack cloth robes

while women held the ancient wisdom

saving it for when the bird tribes

would again give freedom to exist

in green lands where the sacred plan grew

for the believers who practiced

sacred arts of healing the earth

and all who doubted allegiance

to those who dwelt in dark caves

where the treasure was buried

before time ran forward

and everything grew young and died.

 

I finished reading the holy book

of false revelations

and laid down in green grass

filled with yellow daisies

where I slept for a millennium . . . missing nothing.

Dionysus hid under the stage

when the bugbear entered the roadhouse

on Route 275 north of Colorado

last summer when rivers were flooded

with souls Hades refused.

 

The owl flew down from a snowy mountain south of Denver.

 

The festival continued with Pipers satiated with wine playing until dawn.

 

Dancers wore laurel in blond curls

that hung down their naked backs

and sang dis-ambiguous lyrics of an old song.

 

Lovers lay together in the pine forest.

 

We died in each other’s sweet breath and lambent caresses.

 

Dionysus rested in lucid reverie

naked by rimpled creek waters

while gods and goddesses smiled

to themselves

in their etheric heaven

where all lived free

from the maw of mammon’s grasp.

The way we talked

sad mumble jumble

incomplete thoughts

on a silly sultry

summer night when June kissed Luna goodnight.

 

That night we

danced slowly

to a Viennese waltz

played by a

rock band in

the empty street of shuttered store fronts where the dreamless slept.

 

Have we ever

learned anything

of each other

from the endless discourse of incomplete sentences without noun or verb?

 

At the dawn

Morrigan played

her silver flute

with her black

feathered fingers

and you became me

and I became you the final battle lost forever and we were now immortal.

 

Aphrodite found

her revenge

as we drank our

morning coffee

with our croissants

that fed our bliss

and we wrote

our new poetry

and sonnets about futility of love we would share for eternity.

Winter comes and life is full and fat

with excess of youth.

The man now leaves the boy,

to dwell alone in quiet places.

 

He can talk with his soul and heart

of things recently new

deep in his psyche long hidden

from children, flowers and bugs.

Now is his time for ideas

of wild things and drums,

of dancing with eagles,

bears and elves.

 

We dance in tall prairie grasses

to ancient drums and flutes.

We sit by a small campfire

under a bright starry no moon sky.

 

We tell the tales of our lives

both present and past.

We talk of who we are,

why we have come . . .

to explore a universe together.

Bring round drums, naked…

dancers, singers, pipes, earth smoke

earth time change.

Dance dance pagan dance

in white robes of snow cold

white light . . . white light.