#tarot poem
I rode the heavy beast through the burning city. Our bodies fused a maiden and a lion, an image of power, colored red and purple and gold. The lip of the grail I held in the fiery air unfolded a horizon on which snakes danced victory laps. That was last year and now it’s night in the new one and the moon is new too and jackal-black. I’m as light as a shed skin, unseeing and see-through. I’m a ghost! I await my resurrection as the Prince of Salamanders. He looks like Lady Liberty but she is red and has an erect penis and rides a lion through the fiery air.
Coming back to life is not effortless. You’ve got to leap without looking. You’ve got to have the lust that shoots sparks out of your eyes and the rosy miracle of the heart’s new moon shedding implacable jackal black across everything, inside and out. You’ve got to choose and it will be cruel.
There is an intense lurking passion to create, but its children are monsters. Secrecy is here, and Perversion
(In the background, calm river winds under implacable night through wastes and oases.)
Remove your helmet of great spiral horns
(It’s as if you could only realize your essential happiness by getting outside yourself.)
Bare-armed, sigil-breasted and phoenix-fisted
(I’m a Salamander.)
There are no flames. They have all been turned into rays
intelligible geometrical form
(Love of open-air, field-sports, gardens and meadows)
All this tameless irrational energy and disturbance derives from the benign and gentle influence of the Mother.
(Beneath lie Ruins, a Truce, Hope and Unexpected Help)
Together now: The Prince of Salamanders
The compass is a wheel it’s a shield it’s a hole it’s a hole it’s a face
The hierophant is a king and an uncle and he’s lonely
Quit that arrogant impulse, heel-hung and hooked wriggler,
take vows, light your lantern
For three whole months on rocky moonlit slopes
keep company solely with three-headed dogs
Your lot in life is snakes & ladders but in springtime there will be parties,
Red Besser Days and Spicer Grails
