The Horned God

 

The city is upon me

Like a bacteria, it makes the skies

Dull and full of greasy black smoke.

The freeways hiss with angry metal bugs,

Buzzing around sunny insect trails.

In my “box”

I stare for hours at the boundaries

Of where I am pinned, labeled and displayed.

People rustle papers at me

Like they are warding off demons.

The desk copiers blink and whirr.

The water cooler gargles the morning talk.

The coffee maker

Competes with the bathroom

For the rankest odor of the morning

In this cubicle

I wear a tie

And a false face

A grinning porcelain

That I switch successfully from happy to sad

Until someone notices I did it at the wrong time.

I am powerless here

I am hapless and worthless here.

Women laugh at how handily I am castrated

In the dull glow of the office lights

My bloodied hands

Juggling the stained knife.

There is some secret place I will go today,

And like a wolf kicks at the dirt

I will obscure the rancid city scent

From my flared nostrils.

I pull the phone plug from the wall

And toss papers onto the floor,

Sprint to the parking lot,

Hop into my car,

And join the herd of metal bugs

In their predictable journeys

But this time the grill of my car shines

With the beckoning glint of a western sun.

How far is it to the Sierras

Out from under the oppressive haze of Reno?

Not far.

It doesn’t take long

To find a loggers path

The rocks thumping like trolls

On the undercarriage of my car.

How long does it take to drive

Where there are no dirt roads

Or Forester’s stations

Or tired little camps

Full of numbed vacationers?

It’s hard to control the wheel here

And the path pitches and yaws like the ocean

But I am hungry for silence

And dead logs, and rotting pine needles,

And the carcass of a rabbit or squirrel.

Soon the car centers on the spine

Of a lump of granite.

I shut off the engine

Get out, and walk towards where the sun

Reaches golden hands through the tops

Of dark trees.

Here a bird calls, there a bush rustles.

The sun slides down the dark shanks of ancient pines

A somber, rich and bloody yellow.

I go forward

I go deeply

Forward

My tie dangles from a pine limb

My shirt makes a white patch

On a rotting trunk,

My pants nestle in rotting pine needles

With my shoes and socks

And as I descend into the forest noises

And the sun extinguishes itself in the darkening horizon

I find a stump that has rotted out

To make a perfect throne.

I sit naked

In the center of all this wildness

Under shimmering stars

And a sickly moon.

And hear the drummers

Circling my sacred power

And the naked maidens

Dancing, their small feet making the forest floor

Pop and crack.

There are sacrifices,

The smell of burning flesh and herbs

The rustle of leafy crowns

The murmur of archaic chants.

Flutes and ram horns

Rattles and clapping hands

They circle and move

Like stealthy ghosts in the dull, silver glow

Of an ancient moon. The wind touches

Like a woman’s fingers, the damp fur on my legs

And invisible lips

Kiss the cloven bone of my hooves.

And when I move my head

I can feel the threatening weight

Of the horns of Baphomet

Held erect by the neck of a bull

And open my mouth

And let the animals out of my heart

To growl and spit and tear

At this feckless, unsuspecting world

Camped on the periphery of my rigid, regal,

Ageless power.

The dancers stop

And nothing stirs now

In the great and ancient forest

The beating heart of this other world

Thumps defiantly,

Distant and mysterious

To timid, modern men.

By J.M.Lamoreux.