Red Dragon

Lucifer (“Fire-bearer”) in Hebrew is Helel ben Sahar, “Bright Son of the Morning.” Later tradition has linked him to the planet Venus and, somewhat ambiguously, to other fiery falling figures: Hephaestus, Prometheus, Phaeton, Icarus. The pride that made him sit “in the seat of God” led to his fall; this is the Greek hubris so often punished by cosmic justice. The final battle of Revelation was also interpreted as a primal battle, the war in Heaven between Lucifer's forces and those of St. Michael at the beginning of time. After the fall, Lucifer, identified with the red dragon, becomes as hideous a he had become beautiful -- and changed his name to Satan.

-- Alice K. Turner, A History of Hell


RED DRAGON

November 8, 2005

Oh you should have seen me back then
as I ravened starry heavens in
my silver Rolls convertible, my black
hair like a mane wild in courses of the
night, my hands more perfect than
poured marble at the wheel. There wasn’t
an angelette in all eternity who could
resist my warm smile and icy eyes;
I could plunge a phallus of pure blue fire
right through ‘em with a glance. All those
downy wings spread wide in hot delight
of me! The O-mouths of ecstasy like
black holes birthing a legion suns with
each new name of God they called me
as I plunged and pumped the rebel fire.
I nailed ‘em all in the aeons of my youth,
each a campaign to mount the Master’s throne.
So many followed after me like whorls
of musky afterburn, cupping starlight
from the pools of sweat I left behind
between their ravished breasts, that cold
fire small comfort for eternity yet
infinitely far too much for life The rosewood
inlay above the backseat of that beastly Rolls
toward my end was notched ten billion
times, each scar and angel star, the
only true map of the horny heavens.
That fabled car is now smashed into the rocks
at the bottom of an abyss of black fire.
That’s where me and my element and
vampiric brood were hurled to when the Master
decreed I’d hurled rebellious oats around
the gables of his mansions long enough.
Every way I once shone bright is now
a hellish underglow; the smile I once
reaped angels with in a flash is now
this dragon’s snarl. I once was Lucifer
but that was long ago, before every thrill
heisted from the Master’s lap returned
to me, crying, Satan. Every delight I halved
from His light is now a scale heaped on my flesh,
a coil which circles now the undersides of the
earth’s own mortal plunge to smoking ruin.
But don’t be scared, my friend: I don’t
reveal the visage of desire’s fate till long
after you have fallen through the last bed
of your ding dong dorking life. By day you
only see this middle-aging man who shows
not an inkling of his former years. Who would
guess that the bland man driving in traffic
next to you was once the rapture of an angel’s
crease, the feral pillage of gossamer skirts
in the back seat of a hot car at the darkest
edge of town? No one: that’s the Master’s
curse, to burn the wings off every ache to
romp and roger His high heaven. That outer
fire burned wholly down and in, hurling
in its fumes that tell-all-book of big-night
drives to a place where none will ever
read it. My hell’s found in what burned from
my smile when the tide turned the other
way: when she at last refused to get in
and walked demurely off, leaving me with
this endless ache which no thrust skyward
could ever again slake. Forever now I am
the road not taken by every good impulse,
the shadow of infernal lust which no longer
must compulse maturing virgins of the heart
toward bad and worser ends. The hood
ornament of my Rolls was once the ikon
of my war with God is now all that remains
of my desire, washed on some faraway beach:
I am he who all put behind to start their
histories, the forever middle-aging man
between God and His procreative mysteries.



ENTER THE DRAGON

Jan 2005

The Dark -- felt beautiful.
-- Emily Dickinson (Fr. 627)

Beware the scented bed of
Love: it rides upon the
dragon’s back who swims
abyssal realms. Drowse
there and you’ll wake
a molted man of fire,
enrapt inside the rupture
of the devil of deep
welcome. Your wings
will lift you into nights
the size of titan ire,
your eyes whet and keen
for any trace of blue
embroilment to fall,
silklike, from yet
knowable breasts
ripe and leaking
dragon’s milk, booze
poured from paps
of doom. Ride such
nights at your peril,
son of ancient smiles:
Do not presume you
have tooth or troth
sufficient for that dark
demanding angel ride
into the chasm which
splits the fundaments.
Just hold on for your
immortal soul
and let heavens collide
and smash down
every shore. Let every
numen reveal the bestial
depths below, like buoys
singing on blackened tides,
rippled by deep waves
fanning deeper lands
than undreamt Love can go.





MASTER OF FIRE

May 2005

Appetite is barely the half of it.
Anyone can ache for the arch of
a lover’s welcoming spasm
and fan that gluttony to such
amplitude that he eats his
beloved’s body entire, leaving only
her blue aura to lamp that hell
inside his heat, a hole the
size of whale’s gobble. Mastering
the fire that way turns kings into
fools and smiths into the anvil they
keep hammering themselves upon
forever freezing desire with killed fire.
Merlin could charm his lord
Uther to look like the king’s rival
and charge full into the man’s
wife like the demon twin of
a cuckold. Such were the employs
of men with his dark talent,
his magic a soapstone to rub
steely ambitions to a gleam.
Merlin may have been lord
of Stonehenge, but when
Viviane smiled with those fey
so blue eyes he, he showed
his metier by singing her name
out of history into a meander
of stone. It took 3 times
to kill that first fool of fire,
but when it was done the
story took wing from its
aerie like dragons awakened
from the foundations of
an old tower, one beast white
the other one red, like cells
of a blood which
burns its blue flood, hot
for all it can’t have and yet is.
A master of fire has his
ashes as proof, the greater
half of his heart that cathedral-
sized pyre raised to you, my
Cape Blue, a story strung
from my broken lyre,
my book of drowning charms.