Your Soul (Who?)

[Guest guest]

I strip for both God and Man

layers and layers of Woman

endless names and voices come together

in one sweet prayer to your Beloved

 

Yet you would imprison me in your dark

shadows of fear, and blame me for your wicked

desire, hiding me behind a walking shroud,

 

I am Eve

I am Isis

I am Sophia

I am Diana

I am the Goddess you will kill, and kill for

I am Veronica

I am Solome

I am Rasa

I am Tania

I am Monica

I am Mary Magdalene

I am Patricia

I am an apostle of Christ

I am Buddha's emptiness

and Buddha's desire

I am Naga Moon

I am Raven Wing

I am Mazie

I am Hedi

I am Gill

I am Joyce

I am Josie

I am Joni

I am every name

I am a Lover of all Ways,

I write myself in setting suns and rising moons,

I am the artistic free hand of life,

an asteroid, a comet's tail, a dragon melting in the scales

of a fish called Wanda,

I am the eternal Spring returning in a Robin's breast

I am a crisis of identity in an Anna-Song

I am a Melody of every form and Sound

I am your imprisoned Faith behind

open door and

open windows

I Am Woman

I am bound feet and earth songs on moccasins

I am dark-lashed and light-eyed,

I am the texture

the feel

the softness of skin

I ride across your destiny on winged feet,

I am words that duel with you, sharp incisions,

I am the sacrifice you have made ready,

an altar to a nameless God

or a God of Susan,

I am your sister, mother or daughter, that stranger across

a lonely room,

the beggar for your Love

cast out into another

cruel night

Unknown

to the agony of your serpentine want:

to embrace ecstasy,

in your all-consuming desire,

I am the garbage decay of all life and the

residual emptiness

left behind,

like Lot's wife,

sea and salt memories, a burning pillar

of fire, wafting a feather plume,

white and pure,

 

I am that 500-pound gorilla sitting on your chest,

I am the thorn that removes the thorn from your

Lion's paw,

I am a gentle wind that rolls away the stone

guarding

your Heart of Hearts.