Tag Archives: Medusa

FACE


FACE

all you need
to face
the Medusa
is a mirror,

a sliver of mirror,
a shard, a fragment,
all are up to
it
all will do

why bother to
carry an ornate mirror, lug
a Louis XIV
piece of
     gilded craftsmanship
into the Gorgon’s cave
that place
of ultimate, perversely
exquisite danger

or any of those bent, warped,
ostensibly satirical
crazy
    circus fairground
magically distorting
mirrors

as if this insult to injury is the way
to strip Medusa bare of
her instantaneous
lethal charm
         all that is left
of her femininity,
humanity

to confront
the monster
you
   made a monster
thing mirrored out
of shadow refraction

     face it, stand it down,
not to balk at
what
   it can do to you
this aberration

which
       let us never forget
was not
always so
    was defiled and then
so hideously transformed
by nothing less
than masculinity itself
by those
same propensities to
heroism surging
unrestrained
within you
    sanctioned and
given
   covering fire
by divine wisdom itself

yes,

   stare into that glass
you wish to use
as deadly
   targeting weapon
before you
point it

at the evil that you secretly
fear
   itself a reflection

proof that behind all
great celebrated
truth
    redemptive victory
a horrible lie

as false
     as any false window, doorway
trick of perspective
fiction of
       dimensions in
true trompe l’oeil

MEDUSA

MEDUSA

Medusa, she of the serpent tresses,
unjustly transformed because
women cannot be innocent

knows they are coming
the reporters, the cameras,
the cliche
hunting commentators,
the writers and poets
with all
  their reflective surfaces

knowing
    she can never
forgive or be forgiven

and this her logic
is that
   until she is killed
(sure she
is to be killed)
she must
    strive to turn
each of these
paladins of brutality
contempt, injustice

to mute outcrops
of fabulous stone.

MEDUSA

MEDUSA

stared into
the face of suffering

your
hard suffering
that turns
to stone

turned me
to stone
relief to
my soft
suffering

equality in
the transaction
turning us
both
to stone

and they we were
amongst, what she
we call them
that
host of statues,
perhaps effigies?

but there you are
reptilian, murderous,
no crown
of thorns to adorn
only headdress of vipers
spitting, writhing,

their eyes
trying to make sense
of my pity
my sorrow

only thing to
match
your anger

blow for blow
run with your wrath

WITH MEDUSA

WITH MEDUSA

I had tea
with Medusa

on Solaris (was
hell striving to convince
her I had
been invited)

joke being
that he who fathered me
swore I could
never grow man enough
to be turned
into stone

and then,
of course, so much
snake myself that she
could not but
feel comfortable
dialing down the ancient wrath
to what
barely rose above
a frown

and thus enough frissance,
and indeed camaraderie,
to sustain
this sudden
turn to ceremony, leading
to the pouring
and imbibing of (obviously)
milkless green tea

and thus
taking time out to wonder
which of us
might be real, unless both,
or even neither

or as
the planet itself might
elect to determine
constructed exclusively
from
memories
or producr of
the dialogue, dialectic, between
the snakes
in both our systems
and the alien intellect rooted
in Solaris itself

(such a bugbear, and liberation,
how the human
brain
finds itself shaped to
divine and interpret)