- Holy
In you
I am saved.
We join together
and my sins are washed away
Every caress transforms into a psalm
Every sigh, a hymn
Every place where flesh meets flesh
a pilgrimage site
The way you touch me
feels like an act of worship,
reverent passion.
I am sanctified in you
drops of sweat mingle
like wine to blood
Our union transmutes into
communion as I feast on your body
and you drink my blood -
I am born again
© 11/4/98 Lucy Pantera
Another World
When I drift off to sleep
my life begins anew
with you
In the semi-lucid glimpses
trapped between twilight
and midnight
I fall in love
with someone I've never seen~
I feel you
I know you with a clarity beyond words
You wait for me there
and I feel that surge of energy
that means I'm dreaming of you
even though I'm awake
and those dreams are more real
than the sheets which trap me in my bed,
that tie me to this world.
I tingle with the thought of you
and I feel your thoughts, pressing on me
like filament or gossamer
and I can't tell where I end and you begin~
There is suddenly only "we."
Slumber beckons, seducing me
and I give myself over to it,
sloughing off this world for a place
where we soar the stars together~
This world, too, would be magical
if you could be here with me
if I could hear your voice
touch your face
feel your arms envelop me...
I live a lifetime in those moments,
those stolen bits of time,
fragments of feeling that keep me whole
coming from the fringes of reality
where hopes and dreams meet
© Lucy Pantera
The First Cut Is the Deepest
I grew bored with my waist-length hair.
I wanted to be exciting again
like I was in high school when everyone waited
to see what wacky new wave style I'd sport next
What color, how spiky or asymmetrical-
it may have been odd or even ugly, but never dull
No more straight blunt cut for me
No more hair down to my ass
After five long years, I was changing my style
I felt lighter
With each snip, I defied all the boyfriends
who told me never to cut my hair. My hair!
Since when did it become public property?
With every inch shorn,
I took back my life
When I got home, the style looked barely different to me
Just shorter
Lots
shorter.
I called my mother in the midst of a fit
She didn't even recognize my voice amidst the sobs
One clear, unobstructed phrase sprang painfully from my tear-stained lips
"I'm uh-uh-uh-gleeeeeeee!"
My pride and joy was gone, and
I felt like the same old me-
All I could say was, "I'm ugly!"
"You're still a beautiful girl," she crooned
Like it's not in the Mom Contract to have to say that
and guys' opinons really do matter
No matter what my Women's Studies classes taught me
Nearly twelve inches gone
in the snip that it took to
unman John Wayne Bobbitt.
Samson lost his power when he lost his tresses-
I cursed all the people that linked my identity
and ended up cursing myself instead.
Even now, I feel that pang when I brush my hair
and the brush keeps going instinctively
long after the hair has stopped
like an amputee feels pain in a ghost limb.
My prettiness, sold somewhere to make a wig.
My hair, at least, will grow back
© Lucy Pantera
Simple
My friend's baby was
profound again today.
At eighteen months, he's
got it all down.
You see, he learned the word
"ball" last week, no doubt
a dubious achievement.
So yesterday when we were playing
in the garden, he found a round
rock and threw it at me,
gleefully shouting, "Ball!"
I panicked.
Ever the helpful, well-intentioned one,
I corrected him.
"No Jon-Jon, not ball, ROCK. See?
Hard. No bounce. Rock. Can you say
rock?"
So now in Jon's world, if
something is round and it's
not a ball, it's a rock.
It's just that simple, see?
© Lucy Pantera
Dream
When I close my eyes
I call you again, in the shadowy realm
where you dwell.
Softly, like our first ethereal kiss,
opening like rosebuds against
my dream lips,
more real than sunlight,
you speak without words.
In defiance of the coming dawn,
I savor you like droplets of wine or sweat
still feeling you,
Your imprint on me like
the rumpled spot in my sheets
where I felt you
in my sleep
© Lucy Pantera
Missing
I am haunted by a vision from my past. Abraham and Isaac.
The scene is depicted in our family Bible, and I cannot purge it from my skull.
When I was young, it horrified me, yet I could not look away.
Abraham about to plunge a knife into his terrified only son,
his eyes wild with religious fervor, as he prepares to make
the ultimate sacrifice to prove the supremacy of his faith.
The book creaks open,
its ponderous weight oppressive in my lap.
Faded gold-gilt leather-bound pages choked with dust make my irritated eyes water.
I do not know why I must look at the garish image again. It horrifies me still.
Besides, God holds little interest for me lately.
I do not recognize him among these battered leaves.
Still, I turn the pages, breathless from the puffs of grey wafting into my lungs.
I was unaware that I was searching.
Only now that I have found it, just now do I realize that I was missing something.
A single, lonely rose pressed within the pages. My rose.
I placed it there ever so tenderly after the wake, to keep it safe, to preserve it.
In surprise, I grasp the hardened stem and find a thorn.
Since it is dried, the sting is somehow more intense.
My finger in my mouth, I taste the coppery tang of blood.
I am still alive; I feel pain.
© Lucy Pantera
Breathing
She asked him to stop
the car. He pulled over and they parked
on a dark country road.
"It's a full moon tonight,"
she remarked to no one in particular. They crossed the
field in a spray of moondust
and starlight, refracted by
the frosty November grass.
She noticed their breath, a pair
of silver-misty clouds touching fingertips
as he whispered, "I want to
show you something."
The moon strained to complete its arc, caught
in the web of winter-barren branches.
The bare boughs teemed with life, gilt with platinum frost.
At the tree line, breathless, the lovers
paused. "I can feel it," she sighed, or
thought, as he asked, "Can you sense the magic?"
They beamed like moonlight at each other, thoughts
entwined like summer's ivy that
slumbered beneath their feet.
"I begin and you end and it's all
the same," they breathed together.
Without a word, the universe spoke.
"Destiny." She felt the
grass, the trees, the wind whisper, without
a sound, "He is the one." Wordlessly answering
the question borne of his heart, the Indian spirits
who slept in blankets of earth revealed,
"She is the one."
"I swear I will love you
with the very depth and breadth of my being
for my entire life."
After an embrace shared by the maiden
moon, they resumed their moondust path back across the field.
Outside the car, they breathed together,
and the foggy mists
mingled in the shadow
of the silvery-white orb.
© Lucy Pantera
Lucy Pantera
the street corner | scentless apprentice | Druidic Concoctions | anonymous
Antithesis | Jules | ET | Paul