Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
The Upright Man
The first was a gift, of course—well, aren't they always?
—that Kelly gave you (he'd made it himself) one night
after one of those early sabbats in Shirley's basement.
Rite concluded, circle down, the rest had gone
upstairs to drink and party, but we—the young,
the pious, the naked—had stayed down by the fire.
Then suddenly it was on you, he was on you,
and the rite began, the real one: antlered
(the antlers screwed, had we known it,
into a yellow construction worker's helmet),
cowled with a bag-mask of faux brown fur,
with eye-holes, but no face.
Then there where you stood became our center:
your stocky body, firm as an earth-fast stone,
a rooted tree, our axis mundi, your thick veined cock
—with its own cowl—standing, throbbing,
with you, your antlers assaulting heaven
and we were dancing, dancing around you,
wheeling with you as our pole, while upstairs
they nattered and drank their silly cocktails.
That was both after and before the days of wood,
paint, and leather, but the antlers at least were real,
and so was the dance, and now,
some forty years on, our dance that night
has still not ended.
O Upright Man, O Lord:
may this dance never end.
For Uncle Wolf
1954-2004
In Memory
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