The Sixteenth Alcove
Obscene Worship
I
She is beauty and grace
Personified – in her form
Many reflections of the true
Goddess, Moon: the One to whom
I abase myself nightly
Her cycles of blood a tide
Matching the Goddess; and the
Waxing and waning of her
Attentions a proof of her divinity –
An irrefutable lineage clearly seen
Never doubt that she is
The spark of greatest creativity,
A muse and a temptress
Worthy of a worshipful tongue
To please her or extol her virtues
II
Her many guises charm and beguile:
Now ebon or alabaster,
Cream or exotic spice –
And inside each trembling blossom,
The blush of faded rose petal
Varied in shape and size;
Suited to fill many roles
Within the vast pantheon of my need:
Humbled domesticity to
Abandoned gratification
III
Sometimes I feel I am a lowly worm,
Flicked casually from gilded sandal strap:
Rightly so, for what have I to offer
In exchange for her many charms –
And I unworthy of receiving
The least of them
So she is placed high atop a monumental column:
One carved with hieroglyphic proficiency;
Undecipherable and cold as icicles
From such a height she gazes
At far off spectacles; delights
The likes of which no worm has eyes for
Her eyes drawn to far off
Amusements; and I a wriggling
Speck so far below:
How else would she perceive me
‘cept through eyes so clearly divine?
IV
Should her lofty attentions
Fall gently down upon me,
There is a power lent me by this:
I am become a rampaging Wyrm
That reminder of her human nature
Enthralls and excites me into actions
Quite contrary to confessions of worship
My strength then shakes
Her aerie loft from its foundations –
Ardent exhalations thawing the caryatid
Till the unguessed at sense of what was writ there
Runs dripping off; the very secrets of her
Poured out to soak uselessly into the earth
V
Tremblors set into the cracks
And her monolith is crumbled
So that she must fall to lie
Helpless and chaotic
When her mind is all a jumble,
I am most decisive and delight
In toying with my prey
(she to whom I had prayed as a lowly toy)
Sharpened fangs grasp cruelly
Whilst shaving flesh so thinly,
To clarify her succulence
Upon my moistened tongue -
And hardened talon pierces her
‘midst whispers of denial
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