A Difficult Woman

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Sad Mercury Rising

I watch her. Refracted, the shimmering shadows
Her curved riping body, demon-faced fair.
She is foreign, familiar, a darkly-lit ice queen
Besting galaxies old dusted star-strewn;
Clad velvet, locked rusting, in iron’s cold stare.

She, once cast off, now sits with quick madness
Slip-surfaced wet from salt looking fragile glass skies
Her sloe-dark eye, all-seeing, shatters mysteries as mirrors;
If beauty is truth, says she, gaze-narrowed onward,
Then as beauty and virtue, truth in her turn, too, will die.

She nods to me now, ready to have a true telling
Of a girl, close theft-taking empress beauty’s fair crown;
Palace pale, wolf-hunted, a snowy white rosebud
Blood of hers a thick reddening
When it redded, so it bedded, it bled and bled down.

I saw appear, there, in her heart’s hot ashes
A rush-gushing wild heat, promised power to come
There’s but one answer, I hear her, hands raising
Slim, slight, ready, they beckon
The story still a-twisting, turning, crackles and thrums.

Speak itmirror, speak me of my own beauty
Thrown wordless at me, cold crisping clarion call
And as Sad Mercury rises, silver weeping moonlight
Yes, my Queen, I bind anew my mistress,
 
You are

[again]

The Very Fairest Of Them All.