I pour out a cup
of my precious dancing bull wine for you
fire-faced Loki
most hated and most loved
of all the gods.
They say you’re going to be responsible
for the destruction of the world.
It will be sad, sure, but what’s a world for
if we can’t mourn it’s passage
and celebrate the transformation into something new?
“Are you doing all right?” she asks,
as I stumble back into my apartment,
carrying a bottle of wine for you.
“I’m doing great,” I say,
my words slurred but coming from the heart.
“I’m writing poetry. And what’s better than that?”
You are sweet but empty,
entirely mad and quite dangerous.
Once my god traveled to Germany,
to the Black Forest where Roman legions disappeared
without a trace.
I imagine you and he met
and toasted each other,
bringers of the madness of radical transformation.
What amusing tragedy resulted,
what gay sporting among the ashes
laughter and the hiss of serpents,
prophetic and painful.
Baldur must die
so that new flowers can rise
and the grapes that hang on the vine will swell
like beautiful girls who give up their lives
for the mask-wearing stranger,
the clown from Thebes.
My song is not conventional,
but I mean every word of it
– there is no enmity between the sons of Laufey and Semele
and I feel none either.

10 months ago  /  4 notes