medusa

[constantine]

patiently she waits, the gracious one
medusa, her serpentine tresses coil
and hiss with the sibilance of the damned

i have grown under the tutelage of her eyes
basked in the warmth of the hearth
hungry, she fed me and
taught me the way of knife and fork,
i was schooled by her glances
and in my dreams her eyes followed me
she forgave and forbade my trespasses
my transgressions, once
she offered clemency for a kiss
but my timidity refused her
and she froze me with her pain

there is only one woman
no matter how many times we meet
she has the same eyes

[still.trucking]

She had such beautiful children
are we not fortunate sons

it was jitterbug who learned me how to stop her from beating on me with anything that came to her hand.

stop tripping my triger

[constantine]

big daddy gave em a dose of the same medicine - now nobody knows how to act.

[still.trucking]

Never occurred to jitterbug to tell me that.

What he said was never let her see you cry.

If she could not make cry eventually her arm got tired of beating on me and she never went there again.

But the idea did occur to me around ten years later. On the the twenty second of November 1963 as close as I ever got to suicide by matricide.

Poetry is a trip