Denise Dee

The Journey

We'll journey to the bota, the place where the dead now live
If you speak to certain people they'll say they've seen them risen
again
Here's a piece of candy, have a sweet taste in your mouth when you
grieve
Know that nothing lasts, the sweet and the sour both rise
We are born to die, the circle always spins

Come with me to the bota, let the journey begin
We'll journey to the bota, let our journey begin

We lined up on the road
People played flutes, the crowd made a glorious din
The taste from the candy was sweet, sweet or sour by turn
With something in my mouth, didn't have to search for words
What is the sound of a voice carried on the wind?

I saw my mother had risen, a slight greenish cast to her skin
Bones were showing, where once her eyes and mouth had been
Her hair was standing on end
People walking around me, ripped their clothes to shreds
This was the way they told me, they used to honor the dead
Someone started speaking, couldn't understand a word that he said
In Greek they used the same word for sleep and for dead
The road where we walked flattened, everything seemed grey
The way that things get, when you've been walking all day

Shrines lined the side of the road, filled with saints or as a place to
rest
I filled the boxes with coins each one containing a wish
They used to bury people with money and food at their side
I remembered the words "Shake the dust from your feet and rise"
Set out to a town where there might be a friendly face
If they offer you food, you will both be filled with grace
If someone feeds you while you walk, walking down the road
With their food in your stomach, no harm can come to you

"Set out on every journey, as though it may be your last
Stop for everyone you meet, don't always move so fast"
The little boy said as he offered me a glass
I gulped down some water, remembered his words and started to sip
When I finished drinking, the dead I had been walking with
disappeared into the night

I sat against a tree where I knew I would go to sleep
With a rock for a pillow, closed my eyes and started to dream
The voice that will speak through you, will not be your own but God's
Sometimes you will hear it, when you are not asleep
Sometimes the things it tells you, will make you want to weep
All of life is a journey, a journey down a road
Sometimes you'll want to stay, but the voice will tell you to go
Someone whispered "bota", the place where the dead now live
Walk with me to the bota, let the journey begin

Lunacy

Oh dark serpent's tail wound around
my mother's neck
the madness of my father strangling
her creativity
I wake to find
her hands wrapped around mine
I offer her an apple
but she no longer craves the taste of forbidden fruit
her juiciness withered
her well dry
she does not trust me, wants to believe it was I
who took her life
on a broomstick a shrunken head made of apple
does jumping the broom sweep your life
of the impulse to create?
She never wanted to be called mother
and neither do I
if this is madness
bring it on

The Beginning of Light

Some cities have darkness visible
there is no need to hide what you fear is ugly in them
this morning the turrets of an apartment building
against the night sky
give way to the beginning of light
reminding me of Prague, city of bridges
shadowy statues, figures emerge from clocks
symbols float across the subconscious of a city
the bridge across watery emotion
the 12th hour, one of drowning

And on Halloween for the first time
in thirty years I dress up
as the light in me
no need to take darkness out of a trunk
I have lived believing that darkness could not coexist with light
did not mind the darkness
believed it to be the well I drank creativity from
had heard that the resurrection followed death
pictured my father strapped to a table passive
gentle as the lamb
as electricity blazed through his brain
attempting... what?
to kill the dark parts, resurrect the light, restore balance?
I think of Herman Munster and Grandpa, cartoonish men
in the basement
lightening bolts leak from his brain and this is what I believed men
were
inept, drained of some vital life force
my brain blazes with electricity
and I cannot stop the words
though at some point I thought him divine
my emasculated father
and the emasculated Christ
drained of anger, outside of life

My moon is dark in the shadow
of my sun, shadows have never scared me
I was born into Pittsburgh, city of darkness
in daytime when my father was a child
no sun shone
his mother unable to use her lungs
blackened by tuberculosis
rot on a potato, they were Irish
who believed in misery as mystery that resurrected you
into the next world
his father blotted by alcohol
my sun hidden in the 12th house, the one of secrets, of drowning
my sun named Leo like my father
and because he dimmed himself must I?

On the bridge in Prague, the clock strikes noon
my dark moon
my father had no mother, and neither did I
my moon dark behind my sun
my mother became mother to him, and father to me
and I searched the darkness
for someone to nurture me and found

Shadows fall, the last bell, motion stops on the bridge
heads raise to the sky, the sign that the dance will begin
figures emerge from the clock
stiff, deliberate
they move, tiny movements made from resistance become beautiful
they will dance whether they are meant to or not
no matter how tiny the space
how gray the sky
they dance against time which will eventually stop them
but why think of that now?
the clock has both sun and moon
they circle each other as is the dance of life
dark and light, joining and parting, but never separate

Pittsburgh had an orange sky at night, sulphur and steel
and things man made sometimes overshadowed the moon
I was scared of strong men, did not know any
but how can the moon show the strength of its light
without a strong sun?
I thought it was a battle, but now I see it's a dance
I look at the turrets of the building jutting into the lightening sky

Something light is emerging from the darkness inside me