Saturday 4 January 2014

La Loba (For Diamanda Galás)


I saw you sharpening your steak knives
on a streetcorner on Santorini
on sheer-ice obsidian
Hard as the Hellenic features of the
shrouded women of the marketplace
Sharp like the hastily hewn hexes
on the gravestones of Anatolia

Oh to have been a fly on the wall
Of that vertical house in San Diego
You and Dimitri
Honing your art like cocooned pupa
Before the blood ran, the pulse quickened
And the fearmongers fled in fear
As you detoured the dread to their doorsteps

Or to have been a bullet
in your double-barrel prayer
Who was the target?
Was it Gibby Haynes?
Forever surfing his precious butthole
Or Axl? – Fuck his axel but pity his tiny mind
A relic in his own time
Trampled underfoot by your companion cavalry

To have been the altar
For your Plague Mass
Or the X for your Shrei
Or the solvent
Leeching the lead from our zeppelins
Who would have thought
You could wash the misogyny outta that shit?
It’s never truly indelible is it?

Diamanda,
Don’t you know your brother
Is alive and well and living in the Sporades
With your friends Callas, Pasolini and John Lee
While you soldier on for us all
Yielding to the unbearable
Letting it course through you
'Cause nobody else ever would

La Loba
You with with the celestial shriek and electric soul
Sappho on the Mississippi
Or Olympias in the Ozarks
Soaking up the blood of our slain sisters
And wringing it out before our eyes and ears
Moving a million hearts in mono, stereo, surround sound
White noise, black noise, rivers coursing through steelmills
Poor old Johnnie Ray never saw it coming

Switch it on, Diamanda
Switch on those mics and let 'em have it
Forever the best
Of our better angels
Forever challenging us
To be just a little bit more alive


4 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. would you send to diamanda.assist@gmail.com

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    2. Wow, I didn't immediately realize it was you yourself! It doesn't exist in print anywhere but I can certainly send you the words via email. I've been cranking out poems slowly for years but haven't had anything published. Thanks for reading!

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