Caterpillar Empress

Caterpillar Empress, she wears her jewels

And she moves in voices that haunt the city

on the other side of her mirror

There’s another mirror within

And the lonely and the blind, they look at her

when the world tucks its head within her soft belly

and weeps in fond flows of silence

She is the Caterpillar Empress

She wears a million moonstruck shoes

And I marvel at her wisdom

And I don’t seek for the volcanoes in her body.

But there’s yet another mirror

It shines blue when ghosts come out

And chain their hearts to her form

And then the vision the viewer and the viewed

find out their crypts

and become one

And maybe the world weeps a bit too

Or maybe it doesn’t

But how does that matter?

She rains her love on turtles of time

as she struts along the canvas of our hidden, empire

standing, often, between the seasons of want and rain

when eyes touch, like petals, her wisdom

the sky and earth

dancing between the nerves and mist

circled by the southern breeze

to carry her wisdom from star to star

And thus, I roam.

As these proud centuries of famine and machine

ravage the clocks and gasp, amazed

at these tiny endless quests.

Caterpillar Empress rises through time

like Venus through the waters of love

and fishes make love and birds of the heart – stabbed by the hunters

of dream and vice – they chirp a bit, or maybe they don’t

my mind is my body now

and her body is her mind

And thus, our whispers dot the humanly nights of this world.

No one knows where her palace lies

No one will hear the shrieks of the last bird when it dies

No one will see the last star blanking out.

Thus, she hides her bullets

from the monsters of kindness who adore her face and

make love to her all day and all night

till the new exodus

and civilizations of sunset as they usher

new blue rose of mind. (Whose mind?)

Meanwhile, Doctor Love, he moves from town to town

in his withered brown coat

and with his empty black suitcase

where cold centuries paint dark faces

and hot centuries paint bright faces

He’s an angel too, though no one has told him that

but when it rains on him sad music plays from the skies

because the lonely and the damned, as they

wither in prisons of gold and dust,

they cling to his coat, and the Empress knows it

too. And we all know it, though no one

has ever told us about it.

And then in another beautiful dream,

they meet and they kiss, the Doctor and the Empress

they really do

A flying saucer wheezes past the ears from other sides of windows

and flies fly in from faraway shores of twilight

carrying news from lost sailors – they say they are well

they have found a lost kingdom on the other side

and there are purple faces of green locust-men

and blue faces of red women of olive and thirst

She is a real empress now,

she takes off her sapphire ring

and puts it in a glass of blue wine

He is a real Doctor now –

he takes off his shoes

and flings out the history of the world that lay buried there thus far

A little songbird with curved maroon beaks

picks up this tune,

makes pancakes out of it

and carries them to the blind gods of machine

the haters of the heart fall silent in this hour.

They are real Haters now.

But then, rude sunlight takes you to another lost city

that lies limp by the empty sea – all gray and stunned to ceaseless silence

like broken violins by broken automobiles;

Rabbits freeze in foglight and stay frozen till forever begins & ends

the silk and honey are dead and gone:

(you know all about it –

that perfect cadence  of forsaken umbrellas on cobwebbed penthouses

the dark vines of deliria and disenchantment

that crawl up your chest to choke your throat,

etc)

and then the river she hides her aura, homeless,

to count the deaths and hopes of yearning,

there’s salt and stone-chips in your pockets now, Phlebas

you look out for your Empress, you call out for your Doctor

You stand before the stern judges of rock and lacklove –

you don’t find her there, and he’s roaming in the wild zones of ancient dusk

looking for those billion little pieces that never were

you hear that huge pink baby crying in the woods,

she’s crying because everything burns and thus everything’s false;

but you don’t see her, you see a dying cat instead

The cat has lived enough

Thus, the hunters are on prowl yet again