…. and her Lion Guardian of the nine lower realms

 

I move through the five vowels as the seasons of life, consuming the seeds of pain, fed to me by the Fir Goddess, Fire Goddess. I look up at her flowered face, her Flower Mouth, and she spits the pine seeds into my mouth, one for each season. I am grateful there are five, as that means I’ll have a full life, though pain will not be a stranger.

In the winter of initiation, I am bitter, metal, blackened and waiting to shine forth the nine forces of her Flower Mouth. I am told I will become a Lion Guard, kneeling at the feet of  the World Tree Golden Boughs. There I will grant or deny access to the nine lower realms…In the Proud distance, I see the Barons in service to their Kings. I will not walk amongst them. And many times I may be shunned. Each one may possess up to 100 sheep, and a separate flock of worker/slaves just for fleecing their herd—who are also to be counted, fed and treated as sheep…I see their rations tallied in a 12 month cylindrical march, 5…2…1…this is their rhythm they must follow in all its perversions, from dawn till death.

I live by the Mysteria, as a free worker, neither Baron nor slave. I serve at the request of the Goddess, the Mother, Demeter, who presides over all the poppy fields and their dreams in Summer, the time I am borne to die in, walking in rapture over sun purified fields. Though I was born in the month of Perseus, The Destroyer, and am prone to its fits, madness, and rage, I have learned how to temper it through art, instead of steel, and cut down my opponents gradually, over time, like the ocean softens sharp rock outcroppings.

Only the Priestess can make unguent, and I am not allowed to savor its soothing delight. Save once, as a young man, when I harvested the wild plants and made it myself, I am only permitted the orgy dance of divine creation. It is a fair trade when I work on these conceptions. Brutal emptiness, to be flung so far out of her temple, when I am not.

So I sit, sniff, and stare at the stars, when I am lucky. With a roar I announce, here, this way into the lower realms. Or warn the strangers away, when I fear they may get lost down there. It is this union of light above, dark below, that I must create in all works encouraged to leap from my little flower mouth, from the first Perseus shower to the last…

Keep working, she whispers, till your soul is worn smooth and sweet as cream and honey.

On rare days, I breathe her incense ambrosia breath, and pronounce her five vowels—her fire vowels—in one glorious exhale…

There are no King Bees, only Queens in this hive. Skin man, Goat shaman, see her trees are all the letters, and her forest is what you have written down…into my skin, into my bones, under stars weeping for the warrior who has laid down his sword.

Lion mouth, this is your Flower Mouth…tell me again your little story, our story of Light/Dark .…

[Gary Aker lives in Portland, Or, where he pursues dance and photography in addition to his usual andunusual writing duties. He has been writing and publishing all manner of work for over 35 years. He has two sequential crime novels published as e-Books on Amazon and most other platforms, Delusion and North of Likely …  He is an avid baseball fan — the game with no clock — and his great uncle is in the Hall of Fame.]