Ygdrasil: A Journal of the Poetic Arts

YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts

March 2010

VOL XVIII, Issue 03, Number 203

Editor: Klaus J. Gerken

Production Editor: Heather Ferguson

European Editor: Mois Benarroch

Contributing Editors: Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp; Oswald Le Winter

Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena

ISSN 1480-6401

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Juniper by Jack R. Wesdorp

INTRODUCTION


Juniper is beauty incarnate, Aphrodite emergant, the pieta denudata, 
the shekinah divinorum, our sighle claddagh, goddess therebint
enthroned on the precipice, we revere her as mother earth 
and sister moon, as the ourobouros that englobes manifest, the spirit
that nurtures life and love. We cannot look away.

Jack R. Wesdorp

Juniper

(1770-1838) Juniper: After I discovered boys the way was clear forever. Aphrodite of one voice with all the gods in heaven. Boys would kill to get at me, that was a revelation, both a penitentiary and cause for celebration. Great responsibility, I did not take this lightly, I would anoint the pillar with honesty and mighty as befits divine élan. All the women of the world embody love and beauty, out of us a god is born and whoring is our duty, beyond that we nurse the sick though we ourselves may perish, trim the convent candlewick our troth to hold and cherish, winnow grain and mother grief beside the field and cradle, be thou heaven’s hand weaving wizard cloth nor be afraid of mere death. This we believe. Every bonavent confronts the rationale of hooking when all we own is our cunt and fortunate good looking, some of us espouse the stage, its lure and adulation in the face of mummer’s wage or frowsy fascination. Sundays I stood on the pier with sundry other strumpets flabbergast by gnawing fear, we wish you well young brothers before the mast. We’ll be here! When I was a tavern slink I lived above a crockster, worked at brewing winterbink alembic barley smocker. That attracted grotty sorts the likes of binkel blarney, edelbarf and hackermort, dykstra, the dink, and smarmy. Peril stalks bodacious snatch, many’s the night when knock knock there’s potential at my latch, could be delight or pockmark demented bastard splatter. In those days we took defense by living close a’calling, get our crazy gook incensed you’ll god damn get a mauling, though I never needed that. The physik brewer loved me living there above his flat, wouldn’t do to piss him off, next time you’ll buy some poison. No, he couldn’t afford me, mostly so I had my choice of privateer deportment and the dads of boasting boys. Thus I waxed successful at the art of pleasing fathers, I’m blessed with easy slattern although they’re far more bother. Husbands are a chatty crowd who want to bend my earful, all about their marriage proud and how they’re wending fearful the old whistle’s freaking flub my trixie’s hexed it awful… I get it peeled in the tub kneeling dextrous eat it raw. Always fixes ’em right up. There’s no shortage on divorce so I got mint impressive, that afforded me a horse and millinery dresses. I moved off the beaten path; above an apotheker, three rooms with a heated bath adjoining a bakery; Invitations, patronage, a skipper on my dance card, dates at the masonic lodge, john, men, ships, mansions, gardens, and then that magick … called Fate. Friday the thirteenth high noon john carver brought me roses, I’d been riding, it was june, my mantel clock stood frozen, I remember in color, in slow motion effigy while he’s kneeling on the floor, “I want you to pose for me, a figure so explicit to make the universe blush, I’ll screw your ass to a spit,” and with that he plunks a purse of clinking gold at my feet no perhaps, permit, or please, just this glitter sparkling heat from my breasts down to my knees, john bowed on wide burnished boards supplicant before his art, and I heard these distant words bells resonant in my heart: This is the one who loves you go with him for life my dear. For better or for worse then, mandorla in a clearing in a forest, endless doors where god can hear us singing. You should say something sincere, some clever plum, he’s waiting for you to speak, seems like years, I thought yes!, fascinating, time kept leaking away slow to a place reserved for it glowing with elastic flow into curved infinitive dust shimmering and smoking, I’d just turned nineteen in may, women passed through glass joking, john uncorked wine, sweet champagne, pop! it swam into focus. I smelled Luck, grab hold of that, let me describe us fucking. Rabid alley cats from hell well-mannered ribald ruckus does you like this don’t you dare careful with that doesn’t hurt spurt in there make a baby maybe we should wait a while pile it in there butter jam dammit miss I think you’re knocked probably should get married don’t think too good mister cock parenthood ain’t so scary. Nine months later junie moon because we hatched her swiftly, our only child. I was ruined as a whore, we lived thrifty in john’s studio those years, a series of life carvings well respected by his peers, intricate things, marvelous, ANGEL WITH A SCARF that’s me and the cedar DEMETER, crested bust of athena, also the MAY QUEEN and FATE but the best were just plain me. Captain Goonarr Stuurelaar commissioned a figurehead. That’s the one that traveled far, a lurid piece of jiggle bedroom eyes you fuck me now, imperious I love you set astraddle bucking bow one boob above hail mary. Stuurelaar’s enchanting mass that reeks of rotten bondage. I hear those gobs ream my ass, they draw lots for the honor, god help them before the mast. Yet the figure filled a niche, divine unclothed bravura. Despite its faults we got rich, a slightly skewed curedemal. I still don’t know how that works. “Ain’t that the bawdy harlot?” We ignored their crawler smirks, avoided snotty parlors. Notoriety reaps good, museums offered filthy doubloons for RED RIDING HOOD, enough to make me shiver. We moved to the High Head woods. Junie’d just escaped her crib some powdered wig sent a scroll, real parchment signet ribbon esquire blah blah holy shit! he wants to give us money… sprach night lawyerese…ah, claim, palaver oozing honey passbook in your daughter’s name, signed seamen’s bank good gravy more signatures, judge, bailiff, our coy kabouter’s navy and boys we’re sailing sailing over the bounding waves. Hoy! Brassbound coffer full of pearls, they issued one each wednesday, junie moon’s a jewel girl raised on fishy benison. Didn’t change john’s dailies much nor his djinn’s diaspora, every maple burl he touched assumed religious aura, smelled of apple cherry birch, expensive persian lacquer, and would he please cherubim build some stops for the tracker in a boston big cheese church? I considered nursing school which seemed a long excursion away from john and jewelkid, not to mention incursions into our sex and sugar. What I settled on was plain, practical, and possible, I got my training solo. Boston?---that’s another track. A pilgrimage proper goal; at no time did I ever think the practice might kill me. Would that have stopped me? Never. We do it because we’re called, that quiet little niggle, or your libido’s at fault and you’re shit out of jiggle. Had a lot of grief with that; john slaved to keep it moxie, kept it wet and flattered me with devidet and doxie. Nonetheless my fuck me! failed, something to do with hormones, the humors in your bailey, hunted by a ruinous worm that spits balefire and doom. “Sex ain’t everything,” john said, witness god such prophecy, “I’ll love you more when I’m dead,” he didn’t hint it’d be me. Helltown in august ran rife with typhoid, pox, and fuzztongue; surgeons used a cauter knife and bodies fed big buzzards. Not enough to eat this week was a scullery complaint, children suffered hot red-cheek, mom’s sulfur breath, I feel faint, deathbed stuffing reeks of rot. Junie left home and came back, the world out there lay supine, john got grey and built a shack out in the dunes with lupines and roses surrounding it. Things happen for a reason, summer flight and winter bound each child unto her season. Time ran kite strings through my mind, wrote loops around my body, fifty eight years got behind, only then did I dear god notice john was going blind. Evil wends at night we’re told, I held a lilac lantern, leaving venison and gold my lady of the shanties. It’s the best I ever did, it pleases me my daughter to help them that’s on the skids come hell or freezing water. We burned frankincense and myrrh, faith in the ancient manner, john faded bent with worry that his wife and child wander naked but for their courage. Grace is a curious state, she walks in self sufficient perdurabo conflagrate calculatus omniscient. Even so we’d rather not know the deft of our dying, when to go, whyfore our lot, who’s left to do the crying. John stalked this beast to its lair, wrung from it my dates and due; he sacrificed our pear tree for his final work; he knew it would be diphtheria. I ignored it seven years. When it comes it’s insistent. I wouldn’t let them near me, better to just disappear. I walked to the shack John built, he followed me there that night with our oldest ragged quilt bathed in liquid colored light. We talked through the open door. Those last days were very good encircled by rose of thorn, proper princess pricklewood, I was his favorite whore, that’s what he said in his mind more alive than ever now. I heard him collecting pine, pile up fragrant cedar boughs, that day the wind came up fierce. I died in that worn-out quilt wrapped in only one man’s tears, my fire was born brilliant, I watched it burn from High Head well into the night of day, thank god no one’s really dead. I waved, then I turned away to a wheel where time is fled. There’s much to be thankful for. Love persists in her greening and I saw my grandson born, john was always seventeen in his head and heart and balls, I’m sure he never drifted despite a sculptor’s carte blanche, enough compass well sifted, room to navigate our course, saw it bloom from perspectives like parallax, lightning force, and how it’s all connected, each strand back home to the source. John ran! home; he couldn’t wait. My ashes blew, departed, in his mind I roamed a great concourse of jewel washed stars, by his hand I could sense me become real in the hourglass, expand, grow dense, wood yet free flower crowned fascinating aphrodite at her best, they’ll display me in churches, circumspect at summer fest, may bunting, mistress birches, electric cunt, blessings, come! He laid his hand to our wood set on a granite dais, a chunk of trunk with the root attached worthy of the christ. He contemplated the left, my head canted waging war, I’ll be bondaged with my cleft spread apart in scarlet rage. Then he meditated right, elbows bent, knees to receive, maidenhead yes wet inside, breathing hard heaving breasts please fuck me either way don’t wait. When my image enters men in their most secret being, binding feminine privilege, they’ll find what they’ve been seeking in the ancient universe. This is of necessity god arranging boon or curse according to their questing. Sexual girl sculptures comprise essential reality, curling pontifex all rise pallast spellwyst wenchling doll I conjure thee with my eyes! Chisel to the wood at once before the candle gutters. Voodoo wizard halo krans down to her fondle slutter, I can hear him mutter soft parsing in a strand of tress dear how often have I laid my hand on that curve of breast or splatt into your maiden, turn your cradle knee some more arching back yes pointed feet I implore thee chancel me, feel my heat anoint your dance. How the architect fashions reality from darkness: first the concave saw and adze to rough out five main markers, head hands and feet, then a plane and draw knife englobe her breasts, careful there, cut with the grain, always take a little less, so, rasp and file her nipples make ’em stand up like you’ve just, flow along her belly hips thighs inside our crucial lust, gouge it with a bent spoonbit, barely ghost her veil gently, make it deep enough to fit his most heroic entry, and for the fine tracery of hair and face perfections a convex micro veiner stare all you like at her sex. Then the sanding paper grit delicate round her eyelids, curling fall at throat and nape, rouge her lips with glad surprise, then a floating wash in soap to swell the grain but fleeting, swaddled turpentine in rope, let it dry under sheeting, tomorrow peach blushing stain soft gold ring wedding garnish, final detail through the grain and then transparent varnish linseed rub my john’s insane. Then…silence…the hand fell still, a tool clattered decisive on the floor. Brilliant sunset over the bay. Priceless time spent staring at nothing bed another day, gravity, try not to think, take a walk no not on the beach where we. Juniper. The burning ends, he’ll get a little comfort at the Mermaid with old friends; you can’t tell he worked it blind, there’s no evidence of pain, one last caress, crate, consigned to a church in Bangor, Maine, noted for its pagan rites. So what does the goddess do when she retires from earth? Build a fire, lose my shoes, rest my feet up on the hearth, sip honey mead alembic fill that goblet one two times let’s see how I got dented any kills or karmic crimes? Expert lovers, faithful friends, separate paths, famous names, surely we’ll love you again, beautiful parallel flames, we were very good, ahhmen.

POST SCRIPTUM


Her image

Painted papyrus
Cathedral stained glass
Medieval church halls
Palatial reliefs
Frescoed on plaster
And lace curtain weave
In alabaster
Museum design
Carrera marble
Dynasty china
In andesite garb
Sometimes I’m standing
More often enthroned
Sovereign handed
Frozen word ready
To step into stone
Wherefore do love me.

 

Juniper (c) 2010 by Jack R. Wesdorp