"For Lucifer Morningstar", Irving Paul Pereira
I
I’m an altar boy
untouched by life
watching Christ breathing
slow and hard on the cross
You are the great serpent
coiled around my dreaming tree
I hold a Saint Benedict crucifix
and all the snakes flee from me
Two white butterflies land on my hand
as white as my first communion suit
as white as the cassock I wore
you used a boy to scare me
the kid who did cartwheels
who held my cross in his hands
and called Christ a bastard.
My only instinct was to shut you out
To forget you
To be afraid
for I was still an altar boy inside
II
I’m now a cartomancer
I’m older and darker and always in black
I meet you for the first time
Not as a rude boy
or a great snake
Not among fire and sulpher and brimstone
but in your seven star hotel
You offer me dream caviar
but not before I serve you
I get down on one knee
only because you are seated\
and I tell you we are equals
I can’t remember if you smiled
it was the answer you were expecting.
I wear no crucifix now
I’m no longer an altar boy
I’ve seen the goth form of Christ
Wounds and nails and lashing and death
I’ve seen him in battle armor
Blood red shield and blackened spear
armed with the thing that pierced him
I listen to him play piano in desolate places
I remember watching him at Golgotha
We sit in silence, no need to talk
He helps me bear the weight of my fathers’ coffin.
But you are also there.
you return to test me through the years.
— on Halloween
— in a slender tux
— asking me to “play this game.”
“I don’t play games “ I said.
“And that’s the right answer.”
you send them to my temple
to see the seventy eight signs
you show them how to work with
perfect darkness,
lit at the core by a Morningstar.