Lady of the Serpent Skirts

The Lady of the Serpent Skirts
Gawaine Caldwater Ross

The Empress of Desire lay upon her bed of satin
As seven scarlet vipers wrapped themselves about her, writhing,
Spinning royal visions of monumental grandeur.

I paused as Hathor beckoned with her opalescent treasures
Cringing deeply in my heart, and fearful of her laughter,
She lay there stroking softly, abandoned to fulfillment.

"Why pause now?" she asked, uprising naked in the moonlight
Which spilled in full upon her bed from the skylight over her head,
While on her firm protruding breasts the candlelight was gleaming.

Black hair cascaded down to the stars upon her buttocks.
Her amber eyes seemed ready to turn into a lion's,
And everywhere us now the fires burned more brightly.

I faced the Empress of the Witches like a soul before Osiris
Prostrate in the Judgment Hall, in nauseous retrospection,
Every foul hypocrisy a movement towards the graveyard.

Her dignity was greater, so I answered through my quaking,
"Are you the spring Persephone, or the consort of the Dragon?"
She smiled and stood magnetically, a moon among the shadows.

Then the drums beat fiercer yet and her seven maidens jingled
As they whirled in spiral mysteries of bliss beyond all knowing,
Every rippling thigh and hand a wave of jubilation.

"Come play with us!" their cymbals rang, "You've Ecstasy before you,
And you are summoned by her grace to wade in pools of nectar.
In the name of Joy unbounded, seize this invitation!"

Now the challenge – would I make the hero's leap upstream
Like a salmon through the river, over falls and breathing water
To the place where all is born, swimming in the clearness?

Kali danced through fire, trampling on bodies
With fifty skulls around her neck, her tongue extending
To the borders of the Cosmos, with Shiva dead beneath her.

Then Anatha's face appeared, the Bloody One of Slaughters,
The Goddess who delights in blood, who roams over creation
Searching for that fiend who killed her most beloved consort.

The Lady of the Serpent Skirts was prowling in the fissures
With knives of sharp obsidian, and the hunger of a jaguar,
She takes the spears from brave men and sews them to her clothing.

She was an earthquake in a storm – Reality was warping,
Everything I thought I knew was melting in her magma,
And still those dancers leapt before the mother of illusion.

"Come!" she called out royally, "Come or be a coward!
Are my eyes not lewd enough? Does the Universe displease you?
Would you like a million slaves to ravish and your pleasure?"

I turned and fled that burning gaze in shame and condemnation,
For every time I saw myself, I saw humiliation:
And still that vision haunts me and makes my body tremble
For even now I hear her call that Paradise is waiting.