Waiting for Percival

Lying on her crimson bed
her plush robe falls open,
she squeezes her full breasts
and conjures a handsome lover
that she hasn't ever met
to fill her grave emptiness.

Her scented magic spins out
like a river flowing over its banks,
like airy minions in search
of unwary travelers to besot.

He is a knight in ragged armor
bewildered in a bleak and foreboding forest,
chilled to the bone and sodden,
guiding his horse through dripping thickets
across gullies and ravines swollen by rain
on paths never trod by humans.
His faith is beginning to weaken.

He is a mid level executive
in a well tailored suit and expensive shoes,
away from his wife and kids
to try to make the deal
that will make his career,
but now loose in this urban jungle
for a night without accounting.

He thought he glimpsed a castle
when moonlight broke through briefly,
high on a hill, faraway.
Was it a delusion, or
is he nearing the object of his search?
Will all his despair be rewarded?
Perhaps, he thinks to himself,
the legend is true.

He thought he heard songs of his youth
drifting on the city's night air
sung by girls of summer
who laughed at his awkwardness.
How he had wanted them
to be his casual lovers.
Perhaps, he thinks to himself,
this time I can be clever enough.

All vanishes in gloom
but the spell she has cast
pulls him numbly ever on
past fallen trees and thorny brush,
past hookers and beggars in the streets,
past those doubts that gnaw at him
like demons in the mist.

She is the blessed chalice-
the girl at the well of life,
a vessel with parted lips
and a hunger clawing at her belly.

He is the foretold dagger,
the sacred black handled blade,
the dread revelator,
a cog in the spinning wheel,
the wanderer on a vision quest,
the negotiator of the sale.

He approaches the sacred spot,
the vision of heaven fills his head,
a lust to sacrifice himself pulses in his veins.
She stands at the top of the stairs,
breasts uncovered, nipples pert and flaming red.
The chalice visible between her smooth thighs,
the ache of centuries flowing from her eyes.
He kneels in mesmerized submission
and she takes him to her mystic bed.

All things holy crystallize in their act-
the company's stock jumps twenty points,
the godhead is redeemed,
Britain is born.