At each of seven gates I pause to shed
Another, yet another of my layers.
And all my prayers amount to heaps of dead
Discarded misconceptions on the stairs.
Erishkegal awaits, her hook, her gaze of fury
Fueled to fell the youthful fool who brought me here
And I alone among my inner juries
May embrace destruction without fear.
And what remains, when all pretensions, shields and masks
Have fallen to the blade of broken love?
When lust has fled before the epic task
Of powerfully becoming all the Me I’ve spoken of?
I remain—that naked drop of endless Sea embodied in a man
And I am you and her and we have living in our hands.
