Dorothy Featherstone Port

1954 - 2008 / Sydney

Exuberance with bloody hands

What do the Minoans teach us -
exuberance with bloody hands?

The wind the Goddess brings
is both wonderful and vicious

she flies into your soul
she flies into your face

and what will you do to see her?

Become the stone altar
become the moist fetish
become the bird screaming down on you

it's just a trance
you tell yourself
you'll wake up tomorrow
your lover sleeping on your shoulder

it was just the wine
it was just the drugs

it's all over
I can't remember
nothing happened

no-one got hurt

but there was something
a wind, a bird, a sense
of being taken up and over

dancing and dying
dancing and not dying
dancing and living forever

but your mortal lover snores
and snuffles into your mortal skin

the rattle, the trees, that perfume,
that fantastic presence

what are you fit for now?

whose throat would you cut
to have it happen again?
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