no
outlet
these tawny fields rattle ecclesiastic.
vervain sounds gimballing the very
horizon. every road
now a road away.
every road
a road into feckfull blue.
and every moon
too many.
the land of too many moons.
going 82 in a 65 seems reasonable enough.
after all, one must stay safe.
after all, in these parts
every glance is a glance askance,
and every kid
crunk as fuck
(on the reg)
and smilingly armed.
if The Minotaur, beheaded and befuddled,
had dragged its itching red asshole
(like a berated beagle across the family
rug)
up and out of The Maze,
looking
for a new home,
it may have looked like this.
at 120 the dotted line turns to solid.
The Minotaur Moving His House -- Pablo Picasso
Discussing vervain (verbena officinalis) in his 1935 tome, “Herbs and the Earth,” Henry Beston wrote, "To those interested in magic and religion, there is no herb in the garden more worthy of attention, for this simple plant without fragrance, without an outer look of power, without a flower of significance, was singled out from among all other plants and herbs as the most sacred of the growing things of earth between the Pillars of Hercules and the roots of the Caucasus." “Vervain” comes from the Celtic “ferfaen” (to drive away + a stone) because it was , The name was given because it earlier was told to be a good treatment for treating kidney stones. “Verbena” means “altar plant” and was used by the Romans as a sacred herb placed on altars, and its twigs were bundled and used to sweep the altar. It was sacred to the Egyptian goddess Isis, who taught humanity how to cure illness; when she cried, vervain grew wherever her tears hit the ground. An old Christian charm related, “Hallowed be thou Vervain, as thou growest on the ground / for in the mount of Calvary there thou was first found. / Thou healedst our Savior Jesus Christ, and staunchedst his bleeding wound, / In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, / I take thee from the ground.” Many magical properties were assigned to it: in the home, it was a protection against lightning; if carried, it brought good luck; if buried in the garden, it brought prosperity; if accompanied by a secret spell it would grant one’s wishes when rubbed on the skin; it was a love potion; drinking vervain tea warded off vampires and witches (who, paradoxically, also used it in their evil brews and spells).
ReplyDeleteWhen Minos, a son of Zeus, became king of Crete he prayed to the sea god Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull as a sign of support, but kept it and sacrificed an ordinary beast instead. In punishment, Poseidon caused the king’s wife Pasiphaë, a daughter of Helios, to fall in love with the beast. She ordered Daedalus to make a hollow wooden cow and climbed inside to mate with the white bull. The offspring was the half-bull/half-human Minotaur which devoured people. Minos then had Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth (maze) to hold the monster and put Ariadne, the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, in charge of the sacrifices to Poseidon. Minos later defeated Athens in a war of vengeance for the death of his son, who had been killed when king Aegeus sent him to slay the white bull; in reparation, Aegeus had to periodically send 14 young Athenian men and women to be fed to the Minotaur. Aegeus’ son Theseus volunteered to be one of the victims in order to slay the creature. In Crete, Ariadne, the fell in love with the Athenian and gave him a sword and a clue (a ball of thread) to allow him to retrace his path through the maze. Then the Athenian prince and the Cretan princess eloped, taking her younger sister Phaedra with them, but Dionysus appeared to him on the voyage and told him that Ariadne had already been betrothed to him, so Theseus abandoned her on Naxos. She became the mother of Oenopion, (the personification of wine) and Staphylus (who was associated with grapes. She was either slain at Argos by Perseus or she hanged herself, but Dionysus descended into the underworld and rescued her. They then joined the gods in Olympus. Theseus married Phaedra but had a son by Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons; this Hippolytus had spurned Aphrodite in order to remain a virginal devotee of Artemis, so the goddess of love punished him by having his stepmother fall in love with him, and when Hippolytus rejected her, she told Theseus that his son had tried to rape her. Either Theseus had him killed or Dionysus sent a wild bull which terrified his horses and caused his death. As a result, Phaedra committed suicide.