The angel stood on bowed knee
Waist deep in the shallows
His right hand cast miracles into waves of water
Threw ripples imbued with magis
Stirred and splashed until healing came upon it
Until the entire pool of Bethesda shimmered like glitter on the wet heat waves of the sun
That's when they all began to jump in
But could not linger long
The moment healing settled in
It's out of the pool, to the Temple song
But you stood still for so long
Watching the wretched washed
Cleansed of their sins
Whole of body, whole of mind
You never knew what that was like
You didn't know what that could be like
You would have stood there until the bubbling waters stilled
Cheated out of your mindful abundance
Had I not an incantation of my own
So I chanted "Pura Deva Honey Madme Plath "
Words of pure nonsense I knew
You'd take them as a cryptic challenge
Meaningless but they sounded right
The sheer repetition hypnotized you
And back, back, walking back slowly
Walking backwards towards the pull that still seemed affluent & fecund
You walked
In silence
Until your foot touched the water and you had to stop to absorb what felt like several hundred volts of lightning streaming up from your Achilles Heel to your Freud-ball skull and immediately you realized
Something big was happening
Lowering your waist the pain was transmuted
As clarity wiped the fog from the window of your perception
The songs that came unbidden
Overflowed your stained glass imagination
Forcing out demons and dumb ideas
Death and delusions and bad desires
Running like demons to the sow
Having asked permission
Your music-stuffed head went underwater
A practical baptism, a lesson in breathing liquid
When you were pulled out you had no use for what lay on the other side of the pool
The grassy meadow where I still stood
When the cancer was removed
I came to find what I always suspected
I'm a huge part of the tumor
Dug in on the other side of the pool
While your fool legs take you fast as you may run
To make an offering to the chief priest
Singing songs of praise and gratefulness
I find my own song to sing
The Angel says my burden
Must stick tight and bleed like leeches
Bad seed buried deep in the abyss of my being
An ugly man, face drawn from grimaces and frowns
Unloveable and beat to the bone
Without a single song of my own