Gaia Woman
Her soul tenderly houses
The Seven Wonders of the World.
The Sphinx’s tail twitches in anticipation
of all oracles from the cave of her mouth.
Her arms are recovered limbs
From the Venus de Milo.
Her nipples are almonds from
the tomb of Hatshepsut.
She’s the Bathsheba of Jacuzzis,
Lady Godiva of the Steeplechase--
Helen of Troy launches her ships.
Her torso is an altar
To Quetzcotl, Christ, and Krishna
A monk’s ring splices her nose
Her mucus is the Balm of Gilead
The down of her sex is gold filigree
Her lungs are bright cumulus clouds.
Her armpits sweat Holy Water
Her saliva is the Fountain of Youth,
Her excrement heals the lame.
Her ears ring with Liberty Bells
The soles of her feet are lily pads
Brimming with kissable frogs
Her vagina is Stonehenge
Magic, inscrutable
And oft’ visited.
Her fingers are lightning
Her neck, a silver sieve
In her purse are Dora’s pills.
Her eyes are like Burbank –
Neither quite Hollywood nor Disneyland
Her eyes are Taj Majals
Graves covered in splendor.
Her scent is a cloying candle shop –
Potpourri, Georgio, and ash.
Inside the lantern of her spirit
Eight days of oil last but a moment.
Her speech is hay fever and honey --
Whatever happens to be in bloom.
Her chakras are unordered,
Inordinate, cymbals clanging
A tintinnabulation of impending doom.
Her teeth are bits of poached ivory
Her nails are sapphires and rubies, bruises
on slaves from King Solomon’s mines.
Her garments are embroidered
sweatshop silks from Myanmar
She steps as lightly as dawn
blazes down upon the hungry and the lost
Her calves are sacred carved oaks
Chopped by Lizzie Borden’s axe
Her breasts are named
Kilamanjaro and Krakotoa –
Prophesying death and war
Her wrists are severed hands from Auschwitz.
In her serpentine folds
She holds more twists than Chubby Checker
Her buttocks are swarming anthills
Veined like maps
of blood, a mercurial topography marking
my dowry at Earth’s End:
for I be the dragon,
beware, these molten words of fire.
