Passion

 

I will make you immobile.

I will turn you into stone—

stone boy, sweet boy, sunny momma’s angel,

dickless dimpled cherub.

I will stuff you full of cherries,

stick pins in your side;

I will locate your veins

slit them open like slugs,

drain you until your skin

is as white as your teeth—

your teeth as white as purity,

piety or the Madonna’s holy panties.

Then I will open you up,

peel back your chest

as if it were a vest and you my doll.

I will stick my cold, hard hand in

and take hold of your heart.

I will squeeze it until I feel

it’s rhythm slowed,

made moderate,

made predictable.

I will match it to my own.

I will make you over;

I will make you over,

make you new.

I will make you.  

 

But what is this?

What crazy tragedy is this

that has delivered the greatest work ever written

into the hands of a man who cannot read?

 

The boy surrendered himself

and was brought before me—

“Kill me! Kill me! Find me and

Kill meeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

It is this that I am talking about.

It is that pressure, that unmistakable

look in a child’s eye when the broken vase

lays broken,

and the child stands alone.

His death— inevitable,

and my hand’s inevitably stained.

 

At the first meeting I was already seduced,

his eyes seeing things

I believed did not exist.

He sang a song in conquest and planted his seed.

Later that night I went to sleep

and thought myself victor!

I dreamed of carving up children

whose faces bore his face.

He— both God and demon.

He— both killed and resurrected.

Me.

 

I now exist in flames.

 

Before him I picked apart children

like nuts,

separating the shell, I took the offending meat and left them.

What more could they need?

I told myself this—

convincing words like

“Normality,”

“Acceptability.”

To be or not to be

fit in society, was not yet a question.

I ask it now.

 

He is sick—

it is true. Deranged

blessed, dark honey that

flows from a whore’s lips.

A cold body on the verge of death

that is resurrected in warm blood.

A creature that would destroy you

who let’s you take it’s mangy mane instead

and mount.

He is.

 

Afterwards,

he said

they always embrace.

 

It was sexy—

that beast we call horse

to the boy—

Dark God.

Into the magical field of Ha-Ha

they would ride.

Allan’s bare flesh,

bare against hide.

Boy and horse that for one hour

every month under the watchful moon

became more than just mortal flesh

but a vehicle for everything God should

represent—

Fear, yes; power, yes; love; anger; desire

all these things YES

but most importantly

PASSION.

“Equus son of Flecuus, son of Necuus…”

There was nothing else—

“Raw!

Raw!

I’m raw! Raw!

Feel me on you!

On you! On you! On you!

I want to be in you!

I want to BE you forever and ever!”

 

If God were a man

and his son truly his son

it would have the body, the power,

the unmistakably fierce, solar energy

of a horse.

Man and beast joined as one—

God and boy joined as one.

 

While I sat at my desk and looked at pictures

Alan flesh grew into horse—

horse flesh grew into Alan—

until divinity was given an image

(Horse and rider shall be one!)

While the dull world rolled on dully

I looked into Alan’s eyes and felt

for the first time the cruel nails that held me

crucified.

My hands bleeding

while into the horse’s mouth

Alan placed the jingle jangle.

Hard, cold, heavy blades of steal

that sever flesh undeniably, undefyably, forever.

Yet I realized that Equus could take it

and that I invariably could not.

Not God, yet standing in those chains,

wondering if I was even human.

 

It was later that the boy broke

touched woman naked like Eve

and wanted to crown her

but the head of his hairy God

jealous nostrils flaring

crushed Alan to the ground.

Telling the boy what he already knew

that it was to be—

forever and ever and —

*“You are mine and I am yours.

May all others fall like dirt into the sea.

I bare you to me,

see you to me,

feel you to me,

kneel you to me

always and always and—

Look to the eyes of another and you will fail.

Never shut me out.

I leak like poison into your mouth.

I will never let you fall.

May no death put us asunder.”

 

As of yet I have not done it

horse and rider still are one

Alan as I know him is still.

My colleague tells me to put aside myself,

it is as it always will be

child before adult.

She tells me with her eyes

what I already know

that I have the power to turn Alan’s

flesh into stone.

 

You will be normal.

You will reproduce.

You will work for the rest of your life.

You will wear a three-piece suit.

You will laugh but

you will never cry.

You will touch horses

and be able to look them in the eye.

You will be Degutted.

 

Inevitability rolls on

and I know that one day

I will take your naked skin

and the horse’s hairy flank,

strip it all away

and leave you bare—

bone hard, bone hallow.

I will place my lips upon you

and suck the marrow out,

your blood already gone,

your skin already gone—

and you think that all you will lose

is the pain…

For this I should be killed

but you will be convinced

I am now the mahsea.

And yet I stand to you

back turned, in the corner.

Inside myself,

inside my bones

I know that I am a coward

and Equus who has become my own,

my demon, my terror,

my perverted chance at redemption

stares at me with bloody eyes

and says, *“Ha, Ha.”

 

I want to smell the dark, dusk scent

of Equus moving below me.

I want to taste his sweat

and feel his skin.

I want to be weightless,

unburdened to myself,

his hair like knives to rub against

my own naked skin—

naked because all else is pretence

and I would feel myself a liar.

 

Equus, Equus,

take this man with his questions,

this man who has become

more burdened than the boy

who’s blood will one day

line my hands,

take me Equus

now that you have killed me

and born me anew

to darkness

where gold flecks shine

like stars

and music plays

like the voices of sirens

and I am driven

mad.

And I find myself wondering

what is better,

a life that is never lived

or a life lived in passion

that can only end in flames?

 

Equus, Equus—

God Slave,

I need a way of seeing through this field

where I exist with you—

raw to all things I no longer know who I was,

nor do I want to remember.

All life, all things live in the hair of your hide

and leak like blood from your bloody eyes.

Too beautiful you appear to me

and too terrible.

For me even blinding

does not shut you out

and I can feel myself

extending my hand

and placing before you

my heart that beats in tune

to the stomping of your hooves.

Joined forever- man and God,

I pledge myself to you.

No one can put us asunder,

we ride like a warrior emerging

through thunder to crush

all those below…

 

And I am afraid.

 
All quotes taken from the play Equus by Peter Shaffer except for the ones marked with an asterisk.

 

© Coleen T. Houlihan

Published in Spoonful: A Gathering of Stone Soup Poets