Warning and Remembrance
Reflections from the Dark Mother
A few weeks ago, a good friend came through New York, and we met at Eataly to indulge in pasta and catch-up. Rabid liberals, our talk naturally turned to the deterioration of our country under this administration’s jackboot. Working in global health, and specializing in HIV, she and her colleagues fret late at night about a return to the 1980s and ‘90s when people were dropping in the streets.
Just this last week, I read articles about the White House cabal cutting funding for research into an HIV vaccine and also eliminating funding for various HIV programs, including prevention, outreach, surveillance, and treatment involving PrEP, the drug needed by 2.2 million people, according to the CDC, in order to lower the risk of transmitting/contracting HIV to a negligible percentage. Chilled, I thought of all the gays, especially younger ones, who’ve been enjoying their Bacchanals, sans condoms (because who needs to worry about the French disease, right?); if, as I suspect, health care in this country continues to lurch into a theocratic promised land, what will become of all those who didn’t live through the AIDS years? For those of us who crawled out of it, the shadow never dissipates, no matter the sunny ads promising an HIV-free future, or at least a manageable one with current treatments and prevention.
All of this hinges on a nation that is progressive, and…well, we live in Amurikkka. We grew complacent or, perhaps, more accurately, we grew foolish. We thought things would only move onwards and upwards. We believed the tripe that the universe is moral or has an arc and that it bends towards our conception of justice. Claptrap all.
Several years ago, I wrote a poetry collection reflecting on my own experience with HIV and AIDS. Born in 1977, the disease and I grew up together so that its horrible climax began just as I hit high school. Sex and death. Not just Freudian urges in my teen years.
At the end of the collection, there are a series of poems in various Dark Goddesses’ voices, and I share a few here, each one a memory of that time from the perspective of that goddess.
How to confront bad things happening to innocents. How to confront the nature of suffering and evil. How to confront the idea of divinity in a world of pain. I think the Great Mother, especially the Black Madonna in all Her guises, suffers heartbreak, too, and perhaps it’s in that, in the shared sorrow, that we can find some solace and a call to action.
Kali I took Manhattan, tied up my hair, dropped the weapons, went to work in apartments that stank of vomit and shit. I wrote checks for rent and electric, took trash down to the curb, cleaned toilets, bleached clothes, mopped floors. There was no saving them. But in the silent hours, after friends left and mothers stopped answering, I sang the blues with a voice as broken as their bodies, so they knew the Universe grieved at their passing. Maman Brigitte They called me the Pepper Lady. I sat on Poodle Beach, wearing a bikini trimmed with black rooster feathers, a bottle of hot peppers soaked in rum nestled like a hand between my thighs. I gave a swig to the boys who wouldn’t see another summer, a brew to ease their way. It made their eyes water, their bellies burn. A few recognized me, brought offerings: tobacco and black coffee. These I fed a pepper straight from the bottle: death instantaneous and spicy. Our Lady of Guadalupe Me and the lesbians worked the night shift at the hospital. Not the fancy one. The building mildewed, its waiting room always full. I brought the guys magazines, or tapes for the ones who were blind. I read them poetry, the day’s obits. Once in a while, and only at their request, we prayed: Dios te salve, María, Llena eres de gracia, El Señor es contigo, Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres Y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. Santa María, Madre de Dios, Ruega por nosotros – Wait. There are no sinners, my child, And she doesn’t think so, either.
Those poems have always slayed me. I am distraught that the moral arc in our timeline is regressing backwards.
This post can only be described as masterful, impactful, and in our present political climate, ineffably sad… Bravo
~Chuck