Hugo ode to Ishtar




Many are blind to her magic


But I, lonely pilgrim, ride in out of the dust clouds
Wrecked from the trek, in the saddle I'm slumped down
It's sun down, and the orange orb at my back casts a silhouette
As I purposefully stalk past the domes and past minarets


The monasteries, the spires of the churches
The cathedrals, the casinos, the bonfires,  the hearses
The circuses, the businesses, the shrines, the workers
The statues, the avenues, the finite circuits


To arrive further towards the site which inspires my higher purpose
An altar before which I falter before falling in divine service
None of the teachings of the preachers effectively entered my mind's furnace
Not did any wealth tempt me more seductively than this siren's urgings


But some ignore her magic


This goddess lightly purring, with feline grace
And strokeable fur which resulted in one of her many names
And many are the men who have attempted to tame
This lioness which resides twixt the legs of their lover's frame


All in vain, for the flames that burn within her
are hot enough to leave any sword melted, any lance burnt to cinders.
And any proud knight that charges into her, gets cooked and turned to Ashes within the
Very suit of metal, his ego wore to protect his limbs cos


This holy grail, this overflowing cup
Has caused crusades,Trojan wars, games of thrones to go erupt
As misguided men saw the overwhelming potency of such
A goddess and wanted her so much they were totally overwhelmed with lust


And they couldn't see it was magic


Having observed the potential of their own corrupt insanity to kick in
Many men saw the awesome force of this matriarchal vision.
Its power had been wielded unconsciously thus far by women
But men then colluded to create patriarchal religion


A spiritual control system, designed for limiting
Hunting down, humiliating, killing and reversing this lustful tide of indiscipline,
And use asceticism and threatening eternal damnation in fires of hell again
To usurp and curb worship of my goddess, the divine feminine.


But this crass misinterpretation of the subject
This rank hijacking and twisting of the natural energy that lust is:
A fiery force that once its repressed has to emerge in some substance
Else it leads to burning witches, burqas on women and priests who fuck kids


Because it's a powerful magic


And it cannot be suppressed, so this pilgrim doesn't attempt to
Nor does he succumb to the fire on the other end of the spectrum:
The buzzing swarm of content on the net which bombards the unwary with videos of barely aware or respectful erections penetrating the inner sanctum of Ishtar with nary a shred of tenderness


These two extremes threaten to encroach on the will of any pilgrim
But if he is able to maintain and be instilled with the vision
And navigate between these two perils of scylla and charybdis
He will stand before the holy edifice like this pilgrim and bear witness


As with breathless ease, I descend to my knees and stare
Finally arrived alive in the lair, I can kneel in prayer
As two bended knees form the two steeples in the air
Of the only cathedral of which I'll ever need to be aware


And many insist that it's not magic


Incomprehensible the timeless vortex of truth that this goddess's eye, all seeing, views
She's been worshipped since time immemorial too, 
Before we saw the light of the orb of the moon
Before the sun light formed into view, 
When we still recalled the time we all crawled forth from the primordial soup


Throughout she's provided a profound praxis
Enshrouded and resounding through a boundless axis
And no matter how lost I get in the stress lines my brow is mapped with
I can drown and reincarnate, again and again, navigating north south, up down and backwards,
Following the wispy cotton candy trails over the oceans of her Cloud Atlas


But some still can't see that it's magic
And No matter where I've gone in the day I'm back home in the evening
No matter how many board rooms I go to for meetings
No matter where I roam, what I'm seeking,
In the half light of the dawn, draws me towards her aroma that's sweetening


I, lonely pilgrim, nuzzle in to the folds of elysium
Breathe in with glistening nose like a golden retriever then
Begin to lap in her lap with a hunger awoken with fever
Delicately exploring this knowing delirium


This goddess rescues me from my dark chasm;
Any temptation I have to succumb to the numbness of sarcasm
Is remediated immediately with every morsel of charged plasm
As Gasps and hand grasps grow into vast spasms


And they still claim that she's not magic


Even as The atoms of our fibres become one system
She accepts me as Fool, and makes me Magician
She High Priestess, becomes empress high above us
While I Emperor, become Hierophant, and we entwine as Lovers


Gripping the reins of this Chariot, feeling Adjustment's turnings
We are absorbed in reflection for a momentous moment, just as Hermits
Feeling the churning of the Wheel of Fortune, dust to dust
Civilisations to ashes and back again, lust to lust


I am Hanged Man, forlorn, awaiting the depths of Death
Le petit mort, she is Art, and we detect the Devil's breath
As the Tower we've built is increasingly charged
But is struck down before its height reaches the Star


The Tower falls, but the Star is what we soon become
As one by one we ascend through Moon and Sun
Beyond Judgement, into the vastness of the Aeon
She woman, I snake, in the Universe, the garden of Eden


And as we come, to the edge of this precipice 
In one holy moment, I ascend to this reverence
For a single macro second of tenderness 
which stretches and gives me a glimpse of the infinite


For this is the portal and all mammalian life was sent from it
From this World which is itself a nurturing fertile crescent and
Imbued with such a gift, such a beautiful, musical, climactic, dramatic, pageant...


How can anyone look at this temple and say that it's not Magic?




