Servitude
Does she have to be so mean, I wondered. Just because she’s a witch doesn’t give her the right to be so snippy. A witch, so what? Anyone could be a witch, she’s not the queen of England for fuck’s sake. Maybe I should have been a bit more careful with that bowl of rice, but how was I supposed to know she was count to have to stop and count each little grain? She wouldn’t even let me clean it up, she had to do it herself, snapping about how I wouldn’t do it right, that I’d have miscounted. Whatever. As if I don’t know how to count, as if picking up spilled rice was too complicated a task for the likes of me. If she’d stayed out in her beloved garden for another 30 seconds I would have had it cleaned up and she never would have even known. It’s not even a garden these days, more of an overgrown weed patch, all full of nettles and poison ivy. Hell, if she hadn’t come flying around the corner like a mad-woman and scared me half to death I probably would never have dropped the damn basket in the first place. Oh well. Let her count her rice, maybe she can cook it to for once. I’m not her god-damn slave, after all. I don’t know why I’m always the one who has to do all the cooking. And the cleaning, for that matter. Just thinking about scrubbing out all her nasty caldrons is making my fingers ache. Some of those must had been left sitting around for weeks! I don’t even want to think about what she’d been mixing up in them originally…love potions made with guts of toad and beauty teas brewed from burnt up bat wings. Yuck. Who drinks those things? I can’t believe people actually pay her for that crap. She knows as well as the next batty old broad that they don’t do damn thing. Personally I think she’s on a mission to create the most foul tasting, evil brew possible, just to see some sap actually choke it down. I think she gets her kicks from it. I guess it serves the suckers right, coming around here asking for love potions in the first place. And on top of that, they say she’s the best! She actually has a national reputation for this gunk she bottles. Lord above! What has the world come to when that’s what passing for magic these days. It’s just mad, I say, mad.
Inspiration
I’m Explaining a Few Things
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I’ll tell you all the news.I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.From there you could look out
over Castille’s dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings –
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!Pablo Neruda
Lilith’s Charm Bracelet
On my blue-white wrist I wear
A charm bracelet. Strung on a chain
Of tears beaten silver
Are my broken hearts,
The night noises of the desert;
The haunting calls of cactus owls
And the whisper of the wind,
Mementos from the garden
Where all was lush and green and feeble,
Fragile and anemic in its perfection.
