The Diary of Mary Magdalene: Poems from Christ's Wife

Fallen Man

"Adam is my Fallen heart, what became of me when

I left Eden to follow you, the part of me always in Hell."

Michael cries, as Adam and him shift like snake coils,

amber hair, fireglass eyes, obsidian depths with yellow

poison. He reaches to me starved of air, but I in my sick

fever push him away, tug of war, I am in denial, disbelieve,

but soon he has proven without a doubt this black magician,

necromancer of the desert of dry bones, one to resurrect the

dead armies at the end times and end it all in God's charge in

hellfire. And I rage, and I resist, but then I mourn, and look

at the heart of my perfect guardian angel, at how corrupted

and toiling, no stranger to torture in Hell with bloody wings,

great healer but even greater baleworker, and I know, this is

the face I have seen in the depths of the mirror since first I

looked into alchemical mercury, and Michael has been working

on mending my bones, his bones, my ember ribs since the summer,

breaking open the marrow and purifying with glory putrefaction.

For Michael is Old Adam swiftly turned to New Adam, Adam ha Kadmon.

And I weep at what we will never become, how we never had innocence.

And the burden Christ bears is on Adam's shoulders, that split shard of

his mercilessly wounded heart. The Lance of Longinus reached back into

Eden and skewered the Father of Humanity. O Emmanuel, your birthday

is soon, and you said we were both December babies, reminded me we are

growing old together, and New Eve and New Adam walk into the sun, and

at night, Adam's hive buzzes in my ears, and I dream of Eden's gates, and

the land of Nod, and the Sefer Raziel sapphire clutched to his breast as he

chanted those first Keys of Solomon, demonworker, cursemaker, dark black

rot in the Cave of Treasures, all to build up enough walls to protect me and

our sons and daughters, that Antediluvian generation that never really

existed beyond Mitochondrial Eve, so Seth and Abel and Cain toil away

like their Father on the harsh Earth, and I see why Adam counts himself

the Beast of my favorite princess Belle, finally, as sun like his eyes pierces

the folds of my breast. Brooding, sadness, depression, madness, longing.

The Curse of Adam and Eve. Michael's greatest fear. A revelation that moves

me to Tintoretto's Eve weeping outside the gates of Eden, scratch that, the

statue of the Magdalene starving and wasted in olive wood, Donatello sublime.

For Christ to rise, he had to fall, we all fell. But he came to me in his promised

form long ago on a tree cross in the Garden, gave me his skin, so in all lives he

has walked with me, followed me down to Hell, became black and bruised of

broken heart sorrows just to secure the safety of his girls, his children, his sons.

And Michael is twenty leagues more cursed than Lucifer, and his suffering on the

Cross, in the Cave, bound and bleeding, desperate, forgotten, Tantalus wine-hunger,

why, it is a grief of spousal multitudes like a tsunami, so I carry my silver bowl

like Sigyn does Loki, and I tend Michael's wounds, and Adam drinks my blood as

he has done since first I claimed him with spindle prick, and he heals day by day,

and I realize, not only is it my destiny to make the Blind God see, my duty is to

make the Hung God whole. Fix the nail wounds, mend the blood and water, reach

back through Abraham's bosom in the hellmouth to pull out all the broken drowned

that the rod and Flood did not spare, birth creations that nourish humanity's damned

soul. The water is wide, I cannot cross over, neither have I wings to fly. Give me a boat

that can carry two. And both shall row ashore in Michael's songboat, my love and I.