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Sirena, the Baptist, Sings
by Cesca Janece Waterfield My singing, Sailor, is not what drowned your lovely bones. Notes that lift from my slim throat and then seed the sky with tone and hue are my answer to your barks and brays for battle. Your ceaseless calls for more shores to invade, people to conquer, materials to get, and resources to ration toward your exclusive gratification do not serve the lovely earth; breathing, breasted matron. I will stave your selfish will with song. Upon your linear staff, place I plump whole notes, the flourish-tail of quarter notes, and lyric; rounded form of vowels, tooth and tongue of consonants. See? My arms open enough to hold both hell and hope. I am nurse and muse, both, as well as whole creator. My song was never dirge. You blame my melody for your own drive toward doom. I sing ballads eternal. I sing independent, not in reaction to you, whom I need not oppose, since I am beyond your linear urge, your perpetually unslaked thirst for force. The mermaids, too, you blame. But your desire will always outlive their dalliance, because their wills, on land and water, are their own. Euterpe - have you ever known her? Love poetry's Muse, she authors words felt within every heart. She has served you well. And yet, you have written her down, tucked her into anthologies, pointed at her falsely in annals of history. Do you think you reduce her? She is both page and pen; lingam and yoni; lintel and portico. My Lord, I only wanted our common fealty to love. But your ships and cannon, your treaties beg compassion, treaties you require and then deny compliance… Maurauder upon water, my mellifluous bawl for love is cacophony to you. But love claws at my breast, and cries for breath. So I went underwater, baptist to my self, and dreamt a song. It is a song without end where I try to catharsize your foibles and find in them meaning. Independent of your woe, and the sorrow you sow, I will laugh, raise my voice in celebration to eros, and agape. You wish me dead. I defy your desire by accepting it on my terms. Mon la petite mort. You wish me dead. I defy your desire with mine own, upon and away from my marital bed. I am wed, you see, in daily matrimony to eros. I sing ballads eternal.
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