Autobiography of Venus

Here’s the thing. You never realize you’re an archetype,

your daily rituals establishing eternal truths,

the story unfurling in its fractal glory

across the dimensions of the Universe.

Only lifetimes later the legends seem familiar,

like something you dreamed once

but woke before the tragic ending,

or the consummation devoutly to be wished.

I won’t try to defend Inanna.

Some of us have wild youths, power and beauty

going to our heads—too new, too recently of Light

to know that when you deal in density

your monuments may long outlast your flesh,

but every blow inflicted strikes you back.

The angel has so little stock in suffering

she might rain down apocalypse without a thought

since anyone who didn’t choose that form of entertainment

Didn’t have to play.

In those days Love was prey,

to be stalked, pounced upon, sparred, tortured, sacrificed

upon her star-bright, newly minted altar.

Inanna rashly went to Hell, and later

forced a lover who didn’t care to follow her

to ransom her when getting out proved trickier than getting in.

In the Persephone days, she practiced playing the victim,

having learned to be inert is to remain untarnished.

She was the idol and the pawn of Love. Let others

lust and plot, kidnap, marry and barter. Let others

grieve and rend their wheatstalk hair and freeze the earth with sorrow.

She was above it all or otherwise below,

changing her spring garlands for pomegranate robes

depending on the season, longed for by all

but longing herself for none.

By the time I was Aphrodite—or was it Venus—

I’d learned to live with tarnish.

My alabaster form beguiled worshippers

the more with every lover I seduced

and then betrayed, with every war I set in motion

with my careless gifts, with every nymph

and demigod I birthed and suckled at my breasts.

I wielded power cloaked in feminine art.

But the young shepherd’s beauty and his music

razed my temples to the ground.

I never saw the dust—only his shine.

And for a brief time I knew joy.

He wasn’t faithful. Why should he?

I’d never cared before.

Love in those days was a golden apple

bandied among jealous snakes.

Once shared with the god of war, my bed

became a grave for my enlightened heart.

Among the stars, Adonis couldn’t touch me

But he couldn’t hurt me, either.

Now we are here.

I’ve posed nude on your altars through the ages,

plied you with cruelty, indifference, gentleness.

You never cared to see beyond my beauty.

Despite my name I never showed you Love.

Maiden, mistress, mother…

Here in this mortal realm, I’ve no more time

for serpents, apples, cruelty or spite.

My poor Adonis languishes in Hell,

so many demons feeding on his brightness

the only love he knows is how to nourish them

With suffering.

This time, there will be no pawns, no proxies,

no freedom bought with someone else’s pain.

I’ve lived now long and far enough from Light

I know to strike no blows that will strike back.

Gently, I will lift Cerberus from his chest

and banish the beast that dogs the manger of my Love.

Density will sink to density,

and Light arise to Light.

You never asked the Goddess of Love

To teach you how to tend your human heart.

I never knew before. I’m learning now.