HADES AND DEMETER (PRAYER)

God that relishes the deathless

send me a flickering flame

to devour my flowering Ego-Death

—enter into my covenant of sin—

naked by drinking words of flies

bare of joy I am stripped

emerge into blossomed hatred

flares of flittering fireflies

—Death opens heaven’s doors—

left in a cedar coffer, enclosed

in dirt—flowers stargazers

heaven once sat in the Garden

the dead only eat

Pomegranate seeds or apples

of living wisdom—

reconcile my unwieldy Ego-Death

to death, given a flower-bed

coffer that I may find vanishing-heaven.