"Litany" (1992)
To Kimberly Bergalis, a young Catholic woman who claimed to have contracted HIV from her bisexual dentist, Dr. David Acer, and who died of complications from AIDS on December 8, 1991 at the age of 23. Eight months before she died, she wrote in a letter to Florida’s Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, “Do I blame myself? I sure don’t. I never used IV drugs, never slept with anyone... I blame Dr. Acer and every single one of you bastards... You’ve ruined my life... I’m dying, guys. Goodbye.”
St. Kimberly the Virgin is dead,
who wore her hymen like a banner
and her veins like a fortress.
St. Kimberly, patron of the innocent,
pray for us reprobates.
St. Kimberly the Virgin is dead,
who was arbitrarily assigned the cruel fate
of perverts and degenerates.
St. Kimberly, patron of the pure,
pray for us hedonists.
St. Kimberly the Virgin is dead,
whose doctors and whose God procrastinated
from quelling her pain.
St. Kimberly, patron of the tormented,
pray for us laggards.
St. Kimberly the Virgin is dead,
who by her virtue and tenacity
gained audiences with rulers of nations.
St. Kimberly, champion of the downtrodden,
pray for us bastards.
St. Kimberly the Virgin is dead,
who languished without benefit
of years to grow wise or days to grow serene.
St. Kimberly, patron of the shafted,
pray for us survivors.
St. Kimberly the Virgin is dead,
whom angels homeward bore
while we feasted the Immaculate Conception.
St. Kimberly, patron of the just,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
©1992, 2001 Khrysso/CRWagner
BACKGROUND FOR "LITANY"
A litany is a prayer consisting of a series of invocations by a leader with alternate responses by the congregation, to wit:
Leader: St. Matthew / Cong: Pray for us.
Leader: St. Mark / Cong: Pray for us.
Leader: St. Luke / Cong: Pray for us.
Leader: St. John / Cong: Pray for us.
Leader: Holy Mary, Mother of God / Cong: Have mercy on us.
Leader: St. Anne / Cong: Have mercy on us.
Leader: St. Joachim / Cong: Have mercy us.
Leader: All you virgins and martyrs / Cong: Pray for us.
etc.
The “Hail Mary:”
"Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen."
The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is observed on December 8, the day on which Ms. Bergalis died. It commemorates the Roman Catholic dogma (codified in 1950, but embraced for centuries before that) that Mary was born free of Original Sin, that is, sin that everyone automatically inherits because of Adam’s fall.
The “rulers of nations” are the members of the U.S. Senate, whom Ms. Bergalis addressed in person during the last year of her life.
Ms. Bergalis was later found, according to journalists’ investigations, probably not to have been a virgin after all...
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POEM #2:
"I Wanna Find Myself A Lover/Il faut que je te baise" (1994)
I wanna find myself a lover who will fly me like a kite
I wanna find myself a lover who will pull out all the stops
I wanna find myself a lover who’s prepared to take me further
I wanna find myself a lover with a dream whose time has come
I wanna find myself a lover with the courage just to be
I wanna find myself a lover who can laugh until he bleeds
I wanna find myself a lover who has tears enough to drown in
I wanna find myself a lover who has lived enough to die
I wanna find myself a lover who can meet me at the edge
I wanna find myself a lover who can rail at all the gods
I wanna find myself a lover who will scream at me for mercy
I wanna find myself a lover who will sleep upon my arm
I wanna find myself a lover who is always asking why
I wanna find myself a lover who can see the irony
I wanna find myself a lover who is hell-bent on survival
I wanna find myself a lover with integrity to spare
I wanna find myself a lover who is always making love
who is always making love
who is always making love
I wanna find myself a lover who is always making love
©1994 & 2001 Khrysso/CRWagner
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POEM #3:
"constants" (1995)
inhale
nothing
exhale
is
drink
certain
pee
except
sleep
death
wake
and
eat
taxes
shit
©1995 & 2001 Khrysso/CRWagner
previously published in RFD magazine
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POEM #4:
DENVER: LABYRINTH III
Just walk the path just
walk
the path just
walk
the path.
You don’t have to do
anything
You don’t have to say
anything
You don’t have to feel
anything
You don’t have to think
anything just
walk
the path.
You don’t get to live your life over
But
you can
walk
the path
again,
Let her draw you into
her center:
You don’t even have to watch your step—
You know your step:
You’ve been this way before,
and your feet have more
knowing than you know.
Just walk
the path just
rock
your soul
to your heartbeat
in the womb of Gaia, let her
hold you let her
know you just
know her just
walk the path just
go forth anyway.
Church bells ring, announcing
the return of the faithful into
the cosmos, they
having worked the magick
of transformation in sacred time
and sacred space—
no bells will ring for you
though you return
extruded
from the Cauldron of Change,
the very womb of Gaia,
But walk the path anyway.
Here you go: just
walk
the path just
be
Gaia-born again.
©2001 Khrysso Heart LeFey 2/06/01, revised 7/09/01
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POEM #5:
"The Wedding Afghan" (2001)
Tonight,
wrapped tight
in the wedding afghan Nana made
when I was still a youth,
I shall marry myself again.
She, optimist (if not prophet),
knew the great tenderness within me
waiting to entwine itself,
with the wedding afghan,
around a lifetime love.
Perhaps she even knew that I,
like her dear Carl,
who never gave her grandchildren,
might share
the wedding afghan
with a lifetime Jim
and not a Carolyn.
But I haven’t shared the afghan—
Well, at least not since Seth
and before that, Kelly—
and I was wrong about both of them.
Now,
though my bed be wide
and my world wider still,
the wedding afghan
envelopes only me.
In a lifetime
it is easier to be alone
than wrong,
and an expanse of bed is better
than the expanse between two hearts.
My Jim, my Carl,
will not appear this evening,
and so tonight,
again wrapped tight,
I marry myself.
©2001 Khrysso
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POEM #6:
"11 JUNE 2001:
INDIANA WELCOME CENTER, EXIT #1 . . .
MAKE THAT 187"
I arrived in Terre Haute, and he was dead.
I hadn’t planned it, this coincidence:
I came not as plaintiff,
witness,
advocate,
Didn’t know,
absorbed as I was in the dramas of my rites of passage
and the thickness of my sleep deprivation,
that this first most celebrated criminal of the century had
perished
in
infamy
a scant ten hours earlier
and now belonged, like Lincoln,
to the Ages,
Didn’t know,
waking as I did from my hazy, humid nap
amid semitrailers, asphalt,
and the buzzing of all-weather radials and mosquitos,
that the yawning emptiness of this plodding midwestern town had
confirmed itself with one more body rotting
like road kill in Terre Haute:
Revenge’s vampirism stayed for a moment.
Memo: add hash mark to toll of Oklahoma City.
©2001 Khrysso
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