Kali
 
 
I thought I knew you, Kali, had felt you mashing
     on the brains that slipped out
from the battered heads under your feet as you danced
so many times amid the starving or the plague-ridden
and came even to each door on quiet American streets
     taking the disgusting flesh into your hands
to swirl it in a dance away from order
     in the vital force of destruction
Your black eyes were sweet, Kali, their gaze
     destroyed the salt of the sun
You were the center around which the dizziness came
I thought I knew you, Kali, both is symbol and in form
     both in idea and in flesh
The emotions that accompany you I could understand
     and I welcomed your presence
when I saw you striding with your necklace of skulls
     trampling down an abhorrent human race
the "Scourge of God" you have been called and it is
     a high enough appellation
but now it seems you too are a chimera though once
     you appeared to be the face of transcience itself
as permanent as the universe ripping itself apart
an inexorable beauty's strength empowered to disembowel
     Now your figure with its many arms
vanishes as I pass through it like a squirming wall of heat