The Hexagram

“With one hand on the hexagram
and one hand on the girl,”
sings Leonard Cohen of the streets
whose stories still enthrall,
so I pause to decipher the seal
of Solomon his ode evokes.

The six-ponied star is at the peak
of Saturn, the Lord of the Rings,
and it was a ring with which Solomon bound
the demons that reigned beneath,
with which he commanded the wind and the sea
and communed with animals and trees.

“Yes, one hand on my suicide,
one hand on the rose.”
I continue listening to the song
that haunted me in Glasgow,
where one hand was on the ringed cross,
and one hand on the unicorn.

The Hourglass

The sand is trickling in my mind.
I recall when I last flipped the hourglass.
I was only a ten-year-old,
measuring my diligence against the world’s.

I had created my hourglass with molten marbles,
the marbles that used to stud my playground.
I coaxed them into shape,
in the furnace of my dreams,
those dreams of transcending the banal,
then filled it with sand,
collected from our ancient shores,
the shores on which saints, prophets, and priestesses walked.

Each grain of sand has become a memory,
a moment of triumph,
a moment of grief,
a translucent bead,
encoding my past,
mirroring my present,
and predicting the end of my days.

Pleiadiens

Pursued by the lusting Orion,
the seven daughters of Atlas, the Pleiades
supplicated Zeus for interference,
and hence became immortalized up in the spheres,
a cluster of stars, out of Orion’s reach.

As I look out for them every evening,
my pal insists that some of us are their distant relatives.
Like Pleiadiens, telepathy is in our genes.
We heal with music,
but are sensitive to whatever screams
and computer screens.
Seekers of solitude,
we relate to animals and trees
and are vegetarians.
We are enamoured with the ocean
and Atlanteans.
We occasionally experience déjà vu
and rely upon our own instincts.
We are teachers, helpers, and geometricians.

Eights

When I was a child,
I was instructed to despise
the number eight in this numerical garb: ٨
simply because its very two arms
point downwards to the ground,
whereas those of the number seven: ۷
benignantly point to the heavens.
But then the Arabic numeral 8
is identical to the symbol of infinity
when it is held horizontally.

In Greek the name of Jesus, the Christ,
adds up to three eights, 888.
Besides eight are the points of the Templar Cross
and the petals of the Buddhists’ lotus flower.
To Pythagoras, it is the symbol of victory.
To me, it is the freedom from bigotry.

Dr Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a PhD on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.

Susie’s first book (adapted for film), Classic Adaptations, includes Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

You can find more of Susie’s work here on Ink Pantry.