faith healer

Years ago, a popular short story making the rounds at the legendary Writers Club on AOL was entitled "Faith Healer", in which a sexual encounter between two lovers was a metaphor for spiritual healing, perhaps even was, in an intimately emotional and spiritual sense, as it has been proven that those deprived of affection wither.

This is not of or from the story, whose author I cannot recall at this time, but from the title and the concept. And Marvin Gaye, take a bow, for your remarkable outro "Sexual Healing". This is actually a preliminary take, I expect to do a larger form of it when the mood reaches me.

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pour out your soul in soft sibilance
that I may place hands upon it and draw
the sickly-sweet venom that has festered
deep within a heart apart from mediocrity.
beauty a curse for drawing things darker
than moths and the casual stare.

I touch without entering, only to draw
into me the virulence of violence and silence
that has laid pain and stain to strain
your very soul to cry out for healing,
a sealing of the crypt where slipped
the past to make plot against your person.

I touch and feel the soft and subtle warmth
that radiates from within, a sin of sentience,
trapped in amber to be sapped in agony,
the cold boldness of those who do not understand
or respect the reflection of God within you.
I feel your soul moving in turbulent thought.

I touch and you draw me into you, no pretender
but a tender surrender of my boundaries to feel
the pain you seal in soft words spoken as dare and prayer
when those you care to let lay hands upon you
are offered a trip to an altar of communion
with an aspect of the religion of avatars of life.

I touch and your sweet sweat releases the sorrow
that flows into my skin, as I am the conductor of light
into dark places that no one faces alone and survives,
lives fractured every day by those who play
with the tools of the alchemists and amomancers,
faux dancers who lack the grace or experience.

I touch you as you lay upon me, silent but for
a soft breathing, your leaving not imminent but soon,
for I have done my duty and peeled pain from beauty
to serve the unforgotten gods of love and promise.
my hands can feel you rise and fall in subtler ways
than mere moments before, when transfigured by ecstasy.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.