Poppy.

Photo by Lucas Ricardo Ignacio on Pexels.com

‘There’s a universe of gaps to fill in,’ He says,

‘A puzzle, obscured with its incompleteness,

A bag of a thousand pieces, each out of reach.’

And the fabric slides down my arms,

I’m sliding out of my skin.

Snake shedding, falling to the ground in a heap.

The desire in me to be neutral, bare,

No colour, no gender, blank,

The potential of anything.

And he says: “I am Nothing. He liked the name. It did not make him feel worthless; on the contrary, he began to think of himself as a blank slate upon which anything could be written. The words he inscribed in his soul were up to him.”

Quoting Poppy Z. Brite,

Our King of Kings, our goals to aspire.

We planted trees in the backyard,

The smallest one we nicknamed Ariel,

Summoner of tempests, servant of fortune.

Tiny, fragile, a hole in their wing,

Frayed lacing at the edges, where spirit meets air.

‘I know you’re small and weak,’ I whisper,

‘But I know you have it in you to grow.

All I ask is that you try to thrive,

And I will try and do the same.

I will do my best for you,

And I will never ask anything more,

Than for you to be exactly who you are.’

Back in the house, initiated into the unknown,

Ceremonies for and teaching of.

Can I go back in time and initiate myself?

Give gifts, advice, and guidance,

All I never got before, all I wish I had right now.

‘These are the blood mysteries.’ I would tell myself,

‘Not taught but born.’

Can I give them up, freely and willingly,

In exchange for who I am?

The fabric slides down my arms

And I’m stripped away,

Nothing left but blank white walls.

Ready for life, ready to begin,

Ready to repeat the lessons I didn’t learn before.

‘Ready to thrive.’ He says.

Ready to thrive, I hope.

Witch

She got on her broom, in search of the voice that was calling to her.

Flying over mountains and seas, through snowstorms and desert winds,

The call became a scream.

She flew higher and higher, up into the clouds, and found a mirror waiting there.

In the mirror she found herself, the lost parts calling her home.

Narcissus et Echo

Come to me, one half, one half of you,

Rising up, rising up along rivers, along streams.

Come to me, I split, split myself in two,

To hide my power, hide it from myself,

From you, for the love of you.

Come, and I won’t speak unless spoken to,

Won’t threat unless threatened.

I’ll be small, hidden, mere reflection of you,

Your wants, your needs.

Come, and I will flow into you,

Or remain as still as glass,

Inward, outward, your weakness, your strength.

Come back to me, a memory,

Unfinished and unbroken,

Half fragile, half unchanged.

Come back to me, and for a while,

I will be neither or,

A dream, a sweetness,

A bitterness left to rot, to root, to flower.

And bloom, bloom in me,

Watchful eye, a longing,

On the verge of staring in, falling in.

And bloom, opening, letting go,

Letting in, letting out,

Of what is left, what is without,

What is yet to come.

And I will live, give,

Whisper quiet, whisper low.

And I will follow,

Asleep in the reeds,

One eye staring up,

One voice calling out.

Peacock.

Wrapped in a black sheet

Thrown to the floor

The roll of earthy tones.

Cold clay, cold tiles on hot skin

Flushed feathers, pale porcelain.

Eyes cast down

stood against the dark

Brown, drab, thin bodied.

Not green, not fierce,

Not vibrant with desire.

Escape, a little more

We’ll break her, day by day.

Shut up in the dark

Unsellable, unusable

The subtlety of feminine grace.

That’s why everybody knows

The eyes of Hera

Were the eyes that spied on her.

A Drink at Midnight to Kiss you Goodbye.

Her words tattooed to my back as I walked away.

The rain soaking through.

Thirty acting sixteen.

A bottle of vodka at the cemetery gates.

The songs of youth and rebellion.

Jump the fence.

A kiss under the headstones.

A flower dropped.

In that dress, we’ll recapture the moment.

A never ending affair, and angels pointing the blame.

Maybe we can stop, when the pain gets too much, and the bottle runs dry.

Just one last kiss, just one last drink.

And we’ll leave behind The Smiths and Keats, at the cemetery gates.

Teeth

In the silence I meet god.

‘Breathe.’

In the silence I meet god,

And she tells me to breathe,

‘One half in, one half out, the whole in between.’

In the silence I meet god,

And I prepare for battle.

Gnashing teeth and rage,

Love loss made me bitter,

Made me hate,

Made me self-destruct,

Made me strong.

You made me strong.

Half Lotus

For a second I forgot

For a second I wasn’t carrying you around

For a second I wasn’t me

For a second I was who I think I am

For a second there wasn’t anything to be forgiven for

To be ashamed of

To punish myself for

For a second I let you go

And I was more alive than all the seconds before

Mary Magdalene

Little me, trying to sift an ocean through my fingertips.

If I could put a harness on all that’s in me…

Work with the flow, flow with the word.

Contained and manageable,

A woman’s work.

Leaving Behind the Garden

Try your best not to misuse this power,

Now that you’ve found your truth.

I know we don’t get to choose our power,

And embracing it takes time.

Try not to fear this power,

There are many ways for it to be used,

Some you’ve already discovered on your own,

And some you’ve yet to find.

Deep down you’ve always known your power,

And I know it feels so strange to wield.

Embracing it has cost you dearly,

With the ones you left behind

Asking how you got this way.

So they said you were the devil,

And you played for them that part,

And you denied all that you had,

Why do you think you tried so hard,

To please them, to keep them, to love them?

Just because they feared their power,

Doesn’t mean you do the same.

When you deny your power,

You betray yourself again.

And we need you, to be you,

So be you.

Redux

We brought something wild into the house,

Unspoken, wordless,

Empty silence around tongue and cord and…

The thing it burrowed deep,

Scuttling under floorboards,

The between, the cracks.

Watching, cold eye,

It’s throat becoming ours.

Stitching stone and stick into words hurled.

Fangs under nails, claws under tooth,

Rendering clothes from skin.

We brought something wild in,

Something we’d long kept out.

Animal from human,

Lust from love,

Rage from hate.

Ashamed to see ourselves,

We shrouded the mirrors and dug it up,

Returned it, hand in glove.

Apple back to branch,

Fig leaf back to skin.

Innocence back to ignorance,

Two back to one.