Summer Bit Me

Summer bit me
and the stars swallowed the smoke from the city
choked
and fell out of the sky.
You came and kissed me
but only stayed a little while

and I sat in the hallway
and I sat on the stairs
and I assembled the furniture so the spirits could be with me there.

In the  strange house I could hear the echo of the dry walls
calls
thud with the lack of folk
and I was ran ashore without a boat.

And a crow cried out,
and a commoner came and plucked me from my high bough,
and the devil on my shoulder asked me honestly
‘are you happy now?’.

What a thing to ponder,
that he sets me to the road again to wander, no hearth no home,
no place to dig my bones.
Therein lies the madness, therein lies the grief,
that there is no place to chalk a threshold,
no place to sow my seeds.

And god called over one night to put me in my place,
and I had forgotten what it was to feel disgrace,
I submit myself to Her but she said it to me straight;

‘Stop sister, unlace your wings from that pincer, place your faith in the spring that follows the winter’,  but I was too corseted by the will of the money mincer.
And no one claps their hands for a clean spoon and nobody howls back when you don’t howl at the moon.


I walked miles and miles in the circle of convenience handing out paper cups to the sleep starved helping them get back on the engine that’s run by the blood of our new gods.
I sacrificed my innocence to it’s endless progression without growth.
And I saw beyond the glass ceiling the castle of the kingdom and the children drowned in the moat.

I waited, and waited, and waited, for the harvest that I thought I sowed.
I walked, and walked, and walked, but found nothing but death at the end of each road.

And you cried, and I cried, and we were far away.

So I called to the ether, wherein lies the secret and I sought the reaper, so that the reaper might not know the seeker. I danced, I danced, I necromanced my shuffling corpse tied to the hooves of a horse,
jigged ol nick jostled him out back door.


And finally the moon howled back and the tide changed and a wave came,
And the tide deigned to turn around and bring you back this way.
And when you came you brought the wind and it came to rip my rotten roots and strip me of all sin, and god called round, stomped up the wooden stair, and she set me on the zephyr, cast me on the air.

So at last I have a halo that is no more a noose, at last I have my wings to sing, my light to bring, my love to be set loose. At last I settled feet on earth and surrender to the road, I see the path before me and I carry nought but the grace that I am owed. Home is where I sow my seeds and home is where I rest, my home is in the hills the streams, the cities and forests.

One day I will have a garden where I can be alone. Until the day I have a garden, my rest is in these bones.

Sedna

sedna


Terror
You walk in, out, in, out.

I walk around.

I face and face nothing.

Not myself.
Not even.

You raise your voice.
I lower mine.

We make spaces that the other fills. Submission. Dominance.
Silence.
Roaring.
Familiar spaces. The sacrificial virgins to the old gods.


Too many times now, my right arm, my last two fingers, some ancestor keeps me here.
At war.
At war.

I ask to speak
I speak without permission.

I live
I live.
I dance without you.


Older,
I walk backwards in time. I become a whale, a mermaid.
A cup bearer.

Drink the elixir, please, true lover, see inside me.
Read between my eyes.

I sing.
I sing ancient songs for silent times.
I ask that the birds echo back
And the bats
Yet all I hear is the keening of orcas
And the hollow crack and echo of ice on water.

Since the time
I was cast out under the cloudy thunder
Fled a nest fearful
I reached out for you
Only to meet your indifferent blade
My fingers severed from the palms
One whole hand from wrist

Father father, why did you choose this?
You watch me sink and sink
into the dark throat of the ravenous
tide
little me
under an ocean that swallows the sky.


In the soothing of my scarred limbs,
my phantom will
No man can I trust till they can bear witness

Still
I know you took the fingers from me
So there would be nothing I could point
should I dare to surface.