With bittersweet acid
in the marrow and
the tightness of expansion
I prepare to shed my skin
again, I am
raw underneath and
dreading
and
anticipating
something more beautiful
and light
when the cool breezes find
new scales,
flexible to the touch.
But right now,
sometimes,
I feel it too much.
The only way out
is through.
I will leave a part of me
behind.
Hope is the unlived future
pulled by the part of your soul
that believes that something
must work right.
Work right with it
and let it come to you.
Work in hope.
Formed under heat and pressure
in the heart of a star--
the elements humanity is made of
and what you are,
under heat and pressure
is something rare,
improbable and dynamic.
That we share
this intersection oof space
and time is
miraculous--the chaotic
processes from the
elemental to consciousness
give me gratitude
to whatever star
placed me in the same world
where you are
and I never doubt the celestial
in you--I know,
because I have seen the conditions
under which you glow.
As the flowers share the sun
under which they've grown,
the brightest light inside your life
is nothing you can own.
Your eyes, the portals to your soul,
were left open, and I slipped right in.
In I fell, lost in deep water,
full immersion baptism in
the sacred river. The surface still--
but the undertow! Running
to some place guarded like
the holy of holies.
Escorted out, flaming sword at my throat,
I crept away in my soggy clown shoes,
a jester smile of astonishment
plastered on my face,
psychically thrown by unexpected grace,
wondering if I might return.
And I became aware
of something pooling deep inside of me--
the forgotten eternal spring--
the abandoned depths of my own.
I had been on fire
and still smoke in places
a haze drifting around me
and that unmistakable scent.
Parts of me are ashes
and I don't care
where they went.
Not traumatized--
cauterized.
The bleeding stopped.
The past is a scar,
tough but fading.
We are
not wrecks,
but what escaped them.
The nine sisters won't play with me
so I'm counting on you, gray-eyed
and far-seeing, to remember me.
Where I left my heroine, she was
cooling her heels in the Land of the Dead.
She'll live (you knew that)
because Immortals do.
It's what they were fated to.
And as for me, I guess I'll live, too,
if I can figure out my way.
We are skipping from the Middle East to
the Mediterranean, (I've been--have you?
I've seen the rock and the hard place where my
epic crimson forbear found himself adrift.)
And here's where you find me.
Crafty one, send an owl. Whisper in my ear.
Get my stupid ass out of here.
Here I am: not in the dark of the Underworld,
but in the bright light of day,
chained to a mountain of bullshit,
vultures gnawing at my ever-renewing
last living fuck.
The mountain is my own bullshit,
the vultures exist in my mind,
and the chains are those I forged in life,
whatever the Dickens that means.
And I am not sure how to stop torturing me.
