The Edge of Fear

There’s really no other way to describe it

The way I now feel inside about you

Other than a once dreamy relationship

Now having veered into nightmare

Where previous, the feeling of your warmth on my skin

Soothed me, comforted me, made me feel real

Spiraling now into a sense of terror when you’re around

Even a hint of you sends my feelers on alert

Just a twinge of your presence opens doors to future horrors

It is so sad

So terribly, terribly sad

This connection we once forged

This connection I prayed for, yearned for

Many

Years

And when you came, all that work I’d done

Our rhythm, our dance

You were so steady, so reliable, so deep

You made me feel

Real

But now, after several trips to the emergency room,

And numerous encounters with the crazy makers

I look back and see there were hints

Hints of your coming erratic swings

Hints of that once reliable presence, its sacredness

Starting to crumble

My heart hurts, such grief at losing our connection

Now medicated, I don’t even know if it’s you I feel

Even with that illusory sense of control

To quiet your outbreaks, to keep you from

Killing me

I still brace, wince, all the things

When I feel you return

How did it come to this

From such a deep sense of reverence and beauty

To this mistrust, confusion and wishing you’d disappear

Will we ever find our way back to each other?

How can I return to you, the you I remember

The us I remember, dancing, praying, offering

Instead of living, forever confused

Beholden to the pharmaceutical reins

Marionetted by diagnosticians

And when you’re around

Always

On the edge

Of fear

Solutio

She’s dissolving,

Again

Flesh evaporating like steam,

Again

Waking…empty, confused

Again

A hunger so deep

A terror so vast

They are battling,

Again

The cycle, repeating

Again

The same damn excuses,

Again

The doors not opening,

Again

Body rejecting nutrients,

Again

But something’s different

This time

She’s angry

And wailing

Unlike the passive defeat

Many

Times

Before

This time

She’s angry

This time

She showed up

Screaming, and yelling

And yearning, and slobbering

And wanting

Wanting

Much

To change

This time

She pounded

Fist to your pine-laden floor

Growling, bursting

Demanding

This has to end!

She howled

Over and over again

She howled

This has to end!

And you

In what may be the fiercest love

Just circled her

Holding gently

And letting her dissolve

Into particle tears

Absorbing

And rocking

And letting this old, old way

Have voice, and volume and fear

So that all of the creatures of the forest

Flee

You held her

Dissolving

And let the awful silence

Of her disappearing

And the next steps,

Not knowing

And the horrid, horrid

Wanting

You let it

Connection

No words, she said

I like the dreams, she said

Get some crayons, she said

Spending time in the basement

She’s finally talking to me

She Said No

She said no

Despite the day planned off of work

She said no

Despite the friend coming to guide her

She said no

Despite the doctor ensuring

This was a “minor office procedure”

She said no

With panic rising through Her

She said no

To stirrups

To objects entering into Her

To mega doses of Advil, to tranquilizers

To the whole damn experience

She said no

And brought me

To the Earth

She said yes

As I cried and let my belly touch ground

As deer snorted, gazing

And flocks of turkeys gobbled in in the oatstraw

She said yes

As I called my circle of sisters, recounting

As lizards did pushups in the sun

She said yes

As I turned towards Her

Wanting to know

She said no

Questioning the medication

She said no

Grimacing at anesthesia

She said no

At insurance standards

She said no

To fear and pressure

That this was not just a natural process

Ignoring the millions of women before her

Traversing these symptoms without getting objects inserted

Just to be sure

She said no

She said yes

To possible somedays

If medically necessary

She said yes

To remaining open

To being spread out on a table

If her life depended on it

But for now

Very clearly, and undeniably

She

Said

And I am listening, curious

(But half scared that

She is just trying to kill me)

Wondering why,

Instead of a quick office visit

A deep, deep, and powerful place

Pulled me away and to my sisters, circling

To soft wind blowing through springtime grasses

Away from neon insurance standards

Rooting, grounding, sobbing

Into the Earth

She said no

And I am here

Listening

Hearing Her

In three short days

I will sit in a room

Feet up in stirrups

Painkillers in my belly

Friend by my side

On this day

(Barring my body’s own refusal,

A fainting or other somatic scream)

An instrument will be inserted

And a part of me will be sucked out

And placed into a container

Clear and clean

I will hopefully rise from the table

Grateful for such grace and ease

I will smile at my doctor, and friend

I will walk out into the world,

Having faced the medical monsters

That terrify

Meanwhile

This part of me, suctioned

Will be in a tube

And will travel to some laboratory hands

It will be studied, dissected

It will be judged

As good or bad

Several days later

I will receive a call

(or message if the news is “good”)

I will be informed if this part of my body

Has passed the test

I do not know how I feel about it all

Besides straining to trust

That no matter what

My body is taking me on an initiation

Its extreme cries urging me

To reach out

To overcome my resistance

To hospitals, and pharmaceuticals

And diagnoses

And to sit in a room

In three short days

Feet up in stirrups

Painkillers in my belly

Friend by my side

While an instrument is inserted

And a piece of me

Is sucked out for its journey

I am so grateful

To have the luxury of friends

Of caring staff, and sanitized medical tools

And despite my fears

I will go with the intention

Of hearing Her

In the swirling mind control of the System

Hoping for meaning

Hoping for an understanding

Of this Great Body and its terrifying symptoms

Hoping for a translation

Of what She, who I refuse to see as faulty

Is trying to say

Silly Me

Silly me

Here I was thinking that The Underworld

Is a place you visit once

Here I was, sacredly surrendering

To the Descent, fingernails clawing down

To the Abyss, wandering hollow for years on end

Unable to rise to another day

The Protector, struggling, to keep the light alive

Trusting I was going through some once-in-a-lifetime trial

To birthe the healer within

Silly me

Thinking that the Ascent

Was my final release

Was the way towards integration, finding my way

To bring the gifts, back from her slaying, to serve

Here I was, seeing the Sun for the first time in decades

Shouting hallelujah like I’d never leave it’s rays

Silly me

How many times do I keep track

And does it even matter anymore?

Like nature,

Cyclic, sometimes blessed and sometimes devastating

I do not understand why she is trying to kill me

Again

And I wonder if it is really better

To be able to know

To be able to ask that question

Sometimes I wonder if it is superior

Like the wet and emerging butterfly

To not know, to not be aware to ask

Why it is raped, its life force threatened

Upon trying to emerge, to fly

It happens, all the time, nonetheless

This nature

Does it ask?

Does it wonder?

Does it dread the

violent

cycle?

Silly me

Here I was thinking that The Underworld

Is a place you visit once

Yet here I am again

In this dank, bloody, hopeless cavern

Even now, wondering,

If it will be the last time

Silly me

Questions In A Dark Forest

Questions, questions

She’s asking all these questions

She’s leading me back

To you

At first, a choke in the throat

I’m crying, overtaken in sobs

Not quite sure where the trail begins

Am I in

Or just entering

The dark forest

Questions, questions

She’s asking all these questions

And now you’re answering

A slow, throbbing mass

Nauseous, I’m nauseous

Cramping

And now, the pulsing rises up to my heart

Questions, questions

She’s asking all these questions

I’m trying to hear you

You’re sending pictures, not words

Of childhood rooms and raging

Of a brightness, eclipsed

Of starving, of tossing and turning

Of kneeling, slobbering

Of vast purposelessness in tropical jungles

Of introjected yearnings

Of death

I cannot understand this, these communications

Please help me know why you’re here

You’ve been by my side, so long

Slicing my tender shoots away

As they try to grown, thrive

I feel you, ancient

Hopping from one tortured mind to another

Here you rest now

In my throbbing gut, reaching up

To my heart

What

Is the message?

What

Is the message?

I don’t know what you are

Or if your eonic presence even speaks

In words

And she’s asking all these questions

And it’s loud

And I’m lost

And I’ve no map

In this dark, dark forest

I wish I could hear you

I wish I could understand

You, ancient

Annihilator of anything I try to believe

You who have tried to kill me

Over and over again

Why

Are you here?

Questions, questions

She’s asking

Many

Questions

I cannot hear you

It is so loud

The time is up

And I’m racing

Before the sun sets

Before the cold, emptiness

Takes me

Will You ever tell me

Will I ever know

Before you finally accomplish your goal,

My death

I Co-Created A Music Album!

Album art designed by me, Logo/title created by iamthemoon

Hi friends…guess what? I co-created A MUSIC ALBUM!

𝐻𝑒𝑘𝑎𝑡𝑒 began as a recreational therapy project for both me and guitarist mOOn to process our shared experience of living with chronic pain/illness.

It is a concept album; it roughly follows the structure of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and is meant to be listened to sequentially to take you on a journey.

Like me it is both light and dark, off-key and melodic, intense and soothing, polished and amateur. No professionals were used in the making of the album, so it is also imperfectly perfect :}

We couldn’t quite fit ourselves into a particular genre, so we’ve named this style “metal-adjacent spoken word” hahaha…be ready for loud/dissonance (but at times beauty too)

We both hope you enjoy it…Take a listen and please give feedback here or on Bandcamp if so moved!

Here’s the BandCamp link: https://traveller2.bandcamp.com/album/hekate

Re-Membering

Photo by Hakeem James Hausley on Pexels.com

Re-member

I keep trying to

Re-member

Mostly, though

I walk through life

In a daze

Who am I?

What do I love?

Where do I want to go?

How do I want to contribute?

The response is silence

Just

Echoing

Silence

It’s as if I can see though my hands

And

I woke up this morning

To the voice of someone assuring

These are all just signs of spiritual awakening

These are all just signs of the old being cleared

These are signs of being prepared

For the new to arrive

Truth? Is this awakening?

Or is this apathy, is this insanity

After grinding through the work

Decades of release, healing, understanding

I sure hope it’s the former

I sure hope that I am aligning

With some Pleadian DNA strands

Just waiting to download me with my True Purpose^TM

I sure hope

This is awakening

Re-membering

Am I just re-membering?

Dissolved one more time, turned to goo

So that I may re-form and walk with clarity?

Is one more layer of old programming being removed

So I can finally let the ancestral gifts express?

Or is this just apathy

Insanity

Is this just emptiness

Meaninglessness

Illness

And despair

Chronic pain

Ripping into my reality

With no purpose

With no lesson

But to destroy me

Like the decimated carcass

Rotting after winter’s thaw

I hope it’s not apathy

The kind that only bitterness and stoicism bears

Or of course the turn towards medication

Living a life, veering opposite of my value

That everything is soul

That everything is a lesson

That everything

Is sacred

Instead, swallowing a choice

To create an alternate reality

So I don’t have to be with

The one so clearly present

Re-membering

I hope

I am

Re-membering

All of my well ancestors clearing me

All of their wisdoms preparing to stream into core

All my parts screaming out for my care, one last time

I hope I am re-membering

And not just descending

Into

Some

Crazy

Hell

Red Tent

I am on hold

And there is blood everywhere

I am calling

I do not know what to do

There is no circle

there is not even one elder

to tell me what to do

to do with all of this blood

like Carrie

I wonder

if I am dying

Red tent

where is my red tent

where are the women, holding

showing me the way

when there is blood everywhere

and I do not know what to do

Speeding

I am speeding

back to the place that used to make me feel safe

there is an overworked woman receiving

the payment machines do not work

I try to pee into a cup but

only large globs of me expel

I do my best to mop up the mess

I put it in the bag

I am waiting

in a bright white room

two women enter, speaking kindly

sharing stories, sharing concern

helpful words

my pulse eases

this is a woman’s walk

here is my red tent

I am resting

back resting on the Earth

overhead ravens circling

my hands feel into grainy sand

my fear held by rooting

drops of witches purse on tongue

she is here

she holds me

here is my red tent

I am walking

tiny bunnies at my feet

she is sharing

of late night terrors

and blood and confusion and care

she is sharing of what finally saved her

we are talking

about blood as the ducks squawk

and the cherries bloom

here is my red tent

I am visioning, a journey

red rivers in mazes

Strophalos, Hecate’s wheel

tunnels of crimson surround me

a black Crone’s cloak placed over my brow

I am sharing

with my sisters

pearlescent seashells

Also doused in life’s liquid

laughing we chant

here is my red tent

I am passing

and they are here

I am on hold again

there is blood everywhere

I am calling

I do not know what to do

But I know I am here

with my witch’s purse

with my red earth

with my sisters

I am passing

i am dissolving

I am in the red tent

here, at the Crossroads

I am making my offering, terrified

To the Crone