Pen Power

A letter

A letter

I light a candle

I whisper to the ancient ones

I let go of the I statements

And all the knowing heart I have

I let myself

Feel

I take out the fresh parchment

I grasp the smooth coolness

And I begin

I put your name at the beginning

And then I let it rip

All the things

I wish you never were

All the things

I hate about you

All the things

Your evil wrongdoing has brought into my life

All the things

I let myself feel

All the rage and roilings

The ways you could be better

The terror I’m afraid you’ll unleash

I feel it shooting from mind to matter

Furious scribblings scratching across the bumpy table

Through my limb

I stop

I feel my heart beating

I feel the blood pulsing, heat shimmering

At the edges of my skin

I feel so goddamned much

I try to write it all down

Addressed to you

About you

Because

Of you

Then

There is silence

I know it is time

I breathe in again

I scoot the chair out

And rise

I let the cool water run over

My palms in the wash basin

I splash its wetness

Against my face

I look

In the mirror

I breathe

I feel my feet on the ground

I shake it off

I turn back around

I sit down

Here, now, again

I watch the candle flame flickering

I grasp the smooth cool instrument

And I begin once more

Only this time

I strike

I strike out

Every instance of your name

In my letter

Slashing every which way

There’s so much of you here

I slash you out

And then

I write my name

Everywhere you have been

Every line

Every arrow

Every single place I seethed your title

I write

My name

Fast

Furious

So I can’t give in to the temptation to stop

I write

My name

I breathe

I look back to the candle

I talk to the ancient ones

I know what I must do

And then

I read

I read all the ways

All the things

I read

Self to self

Self to Spirit

All the ways

All the parts

Warring

I read

Taking it in

Sometimes I cry

Sometimes I deny

Sometimes I rage

At this act of accusation

But mostly, these days

I laugh

I laugh, I laugh, I laugh

I know you are real

And I must find ways to keep what I love alive

I must continue to set boundaries

I must continue to fight

But you

Are also me

And somehow that gives me a strange, strange strength

Somehow that leads me into

Center

I put down the pen

I stare at its power

I gaze at the flickering flame

I feel my feet on the ground

I feel

At ease

A letter

A letter

I blow out the candle

And walk into my life

See

From the very beginning

Scrying mystery from mattress bullet holes

I have been looking

Looking for clues

Following trails

Wondering

Where you are leading me

Tea leaves and oracles

Augury and portents

Wilderness quests

Searching

There are these repeating patterns

And sometimes I laugh

At how he shows up in my field

But rarely

Can I see

I sense the repeat

I grok the continuing theme

But rarely

Can I see

See what the vision is

See what this pattern wants of me

See

How these hands yearn to respond

All I see

Are patterns

In mattress bullet holes

In tea leaves

In oracles and augury

With

Apparent

Meaning

Swirling symbols

Dancing before my eyes

Not once is my hair blow back

By the message

I see

I laugh

And again, I sense into the gargantuan question mark

Floating in the midst of it all

A Melchizedek doctrine?

A Proclamation of the Quorum of the Twelve?

A neo-natal reenactment yearning?

It is as if all these symbols

Are speaking

Guiding

Showing

But I

Cannot see

A different language

Sometimes I wonder

If it speaks a different language

I have not learned

Does it taunt me, patterns

Over and over again

To say, Look! This is the key!

But hahahahahaha! The interpretation, occluded!

Silly human, too bad

For you!

From the beginning

From mysterious mattress holes

In abandoned warehouses

To Turkish coffee grounds in exotic cafes

I’ve been trying to see

I’ve been trying to understand

Why the hell I am here

And why the hell I keep searching

And what these patterns mean

And why these symbols dance before me

And how, and if

They want to transcend

My eyes, blindfolded

In this dark

I can only step one foot at a time

Staying present is my way

Surrendering to what I can feel

Small signs, following

Hoping they’ll lead me

Fully aware

It all might be one wild goose chase

Still, this unquenchable thirst I follow

To finally

See

I wrote a little ditty that goes along with this if you’re interested, mayhaps I’ll record it and post it here soon :}

What do

You Want Me

To seeeeee?

What do

You want me

To seeeeeee?

Over and over and

Over

Over and over

You Showwwww

Over and over and

Over

Over and over

I can’t knowwwww

What do you

Want me to seeeeeee?

Fire comes in close

But is not free

Hidden I’m hidden, I’m hidden

Hidden I’m hidden

Must be a key

Hidden I’m hidden, I’m hidden

Hidden i’m hidden

Just want

To Seeeeee

What do you

Want me

To see?

What do you

Want me

To see?

What

You

Want

Seeeeeee?

Featured

Nightmares

*The Nightmare*, Henry Fuseli (1871) By Tulip Hysteria / Go to albums – https://www.flickr.com/photos/36417567@N03/32380012237/, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=111521078

Fun fact

I’m obsessed with Nightmares

Sleeping ones

Waking ones

Those creatures that suffocate in the dark

Those creatures that suffocate

In the light

Repeating

I am obsessed

Fascinated

With why they are

Repeating

Terrorizing

Night Mare

The mythological beast tormenting

The sorcerous demons

The goblins that ride my chest

While I gasp, scream, weep

Hoping for the dawn

Oh, Sleeping, dreaming Mare

Unearthing the gargantuan spectres

That swim in my long-forgotten hollows

Those begging for attention

Begging for engagement

Begging

For a stand-off

Oh, sleeping, dreaming Mare

I am obsessed with how you turn

When I can stop and face you

Those times

When the clock numbers shimmer

And I realize I am not awake

Facing you

The scales and teeth I feel in your pursuit

Smooth out, and there’s a kind look

Pleading

I find in our eyes

Why do you come, Mare?

What do you have to teach?

How long

Repeating

Have you sought for my face?

Night Mares

I’m obsessed

With why they come repeating

With why they kill, suffocate, torture

With how they chase me

Over and over

Until, hopefully, one day

I might turn

Obsessed, also

With you, Day Mare

The patterns that repeat themselves

Over and over again

As if I am waking

And walking

And sludging

Through the same dead dream

The mythological beast

The sorcerous demon

The goblin riding my chest

How are you

Embodying the skins of beings

I am challenged to face each day?

How are you slithering

In the repeating arguments

In the cyclical frustrations

In the same problem

Appearing

In different bodies

What happens if I face you

In the waking hours,

Asking the question

Of what you’ve come to teach me?

Will your scales, your fang-laced suffocation

Reveal pleading and wise eyes

When I stop running away

When I turn to face you

When I recognize the

Repeating

Nightmare

Daymare

Coming to wake me

Fun fact

I’m obsessed with Night Mares

I’m obsessed with Day Mares

I’m obsessed with who you are

And that knife in your hand

And what will happen

If I turn and plunge myself into

Your teaching

It is time

To wake up

It is time

To wake up

It is time

To wake up

Featured

These Artful Shadows

It doesn’t interest me

How witty,

clever,

stunning

or badass

your creations are

What interests me

Is what terrifies you

What interests me

Is what creation is hiding deep within you

What ideas, images, stories and sounds

You yearn to share, but hesitate

I want to know

The color of the bars

Of the cage that keeps them in

The thoughtforms engraved deeply

Imprints on each of its thick stakes

I want to know

What the lock smiles at

How the key might shape itself in your hand

I want to know

All the creations you fear

How they might outcast you

All the strange and twisted figures lurking

Or perhaps

The sweet, innocent pinkness

Smothered beneath years of leather and smoke

That voice

The voice so very different than what’s known

I want to see, feel, know it

It doesn’t interest me

The skill you’ve built

The followers you’ve amassed

I want to know

The life events you’re hesitant to explore

Your hidden fears and desires

How they’ve shaped your journey

What you hide or gloss over

What parts of you

That you shudder to explore

The personal truths you’re hesitant to confront

The moments in your life you find difficult to revisit

The themes and topics that repeatedly draw you

But that you tell no one about

But perhaps, before,

This intimate splaying

Just that cage

Tell me about it

How I want to share its feeling with you

How I want to hear the precise notes

Of your screams, how they reverberate it’s casing

Show me what my fingers would find

Trailing down the steel

Those words and stories engraved

Rippling beneath the touch

Trapping you, pacing

Hungering

Pleading

It doesn’t interest me

How witty,

clever,

stunning

or badass

your creations are

What interests me

Is what terrifies

That thing

No matter how deep you’ve dug

It’s always something

Waiting

Share that with me

Through your brush

Through your word

Through your song

Through your image

Through your movement, your facepaint, your howl

I am talking to you

And I

Am talking to me

Hoping, someday our craft

Will sing

The Artful

Shadow

That thing

No matter how deep you’ve dug

It’s always something

Waiting

*Credit to Nancy Levin as well as this strangeness by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum for inspiring this thought spiral: https://youtu.be/Dpmf2DNVhy4?si=k9PliprLopvsGJIX

Featured

Match: Eros: Death

Hi! Your profile is incomplete…answer more questions to meet your Match!

Next up: Tell us what would help you feel emotionally met in a partner.

Gosh. I’m so tired of answering questions. But I do have a poem for you!

~Eros: Death~

She said

What we are strongly attracted to

Will erode us

Erode us!

Peeling away

What we once thought

We were

Sometimes quick

Sometimes aching

Like the slowly crumbling shore

If what we long for is True

If it is really True

Its pursuit and involvement

(And perhaps even its avoidance)

Will destroy us–

Transformation

Is its only

Beautiful and vicious goal

Oh Death!

Oh Love!

I kneel before your awesome power.

In the grips of your changes

Have mercy upon the terrified!

Does that answer your question?

Dinner With My Shadow

I imagine Her

Not so hard, really

The one I’m constantly trying to forget

She incessantly sticks at my side

I imagine Her

Upon walking into a dinner party

Oh, the 13th Sister

Oh, the one who wasn’t invited

They’re embarrassed by Her

Nervous, prim and proper

Unable, really, to relax

Attuned to all the feels of the room

All the unattended forgotten ones

She fidgets, She fidgets

Short of breath and internally gasping for

Escape

But she stays

She stays

And she pulls out her measuring cups

Right there at the table

And she pulls out her calculator

Disturbing the frilly napkin

And she begins to tally the foods for possible consumption

This, this eases Her

This, this somehow distracts Her from the

Intensities of the unspoken she rides

She’s cleared off a part of the setting

She’s got her cups weighing

She’s got her numbers, calculating

She’s taking up space

Writing it all down

Before it goes inside

Somehow

This keeps it all in order

Somehow this keeps it all in order

I imagine me, looking at Her

And wishing She wasn’t here, at the party

Knowing, everyone knowing She’s here with me

They stare at Her, and I, unsettled

Some even trying to tutor

Encouraging discretion

But still She counts,

Still She levels

The mashed potatoes

So the surface aligns precisely

And only then plops it onto

Her plate

She’s still deciding whether she’ll actually

Eat

She knows

How to push it all around

Pretending

I hate Her

I wish she never existed

I wish she’d stop following me

And learn to chill out

I wish she’d know

How to laugh and eat and play

Choosing, tasting, adventuring

Like everyone else in the room

That she’d have other interests

Than the next meal, the next amount

The next possible poisoning

The next protective

Ritual

That she’d be led by her hunger

And quelled by her fullness

That she’d speak with wisecrack

At the lurking phantoms swirling

Around the table

Changing the field

Trusting Herself

And not just trying to hold It all together

Until It no longer breathes

She haunts me

And I’d rather not go anywhere

Meals solitary, inside

Appeasing Her

Than to continually risk

The shame I feel

When she’s seen

When I’m seen,

With Her

But She, cups clanging

And numbers whirring

Doesn’t seem to really care

She just knows she’s got to survive

This madness

She does what needs doing

To keep us from drowning

In a culture, externally, showing no other way

In a culture, introjected, systematically brainwashed

And I stare at Her

Eyes focused and uninterested in small talk

And I begin to see Her

And what she’s doing

And start to understand

How she helps

How she is helping

Until the scene shifts

Until the evolved tools present

She’s holding out

For nothing less than The Truth

And I start to see Her

And I start to see

I say to myself, watching me

This crazed laced-up alchemist madwoman

Desperately trying to keep us in order

So we don’t just lose it in a world

Of no holding

I say to Her, myself

That’s pretty epic

In its own strange way

And I begin to accept Her, me

Seeing how She helps

Seeing how She’s needed

Now

And I see Her

And I start

To maybe

To maybe someday

To maybe possibly

To maybe someday possibly

Begin

To love Her

Thanks for reading! This poem came from the following prompt–perhaps it will wet your whistle too?

What parts of yourself would you not take to dinner? What parts of yourself would you want to leave at home?

Deep, Fast

It’s taken me a while

To accept the thing I’ve hated most–

That strange field surrounding this form

And its wyrd ways

Upon coming into contact

With you

Somehow

The electrons and wavelengths

Rotating auric realities

Arrange themselves

To raise the shadows

You

Don’t want to see

At one point

At many points

These invisible hoverings

Yours and mine

Were things I didn’t want to see

But with their repetition

This constant reverent attendance

Slowly

We’ve made friends

Deep, fast

Smiling

It’s not a conscious effort

I just watch as the charcoal-green-gray

Bubbles start to simmer

Between us

Their puckered, hollow seeking

Here they come again

Deep, Fast

Some people say this is my approach

The specters naturally raised

When two or more are gathered

Here

But it’s taken decades

Of hating it, always

Seeing over and over again

The things I didn’t ask to feel

The things I didn’t mean to insert

The things I’d rather not notice

Wishing for laughter, and ease

And that thing that people call

Casual relations

Deep, fast

Over the years I’ve seen it at work

Sometimes conscious

Often coyote

And after wrastling, resentful

Have come to learn how to hold

These particular reins in hand

How to be gentle

Self-reflecting

And true

Always

Learning

Responsible

I do my best to be responsible

With the unmet, yearning, screaming

Invisible creatures that emerge

That some part of you

And me

Contract to bring into light

But often

Mostly

As usual

These hungry ghosts, begging

Finally seen…

Are abandoned

Deep, fast

This creates a life of only few

Who stay

Who stay in the reverberating tension

Who stay to talk about

What they don’t want to feel

Who stay to explore

The mind-bending transformations

The unexplainable dissolutions

The terrifying Void

The sacred coagulations

That come to pass, sometimes within minutes, hours

Between us

Deep, fast

I now put that on my intake form

Preparing those who enter

Leaving them to choose

Isn’t it funny

The thing I always hated

The thing that seemed to keep me apart

Now, in my embrace

Is the thing that I am sought to provide?

Deep, fast

If you want to go deep, fast

If you want to hold on

Through a rocky but kickass ride

Braced and committed to presence

To speaking to what can be spoken

A hall of mirrors, tended

Meta meta meta

Shadows seeing shadows

To the best of your ability

Come in

My door is open

But watch your step as you enter

That first one

Is quite

A doozy

It’s deep

And fast

Blood and Bones

The things I’m not supposed to talk about

Like how I covet collecting blood and bones

Like how my gaze is transfixed

By the slow descent of crimson matter

Dripping down glass

Blood that takes no injury to procure

Blood that causes life, not death, in losing

Blood that returns, over and over

To remind me I am real

I am not supposed to share about

Collections

And paintings

Watching the red transform

Upon surfaces

Well beyond toilet water

And mass-produced cotton shame inducing

Hiding devices

I’m not supposed to talk about it

But the blood

Is all that makes me re-member

So I love it

The things I’m not supposed to talk about

Like how I’ve been waiting

Months, weeks, many moons

Watching the torrential waters

Wash over its sacred, but ignored, body

Wondering if one day it might vanish

That stinky, striped carcass

A life once vibrant, now rotting

But upon each circling

I’ve found her

Slowly dissolving away

Staying

In my Dream

Her thick, black quills

Floating to the creek below

Batch by batch

And recently

The innards of tail

The sharp ridge of scapula

Washed clean from storm

Appeared

I’m not supposed to talk about it

How I’ve been waiting to be chosen by bones

How excited I am to see them

Wondering if they’ve been holding

As if cleansing

For my capture

I’m not supposed to feel

Such excitement as I crouch down, finally

Lay my gloved hand on its beauty

Whisper grateful blessings

And transfer this evidence of life and death

And the micro-macro cycle of everything

Into my blessed receptacle

A neighbor, leashed wildness by his side

Stops, childlike, to ask what I’ve found

A skunk, I say

Looking up to him

Staring from face laden

With invisible echoes

Of recent blood ceremony

It’s been here a long time, I say

Hoping for a moment he’ll join me

But his gaze immediately shifts

And there is no response

And still

Like many things I’m not supposed to Do

Like many things I’m not supposed to Say

Like many things I’m not supposed to Feel

I allow myself to honor

These strange desires

These drops of vital plasma

These candle-lit applications

These dirty sacred road blessings

These bones

This blood

I allow myself to honor

And let the human, thinking

Walk on

Thanksgiving, Gratitude and Whatever

Thanksgiving, gratitude

Whatever

This week

I sit and remember

The litany of what I have and hold

That so many will never see

The warmth

The shelter

The creamy bittersweet reishi-infused liquids cascading over tongue

The lack of pain

Or extreme imprisonment

The solitude

The health

The vehicle to transport me into varied realities of my choosing

The consciousness

To transform pain to blessing

Almost instantaneously

The wise, deep, cackling crone

Deep within, everpresent

The guides

The teachers

The plentiful food on my plate

The laughter

The sunrise

The immediate access to webbings of knowledge

The freedom to say

“I want a relationship

Where we’re aware and committed to

Working on our shit together”

And the self-love to not care

If the listener runs screaming haha

The voice

The sound

The art that now can come through unobstructed

Through this vessel

The witnesses, holding deeply

The love, the carved out

Empty full compassion pulsing

But

Whatever

What lies beneath

On this day of great trespassing

Aware of that too

Not gratefully bypassing

The millions of original beings

Paved over, passed over

Starved, forgotten, shackled

Extinguished, tricked, lied to

Forced to psychically submit

Gutted and soul starved

Healing the Soul Wound

Do we now see it?

Can this day be of gratitude

That we might just be seeing it

Grateful that the festering wounds

Repressed rage, bigotry

Unspoken for centuries

Are being released

Sometimes uncouth, often offensive

But released

Like Wednesday Addams, smiling

Match in hand

Thankful we can burn that old shit to the ground?

Thankful

We may be seeing the People

The human and non-human People

These beings, given Voice

Rising up

Transforming?

But

Whatever

Giblet laden gravies

Shimmering, reverberating

From distant relative argument

Over recent propositions

And how Sally should have never bought that car

And did you hear the price of gas

And how hard it is to build anything anymore

Without those codes gauging you

Lalala dancing words on aching surfaces

While Sally vomits in the bathroom

While Uncle Jim hides in the car

Taking another hit

To make it through

Whatever

Both eyes open

To my extreme Wealth

In contrast to many

As well as the bowed down

Hoping, praying, singing

To our seeing

To our healing

To our waking

Grateful

Thankful

Whatever

The Soul Wound

Witch

Four hundred years later

The General appears

At first taken by her, giddy

He leaves gifts and poetry at her door

Not especially interested, but clarified

She nods kindly, shows him the gate

Her boundary

And sees him on his way

Yet she senses something coming

Murky tendrils weaving, invisible

As he looks back, a subtle leering

Rippling the quantum, rippling

She’s wondering

Whether to prepare or forget

Defense has long worn out its usefulness

She puts

Her sword down

Over time

The notes keep appearing

The gifts somehow making their way

Across the gate, the line

Subtle,

Cloaked in saccharine

She realizes the need

She stands at her doorstep

She waits for him

And when he appears

She looks into his dream-filled eyes

And draws out

Her blade

She clarifies

She slices through

The thick projective miasma

She points its tip at each stake

Of her picket

She calls him

To look

Woozy, smirking

His gaze wafts playfully

Down

He sees it, eyes widening

This gate

As if for the first time

And realizes his slumber

Embarrassed, he steps back

And away

She remains

Watching

As his body pivots and strides

Fake confidence towards his city

This time the leer

Has turned cold

Something’s coming

She knows

Next morning sunshine

Greets her

A soft fur winding against her leg

And she walks to the gate, curious

Of the note tacked upon it

She pulls off the memo

And feels its searing

She drops it

Watching it fall to the cool earth

Crouching, wary

She reads the now dampening parchment

Not too surprised to see

WITCH

Emblazoned upon it

And lengthy explanations

Of her wily ways

Of deceiving and be-spelling

Saddened, she knows him

This General’s story

Of tending his own Anima

Cruel and illusory

Suicidal and death dealing

His own loving

Entwined with the torture he served

This story, it keeps repeating

It is his, it is hers

She pierces the memo

The tip of her sword saves her

She brings the burning accusal

Walking, sword outstretched down the roadway

To a small clearing in the wood

Here a brook babbles

And hawks sing

And she sets a space

And she calls to the wise ones

And she gathers the waters

And she hums

Here, she immerses

The age-old fires

Of trauma, projection and cruel self-story

Into rock’s crevice, holding

Waters trickling from her hands, heart

Waters holding, cleansing for a better way

Washing her past, his

Tending the blood wounds seeking

Mouths hungry to be healed

She offers, she offers

Iron Goddess of Mercy

She sits

And waits

Letting the sunlight peeking sparkle

Upon the cleansing pooltide

With the pain

And sorrow dissolving within

Knowing her hands, her mind

Indeed offer healing

To re-member

To re-story

To let the old die

To create space

For the new

Hawks circling

Cries piercing the air

Holding her

Sonic, salving the lineages

With their love

She knows not

What may come

Of the General

But dirt beneath her toes

And wind against her skin

She holds clearly

What she knows

She is