I can make a cage beautiful.
Childhood disorientation in Cajun Country, Louisiana late 90s isolated Family Trauma I struggled to understand what was happening around me so I created imaginary worlds: paracosms, something I could understand, somewhere beautiful and just for me to organize and create rules and guidelines which brought other children to me through creating myself as strange and shocking in the conservative Southeast.
Ability to turn inward from the external chaos, a choice to live in stories live in imagination so the dive into storytelling was natural. I created imaginary worlds with these complex narratives and characters and creatures and whole generations of royalty and history that went back hundreds of years. Saturday nights were for staying up late drawing maps of the kingdom and creating poetry of their hero’s tale. There were wars to mediate and rally my classmates to join. I created special devices that were handheld and carried creatures from class to class tucked under my arm and more and more to create and expanding this world of endless possibility. Other children were drawn in by the bizarre and the ones that were repelled, I never liked them anyway. There was a rush, a power in the polarization I manifested.
As an adult I thought, well, who do want to be? I want to be a witch. I want to be a poet. I want to be this weird, ethereal thing that lives in this strange, fantasy aquarium, a fairy terrarium. Almost a thing of myth, a semi secret character who is shut off from everything and you can look in this regular, inconspicuous home and see this strange little world that just takes your breath away that is decorated with moss and lavender, ivy and animal skulls adorned with black roses it’s like a secret discovery I’m always looking into a weird little world of sorts, usually hidden in plain sight if you just know where to look in the palm of my hand and not only am I gazing into and feeling pulled in deeper especially to care for this world and these creatures, their pure survival dependent on me.
But the truth is I have placed myself into that world so not only am I looking into it, holding it in my hands but I am physically trapped in that world too which was created to understand something, anything in the chaos to feel a shard of agency it is Mine created in beauty and wonder, created in a last ditch effort for salvation. This I can choose to share or define there is a clear idea of my role and my expectations, I am needed and important. And yet it is simple that as I stare as a zombie into this small treasure, eyes in a mirror stare blankly back into me. For I created myself in my perfect image, in my perfect imagination. For I am trapped here as well, trapped into my own perfect creation.
I can make a cage beautiful.
Fall 2019
Tag: fantasy
I Need to Quit Regurgitating Goddesses
Last night something was emerging
From the belly from the depths
Fear was a stabbing pain
Between brows it was Time
Sweaty and retching
There was nothing I could do
Out emerged a sack a pod
Slick with green bile or algae
Hot from the deep shine like a
Clear water balloon
And then she took my breath away
& My eyes full of radiant gold
& She began to glow and shine
Fins wave rhythmically illuminating
Gold and Hot her atmosphere
Holds countless microscopic shrimp
Surround her in formation- orbit as stars
Satsuma scales cast shadows in the curves of
Her delicate marine body
She chooses to part the rich green leaves around her
Chooses to appear just as she is a scintillating hue
Her world lit in the confidence of simple existence
Her eyes never left mine through the
Dark internal waters and in her
Tiny perfect world from my
Belly dark you slithered up the
Tunnel of my throat I never could have stopped you
You are ever powerful, my little goddess
Her gaze both holds me in perfect comfort
& sees me in off putting clarity for
I am not used to being seen as I am
Oh what magic have I stumbled upon?
Oh what magic has been waiting to ascend from my darkness?
At last, in finality: the truth that
Despite all her majesty despite
Her endless manifestation of peace,
She needs help
I must fiercely protect her
Fall 2019
Black Moth
I dream in fear an Iridescent Black Moth has
Landed on my plate of satsumas but
Genny comes & with such heartbreaking compassion
Scoops him into her palm and brings him outside
Shushing “it’s gonna be okay lil’ guy.”
The little frames his wings may contain
Sleep dust or some sort of ordinary magic
Maybe Genny recognizes the Fae in him
By god, he surely recognizes the Fae in her yet
What message he may have or perhaps just
Fell off his trip to the gas station for
A pack of cigs and a pixie stick
For now they are the only breathing creatures that
Exist in all of space and time and here
They witness the other and the eternal
Absolute that none has felt understood before
The beauty was the amount of gentleness and
Total acceptance with no hesitation that Genny
Gave this creature.
The Magic was the trust that this creature had in her.
Fall 2019
Relapse into Fantasy
The New Story is
I am not human
I never was
No desire to eat or bathe or
Love with a body yet some
Creature of the stars
Of soft mosses Pain is
In the skin in the
Mouth it hurts
To breathe. Light too bright
To dull to fight
Call my name by candlelight,
How can’t you see?
Don’t you see I am not human?
I tried to tell him
I tried
there is nothing more to do.
Delusion is a pastime I can
Admit I like to alter reality to a
Place of whimsy if the
Conclusion is my lack of
Humanness, then I acquire a pardon,
Possess an excuse for all the
Strangeness I feel and why
I don’t enjoy having skin around me
There is fear at myself.
Thoughts seem to flit about and attack each other
Sometimes play I observe
Chaos, welcome
Relapse to fantasy to Letting
Go and writing myself into mythology maybe
I can make something maybe
I can make sense this is
Not mania this is salvation this is
Inevitability in a little
Cottage in mountains I
Surround moss I am gathered by fallen twigs
Watched by foxes and magical girls
Follow me around and cry
Crystals at my feet there are
A million moonbeams in your eyes
There are a million reasons to not
Want to die I have always been attracted to a
Man with that twinkle in the eye
Look towards me out of the corners of your face yet
You’ve no idea what you see
What you see is not what you want me to be
I will never be who you need me to be.
I equally am and equally am not a
Misplaced creature in a foreign land am and am not
A cast away deity shaking sleep from stardust hair
This land is not my own I am not of here this
Language discordant in my ears this
Spins too fast this fragile pain
There is no burrow deep enough
Take me back to slow water
Take me back to wind chimes
Take me back to bones
Take me back to the beating of the
Heart of humanity to sex
To electricity where
I could never be touched enough when
I cried out romance into cuts in my skin contains
Feels alive with
Girls I love with
Danger, with
Salvation. Love is repentance
Love is guilt
Love is hurt
Being otherworldly creates me a goddess I
Desire to be admired
From afar
Tell the world pretty stories yet the face
On the other side of the veil is
Just deep lipstick you can
See through my skin, what is on the inside?
There must be a doctor
Somewhere that can tell me what
I look like inside I tried
Oh god you can believe me I’ve tried
There is something yet within
She inhabits gilded halls
In a little globe in her palm
It is a secret
Inside I am a secret
It is nice that way
Emerge to pray and light incense
To be admired and back
Inside wherever the
World can be too much to
lounge amongst perfection to
Solitude in absolute Men walk from thousands of miles
Away blistered pilgrims in my holy name
Yet the story I really contain a young
Man who somehow
Knows he may not
Be human it does not matter at all
There is nothing we can do
He can see it behind my eyes he can see that
I am not ethereal at all at
2am
Binging on sweets
Greasy hair
Smeared makeup
Dissociated
I am not ethereal
In pain
Under you
At war with myself
To ask you or to not ask you
To stop or to fight
I am not ethereal at
2am
At my parent’s house
Snot on my chin
I am not ethereal changing a wet bloody pad
I am not a ghost I
Haunt old songs in my car
The only part of me that is close to human is the pain,
Possibly the pain
this could be human one day
Pain at blood red at gnawing stomachs
Pain at the throat at the vulva at
Claws in my eyes at
Coldness and pain when hit and
Passing out
I leave blind
I’d rather feel pain than be dead inside
He is pure violence he
Breaks through the lock he
Does not care at all he
Breaks right through my heart through
Ornaments of gold through
Winged cat eyes through
Fishnets he
Destroys my fiction
I thought I did create
My alien skin he
Is not fooled is
Not afraid of me
Oh how did I let this happen he
Tears down the veil he
Does not care at all
Oh I tried to let him know
I am not yet human
Yes I fucking tried to let him know yet
At my feet at the altar on top of
Blood he may die for my
Love does kill, the fleshy creature in me
Caught his eye
He tossed aside my storybook he
Tore apart the fairy tale
Set fire to woodland cottage
Melted down my crown
He cared enough to truly see
He fucking set me free
I fooled myself, why yes he did
And yet likewise, he fooled me.
I’d rather hold the pain than be dead inside
It fits nicely in a little globe Pretty
From outside but
I can make a cage luxurious
No one will take my pain I’ll
Spin stories I’ll seduce you Pain turns
You swooning when I paint it with gilded
Feathers when I sprinkle it with fairy dust when
I record it in a leather bound diary
This is all I have
This is all my own
You will never be able to read me
Even my expressions are in code
Even my kiss is a disguise
I have been asked the right questions before
The breadcrumbs have been followed
Fine,
I’ll admit that
Yet then I cannot maintain
Fresh coats of Lavender over the stain
I cannot protect the storybook
Cannot defend the Pain
This human skin
I tried to become an alien
I fought to become a Fae
I killed myself to become a Saint
For people to share stories
Around camp fires
A being of legend of mystery that
No one ever knew
Who lived in a beautiful cage
Who imprisoned herself in a caricature
Who was never quite sure who she even was
What she was.
Would rather live in stories
A beginning a middle and an end
Tied with a bow
Scary Bunny
Scary bunny
I am an angry bunny, foot
Stomping, ears
Twitching, brows furrowed, shine
In my pink eyes.
I defend my rabbit friends to the
Death with sharp teeth and strong
Curved claws digging, digging
How far
To China?
My home is in the soil
Cool & soft & deep
Packed tight all summer with rough paws
These round halls contain those I love
Home is curled in a dry
Nest
With you
Yellow feathers, fur of wolf, fauns’ eyelashes
Lull to sleep
I built this paradise myself
Dug all the way and hopped the Great Wall
Looked the hawks in the eye as they swooped
Down for my neighbor’s babies
Still pink, eyes yet to open
And I looked away after I
Gnawed off their wings, as struggle made way to a helpless release, as
They gave up the fight. I watched the gleam fade from their deadly eyes.
Of all I was able
The one I loved the most I could not save
My whiskers quiver,
Spider webs, sticking and so sheer they’re invisible but you feel them nagging on
A scratch, a pain you will search for decades
Warriors do not feel fear at all
Describe the boundaries of what makes you feel safe
How will you sleep, knowing your babies rest
Sweetly with small breaths and fluttering noses
Glow-in-the dark moons and stars
I will protect you
I’ll see you play in the sunshine tomorrow morning
Holding hands, sipping dew drops from sunflowers
Blushing with yellow pollen on your white cheeks
Nectar when you kiss me
Read you a little book tonight
Fluff your daffodil tail
Paint black lines on your eyes
Gather twigs
Well water from a mossy pail
Open your hutch tonight, okay?
Gloves over chicken wire, I’ll be there by midnight
String over throat
Did you know warriors feel no fear?
—————–
Lucid Dreams 