poems by Vane Vander

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Sorrowful Laika

ever so recently, everywhere given advice
to abandon the restless hopes, desires yearning to abandon my vices
for a better world beyond this veil
or one on this earthly plane, ready, and I just need a sail

lie down
and sink into the grass
and appreciate these fleeting days you have left

close your eyes
and try not to think
of the family of which you've been bereft

but in my dreams, when found a rare safe place
I turn my head, and there I see your face
soft smile, loving eyes, open welcoming arms
that once pledged to keep me safe from a big wide world of harms

in my heart lives seventy years of unlived regrets
but just like we promised, I refuse to forget

but the more I think about it, the more pragmatic it seems
because the more my furtive fingers snatch in the air for dreams
the more the memories slip through the cracks
abandoned on the shores of time, gone with a nimble thief's hacks

cut yourself down
into something so small
a nuisance to nobody
become nothing at all.

this is the daughter's fate.

for what could persuade me to flee from Mother's love
than the divine request of someone up above?

to finally have an excuse
to say to someone amused,
confused as to why I'm on the lam,
"You have no need to know who I am."

FATHER TEACHER

you stand on my legs
and yell at me to stand up
you pin my wings to the wall
then jeer at me to fly

you deny me my feelings
and mock my lack of lust
you teach me to hate my body
then label me bilious

you cut out my tongue
then command me to speak
you forcefully defang my jaw
then proclaim me meek

if you seek to know
the root of all my pain
you need only look in a mirror
to see all who is to blame

liberi (an alternative take on things)

the midnight hands caress her face one last time
a faint brush against her lips- a kiss
leaving steps in the snow as I turn, still sublime
and disappear into the fog and mist

she and I meet again at the entrance to the underworld
this time, with her friend of old
energy runs through me- and my wings unfurl
and the world re-remembers the cold

but not to fear, for she brings a fire of her own
and propels her friend to the edge
and with a snick I am human again, alone
with a heart divided by a sharp wedge

instant regret in his eyes
as he picks up his daughter- no, his son
and weeps to the sky
a promise to keep safe, no longer kept

through his hands run red
black and yellow and brown; a life he never knew I led

hanging between the balance of life and death
faintly aware as I'm carried to the back of the caravan
wrapped up in sheets and whatever's left
only father left to see me; ordered not to be touched by any other hand

soul kept in one piece by the Mother's grace
kept asleep, unaware, in limbo until we can reckon face-to-face

we arrive at the Tree
and my limp body is laid on the ground for Her to see
for return to life, father pleads over me
no matter what crimes I may have committed for the enemy

dead hallway

a heart like a boxer fighting my last round
fear and inhibitions ready for the final smackdown
hallucinating death chimes in my visions
give me the void or give me liberation

sprinting down the hallways spiraling before me
my body the fastest I've ever seen
a knife hidden close to my chest
and a brain to make up all the rest

this isn't supposed to be how it goes
a fight scene, gigantic, is what everyone knows
for the audience's sake, some pithy quotes thrown around
but this mission requires I make barely a sound

behind me, nobody's giving chase
but that's no excuse not to make haste

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-THREE

you're the reason I'm living,
but you're making me livid

my flesh painted with your claws
digging in, a bloody sort of law
that declares dissenters wild beasts,
game to be hunted for your feast

I hang from the ceiling by my wrists
a punching bag for your sharp fists
that carved me out of rough-hewn rock
and now punish me for daring to talk

I am a waterfall from toe to head
surprised that in me was so much red
this slaughterhouse is far too wet
Mother won't like stains on the carpet

chipping at my self-esteem
attempting to shatter my dream
of a place where I know I'm safe to grow
a house I can truthfully call a home

if seeking liberty is my crime
then may I plead guilty until the end of time

To Rufi

sometimes I can hear Mother's voice in the rain
but her memory brings me more grief than pain
sitting by the window, watching the drops fall
off the trees, wondering when I'd grow that tall

tall enough to tower over all of my foes
and strong enough to counter all of their blows
and the words of malice roll off my armor like the rain

but I know I'll never have a chance to do it all over again.

Mother, I plead you, even if you now live on the other side of the universe,
please send me a blessing to counter this sonderous curse.

ACHTUNG II

I have a recurring dream that started
many years ago
where I was condemned to wander the earth
with only the moon's gentle glow

to light my way as I wander
through unfamiliar lands,
face covered by something or other,
midnight staining my hands

only my feet to carry me,
still sprightly with my youth,
my back aching with weighty backpack,
shoulders more burdened with the truth

that there is no safe place in this world
for a girl to run,
condemned to be a victim when
Father declares her life is done

I cling onto this lifeboat of an omen
through many a stormy day,
as I know deep down this is one thing
my parents cannot rip away

Fallow

as soon as you're born, they make you feel small!
and then wear you down until you're nothing at all
a good little girl or boy sitting at the stand
forced silent unless you first raise your hand

children are not meant to be slaves
and yet you tore them from the void and let them experience pain
just because they came from their loins doesn't mean they belong to anyone
but to you, if they don't reproduce, they may as well not be your son

we are not trophies to put on shelves
the only person who can decide who they want to be is themselves
no obligation, no reason to carry on a prideless family name
so the fruit of their efforts can be tortured the same

so may your vinery run dry and stale
and may what's forgotten be your tired old war tales
and may your hopes for your childrens' future turn into fears
because, I declare, the cycle ends here

glacio sub mia hauxto

snow is blooming in the distance
little crystals not yet formed
a dream, a faint memory, a dread
of never-returning warmth

little crystals adorn my skin
of glass, minerals, and water
picked up and transported far from home
ripped away from earth's flesh like a martyr

but no, I'm not religious
even as the earth envelops me
even as I succumb to death's sweet embrace
and birds sing dear sweet melodies

The Tempest

there are trees waving in the wind
outside of my bedroom window
holding the moon in their bony arms
so that it doesn't come crashing down

at the bridge of dawn and dusk
evoking hasty words from forlorn lovers
the night howls; the wind roars
destruction come another day

there's a storm comin', sonny
it would be best if you prepared
so pull out the sandbags and floodlights
and hold your loves ones tight

the calm before the storm is overrated
you never know the calm is there until it's gone
rain pattering against your window
lulling you to sleep

tell Rufi I won't be coming home.

the walls are coming down
like a tornado
leaving only the floor of the kitchen intact
your pillar of a fridge in its place.

the light streams out from the windows
soft and white and pleated
and I lie here on the floor, in the sun

the borders between the worlds grow thin beneath my fingers
but I can feel them scabbing over
like a six-year-old's skinned knee on the school playground
and your voice grows soft, grows weak, grows unsteady
don't go! I just got you back!

bent over a bathroom sink
scissors in one hand
and rivulets of blood pouring down the other
but it's just a nick, just a scrape
red mixing with blonde with blue, clogging the drains

I told you I wanted to cut my hair.
and while I feel free now
just give it a week

just give it a week.
you'll feel fine.

but I don't feel fine at all

missing two-thirds of my heart,
where am I supposed to go from here?
a beginning, and a middle,
but no end
and no closure

perhaps this is my fate,
to always disappear into the night without a trace.
did you search for me?
drag your boots through the mud, through the snow,
cloak wrapped desperately around your face to breathe

never truly dying,
just ceasing to exist.

Morgan, if you're there,
before you leave,
tell Rufi I won't be coming home.

SURVIVE

before I was female, in the womb where none could see,
I was still I, was still I, was still me

swaddled in pink, blanket, blood shed
an artist only given a palette of red

an animal taken human shape
but just as afflicted as that cursed ape

and when I begged you to let me exist
wild as I am
you clipped my wings, hypocrite,
became a thousand cams

stranger danger, constant stress
of finding you around every corner:
shedding my skin, lyzard,
the fire inside only grows warmer

cloaked myself in shadows,
met with souls
who taught me of freedom
while the blood between us grew cold

I want you to hurt
as I have hurt
as you have hurt me!

"I've had enough!"

is it truly the daughter's fate
to first be conquered by their father?
for I perish a million times under the point
that one confuses so often for the whole

but recently, come these veins
filled now with wyrmic rage,
I'll take the pen, I'll write my own damn page,
I won't let you take my soul!

piercing eyes like a thousand knives
burrow through your soul like a million mice
flooding in, a tsunami, annihilating all in their wake
the future that you dumped on my shoulders to make

I'll turn your blades against you
reversal digging in:
remember that you aggressed first;
self-defense is not a sin

watching you bleed out from under my claws,
redemption a lost cause

Crow Row

I've been condemned to toe the line,
to forever walk between the worlds,
never truly belonging to one or the other.

you wanted me to nullify myself,
an alien in my own skin,
forever at war with my own biology.
you watched me impale myself with Mars
and bleed out on Venus.

and we sung together of freedom
and of how we renounced the world
while still partaking of its fruits

so bloodless, deathless, we took to the wind
a crow and a raven alike in sin
a bird of prey and its object of affection long sought
high enough in the sky to be a single blot

so what is a broken bird supposed to do
when heaven sees my plea - and opts to refuse?

all I've learned to do in life
is how to make an exit.
leaving in tears after
a failed eighth-grade play,
a forced deletion of a dear internet place,
the destruction of dignity at the hands of a dictator

"I will not cry"
"I will not cry"
I will not cry.

what happens when I need to exit heaven?

where do I go?

As Cetra

everything hurts so goddamn much
and I can't breathe
and I can't pray for help because there's no god above
who'd be willing to intercede

curled up in a ball, back squirming in a way no human was meant to,
missing, found,
feet digging into the dirt to reground,
forehead pressed against the wall

and as I lost my attention span,
instead of literary pursuits, I let loose my hands
and my heart to scream at the sky

stop it! stop!
I am not your case study,
your shining example of a torpid soul!

I won't writhe for your pleasure,
you who stand and sell at the circus tent
and yell for all to a monster behold!

me,
begging the dragonkin that inadvertently exposed me to a universe unseen
to one last time come back online
and spill to me his secrets
of how to become divine

because I claw at my chest,
stubs begging to unleash the butterflies caged within,
moths come back from pilgrimage to light
as fireballs eager to cause fright

maybe this is what it means to be whole,
to let the rage finally consume my soul

Anhedonia

let the rain wash over everything.
let it erode the land
chipping away at every part of you
you once thought was essential

let the flood come tumbling from the horizon
violent waves promising redemption
we will find our motivation again one day
we will rise again

as I toss around in my bed at midnight
my mind conjures up a storm
of who I was
who I fear I may never be again

but surely this is not the end of the road, right?
nihilism has not got me in its grasp
and I haven't sent my soul to the grave
and I will keep writing
even if it kills me

Chaos Island

I have spent too much time languishing
on my bed as of late.
I have become the very behavior
that I once professed to hate

I must confess
I grow ever weary of being
under muse's duress

what a capitalistic duty,
to always be singing,
to always throw myself on a pyre
in hopes of fulfilling
some higher desire

I am as an ant against the night sky
watching stars glimmer and comets shoot by
me, mine, and self, three halves of a whole
the Silent, the Ceaseless, the Winter Night Cold

I am so small
and yet I yearn for so much more:
to tear down all these artificial walls,
to kick down heaven's door

but a lifetime of conditioning has led me to believe
that all I am is what others see
that all that matters is what makes it to others' eyes
and any form of rest is something to despise

I plummet farther, further, into Discordia's bosom
Jupiter unfolded, weeping volcanoes, cracking dry tongue
my hips creak with pain as my kneecaps cry loud:
what will happen to my soul when my body gives out?

a hundred years of life from my family's genes is far,
but this enmeshed life I lead is a little too hard
to imagine always going through the same motions unharmed
to pay bills and acquire more clutter and charms

some part of me wishes I had never separated
from the muse in the sky, the Source, the Godhead
an existence with meaning, a living with power
not rot at my cash register as customers glower

they say that from death and decay springs life
but I find it hard to believe that my body is so rife
with living things, like I am a titan slumbering,
a soul misfitted in a body so lumbering

but I'm stuck in this body, so now I must cope
and maybe one day I will regain my hope
to return to those fields, to sing a new tune
to return the ocean to the embrace of the moon

Degenesis

how does a god die?

it doesn't happen one day
but it happens all at once
like a volcano overflowing, red hot
onto the unsuspecting people below

how does a god die?

your bones grow heavy
and more than usual you sigh
skin grows scaly
and it hurts to cry

how does a god die?

your fields grow barren
and your mind clouds with fog
and you sleep all day.

simple as that, they say
until one day you shift
and you never

shift

back.

it's not that bad at first.
at least, that's what the scalies say.
who wouldn't want to be a dragon all day?

who wouldn't want to be a pet?

it's all fun and games
until you lose your cognitive ability.
your memories
and your dreams
and your wants.
just left with needs

a simple man, indeed.
but mother would have never wanted this.

how does a god die?

simple.
they live for too long
and then they degenerate
and we watch the spark of ego flicker out in their eyes
and then we put them in the stable

and poor baby only knows father as
a lizard that slinks on the ground

Eryth

tossed about by the winds of change
I struggle to find a way to feign
some measure of lasting paradise
which I tried to, in my heart, retain

but now I am as desert bluffs
dry as bones kissed by the sun
land gone fallow for far too long
ravaged by everyone

hollow out my rib cage
and make me your living garden
flowers poking through the cracks
where once fierce breath exhaled

and I'll water their roots with all my blood
no ink for summoned scribes
to write falsehoods about my deeds
just petals falling to mark the time

you'll visit me, won't you?

I will live on, yet not as you do
for the roots become my veins
and the stems woven together my skin
my tears the soft-falling rain

and one day when erosion's sweet breath
has taken the last of the world that we know,
may my flesh have merged with all the earth
and we be twin caves deep down below

Found In Winter

a baby brought by the ides of December
in the gentle winds, curls of snow like mother's hair
a million wings bading me goodbye
left on the doorstep to suffer the cold
saved before the icy spikes could impale

a carved out little matchbox
soothed by the bathing light
and I reap what I sow
and I breathe like I write

flowers blooming in the cracks of the floorboards
in the abandoned church in the decaying part of town
and I play, and I sing, and I sleep
and I run, and I dance, and I weep

a feral child cursed with the blood of the divine
father, what are those voices that in the night so loudly whine?

Fantomo

sometimes I loved
sometimes I was loved
sometimes I am able to remember

some would dance through the rain
simply because they loved it
some would wallow through it
so they could hide their tears

every once in a while
I feel like a ghost ship
drifting on through the fog

always having a feeling that you’re coming back
always propelled to move further
always convinced that a brighter future lures onward

poetically speaking
I have long ceased to exist
every word regurgitated onto a screen
has been for somebody else

but yet eyes scan over
and I am compelled by the invisible hands of thousands
to continue arranging letters

My Ripped Grayscale Leggings

there are only so many ways to say
that the darkness is encroaching in,
that this world is a jail for all,
that I'm on my way to hell for all of my sins

but if hell is separation from the godhead
then am I already there?
the days are sliding into one another,
no hope of change from prayer

would supplication even save me?
I wonder, drowning in false-friendly tone
"Where do you see yourself in ten years?"
"The answer is simple: I don't"

for if skyland's throne was ever filled,
it has long been vacated instead
for deity is either malevolent,
derelict, distracted, or dead

The Demiurge's Last Will and Testament

The first ides of winter
in my soul are approaching. Come hither.

I would tell you a tale
of the girl who set sail

from the shores of her burdened youth
in search of her oversoul's truth,

but my time's candle is at its end.
I leave it to you to tend

these wild gardens that you have
entrusted with keeping your greatest pains and laughs.

I leave it to you to protect
this cave otherwise derelict,

to protect from harm my empty shell
for which there will be no death knell.

How many will rejoice
at the news that the Shards have lost their voice,

that the Demiurge chose slumber eternal
rather than bathe the world in flames infernal?

Cetra, you are my favorite Shard.
Please forgive me for this burden hard.

One day I know you will embrace
your birthright and take my place

as Singer and quell the warring
and restore this world to its former glory.

One day we will not have to break our hands
in raising bounty from this barren land.

The past cannot be relived.
I will gladly die
so your life may begin.

One Three Five East

I don't know why I should be condemned to this life of duality
every day narrowly dodging fatality
severed by time, by space, from you that I love
lost in space, in a different separate reality

pull your cap down and hide your eyes
bury your soul and smile to comply
pretend that you don't feel, that you don't believe
that you've unwittingly shifted to a decaying timeline

"you need to get serious about exit."

in different times, when Kurosagi refused
to take me to skylands to commune with my muse
I watched myself continue to hack away at my soul
and pretend I didn't feel the encroaching cold

this house will not be my tomb, I should have vowed
because then I would believe the words now

Demiurge, felled by her own hand
fallen asleep forever in strange and foreign lands
sent daughter out, Cetra, to take her place
wyrm's blood, feral tic, angelic face

"why would you abandon me alone in this life,
in this terrible wide world so full of strife?"

I can't turn water into wine,
but I can experience suffering for a lifetime.

and for your lost memories you have long sought,
but you remember naught
but that you forgot

so you dash back into the crypt, convinced
Mother left your inheritance strung in the mist

but all that remains are your bones.

The Last Wave By

Hello, Jett.
Show me yes,
Show me no,
Show me "I don't know".
Take this needle from my hands;
show me which way to go.

I sit here beneath my window
as hanging from the shades jellyfish play,
ghosts of cookie payloads long since devoured,
crumbs all washed away.

These next few weeks, I'll sway and scream
and wish for the Below,
but my suffering can't end just yet, apparently-
still eleven more days to go.

My lamentations to someone else:
why would you treat your own blood this way?
I can feel the dirt piling on my skin,
so hastily discarded to the grave.

My jailkeeper comes and goes as they please.
Not even my best behavior to them can appease.

So I sit here in silence, alone in my room,
heart pounding with knowledge of my impending doom.
You say this was for my own good, but at end of day:
this whole ordeal was never really about me anyway.

Some day I'll escape to the pit of the fire,
home of those who place liberty higher;
I'll soar with the wind, and I'll reap all I sow,
and finally have a place I can call all my own.

But for now I'm a seedling impounded in the shade.
Not yet I can properly call myself self-made.
The air is smoky, and I choke and I spasm
as I stare down the sheer cliff of Servitude's chasm.

My love, I beseech you on what might be my last song,
tell them the only person who ever truly owned my body
was me all along.

Constance

I suppose you don't recall
the days before my literary fall
where we were a bundle of stitches and scars
trying to not bring down on us any more harm.

concrete to our backs, glass above our eyes,
a widened dome through which the whole night sky
performed for us, voyeurs as I hide
in your feathery cocoon spread wide.

I was a bottled-up vial, you claimed,
of that which in that moment filled our gaze:
galaxies churning, supernova aflame,
virulent from leithtemple to fane.

silent it began, and silent it will end.
on you, I never should have sought to depend.
but depend I did, unable to mend:
my heart cannot decide between lover and friend

restless

I feel like I've made some horrid mistake
in offering up my soul for you to take
for I lie here alone, motionless in bed
head pounding like a maelstrom, better off dead

barely a thought in my weary mind
as I think about the world you'd have me willingly leave behind

like a pot with soil whose nutrients are drained
this seed seeks solace in the pounding rain
wispy dandelion child, liberatory kin
self-preservation is far from a sin

Future Sight

these palms that I used to read,
illegible as I watch them bleed

but it doesn't hurt at all,
the way my heartstrings tug at your every call

this future I cannot see,
the one where you end up with me

for my third eye I fear is blind;
is this why you left me behind?

fighting a war in space not here,
beating back a world austere

to keep this life I wish I owned
from ceasing to be overgrown,

this world I hold inside my body
from wearing down and turning shoddy

a place Dimitri can mature unscared:
I'll return once I am done, I swear.

Angxeloj

most nights, your name is penned across the sky
inked in cursive pens divine
traced with gold and underlined with light
and bleeding into the starry paper behind

in the beginning, it was so easy to love
but what good is loving if receiving is tough?
acknowledgement vindicates my inner guilt
for following the way that I was built

everything I've ever decided to quit
has claw marks embedded deep in it
and downy feathers adorning the fissures within
where the love of a steadfast partner should have been

inside the locket you left, resting on my shirt
there are two faded and crumbling pictures
one of you and me when we were young and carefree
and one of a stranger, alone, holding eternity

The World Revolves, And So Do We

Since you wandered into my orbit,
I've teetered off my axis.
It's possible my heart needs
just a little more love practice,

for the magma on my surface
shows my craters still pulse raw,
even now, six years later, with
the impact of last love lost.

The clouds that storm my surface release
broken promise rain,
acid tears of Fury's craft
that slice open my veins.

There is a list of questions
I want to ask but never will,
sea of unsolved mystery,
drowning fish missing its gills.

Your stony face stares at me
without twitch or blink,
a mask of lunar concrete
that makes no move as fish sink.

This hollow world inside me
will never evolve if
there are no chances taken,
just corpses lying stiff.

But the problem with a soulbond
that never sheds lore's skin
is, when measured against Future,
always comes up inconcinne.

Someday I hope to see,
when the storms rest idle,
I look up from Creation
and see your gentle smile.

To Kurosagi

writhing like worms
on a dinner plate
a feast for my sensation as you squirm
underneath me on the bathroom tile
unsure whether you want it or not
unsure whether this is truly the ending we sought

why am I doing this?
why do I want you?
why must I mirror
what you put me through?

ironic, isn't it,
that that's how you came into this world,
and yet glass slivers still remain underneath the washing machines
from the day that I broke my mirror
from an awkward arm's whirl.

twin dirty shirts as we tumble around,
each other's sleeves tied around the other

"kill me if you wish,
but at least let me see your face,
let me leave one last kiss."

and then, come wake, I wonder whence
come the sores on my breasts that beg for lance,
that tantalize with promises of godsend
but just leave scars come their own end
as if you're marking me with fingerpaints to say:
"begone, human scum, who even think to defile
this woman I crown divine in my very own way."

and you say to me not to fret
because one day you'll be drawn in the stars
so you can guide me "home" forever,
but you forget that the sun is our enemy,
scorching the land to a crisp

and I am as blind as Rapunzel
as I wander in this wasteland,
drapes of blue drowning you out
like the ocean you pulled me under

I think I would have liked
to sit on those unmodeled shores with you,
dandelion in my hand
as I blow the seeds to eternity

but the war ravages on in the dreamscape,
and I am not yet so divine
as to force my powers to create
that which has a blueprint

Icon

the tears through which your emotions drain
are the acid rain
that floods through my veins,
inciting my body to decay

kneeling on the marble floor
hands melded together to implore
for a revision in the lore
as you disappear out that sky-filled door

once-supple skin turned to stone
through eye sockets, flowers have grown
I no longer can see, but I know
for eternity you have abandoned me alone

goddess icon, divine waters have dried
trimmed to atomity, human bonsai
I came here to love, not to glorify
no angel will save me, the dear petrified

To Kurosagi II

the pills of my pillow
roll like the roils of
an upset ocean on the onset
of tipping some grand ship over

of swallowing the gulping gulf
between who I think I should be and what
I actually turned into; you
stand as witness as I fall
to your knees, pleading into your arms to
remember the promise you made to forget

these midnight hands wait for day
as the stars shine bright in the midnight sky, a million suns
illuminating worlds in the dark
to what I have done

your wings wrap around me, an anchor,
a silent promise that no matter how loud
my grief sobs out my sins, you will rejoice
that I have found the strength to fight another day

a familiar feeling, to be in a world so foreign
and yet

you and I wait for sunrise, impatient
for the light to allow our ceaseless riot to burn on
a void stretches out before us, an infinite
asking us which path we will walk down next

Candle

I am as a candle that burns
and flickers relentlessly, yearning
for the soothing glint of leaves sauterne

the delicate curl of the smoke that winds
around your hands, your neck, and with time
will solidify into a form sublime

a guilt I feel, the heat within
that asks me if I mean to sin
and lie to myself what I am within

the wax drips as it only can,
not waiting for anybody's hand,
hidden gateway to bountiful land

Bear With It

false idol looks over ruined domain
and sees that the people have wandered astray
so she waves her hand, and messenger bear goes hence
to warn the people below that their fate teeters on the fence

my lover has a tattoo of a bear on her chest
inky head permanently pointed to what she believes is west
but North is where I buried my heart
and North is where my fate lies.

my brown fur
pulled over,
my teeth
dripping red,

my possessions
I've hoarded
scattered around
my den.

you claim you could not bear to see me a bear,
but I think you're just afraid to see your flesh tear
your once slim muse a hulking muscle mass
and the ego of the gods instead of a heart of glass

it would be better, I'd wager,
than how I stand now:
dearth of death and emotion,
forever staring at the below

something stirs in my heart.
perhaps a buried vial of rage?
light behind these fierce eyes
as I stare down this vital page.

do I remember you as you are?
or as you used to be?

if I am not who I was before,
then have you and I ever truly met before?

Boogie

this world does not need
another Melia Mary Jane,
a stitched-up rag doll
made of shards
of every idol I've wanted to imbibe

but even then,
the psychosis stays,
a remnant of days
I thought to which I
had long since said goodbye

for I no longer have access
to that room in which we played,
you and I, Kurosagi,
watching out the window
as rain bled from the skin-broken sky.

ten years ago, I
would hide in grandma's bathroom,
turn off the lights,
lean against the door,
close shut tight my eyes

and imagine I was at
that far-away camp,
eyes sore from crying
because the horses had crapped
all over my new shoes.

and now, in the throes of
the night, I curl up on
my sheets, wonder what
now transpires in that dorm,
the what, the why, the who.

I find myself standing before
those double wooden doors,
the soft acorn swirls, the silver
handles, the lamp behind me,
illuminating the whole room.

I almost think I see your face
swirling in that void,
an arm reaching to pull me back
in, away from heaven, towards
a new truth.

winter is the most romantic of all seasons

the sky is the color of a soft rose
pair of flushed cheeks
post-coital glow

the leaves outside are pregnant with snow,
and I cannot help but marvel
at how little of the world I know

the burning sands, the village gruff,
the darkest depths of jungle womb,
someone plotting somewhere to call my bluff

the sky bleeds to solemn white
turning blank page
awaiting my pen to write

I never should have doubted,
questioned if you could read,
for clearly I am your favorite book

and you know exactly where your
favorite page is: the spot where
the crumbling ground hath shook

were you to hold me in your hands
in that sweltering season, you would
have gotten lost in sweaty sands

but gladly I would trade the heat
for winter's cold commands

to pull you close with chilly license
and bury myself in warm feathers
that have known such insolence

this I give as my only reason
to proclaim to skylands: truly
winter is the most romantic of all seasons

Impostor

Oh, how do I start this poem? Lying
in a crumpled heap on my bed, trying
not to fall victim to afternoon's wiles
(did I remember to have lunch?) beckoning me
to fall asleep with my computer on my legs.

My eyes drift shut for a few precious seconds
and I catch a glimpse of supposed heaven,
the one you were supposed to bring me to, Kurosagi,
a few days over a year ago. Do you remember?
Or was it a shadow of a shadow that I begged

to release me from this endless cycle,
this life that had become a hell?
I wanted a tour of Skylands. I desired
to see Velouria's face, give mine to her hands,
hear her reassure me the fight was done.

But instead we met separated by wall of glass in a corner of Abyss,
and you freaked out, proclaiming you would fulfill no such wish,
that you "loved me too much". What transpired above
that justifies the radio silence? You've been gone for far too long,
and I find it hard to believe that you've already won.

If only I could cut myself in two
and deliver the part of me that fell for you
to stay at your side, to raise our child whose
face I have only once ever seen, have not heard of since.
Shadow begets shadow. You get what you deserve, and so do I.

What was I thinking when I took that hand
and let you pull me through portal to unknown land?
You stole my heart, you asshole. You made my whole
world revolve around you, and now that you're gone, it's like
I'm missing a vital internal organ and now I'm going to die.

You can be the prince, and I'll be Snow White,
even though I hate Disney with a burning passion, a blight
on the modern zeitgeist. Preserve my corpse in a
casket of glass, cut from the same pane I watched through
as you walked away with a newly-hewn Erin draped over your shoulder.

Nothing transpires above the clouds
that ashen woman wears like a shroud.
Bitter lack of air? Not a problem when one
has no need for lungs. She may be benign in her emotionlessness,
but I am evil, a winter storm. I can be yet colder.

Viento

it’s always a horrid feeling when the winds collide
and fight and tug each other's hair
there’s always someone slapping skin reddened from cold
someone refusing to give up
and that roar of comprehension
that this fight will be broadcast for all the world to see
and the clouds swirl past
in shredded tears
reminding everyone that time is slipping past
just one of mankind's many creations
that only exists because people decided that it must

when the fight is over, and the midnight hands have won
they stomp out of the room, thundering the sky as they leave
as if to taunt that this was not the last time

Study Desk

ever since I was born,
my heart has been a clock
soundlessly ticking away:
at least, that's the story
other people say.

where others might have
the pleasure to possess
a network of flesh
and veins with life's liquid,
I instead hold in my heart a contraption
incapable of experiencing
Goddess' rapture.

not that it makes
much of a difference
when one's life is spent on the plains,
but only my childhood was so blessed,
my only consolation the soft-falling rain

that taps on the windowsills
to the tune of my fingers,
mind trying to focus on a lecture
as other thoughts linger,
staccato to my fingertips
remarking on this desk's rough-hewn texture.

the professor drones on.
I entertain the thought
that maybe this job was a mistake,
spending my days fielding students
begging for a test retake
or fetching some coffee
to keep His Teacherliness awake.

but this is the most humane job
available for miles,
and it gives me a new home in which to dwell.
and, amidst the daily trials,
I got to meet you, dear Edell.

Kompaso

the bottom of the sea is more vast and unknown
than the surface of the moon that shines whiter than bone
and even more opaque than that
is your face I see every day when I come home

you cry on my shoulder in the dead of midnight
and drift to sleep at three in the morning
fitfully waking with the coming light

fear on your mind that the moths will come any day
and chomp on our bond and wear it away
with pincers stolen from other insects

we feel lost searching for ourselves
and memory lane feels like a foreign land
loneliness replaces you as my bedmate
and our city bridges crumble to ash

until I find a compass
that leads me back to your side
and you smile once more
as I take your hand in mine

Edell II

Edell comes and visits me
while I wish I was on the mend
and she gently takes my hand and whispers
"It's never too late to start again"

for I lay here sickened, alone in my room
almost a cliche now to call it a tomb
begging my body to sleep, my stomach to cease
the storm I've unwittingly trapped inside me

seeking solace in matter separating from mind
in the moment when I can open astral eyes
and see you, dear Edell, smile burning bright
as if there were no barriers keeping you from my side

"Let's go for a little trip."

the black flag betwixt
tantalizing kiss of Nyx
freedom in the night
from the oppressive world's plights
and the rest of the stars
billow out over my head
from Pluto to Mars

"I do not wish to be burdened any longer,
to sit on this rooftop,
filled with such sonder

at all the people passing by far below,
whose faces I don't recognize,
whose names I will never know."

I should know, she notes, she's really quite concerned
at how painfully my mortal heart yearns
for something above to put on a pedestal
for something divine to protect me from hell

in days gone by
she watched as I
ripped through the sky

as I severed the heavens
and bid goddess goodbye

that god feels compelled to rip asunder
that which woman has so ferociously put together:
a travesty, war is, so only I fight
to hasten the days awash in peace's light

but can I say the same about myself now?

she takes my hands in hers,
silky skin sends shivers,
touch-starved as I were

and her eyes meet mine,
color of evening's sky,
already fearing goodbye

is this legacy even mine to reclaim?
for this physical body has never
experienced such pains

and yet I know
when I look at you,
I am your ocean,
and you are my moon

a smile plays on her lips
and one last speck of wisdom
before night's goodbye kiss

"You should know, 'deicide' is only one
letter away from 'decide',
for it is I who makes the decision
to kill the gods
in order to live a liberated life.

Will you join me?"

Faculty Meeting

In this current life, I feel like it were
not quite normal to have a church
on every single street corner,

and yet it is this way
where I currently live,
not likely to ever change.

In that other world, the parish
opened their doors to the world, sprawling
buildings where learning was cherished

for students of every walk of life:
the normies, the not-quite-there,
those who just aspired to be someone's wife-

and, of course, where I had the (mis?)fortune to seek
a job: that veritable fortress where there was
a new misfortune every week.

Not that it was at all tragic how the weeks came and went,
running errands, mingling with the youths
all magical and hell-sent.

But it was not uncommon that, instead of being enthralled
with secrets unveiled, I was guiding the nurses to bring
some poor sap to the campus hospital,

prayers of supplication offered too hastily
to a goddess I myself was
unable to perceive.

Akira, prodigy- or maybe just prodigal,
giving away her talents without
thought if she'd end up well,

who slew a shark-man mutant made
in a biology class
from nautical sperm and her own egg

in the middle of the water pad
with nothing more than a song
about how she longed to no longer be sad.

You collapsed into the shallow water,
and I watched as your skin rippled, iridescent,
astral mother calling out to abandoned daughter:

but you fought it back, just like you'd been taught,
and your friends carried you back down to
the infirmary, hero, earned a quiet corner's cot.

Jenna, who went out on field trip
with Head Teacher to an outpost in
the forest despite bad hip,

stomach having churned all night long
insistent that something would
go terribly wrong.

And wrong it did- but who is to sack
when Goddess is angered and uses a student
as a vessel with which to attack?

To be stretched out to celestial canvas,
repainted as a ferocious beast
intended to destroy us...

only felled by a barrage
of shovels that met
you head on,

wielded by those still willing to forgive
even when you cried, "I fear this transformation is permanent;
there is no way I can continue to live."

A hammer beats on wood.
I shake my head, casting off the distraction.
I must pay attention. I really should

when surrounded with
those who, on the other side of Mori's Mirror,
are mere legend and myth.

Packed into a tight room, faculty meeting
where the topic of the hour is Head Teacher
desperately in her stoic way entreating

us to keep a tighter lid on ourselves,
lest our school be relegated
to a mere tome on a bookshelf.

Nobody wants to be shipped off to that place where dead
eyes stare back from zombified students, shell-shocked
from how many times a part of the school has exploded

or burnt down to ashes, engulfed in careless flames.
We all would gladly embrace this school's chaos
if it means avoiding the smothering tame.

Edell IV

Goddess takes my arms in hers
(my arms are hers; I'd merely worn)
as if they weren't scarred with scorn
and spins me around to the tune of birds

I am, she says, a sorry girl
to be wingless upon this earth,
no true joy, just hollow mirth;
she pulls me close for an airy twirl

Edell, you've lived your life in dance
from exiled beginning to exalted end,
a tree standing against the fiercest wind,
choosing peaceful glade over bloodied lance

my steps always did betray
my lack of skill,
resembling more roadkill
than a graceful sway

elementary school gym class
being led by a stranger
with grip of iron nearing hurt
to blend into the mass

a routine, a rhythm,
a beating of drum
"when will this session be done?"
friend's rescinded whim

a strange compound
with hidden rooms galore:
to wander is not a bore-
betrayed by foot's sound

I was no good back
in those faraway times;
you bite back a whine
at the one skill I lack

Goddess may have placed
a seal on my heart,
but I can still pour forth art:
just not that which needs haste

but the haste is oppressive,
a weight on your shoulders,
a weight I would gladly bare were
I not so pensive

I feel the way your crown brushes my skin,
the weight of it on my skull,
as impenetrable as a ship's hull,
sailing down to the depths of my kin

my heart aches, yearns
as I turn my gaze to the night yet;
the moon shines once more as a threat,
the warning of soon-lost world returned

Reversal

when I was born
the local oracle had a head-splitting vision
that I would come to an early demise
and out of my chest would spring a million forests

and as I barrel ever closer to adulthood
I worry that her vision will come true
that there has been a seed planted deep inside me
that I may never dig out

right before my family escaped
the local oracle had a vision
that it would be my best friend that would plant me in the ground
which made no sense back then
there's never been anybody in my life
I could ever call a friend

but there's a girl with eyes green as leaves
and I can see my forest reflected in them
a forest belonging to a planet I left behind

maybe that was my purpose all along
to bring life to the planet I loved

Minerva

this intellect of mine,
this mind I have grown
is a knife in my hands I murder myself with:
not a suicide, for twenty years of this life
has taught me this body is not my own

you impale me through
the spears of my DNA
that rip through every cell of my body
chanting like a crusader
"life always finds a way"

to think it a blessing
from dear precious goddess
that the waterfall of my body
has long since ceased, farm
barren, one child less

Edell VI

I have never been a good performer
only making my chest grow warmer
with embarrassment, stage fright, delay
begging the memorized lines in my brain to stay

a million girls line up in a row
all ready to put on magnificent show
but although our puzzle pieces could combine
we are different pictures, unable to align

I've rehearsed these words throughout my whole life:
"it would fill me with pleasure to become your wife"
but when the time comes, just like in eighth grade
I stutter and fail, despite the hours I prayed

a brown-haired girl with gusto and voice
I hesitated to settle with, thinking I had no choice
abandoned by peers, unable to fly
but yet I still did not feel satisfied

not a lover of sound but of soft words
that tingle down my spine, even unheard
silent prayer, affliction, abate
fearing reckless speed, preferring to wait

you discover me hiding in corner of library
and sit down at my side, and together we tarry
until it is midnight, hair stirred by idle breath
days of peace counting down, barely any left

Clouds

it’s always a beautiful feeling when the clouds combine
and spill into each other
there’s always something pulling
something giving
and that silent understanding
that these moments are only theirs
and the wind floats by
on silver wings
and brushes through
reminding them that time is flying by
even though time is a human creation
and therefore doesn’t exist

when it’s time for the clouds to leave
they leave slowly
as if trying to escape their fate

En La Mallumo

I am made out of the stars
cut out of galaxies like rare cloth
and sewn up with the love of two adults
with a sewing machine and a sharp needle

you were carved out of the mountains
fashioned by the most graceful hands
belonging to a sculptor
and commissioned by the king sleeping on his throne

your eyes light up every night
with the green of life violently blooming
and spill into my blonde hair
glowing with suburban life yearning for something better

the blue off of the mountains
fades into the peaceful night
rolls off of the mountains in tufts of mist
and parts when we voyage into the void

with my hand in yours
lead me into the dark
I won’t be scared with you by my side

Edell III

I wonder how I would feel about you
had we met in a different time.
ten years prior, twenty, thirty?
if you and I had held hands clasped so tightly
under that jagged sky

would I trade this clear vision of you
for an aesthetic sublime,
hands furious into the hours wee?
they say you value less what you get for free
than what you bleed for in employed time

I knew another beast
near that same shade of blue,
who I've walked with since I was
but a mere child.
but my heart doesn't burn for him.

the fiercest loves I've known least,
and maybe the latest just happens to be you.
it could be that our time will soon be done
and I'll find someone else to pine over so wild
like I were committing some deadly sin.

"begotten, forgotten, scraps
merge to form a whole,"
I pray, hoping against hope
that the memories flood back,
breaking the dam on my mind

where I stand, water laps
onto my toes, chilly, cold
and maybe I should have brought soap
in my ragged brain sack
so I could leave the dirt behind

and fall into your embrace,
the ocean, moon-chased
cradling light at end of day.

history does not repeat, but it often rhymes

kisses on the hand,
your palm on my pillow,
waves crashing on the shore
as a monolith sinks into the depths

absolutely lost,
no hope of return,
invisible to the lighthouse
cutting through the fog

the shivers ripple through my body
like the waves of the ocean,
a tidal pull,
a distant command to return to that
which claims me as its birthright

ever since that fateful day, night
where I tore the heavens in two,
I have been a foreigner in this skin,
alien to this body not my own

to think, at any moment,
this dam I have built around my
heart could break, and I
cede my remaining time

a wrong stone's throw away from
drowning in that sheltered pond:
I've become all react;
you've become all respond

but you too have known perdition
and the feeling of being excavated from
that early grave, suddenly seen,
unwantingly known

and every touch, every breath,
every moment at your side
helps suture the divide
between these two parts of me

Edell VII

I am your ocean,
you once proudly proclaimed,
staying by my side
through bitter storms profane

but something has carelessly tossed
a millstone into the depths,
and my stomach churns, bedsheets turned
as I keep foreseeing my own death

in our first days, you'd chastise me
for waking before the morning,
but this time, with what you've seen:
this is a dire warning

unbeknownst to me, you've been brewing
up a war alone, heavy on your mind
no wonder my own inner depths
have been responding in kind

a legend of an emperor
preparing for foreign war
but first must cross a raging river
arrive safely on foreign shore

a few minutes pass, rowing along
everything seems well
then suddenly: a white fish jumps into his boat
omen of doom straight from hell

but you have no luxury of postponing
revolution until later date
despite the danger ahead,
the enemy certainly won't wait

for you are not the only one
who knows of my visions
the date is set, the locale planned,
and on your shoulders is a mission

Last Golden Day

No obligations for today,
and perfect is the weather.
Not a big surprise when you barge into my room
and ask, "Can we spend some time together?"

You know I'm not a big fan of tea,
so you whip up a big jug of lemonade
and we sit at a table in the stomach of the garden
and we tell each other about our days.

The cookies are too crumbly today.
You lick crumbs off your sugar-coated fingertips.
My cheeks burn like the sun above,
unsure if we're close enough to ask for a kiss.

There are rules that state students
cannot enter into relationships with faculty,
but I hold no real power here
so the rule does not apply to me.

The birds are nesting in the trees,
singing along with the choir's hymns.
You were never much for worship.
You didn't believe living was a sin.

You just do what your heart tells you to
without a single thought of hell.
It's what I love best about you,
my dear sweet Edell.

The sun peaks in the sky
and you change the conversation's tune.
You are planning an exposé against the ones
who fund this school- and soon.

There's something shady going on,
and Head Teacher is in the know.
Could all these divine powers she wields
only be for show?

My head floods with
an ocean of doubts.
How could this place possibly still be standing
if Goddess's grace we were without?

The only students who
are in real danger
are those who go out of their way
to provoke Goddess' anger.

You shake your head.
The point, I'm completely failing to see.
You do not deny the existence of those above:
just that they have any legitimate authority.

Why are we the only school in the state
that takes open pains to Goddess' rage abate?
The answer is simple, but it makes me reel:
are we really being prepared as Her next meal?

Calm Before The Storm

The day is here.
The day you will declare war
on Head Teacher
and her scheme, risk getting skewered
on Goddess' sword.
My heart is full of fear.

But you have opened
Pandora's box in me, and I cannot close
the lid on this knowledge
in what goes on behind closed doors at this college.
This is the path I chose.
I will walk it with you to the end.

Even if we both die,
it will only further seal the veracity
of these accusations.
I walk down this stone pathway, million times traveled before, without hesitation.
There are others in on our conspiracy,
friends who will no doubt, if things get ugly, escape alive.

You stop outside the doors to the mess hall.
Everyone is inside,
settling down to absorb
Head Teacher's mass prayers, words usually kind and warm-
but you and I know today they hide
the invitation for Goddess to make a feast of us all.

The way you pronounce
every syllable of my name
as if it were a spell
you drudged up from your deepest wells
to keep me, this human vessel, sane:
soft as sun's rays, that tongue I know can trounce.

"Sinead,
I count myself lucky
to have spent these last days
with you.

If nothing else,
remember every revelation
I have showed you
is true."

End Of File

You push open the doors.
I follow after your
every careful measured step.

The entire room, a sea of eyes
eager to scrutinize
the girl who would show up late:

and armed, to boot
(although angered, she's still cute)
with a black market gun at her side.

Head Teacher's eyes widen in disbelief,
although our intentions must still be oblique
because the students dissolve to confusion.

"What is the meaning of this?"
her silken lips hiss,
face the sharpest angles I have ever known.

And while the flowers woven in her hair
beg me to stay a while there,
I know my true place is at your side.

Edell explains.
A sharp stab of chest pain,
ultimately ignorable, like a running stitch

I endure
as Edell makes sure
the students know their soon-to-be fate.

"Very well, then,"
Head Teacher begins.
Everyone expects her to speak more.

But she brings her hands to her bosom,
countenance suddenly lonesome.
A crack in my chest bursts open with light.

I cannot still these trembling hands,
these fingers that have planned
such sunny futures in these walls.

A distant voice is damning me to hell,
and now I know what the visions meant
when they said I was a vessel.

For what is a feast
if one forgets to invite a beast?
I cannot stop my transformation.

And before the light takes me
to remold this body
like putty,

I catch one last glimpse
of your face.

Edell V

The sky is the color of the rose
you lay on my bedside as you turn to those
who felt my last breaths, melding with the wind,
and ask if my loss was worth their win.

For what is the use of parting tar
if there is no more beloved Fell Star?
The path you decided, the future you walked,
midnight eagle dancing with ashen hawk.

"Prepare yourself for death," you proclaimed,
"while you can still feel precious pain."
but do you adore my sundered heart
framed by my pale skin, paper art?

At least you can still be forgiven
for your deeds, passionate sins.
But how does one forgive a vessel
unsavable by even mortar and pestle?

Confined in this infirmary,
every reason to remain wary
of the comings-and-goings of every nurse
that might be conspiring to break your heart worse.

There is still hope for me, you insist;
some spark of life within yet persists.
Covered in wounds from toe to head:
I will not perish in this bed.

The Sea Speaks, My Other Half

time marches on, relentless,
inconsiderate of my quest to create a ceaseless
world. and no matter how many clocks I cover,
how many hours I spend listless in an afternoon's nap,
I am no closer
to reuniting with her.

that woman who represents both the dark and the light,
whether bloodshed through war or inflicting fright:
others cower in her stead.
I cannot help but wonder
what goes on in her head,
if her walls are also painted red.

my wish was to always stay by her side,
no matter how I trembled or wanted to hide.
but we've been separated by the whims of fate,
for some reason I don't remember: death?
some contract that I forgot to negate?
stars above, please tell me I'm not too late

to crash-land on Saturn
holding this jewel-encrusted urn
which holds the remnants of my memories
and throw myself into the metaclysma at its core,
vaster than the deepest Earthen sea,
and locate the gate to eternity.

at the gates, I heard a hiss,
gates locked until I made a promise
that this chance wouldn't be in vain.
I nodded my head, mouthed a yes:
I would endure the fiercest pain
it it meant I could be by her side again.

whether assistant teacher
or enemy of preachers
that would seek to harvest my power,
my fate through my lives is entangled with hers.
I'll meet you at the tower
again, I swear, my precious bloodied flower.

Nobody Escapes Alive

A deity's destiny
is to dissolve their astral body,
every atom a star,
every organ a galaxy.

This world that I hold
inside this small heart
would be given birth
once I tore myself apart.

Not that I could ever choose
the day that it happened,
decided instead by the fickle
fates and their wind.

How many souls-to-be,
that I would have cherished
as the echoes of a dear sibling,
on that fateful day perished?

My day, I know, will never come
so long as the voices remain to me
only a low hum.

But it terrifies me
to think, come one day,
I will cease to see,

to think, to feel, to shiver,
to desire,
to with pleasure quiver.

A mistake to think a deity
can attain immortality.
For even the gods die
come their proper time.

De La Rando

there are bruises all over my body
blisters beg for bandages to soothe the pain
just one more day of fighting
to keep my head above life's waves

my knees anxiously knock together
gaps in more places than one
we aren't getting better, just wasting away
to serve your purposes of fun

I sip your words until they stick
just bitter as root beer's taste
like sugar, I've abstained from your touch
so long the sweetness fails to translate

your lips are a life ring you throw out to me
and as the sharks circle far under my feet
I cling endlessly

don't look down; you might see hell
don't look up; you might see infinity
and that's just as scary as hell

don't play with your food

it burns me up inside that
the life I care about the most
is the one I remember the least
as if, amidst the raining toast
I forgot I was supposed to be holding a feast

but as Rapunzel wanders blind in the desert
so I find myself drowning in the dessert
scraping off the top layer of foam
while struggling to remember
even a single glimpse
of home

the fall from heavens, blaze brighter than sun's light
must have really done a number on my mind
for who else but a goddess can survive a fall from such height
while fleeing from the genocide of all their kind?

no longer exists dear Imaginai
where my siblings and I delicately floated by
and breathed the world into existence with lungs
holding all the world's songs yet unsung

Conqueror Chronos split his soul in two
so he could have someone to love through and through
and made servants from trapped souls of the dead
to serve him delicacies
to gorge himself
until his face turned bright red

when I was divine, I had no need for a gut
to consume bleeding meat or rich walnut
unnecessary to sacrifice, no demanded slaughter
(although I gladly accepted anything a devotee freely offered)

six scorching wings, glassy crimson orb
connected to time, could freely absorb
stray energies this human body cannot process
eyes blind to the spirits, ears hearing less

severed from my throne, condemned to be weird
the food has been consumed, the table has been cleared
dinner is over, back to studying tomes
to make a new world to be my new home

Hematoma

my body is a war zone,
a landscape riddled with terror plots
from sea to shining sea

in the highlands sit
half-hidden land mines
buried poorly in the earth

but nowadays it
takes effort to set them off,
for what it's worth

on the other coast
the land is barren
razen to the ground

reddish earth
where nothing grows
no one else around

deep within the tortured land
a volcano sprouts
burbling to the surface

when it erupts
the forest paints
raddled with a purpose

Depression Foods

Two days
I've been lying here in a haze,
counting the ways

I wish I was a cloud,
one of the sky's dutiful hounds,
passing by without a single sound.

Nothing to do but let my fingers once again trace
the words of power on this tome bound with lace,
illuminated by the flicker of the fireplace.

Mistress says, even depressed, I need to eat.
But this body can never be replete
severed from my magic, my fire, my heat.

What mortal food could ever sustain
the ravenous hunger of a goddess given flesh? Oh, the pain
of rebirth, of learning how to breathe,
how to see
again.

She tries everything: vegetable stew,
buttery muffins with berries quite blue,
whatever is in that burbling brew...

But it takes a whole day to finish one bowl,
and by then, it's long since cold.
She asks me if I would like to hold

an enchanted heating pad to my chest close,
for she knows there's no
point in trying to convince me to close that damn window.

Two weeks
I've been lying here, too weak
to any kind of sensation seek.

I manage to keep down all of my food,
but the warmth still manages to elude
me, even after Mistress brewed

some kind of hand-me-down potion
that I'm supposed to rub like a lotion
over my heart every night. But the motion

reminds me too much of the gentle flap
of my lost wings. The lack
of power, the loss, is almost too much for this small sack

of flesh to bear.

I feel Mistress there.

My fingers probing one night, I feel an abyss
where used to dwell every person I missed.
Where used to dwell the bliss

and the pain of memory,
the entirety of everything,
now is nothing.

First Day in Rennica

Mediuth, you and I
met through shades of oranges and yellows,
the moon hanging high,
the sun not far behind
as sunset twinkled into my pained eyes.

To think it was the wind
that made our paths cross in sin,
escaping from Mistress, unaware,
tumbling down the endless stairs
until lungs filled with Rennica's earthy air.

You let me slip out of your arms
at the entrance.
Were you embarrassed to be with me?
A tragic woman-turned-monster
and a little girl, pitiful and weak?

You ran off to hide
Below, where I could not cling to your side,
where not even the light
could caress your face.
You had the gall to displace
me from where I was trying to heal
and then called me a disgrace.

Mediuth, you heartless-!
You made me cry,
but I couldn't even make
a simple river
missing my powers, just shiver
as the tears ceased and my eyes
dried.
Trembling alone in the room
Solstice gave me,
walls of stone, one, two, three,
four, a tomb.

My only companion a book,
I narrowly dodged suspicious looks
and tried to break into the Below.
A wide winding staircase behind the Tree.
How far down would it go,
I wondered, a gulp, a lump
in my throat,
too scared to take the first step and see
for myself.

Bebo, Ne Forlasu Min

you're prickly as a cactus
stiffening up whenever I get near
maybe I haven't fallen in love with a sunrise
but a porcupine with human ears

"what if you get sick of me?" she asks
still afraid, doubt lingering in her chest
"what if I wake up and I've accidentally murdered you,
not in body, but in soul, and fled west?"

all she wants is to just be mine
but I don't know whose I am
lost in memories, abandoned in time

"baby, don’t leave me alone"
and she shivers close to me
we should have fallen asleep a long time ago
but come morning, I guess we'll see

Three In The Morning In Rennica

Three in the morning.
I am afraid I will be ripped
from your side
without so much as a warning.

This sparse room where I sleep
has none of the amenities
I had in Mistress' tower or Above,
just a bunch of blankets in a heap

and a single battered metal pan
where I make my living,
using the last sparks of this power
to cook what I can.

But there is no slumber to be had
this night. I long for something familiar,
to be reassured that I am not evil,
not even a little bit bad.

But you are laboring down in the Below
on some project I will never be privy
too, and this body is not monstrous enough
to belong there, so for now you must
work alone.

"Mori, Mori," I know you would cry.
"It happened so long ago. Dry
your tears. You are still alive.
Do not waste your thoughts on an immutable past.
You must go on living your own life."

But I cannot help but remember
my brothers and sisters
who I shared near-eternity with,
divine as we were

until Chronos came slashing
with magic sword and cape,
and Brother ejected me from Above,
pushed into world pool's deep end:
"Seliph, take to the wind;
at least one of us has to escape."

So mortal I wandered with crippled powers
through the land I had once ruled over
until my body gave out, half-dead already,
nursed back to life in a heaven-stretching tower.

Mediuth, you know how the rest of this story goes.
I won't bother you with
recounting it again, for I don't want
to give you any more woes.

But the hours tick on,
and I do not have the luxury
of your comfort, so all I can do
is hum to myself a gentle song...

Seliph (Original Dream)

it’s good that you keep me asleep
unknowing, unaware of the outside world
you hold me in your lap
resting between your crossed legs
gentle domination of a newborn deity

a familiar heft like a bowling ball
you perch me on your little braided metal pedestal
and admire the gleaming gold surface
slightly translucent, warm to the touch
a mirror of true selves

how scandalous!

you remember the night spent out on the town
watching the headlines scroll up on the wall-screen

you remember the lady with hairless face and impeccable skin
eyes too close together, cackling at the camera
“Do I seem crazy to you?” she laughs, moments before the drills settle in
surgical precision, scraping away millimeters off her skull
Barbie in a beauty shop
until her head caves in and collapses into dust

your spine shivers, as if disintegrating in solidarity
you never wanted your love to go through that
better fed than dead!

but you don’t feed godlings.
they’re like plants, silly.
you keep them in pots and water them
and hope that they don’t overtake your counter

I could leave this library at any time, if I wanted to
and yet I stay at your side
despite this form, cursed or blessed, up to interpretation
this space is as much mine as it is yours

Twins In Pride

Valmie and Vashie, twins in pride
who one day took me aside
and asked me to look down
past the clouds
at the land below.

The people in villages milling about,
one man fishing for trout
in a glittering stream,
carefree as a dream,
carving out their own lives.

"Such are the differences between gods and men,"
Vashiel, dear brother, explained. "We are incapable of sin,
but neither do our lives belong to us.
We exist to serve. And when the time comes to fulfill our purpose
of giving birth to a new world, willing we must go."

His brilliance is blinding,
my brother the sun. A blessing I am incapable of crying.
Valmiel, my sister the moon,
believes her time may be coming soon,
but her pregnancy is not yet at its peak.

While many a person may sing a tune
in praise of me, I lack the ability to choose
to do anything but act as a deity,
serving the people down below who need me-
who need me to destroy.

Seliph, god of calamity,
who readily tears apart amity
and rips through the surface of the earth
as if some party game played in cheery mirth.
Am I condemned to always play this role?

Makoi

Goddess of creation and chaos,
cast off like mere dross,
your name is Makoi,
and you are nobody's toy.

Garnering mother worship
from the storm
that forms
between your hips,

I cannot help but wonder
what you think as you watch me tear asunder
with hapless hands
all the lands
you work so hard to keep together.

I cannot help
but destroy. You smack
me with a thundering whack
and call me a malevolent whelp.

But life requires death.
How tiny would seem the breadth
of the earth if there was no room
for the flowers to bloom,
so crowded with people it were.

To Makoi all the mothers make their appeals
that their infants will squeal
upon birth, singing with functioning lungs,
not with their umbilical cord they themselves hung.

Preter La Muroj

I felt safe within those walls
cracked and whispering of millions of memories gone by
and only after I left for the outside world
did I recognize their absence

these other lands feel so foreign to my soft hands
where one mistake renders an angel into a monster
overruling moments of pure euphoria
into one single despicable act in time

you ask me why it takes so long
for people to find each other
amid the waves of humans rolling by in the lean of life
and I reply that I don’t know

maybe I should go back to my island in time
and spend eternity in oblivion, staring at windows into the past
because there is one thing that I have glimpsed on this planet but once
and that is a soul with lilies intertwined within

Execution

These words I have carved into my veins
regardless of my flesh's pain,
for soon my body will fall silent,
breath the subdued rain.

"Bury me," my worn mouth pleads
as into the tired ground I bleed.
The mage is fast approaching, and
I will not any false guilt concede.

Once more I've hurt who I would love,
wolf tarred with feathers of a dove
and jettisoned into Nyx's land:
return to sender, up above.

My punishment: wear statue's skin,
sealed senses, soul subdued within
and mounted in remote locale,
waiting for next life to begin.

But I don't want to wait around
and slowly sink into the ground
come erosion, destroying idyllic
scenes of burbling river sound

that fills one's ears, water winding
around alcove, almost blinding
as the sun filters through trees,
lands on my frozen face, spellbinding.

Who knows how many years I'll wait
before a mage arrives belate
and releases me, lesson learned,
stranger in a world that did not wait?

So bury me under the dirt.
I don't care if it'll hurt.
When mage is gone, exhume me
and I'll prove to you I still have worth.

Parental Controls

my father loves a destructive dog
but hated it when I wore that Tootsie Roll thong
as a seven-year-old, given to me by my mother
as a joke.
but he didn't laugh when he saw me skipping around in it;
rather, he nearly choked.

my mother framed my first drawn flower
but doesn't like my search for power
or that, in art, I take after my father:
in words we dwell.
her eyes always glaze over as she croons in fake-sweet voice:
"honey, that's really swell."

my father claims he loves me so
but wraps his fingers 'round my throat
with the full support of my mother:
not physically, but in spirit.
I can only use my voice if I take pains
to ensure they never hear it.

my mother insists all in this house is well
but behind my back that I should sell
my trinkets off, she murmurs to father.
so long as still stands that college loan
and I am being "fiscally irresponsible",
no matter who bought my things, everything I "have" she truly "owns".

my father says he's on my side
but spends his days lobotomizing students' minds
as a job to support his children and my mother.
such irony that the system that abused me,
that raped my mind and left me for dead,
would this long my stomach feed.

my parents say they gave me life
because they wanted a daughter
who would grow up to be somebody's wife
and give them grandchildren in return.
but my womb is barren, despite my mind being rife
with creatures beyond even my own comprehension.

in my hands I turn
over and over a scalpel.
but I cannot excise from my body
the genes of the two people
who condemned me to walk through this hell.

All Apologies

bleary fog from long-gone nights
reading over records of past plights
vaguely remembering a black chair,
light streaming down on a computer desk, connection barely there

old poems, scraps from people who no longer exist
contrived and angry letters to former lovers who'd pissed
away their time with me, caught in eternal hourglass
Spectacle ticking away, each second their last

mass-produced poems, grasping for straws
fleeting pleasure whenever a barrage of likes came along
a picture here, witty title placed there
but the attention didn't transfer when I took to the air

and now I sit here, three years removed from that path
beaten down to Earth's core where we screamed and we laughed
millions of people pushed into a tiny space
only kept afloat by unscrupulous advertisers' grace

it's quiet now.
but now I can hear myself.
and I wonder, what event next
will send me barreling towards hell?

Garden Harden

A stardrop falls from the sky
and I catch it in my hands, delicate,
and plant it into the shallow earth of my garden
in hopes the green will someday shoot up high.

Some seeds have languished as a sprout,
a tiny growth, biding its time
until more sun shines its way,
until the world can no longer go without.

I am incubating the flowers of evil, I am told;
I am paving the path that leads straight to Hell,
and while this inferno inside me burns brightly now,
come death, it will leave my legacy cold.

True, through my fingers many spirits pass through
this sorry farce that calls itself a veil;
but not all are deliberate, not all I call forth;
my control over this gift is not absolute.

So, robbed of my prose, I must abide
by the rhythms of the stars that fall from the heavens,
gushing forth in a torrent that floods the land
and leaves finger-sized cracks as it subsides.

Listen / Silent

it doesn't interest me what the latest celebrity gossip is
or what dramawhore turned who into a lolcow
or what happened on this or that stream
that I didn't have the time to tune in to

it doesn't interest me what you watched in the privacy of your room last night
or what some self-centered internet celebrity said about a game you like
or even what happened in said game
if I cared to know, I would have already looked it up

it doesn't interest me who diddled who last night
or who parked wrong in the school parking lot
or what happened in some episode of a TV show last night

my parents didn't pay taxes
and I didn't get up the courage to face the light and go to school
and these teachers don't get paid
so that you can waste everybody's time and hold up the class
prattling about something that won’t matter a year from now

and I wish you'd stop asking about all the little petty things about me
if I cared to share them with the uncaring masses- I would, you know?
but I've been around my brothers for far too long
and I've learned the way my mother goes distant
her voice, her eyes, her attention
when one of my siblings starts ranting about something he saw on YouTube
unsolicited
oblivious to how nobody's listening

All The Same In Believing We Are Different

Look at me,
I'm more special than other girls.
Why are you paying her attention?
Watch as I give my dress a twirl!

Yes, I know my words are cliché,
my every emotion plastic.
But don't look at me wrong, lest I shatter;
don't do anything drastic

like give even a simple stranger
a subtle second-too-long look,
or I'll accuse you of being a monster
and barf out a mediocre book.

I gladly throw other women
under misogyny's bus
for a chance to be on the receiving end
of some mediocre man's lust.

My entire world reduced
to the result of some ancient fuck;
that which has happened since even before antiquity
I attribute to a stroke of luck.

I am a mirror, a dead bird, a wound,
a fragile icon of glass,
garbage, unwatered plants, tragic event;
a human I am last.

Receipt

a wise man once came to me on the street
and put a crumpled up receipt in my hand
and winked and walked away

I uncrumpled it and gazed upon
the smudged and runny black ink
written with an unsteady hand
feeling the full effects of senility

"if outside validation is your only source of nourishment
you will hunger for the rest of your life"

views should mean nothing
what is a view? a supposed count of who visited a page
meaningless when there is no script renderer to count said view
hidden in the throng of terminal-based browsers

and yet, for whatever reason, I keep chasing the numbers
discouraged by a low day
enthralled by a high

maybe I am the worst glutton of them all

maybe I have already starved to death

Generic Holiday Movie

Scene one.
We've only just begun.
Tell me, what is whiter?
The snow,
or every actor's teeth?

Scene two.
We are barely ten minutes in,
and already the protagonist has
lost her job, her coat, her
house, and her shoes.

Scene three.
Someone close to the protagonist
has an idiosyncrasy
that needs
to be cured.
Maybe she hates
the Spectacle of Christmas,
the consumerism,
or just doesn't want to be part of the worshipping herd.

Scene four.
You can tell the director
is getting quite bored,
because all the old holiday tropes
are being played out once more.

Scene five.
Car crash.
Ambulance ride.
Not everyone will make it out alive.

Scene six.
The protagonist has fallen under the spell
of whatever the bartender mixed,
because her eyes are two glass baubles
eyeing their pairs
hanging on one of the branches
of a man's Christmas tree.

Scene seven.
All dogs go to heaven,
but this heathen
who wishes Santa Claus would never leave
the North Pole,
who would release
her from this panopticon,
will not.

Scene eight.
It is getting late,
but you still managed to get here in one piece,
Generic Love Interest.
Let us say "Merry Christmas" to each other
seventeen
times over
in a room far too clean
as we suffocate
under the presents' weight.

Scene nine.
The protagonist's mother
is dying,
curled up on a hospital bed
like a frail broken bird.

Scene ten.
There is no passion
in hanging up these ornaments.

Atendante

up here in the peaks of the mountains
the wind whips my face like a palm
a backhanded slap from a formerly soft hand
shouting at me to be calm

let the days of forgetting begin
us, wrapped together in a summer haze
you, wondering what passes by behind your eyes
scraps of memories from abandoned days

I hold so much of other people inside of my heart
a dash from here, maybe a hand or two from a friend
thousands of people, names long since forgotten
whose only contribution to me was a dent in the end

maybe one day, millions of eyes will stare at these pages
and might find an eyeball or two staring back
for an artist's life is constantly on display
always living for imagined attack

The Time Traveler's Silver Handles

Summer never stays,
whether it's from a girlfriend who did betray
the love I had for her for a fleeting passion,
framed by the shadows of men who sang the songs
that filled hearts both hers and mine,

or the ceaseless revolution of the planet
under my feet, which would never let
me feel its sprint through space
on the same track it has always ran
since the beginning of time.

Come the fall, which falls by far too fast,
I cannot help but wonder: if I went back to the past
in a fancy time machine of my making, what would I say
to my twelve-year-old self, fresh into seventh grade,
at the cusp of unlocking familial hell?

Something along the lines of, "Don't make that blog
on Google; don't fall victim to the siren song
of your companions, stating that nothing matters if
your real name isn't attached. For your parents will
find it far too easily, and it will not end well."

How many hours I spent in that computer lab
typing away on a poorly-constructed slab
of a keyboard while the rest of my class watched
a movie upstairs. I wanted to jump into the pages
of my favorite book and fly away with the rest of the flock.

Maybe it was a scar that stretched through all my past lives
and those heavy tomes just activated a buried lust for flight,
wanting to cast off the weight of familial history, the constant
expectation to be grateful to attend the same school as my parents,
breath in a billion feet all marching in lock-

step. Those chapters long since decayed in the compost
bin of my brain, giving birth to a host
of better ideas that nourished me until I was free
of that oppressive place. And yet I have never been free at all.
For I must fight the same institution that feeds me.

My conscience will not let me do otherwise.

I would tell her to go back to those hosters like she were returning to motherland
and write every page of her blog from scratch and by hand
and to keep the damn thing a secret, even from her own friends.
The world was about to end, after all, and so were those so-called bonds
that had for so long held such a sacred place in her psyche.

"Keep your head down," I would implore,
"and keep careful watch over who comes through that door."
For her parents would never properly appreciate her hard work anyway.
I'd hand her that ragged red book with the silver tangle on the front
and leave her to make up her own damn opinion.

Color Nata

I found a pink card in my room today
and remembered an emotionless sky from a dead time
metal grate in the floor, home to spiders
and juvenile eyes peering out to the kitchen below

a basement room I shall never step inside again
dusty, covered in webs, filled with old coats
that had long since lost hope of the sun’s warm embrace
greeting them once more

constantly knitting the same two stitches over and over again
fluffy yarn seemingly wasted for a stuffed poodle’s leash
waiting for second cousins to arrive
and lock me in a toy chest to sleep forevermore
among the dead and dying

a week taken off from school
a red jeweled spider pin in my hand
my fingers curl around an old pen salvaged from the past

my great-granddaughter, I do not even remember you
these rivers and ravines in my face- the world has forgotten them
it is your duty to make sure
that the world does not forget yours

with this pen, I shall write my destiny
with this pen, I shall carve out my own heart

always remember this

always remember this

always

I Always Almost Failed Geography Class

"A tragedy it would be if you sever
your connection to your ancestors,
as if they had lived never."

Your brutal eyes bore into my skull.
I am a ship, and you are a torpedo
about to rip a hole in my hull.

All these accumulated wounds,
these scars bearing pain
I have never learned to soothe.

I take the pen from your outstretched hands
and trace over every crack in my skin,
painting myself a map

spiderwebbing with roads, rivers,
pins that point out all the landmarks
where, drunk with Muse's agony, I quivered
into the small of the night.

The mole on my left knee,
noticed one day while my little brother,
unsupervised, scaled a tree

in the backyard,
and my parents chimped out for fear
he would fall out and hit the ground hard.

The hills on my breasts
that I pop one by one by one
in the college dorm showers,
mind busy agonizing over tests.

The fissure on the back of my left thumb
that reopens every winter, as regular
as the rhythm of a beating drum.

The scorched land to the left of my inner gates
where hair will never grow again,
no matter how long I wait.

The pits on my cheeks like dots on a list
where Mother paid a strange surgeon
to carve away an unexplained cyst.

How am I supposed to forget the unseen
voice that whispers to me every night,
who infiltrates my genes?

My family tree is a mountain, I at the peak,
the crossroads between a million bloodlines,
some with divine power, some mortal and weak.
Before my eyes,
so many conflicting street signs.

Legion siblings, cousins, lovers, parents,
all that can make some claim
to my laments.

Who, even myself, could dare to begin
to catalog these sacred locales of my skin,
this hollow world that slumbers within?

Rihs

How easy it is to write a poem
when your tools are an enter key and prose
and a finger to throw them

against a wall, hoping they stick,
and turn around, oblivious,
to your craft missing kick.

There is no spark in these lines,
no matter how many cliches you employ
of how women are divine

or how all men are trash:
I've heard it all before;
do not think yourself brash.

I grieve for the trees,
felled as they alchemized air
for your sorry lungs to breathe,

that must now sit bare,
barely a word on any page, sitting
in a box of unsold wares.

I acknowledge it is unfortunate
that your heart suffered such blight,
but I hope one future day you learn
how to properly write.

Initialization

to live a life
of isolation
and yet hold such renown

if anyone knew
the storms within
I'd be labeled a clown

I sit and ponder
over my poems
worried they're too long

compared to
insta-poetry
making up a massive throng

the main reasons
why normies claim
to despise poetry

are because
it's too opaque
or too short to hold meaning

a metaphor
for hetero sex
that's been done a thousand times

or stiff and rigid
devotion to
fixed meter and rhyme

an aesthetic
of messy doodles
and false intimacy

like you'd left
your diary open
for the world to read

if I had a dime
for every book
that was about "healing"

I'd have enough
to buy a tome
about an original feeling

Lavender

Don't call me "queer".
I know that I'm weird,
but there's nothing abnormal
about how I love her.

To be amalgamated,
a vague pulsing mass:
I don't mean to be crass,
but words mean things,
even if they are
intended to sting.

For some reason, it's very
hard for you to say that word,
as if you thought it was scary:
lesbian.
Spell it out:
L-E-S-B-I-A-N.
Sapphic I am,
and sapphic I will end.

Tremble in fear
of a union of X's,
powerful enough
to fix the world's messes:

and yet, why should we?
Shoulders sagging with the weight
of the world's hate,
erased
so nobody can that purple flag see.

Lesbian is not trans, and bi is not gay,
but "queer" just squishes all into the same
box that describes absolutely nothing at all.
My problems are not yours,
and yours are not mine.
It's absurd to think
all can be solved
at the same time.

So don't call me "queer".
I know that I'm weird,
but when you call me that,
all that I hear
is a lack of care for
attention to detail.
My love may be gentle,
but it's certainly not frail.

The Poetry Factory

Step with me: one-two-three,
we've got to come up with a rhyming scheme.
Step with me: four-five-six,
we need to make sure the reader gets an emotional kick.
Step with me: seven-eight-nine,
we must ensure the turn-of-phrases are sublime.
Step with me: ten-eleven-twelve,
we fail if this book ends back up on the shelf.
Step with me: thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-
I'm tired of writing on tiny phone screens.

Thelema, Xeper, Deitus

Thelema, xeper, deitus.
Each with their own phase,
their own story to tell
of how I have grown and
not all in my heart is well.

Thelema: what is your Will?
Your destiny, your fate, your
grand purpose in life.
Whatever you name it, will
you accept the necessary strife?

In lands long since gone,
or maybe not yet formed,
I held my blade to the sky,
cursed the fate set out for me,
screamed I'd rather forever hide.

No matter if it meant leaving
everything I'd ever known behind,
from family severed,
never able to again know my own face
as long as is a forever.

Xeper: what will you become?
What cursed blood travels through
your veins, lying hidden
for a chance to turn inside out
your human skin?

In a place not unlike this
one you and I stand in now,
so much I angered the powers above
that I pulled a reverse Eden,
torn between duty and love
while locked inside paradise's garden.

A beast was lurking inside
of my body, slumbering
since the day I was born,
and, as punishment for defiance,
they wanted my mind from the beast torn.

Deitus: your ultimate fulfillment
lies with challenging the above
on their own terms.
The people around you
are merely worms.

I spent eternity above
the clouds, watching humans
work the land,
content in their own tiny lives
until one of them reached out a hand

and brought bloodshed down
from above, clouds raining
ichor instead of rain.
Only I survived, and only as
a dazed newly-minted human,
no longer sovereign.

Digital Scars

one more night spent trawling reviews on goodreads
like I am a fisherman on a gasoline-
tainted sea, watching the black blobs
float past my boat as my nets
trawl on the ocean floor.

maybe I do it as a form of self-harm,
a sky filled with reviews all rated one star
complaining that this book or that's
poetry lacks substance, rhymes too much,
too filled with cliches, such a bore.

this sea, from that site, is overpopulated with fishes
constantly spewing forth generalized wishes
and regrets and memories from many a failed
past relationship, sometimes abusive, other times
just a missed connection the author regrets.

and maybe my father who spends his days
shoving discombobulated facts into students until their minds are a haze
was right when he said I act as if I would starve without
the validation of others, too scared of confrontation to go against the tide
and risk being disliked, even by someone I have never met.

it's too easy for me to slip into the mind of a hive
and reach into my ass to pull out some overused rhyme
every time I want to write a poem.
but I can't help it; it's become a reflex, like breathing,
to want to match my mental voice to some semblance of fixed meter.

it cripples me to the point I hesitate
every time Muse spills words onto me, to the point I am often late
in getting them onto paper or screen, waiting until I hold
whole stanzas in my hands to see if they make sense-
and then I forget them, disrespecting both her hard work and her.

my social worker tells me I have a perfectionist streak,
burdened by an untreated anxiety disorder forcing me to be meek
and servile in the face of opposition, against my better nature.
it is what I hate most about myself. I can deal with being "evil",
being "toxic", being "negative" to a fault.

in that world inside my mind, I can play opposition, I can play Adversary.
but come the specter of unknown eyes, my female socialization tells me to be wary
and not do anything that could cause harm to befall me.
but I want danger; I want freedom; I want a life all my own.
I want to be a poet at least until my heart finally comes to a halt.

already I notice this poem is getting quite long,
as if all this time I had the words bottled up in me all along
and wasn't able to release them properly on a phone's tiny keyboard.
I wish I could more often take moments like these, seething with inward rage,
and apply this lyrical balm to my digital scars.

STAFF ROLL

I am taking it upon myself not to rhyme in this one.
Must a poem always rhyme?
Is it not enough to let the words fall where they will
and hope the result is sublime?

Oops: there I go again.
I guess I just can't help myself,
too anxious over whether
the result will turn out well
to allow the words to flow
where they will.

I type these words out after a long day
of taunting dogs and online play,
exploring what might be another lost portion
of myself.
I have to keep remembering that not
all is a possible past life,
not to commodify my being,
not to relegate all I am to a dusty shelf.

Last night, at the time of writing,
I met Kurosagi again,
and his phone betrayed he'd been cheating on me.
But I feel nothing in my heart,
no anguish,
no pain,
no despair that it happened yet again:
the one to whom I promised my whole heart
grew tired of the distance,
broke our bond apart.

I suppose, in the end, I get what I deserve.
How dare a mortal have the nerve
to fall
in love with one of hell's emissaries?
The gall,
to claim that darkened soul all for oneself.

Laika leaves her home,
sets out for foreign shore,
condemned to this earth forever roam.
What am I supposed to say to her?
Sorry your father turned on you?
Sorry your mother couldn't stop him?
You have my apologies
and my memories
and my rage.

But you deserved better.

If only I could flip to a page
somewhere near the end of the
book of all this pain
and see how it all ends.
Will I perish at my parents' hands
or find Goddess' godsend?

Your mother abandoned you,
and so did Cetra's,
both believing in vain
their daughters could
reverse their curse
and avoid the pain.

Although Cetra had the advantage
of taking on skin of a beast,
the whole world her home,
every forage a feast.

A bridge between the worlds,
sleeping on tree roots
when not dazzling the world
with immense wings unfurled.

Muse never awoke.
Her skin stayed stone,
mind dampened,
forever far from home

like Erin's nightmares.
Abdication of responsibility
full and complete.
No harm can come from a woman
turned to concrete
or marble, legs fused together,
eyes shut, arms wrapped around
a healing staff, never again
making a single sound
of discontent.

I keep having dreams where
I lock myself up as such.
A fetish? Or to be formed as
a fetish, an object of
religious importance...

At least Erin had
the good sense to make
her jail a tower, looming over the
heavens, the clouds,
a sea of nothing to
her mourning soul sate.

Rest in the mourning, as they say.
Take eternity if you need to, or just a single day.

I know Edell needed a while
to process the pile
of regrets swirling around her feet
like a needy pet
as she sat there in that infirmary.
The light streaming through the bleached clouds
and Sinead wearing her hospital sheets like a shroud
as she lay there, comatose, halfway to dead.

Sinead, "Goddess is gracious" but full of hate,
it seems, pulling you along
like a puppet on strings.
Come, dear children,
the war will start soon.
Gather up all of your things.

We're going to have a grand time
even though some of you may die
at the hands of assistant-turned-reverent-
monster.

Monster.

Monster.

That word reverberates through your bones
as you mindlessly destroy parts of your home
to take the blame for Head Teacher's
layers of hidden descent,
the years spent
weaving generations into
a thick tapestry of deceit.

A monster you are,
returned to humanity
by the sole one capable of
bringing you to your knees,
only calmed by the one
who holds your heart.

Nobody holds Mori's heart.
Carefully guarded in that tower,
every passerby earning a glower
in rage, fear that the next one to ascend
those stone stairs of the mind
will smother with a love ready to blind
and then send dear Mori
to join her family, long since dead.

You get too close to a candle,
and the flame burns your fingertips.
You get too close to a blaze:
let me count all the ways
I cause pain
to those that I love.

Let me count all the ways
I am a monster.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VANE VANDER has somehow accomplished the impossible feat of having both too little energy in her body to function properly and too much to actually rest. She spends her days wading in schadenfreude at other people's one-star Goodreads reviews, landing a spot on several FBI watchlists, and laughing as the internet accelerates into a corporate wasteland. She can be found shamelessly stealing billion-dollar-corporations' intellectual property at mayvaneday.org.

Copyright © 2021-2025 Vane Vander. All rights reserved as detailed in Copyright.