These Faces I've Shorn
I find myself returning to it sometimes, this corridor of names, the faces I've worn. Disowned and shed at last.
I thought the past wouldn't allow me to return, except doors have hinges, and with patience and spit, I've learned to work my way around.
The world opens if you hold the lotus for a while. Or eat, so taught, built a child of clay and dust inside this inherited pantheon.
My face all scarry and pock-marked.
It's not mine for knowing, yet I reckon I'd dare walk outside our house, if I was forced to wear over my eye a pirate patch.
Could I meet the world with one eye missing? Would or Wotan. Do I imagine myself wise in all the wealth I've been permitted to keep?
Creep up the staircase, my pregnant belly cradled inside the ladle of grave, soft hands. Misbelong of past mistaken authorities.
I have no right to long for these shores, yet I do, and tear it to pieces, and bury under-mound.
Hold inside my mouth the memory of twin blackcap.
Sister-warn not to bury my nose inside the armpits of giants, but the hour inside me grows late, and I crave the sweat of man.
My loss, whose dice. Miss the freedom of whistling along dead-empty highways. The sea-salt road. e.e. cummings for the first time, not best time.
I've read all these words before. Many times. I'm greedy, think myself fox-like when I cower under the TV with my gray-patch fur and my nibble of stinky cheese.
Defy the rules of games I've built, char my bellyache on altars never warranted. When it ain't blood, it's shit, and I whimper,
Forgotten child under the kitchen-door table, there's no one to tell I've broken it. And besides, there's no how.
Bloody Mary, on a mat of rage and bliss, died, mistaking her tumors for foul-smelling babies,
And if I don't wean my grip off these crack-wobble masks, some day some way, so will I.
I'm enjoying very much where I am right now. And yet, I find sometimes a hankering for past selves. For places I've been. I woke up with the sea inside my belly, and it spawned this little write-up. For once, I know what each word signifies. Now, if only I knew how to stop them signifying.
I remember.
Reading this felt like sitting in a familiar room. One I've sat there in my bed, crying, aching, in agony, because the world that once was is no more and I can no longer unsee what I've seen.
I lean into the dark night of the soul with this -- it is the blackening before the rebirth, for the body and soul to transform there needs to be the death of the old. This can drive men and women mad with grief. I have been there, I have witnessed it.
I won't try and give give meaning to your words -- that would be like naming the Suns and moons in someone elses sky -- I saw something deep in it. Old. True, tired maybe, but still glowing.
As I said in my last comment the most powerful and ancient thing we can do in a world of maps and charts and data is to feel.
So consider this a nod, from someone that's carried the weight of the world too.
As writers, sometimes the story is right there, we just have to have the patience to lay it on the page! Excellent poem.
Also, I keep gravitating towards your work
It is by far the best I've read on hive to date
I feel the deep punch in my gut as your words strike my soul
You speak of becoming.
I am becoming too
I am walking a path where I have no clue where I'm going
But I feel the deep need to build something lasting.
You seem to ascribe no home here, nor community
Believe me I have searched for you.
Let me be one of the first to offer you a home.
I would be deeply honoured for you to write on The Flame
https://peakd.com/c/hive-170744/
The Flame comes not with rewards (yet)
But recognition.
In a community being built to recognise and remember.
https://discord.gg/ourbrotherhood
This is my Genesis, perhaps yours too.
If not, maybe greater things await for you.
This is an offering.
You either step forwards
Or you witness.
Either is fine.
Be well, my good soul
I do like this: 'Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans!"