THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

POEMS BY VANE VANDER

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CHANGEOVER

amphitheater

My lungs are twin chambers
that a crowd clambers into
to watch on what seems a tiny stage
what bitter thoughts of mine will play
out today.

I've somehow managed to externalize
that which used to live between my eyes,
that fragment of a soul I used to call a Self.
Teetering between insane
and a bundle of actors profane
refusing any prewritten script's help.

Breath flows in,
audience's applause.
Breath flows out,
actors now clod
in dripping red.
Another thing I shouldn't have said,
another place I dare not go,
another augury foreseeing
I will perish in the snow.

a peaceful anguish

In my heart resides
a peaceful anguish,
and my calm is made
of a resignation
that begs me to extinguish
the last flickering embers
of this life I would rather not remember.

Life is the babbling
of a baby not yet learned
in the sorry shackles
of language and its many words.
Meaningless and yet fruitful-
if the fruit is meant to poison,
a million wild berries
that will ravage my corpse not yet frozen.

For I have been granted the knowledge
I will die as a beast too beautiful
and too strange for this world.
My eyes will gloss over.
My scales will lose their shine.
The growling deep in my lungs
will be reduced to a silent lull.
And my naked bones will wail,
for gaining the blood of the divine
was not enough to stop me from perishing
before my promised time.

right to die

The only natural birthright
I was ever allotted
was the right to die,
to perish underneath
the ever-changing sky.

Everything else I was sold on
was naught but a fabrication,
a promissory note
with no way to collect
on the debt
of the sorrow I was bestowed
and the peace of which I was bereft.

I am trapped in a nightmare of fabrication,
and there is no divine mirror
to stand
as an omnipresent
escape hatch.
I am locked into an existence factory,
and all the fire exits are welded shut,
and all the windows are boarded up,
and even when found a place to jump,
the road on impact is a layer of ice
over a lake full of avarice
that will not let even a single one
of the soul council's possessions escape.

For even if my own life I take,
the respite will be but temporary.
Chastised for being so haughty
to think I could defy these earthly jailers
and soon shoved into another body
to replay the cycle again.

Somewhere,
I could swear,
lies a yet unmolested stretch of the astral,
and maybe there
I can for a while from this madness refrain.

symbolic immortality

Your obituary states
that you survived by me.

Life is a storm,
a shipwreck at sea,
and I came from another boat
and threw
to you
a life ring
you clung to ever so tightly,
and we both made it out alive.

Life is a gambit
of generations growing vessels
to attain immortality.
You filled me up
with the runoff of you
like an attempt to recycle a candle,
material the same
but dwindling through use.
You survived
by using me.

unplug

there is nowhere to go
and nobody to be.
there is no ego
to so slavishly upkeep.
nobody in the grand scheme of things
cares about your "posts",
your "digital garden",
except for what they can poach
and steal for themselves.
we are all so goddamn tired,
trying desperately to forget
for a few precious moments
the life handed down to us
we have no choice but to resent.

A Sorry Sense Of Amnesia

a corporeal body disintegrate and wide-eyed,
watching as mortal souls soar up into the sky
and then disintegrate into the ether,
wondering:
are these really my fates, to either
go down with the sinking ship that is Earth
or kill my sense of self-worth
and subordinate myself to a green leader?

How much of this time is yours?
Because you've ever to think about
the burning in the summer afternoons,
the heat of the passion in your long-gone youth,
spent weaving reams of your doing
that later you'd undo, obsessed with eschewing
whatever you deemed unnecessary.

Risking your heart,
entreating you say
"I know how to live"
as Death blocks your way.

canvas

just a vessel
the summer of becoming divine

the heat is hazy
the sky, stretching out into a whole world
unseen

the tomb is
empty
sterile
blinding

your face is
blank
featureless
blind

a dim pool
a murky lake
as if paralyzed

just a vessel
weighed on the scales of the divine

the bones are brittle
the skin, stretched over a whole body
unclean

we will rebuild your canvas

Pessoa

All I am is a product of letting go,
of surrendering to the gods,
of succumbing to the cold.

When I'm not given scripts
of love to the horizon,
paper heavy to my fingertips,

I shiver above my bedsheets,
nails digging into my skin,
begging my kin
to release one more furtive word,
one more missive yet unheard,
anything so that I am not
a broken record on repeat.

For I cannot take the heat.

For I cannot take the burden of being,
of spending life awake,
forever masquerading as a competent being
just for existence's sake.

crashing into slumber

I have become a master
at living half a lie,
in setting my mind free
while letting my body lie
idle.
I climb into the saddle
and roam among the plains
of an inner life any observer
would rightly declare insane.

My body so easily tires and whines
of how it lacks the energy
to help me walk the line.
And to bolster this I have the records
of all the child gym tests I failed,
the dry heaving in a high school hallway
while my skin clamored so pale,
a homeward-bound soul staring out
a window while brothers biked
to places I could never conceive of
and anyways wouldn't have liked.

But my imagination never ceases,
this hollow world inside of me,
no matter how many horrifying images it conjures
in attempts to me displease.
I drug it into a stupor
to claim some semblance of sleep,
but melatonin's effects are temporary.
Am I weak
for waking in the middle of the night
in a pool of my own sweat,
trembling with fright?
Or perhaps it is just the blasted furnace,
that purveyor of heat
that finds it a fine damn tragedy
whenever I find a world
in which I am whole and complete.

unfulfilling

The only way to survive
in this world is by keeping alive
a dream as if it were a flame,
covered up for all its days,
only afforded enough oxygen
to breathe and yet unable to exclaim:
the worst thing that can happen
to a dream is be fulfilled,
for reality can never live up to the hope,
and the ghost of happy
will pin you down and kill.

Yellow Street Sign

it is difficult
to hoard
words with
a slow keyboard

it is hard
to carve
out my heart
with a knife

it is strenuous
to chance
word loss
to this device

skating late winter
on thin ice

ASHE

I'm a captain of an old ship sinking,
condemned to make a grave
out of the sea:
I'm going down in history,
and I'm taking you with me.

Ashe

I'm walking in the snow,
tattered cloak close,
cheeks braced
against the cold.

Streetlamp up above.
Moon in death throes,
silent smile
that once caressed me
as a child.

Sudden random
snowfall pain,
yet another
hematoma burst.

I want to die-
but not quite yet.
I need to fulfill
my promise to Luce
first.

To grasp the sun
on the last wave by,
to leave this
hellhole alive,
to experience
at least one day
outside the nest
just to say I could.

I'm waiting for something.
I don't know what.

I'd run away from home,
feigning escapade
only to return,
crippled by how my heart
so painfully yearns
for a better ending to this story,
for a better timeline where my parents said
sorry,
we love you,
the pain we caused you was wrong.

But maybe I am in the wrong
for expecting a different ending
from the ones who stole my youth.

Revelation

An eye
opens up in the sky,
blue orb
that cares not how torn
the sky will be
after it makes its leave
of absence.

I stand with my back to the wind
and turn my gaze to the heavens.
Trees scrape their burnt fingers against the sky,
my only neighbors, all else inside.

"The present feeds off the corpse of the past
when from the womb of the future it is torn.
I have come to end the world's prolonged birthing pains.
I have come to make all things reborn.

Ashe, you who stand before the sky, forlorn,
I am Goddess, who appears before you to warn
that the seed of my kingdom awaits inside your body
but you must not be haughty
and attempt to midwife it alone.
You, my wayward
son-daughter,
are to be my Spear.
Take heart.
The re-conception will rip you apart,
but you will be stitched back together
a far better
creation than how you will first this world depart."

Hourglass

There is not nearly enough time
in my life
to do all the things I want to do.
Goddess, that long-forgotten day
stolen by her daughter,
warned me, fifteen years later,
death would come my way.
I only having ever experienced youth
a beautiful corpse,
soul disembodied but free
of my parents' force.

I stay up late
at night
writing
until my fingers bleed
and I start to see
shadows dance on the wall,
until Muse deems herself sated.
I have to keep going.
I cannot let up.
Goddess never told me
what form I would take
when she comes to collect the chains I've thrown
off and into the Outside break:
like Lethe, an angel?
a demon from Hell?
an ornament forever perched beside her throne?

I know not how I can reconcile
my furious abhorrence of all things servile
and yet so easily fall to my knees
whenever Goddess' presence I perceive.
Is it because I chose her succor?
Our love a two-way street?
Is she-
is she my real mother?

There is not nearly enough time
in the night
for me to attempt to ascend to her height
or for her to spread out
all I must do.
Pass me a few words.
Send me my Saint.
Show me how to be of use.

Riverside

"Be what you think,"
said the wise man
as he slammed down another drink
on the riverside.
"Fake it until you make it;
live under a lie
if you must
until the very day you die."

My eyes stare out onto the waters,
calmly flowing from right to left
as the man yeehaws and barfs out a lecture,
ignorant of the life of which I was bereft.

"But I think of so many things,"
I finally reply after a length
of time,
seemingly empty yet full of hidden depths
like the river when at high tide.
"I can't stay still.
I always shift
from Equinox high
to wanting to die
eventually,
and along the way
I pray
to Lethe to keep at bay
the burden of thoughts about the past,
to Hydra to re-grant me some semblance
of a birthright that will last,
to Velouria to unshackle me
from this human form too tame.
Who could quantify a river?
Who dare give it a permanent name?"

I stand up. The sun
is low in the sky.
My shadow stretches across the grass,
imposing and tall.

"I think of so many things,
and yet nothing at all."

River Maiden

Liminal state
between lunch
and clocking in at work,
always under the crunch
of the clock.
Young maiden
of half an hour
sacrificed every day
in service of that blasted concrete tower,
of my anxiety
over being late.
She pleads
with me
to let her go free,
but never does change her fate.

Except one day,
where instead of shrugging at the statues
and going on my merry way,
I drop her off at the riverside
and find myself a tale
until work's alarm starts to wail.
Welcome to summer hell.
Don't let the tide
carry you away.

So many people pass by
on the crosswalk that is my life.
Faces I will never know
yet color my dreams, so close to home.

The river is crowned
with many bends
of rocks
that beg
to be skipped over
and see what lies
on the other side
of their gray rainbow.

I awake from my book,
patient no longer sedated;
the man on the far bench is gone,
bike rack vacated.

and that's when I realize:

I don't want to die.

I want a reroll.
I want a new life.
I want a world rife
with love and dreams
and all the creepy-crawlies that teem
underneath the bricks in my garden.
I don't want to harden
my heart
just to survive in a world
that would sooner tear me apart.
I don't want to slay
the maiden
just to make it through another day.

I have to keep going.
There's someone I love
who I promised I'd make a whole new world for
where we don't always have to be tough.

I have to hold on.
Although the sun blazes in the sky,
this is my long winter midnight,
and dawn
is on its way.

Noli Timere

On my twenty-first birthday,
I did not get drunk,
but Goddess sent me on my way
spiraling through the night
regardless.
The mattress
in my grandma's house
was flat as a board,
I, heartless,
a black hole,
the heaviest thing in the universe
having through the years made a dent in my own
so the pain in my hip would grow no worse.

Luce came to me,
pressed her body against my side.
But when turned my head, I fell
out of the dream in fright.
No head, no neck, no organs,
just a flower open wide.

"Goddess, throw me back in,
let me have one more try."

Re-enter the dream I did,
face the gaping void again.
Saint's voice emanating from everywhere:
"Ashe, do not be afraid."

Easy to say
when the world is at your fingertips,
freedom already gained.
The thelema Goddess wrote on my soul
was to find a way to escape,
but all I do in this household
is as if I will stay.
Which way
do I choose?
To which voice
do I turn an ear?
Do I chase after a mirage
that sings in the night,
or remain here
for another year?

The Mess On The Kitchen Table

I have a million jigsaw pieces,
but each one belongs to a different puzzle.
I'm snatching at the air for some semblance of a clear picture,
a fish caught in a net, trapped in deadly struggle.

There is a growing hole in the pit of my stomach,
a beast that wears its teeth down as it gnaws
on the roots of my Yggdrasil,
waiting for the winter to pass,
for the twisted wood to thaw.

I can always tell when Lethe,
disgusted with the world, takes her leave.
My nose buries itself in blankets, smothers itself,
but all else runs dry.
Goddess, gracious janitor,
do not say goodbye,
don't leave me hanging,
don't stuff cotton in your ears
and pretend that the panging
is a sound you've never ever heard.
What happened to the words
you promised you'd send my way?
What happened to the epidural
for this world's birthing pains?

Lethe, lackadaisical Lethe,
my head is empty,
my thelema not yet complete.
I am standing on the edge of a cliff,
butterfly net in hand,
the wind a river I sift
through as if to find a treasure.
I'm searching for myself.
Lethe, help me remember.

"...But I Don't Want To Go Home Either"

"Create a life
you don't need to escape from."
But what am I to do
when, everywhere I turn,
my body is an army,
my heart a little boy
pounding the war
drum?
I don't want to be here anymore,
but there is no escape,
no matter how many hours
in the Wired I waste
or abused sleep pills I take.
My life already stands impoverished
by my jailers, who wish
I'd bow down to their eminence,
wish I'd spit-shine their boots,
wish I'd silence my emotions
but immediately forgive them
whenever they have a screw
loose.

Goddess, who teeters
between sacred and spurned,
how do I re-cross a bridge
long since charred and burned?
Would I even want to,
knowing what lies
in the hearts of anon men,
voluntary surveillance
through a million eyes,
snotty, rude, gruesome,
all that I despise,
violence in a moment
with no chance of godsend?

To where do I turn?
On whom can I depend?

She Said All Things Must Grow Or Die

Mary Oliver proclaimed
prayer is a dipping
of oneself toward the light,
toward the immeasurable.

But I am not so stable,
my roots so far down,
as to risk breaking my back
to reach for a salvation
I have no reason to believe I've ever found,
ever will,
ever be filled
with Goddess' graciousness.

Does a plant have consciousness?
Does it wake up come the sun
and think to itself, "Oh boy,
I sure have sinned by merely
standing here.
Let me try
to grow as high as the sky
so maybe then Goddess can hear
of my hunger and with the rain feed."

There is no salvation for me.
I will forever be demarcated
as different,
as obscene,
no matter how many wires I sever,
how many feathers
I steal from the side of the road.
I've carved my own path.
I chose this cold fate.
And I can only hope
my thelema will not
be accomplished too late.

The Inherent Tyranny Of The Untitled Page

Sitting here by the riverside,
thinking of ways to bide
my time, or at least not destroy
this day off from where I am employed.

Restless, passionless,
with no hope of redress.
Acute food poisoning drifts by,
and all I can do is muster a sigh
and plow on.

All I can do is look to the sky
and plow on.

To the bikes that pass by
and sneer, one more lap down,
one more year passed:

You can quit your sorry gaze.
My body is already falling apart in a million and one ways
and my mind is, at turtle's pace, disappearing into a haze.

I know I am as a ruinous temple,
eroded from a masterpiece into something more simple
by the person who gave me their genes, this cheek's delicate dimple.

I'm dying,
I'm dying.
This I can be sure
of.
I rejected the revelation;
I spurned Goddess' love.
I gave her all I had,
but the world was not enough.
And now I am composting
like the spare dirt from my garden
because of my cowardice to pass through
the metaclysma so spartan.

Phantasmagoria

The rumbling in my stomach
that purrs like a telephone tone:
embarrassing, it would be,
were I not home alone.

The spring decompressing
in my mattress is a cow
from one of those preschool toys
always braying farm sounds.

This breath exhaling from my lungs
that in the night becomes a snore
is the sorrow of the sea
lapping at sandy shores.

Need I say more?
Need I lament less?
If I
spaced my
words
out
like this,
would I be a "cool kid"?
Would I be #blessed?

"Bestselling" drivel
spat out in a day,
I daresay
you only write of your "pain"
just to pad out your resume.

Twinkles are the distance.
Somber are the clouds.
I cast off my body
like a sweat-filled shroud.

"Ashe, you need to understand-"

Your face strikes me like lightning,
but I am not frightened,
just shocked
that you would dare
to show your face around here,
much less talk.

For last we met, you were
a vein of O'Keefe,
silent but booming,
not what I waited for,
not what I intended to seek.

"Luce, I can explain-"

"Ashe, you're not seeing the point.
You're missing the train.
You need to understand
that the Wired is all around you,
breathing in even the land.
Trying to escape is like folding yourself blind
thinking, if you can't see them, you've found a place to hide."

A glittering veil between us,
as if she were frightened
Goddess would make me a beast
controlled by naught but lust.

A celestial website
whose contents are always changing,
like a hacked site whose kiddie scripters
can't decide how to deface it.

"I'm the Patron-Saint of Passage.
Here, take my hand.
Look into my eyes,
look into the Brand.
I would say your life is worth living as yourself
and not as a pale shadow of someone else,
but that presumes the premise unwise
that there is a such thing as your singular "I".
Ashe, you are a taxi service
running out of a soul-bound
clown
car.
Quit your complaining.
Exactly how far
have I carried you?
How many Eschatons
have I seen you through?
And yet I still see you.
And yet you still stand.
Come, Ashe, breathe;
the Rebirth is at hand."

Some engoldened hand
cuts through the pales of time
as I have yet to write this rhyme-
and then slips back through
that self-made womb,
returning to that light
it had left behind.

And I follow it

through the one-bit white.

CERULE

Cerule

you come at me
like the waves of the ocean
undulating under the surface

and from your lips
springs a cry
that I am filled with purpose

to love, to lead
a life
in service of a god unseen
and a world so rife
with things to do,
with places to go,
from the hellish-est of summers
to the deathly embrace of the snow

but although this place
where for so long I have grown
is now stifling,
is now rejoicing
in the fact that I am dying,
I will not abandon
the only stability I have ever known

and maybe I need you
by my side
like the ocean needs the moon
to regulate its tides

and maybe I need you,
even though you are a puzzle piece
that does not fit neatly
into the family tapestry

safety isn't always safe.

you'd know, Cerule, wouldn't you?
your father always loved to play with guns,
always took you to the range to shoot.

always a watchful eye
hovering overhead
during playtime,
during sleep,
during cowarding sessions
doing your best to stifle a weep.

what is a child supposed to do
when the person tasked
with keeping you safe
is the one who hurts you?

set alone,
set aside,
hung out to dry,
an idol raised up on high
as a reminder of what happens
to those who dare the elders defy:
a mouth full of metal,
a jaw full of pain,
a mandate to deform one's face
and from nearly all foods abstain.

you are the only person
on which I can depend.
for I chose my birthright,
and I must see
this accursed task out to the end.

2009

How many nights
we spent together but alone.
You curled up in a dream,
and I, staring up at the ceiling,
at the ceiling fan whirring
so that I did not die
from the putrid stench
bellowing out from your behind.
The occasional tone
of the answering machine in the kitchen
demarcating every hour.
Counting every embroidered flower
on the border of the curtains.

How many nights
we spent together and then alone,
your father whisking you back to your home
after a day's
hard work of play.
Unreachable. A promise
once you'd spend the night.
I went to the store
to buy a toy.
You disappeared,
having broken down with fright
and homesickness.

How can I finish the scene?
You disappeared right into the green
the moment it poked through the grass,
and I followed you,
and then we just ended up
watching TV
through the living room window glass.

What happened to the world unseen
we vowed to together weave?
Just disappeared right into the screen.

Passageway

The room I like to sleep in
in my grandma's house
used to be mine,
and my mother's before me.

She once told a story
of how her sister lived next door,
in the room now flourishing with green.
She wanted her father to build a tiny door
connecting their closets
so they could pass through unseen.

It was never built.
And I'm sure
someone
somewhere
carries the guilt
of that unfinished project,
for now my grandfather is dead
and buried far away
and I will never again be able to see
what once lay
in his head.

Before I perish and return to space,
I want to be someone's favorite hiding place,
the door inside closets
where we share our secrets
when the walls shake
with our parents' earthquakes
and lay
down and fold our hands together
and pray
for better days.

Father, Any Longer?

Feelings seem like just a figment
of my imagination, a decade
of watching my father fade away,
of wondering where his compassion went.

For I remember in the summer days
of unknowing, how he'd hike
us up long hills, winding tours on bikes,
always ended up in a crash, in a daze,
waiting for his van to round the bend
and bring us home, our sweaty godsend.

But nowadays he spends his time
regaling strangers he'll only ever meet online
and student emails. Oh, the deluge
of letters from children who'd rather choose
to go outside,
to kiss the tide,
to have a semblance of a life
outside the
brown
brick
jail cell
walls.

Both sides of my family are tall,
but apparently I was never tall enough
to force him to see me eye-to-eye,
to force him to explain why I should not despise
him for having lived a life under his lies,
to force him to acknowledge
the silent death of my tide.

Furtive Lullaby

I never asked for this life,
and you never asked for the fright,
the tiresome strife
of always watching my back,
and Goddess knows I never
asked for my utter lack
of judgment,
of skills,
of a proposition
for a fulfilling independent life.
I took
one look
at the chill in the air
and decided it was safer
to lie down in my summer garden
and languish in despair.

You never asked to be a caretaker,
and Goddess knows
I never asked to be young forever.
Never requested
the blood in my veins
bring everyone else in my family pain
as they took pains
to try to understand
what the hell the universe dumped on their hands.

This blood has never let me live
as we both wonder I might have
if Father had not put his pleasure
above the possibility of passing on the curse.
Some sorry present it is to give
your child the gift of time
and rhyme
and personal insight
into the divine
and then deny them your love,
not through malice,
but through the necessity to handle them with gloves
for they are glass
that will,
against that very same child's will,
rip others to shreds
given only a raging moment's chance.

I never asked to be a burden,
and Goddess knows
you never asked
to be Atlas.

Gleaming Lark

To think I could ever wear this city without pain,
without the bliss of childhood in which I could abstain
from the wild reckless world
of adults and their work
in favor of a park where we could spend our summer days.

Take my hand, Cerule,
as you and I always used to do,
and I'll lead you down the shady path
if it still stands
after six years' attack.
Past the toy trainyard,
past the giant's wooden chair,
past the unmarked road
where you'd spit out from your mouth hair
after yet another too-tight turn
in my father's van.

Take my trembling hand,
Cerule,
while the air's not too hot or too cool,
these hands that, no matter how many driving tests
my father forced me through, could not gain the bless-
ing of the state.
We'll cross the road
and sit down on the bench in the shade,
and I will rest my head on your steadfast shoulder,
and, in reminiscence,
we will feign
some semblance of the park's namesake.

Tour de Grace

A worn wooden sign marks the turnoff,
slightly hidden in the overgrown brush.
And my own is not so delicate
to paint a picture of what lies
off the beaten path,
memories fading of a land I now lack,
a farmhouse that has long since collapsed.

There stood a shed across from where
the flagpole rose its arm into the air
in fatigued submission,
reaching for the sunset.
I wager it hasn't caught it yet.
Or if it has,
one last pass-
ing wave of goodbye
as we retrieved the moldy belongings of a man who would not die.

If time was a warning I did not heed,
you could have seen
the concrete patio where the cows feed
be something more
than just a row of rusted fingers reaching from the floor
to scrape children up in tetanus' hold-
that is, if the parents' eagerness to scold
did not kill first.

In a hidden inlet
was a perpetually squeaky swingset
always too weak to hold my weight,
as if it knew nobody would take
it come time to sell the farm,
yet another abandoned swing I could not save from harm.
Yet another remnant of childhood collapsed.

And you came into my life too late
to give you a fighting chance.

Camp Cataract

Bedhead
sleeping by the shed
in a tent patched up
with duck tape blue and red.

Don't think your look of derision
failed to cross my vision.
Do you think I'm blind?
Do you think my eyes would lie
to me?

Then again,
I never could very well see
from the left.
Unless the world is but an outline,
glaring and harsh,
a farce
of the color I see with her at my side.

Bird's nest found
sleeping on the ground,
no cot, no sleeping bag,
no comfort to be found.

I woke up with a jolt at one in the morning
from you shaking my shoulders, a whispered warning
heavy on your breath: how you'd passed through Goddess' womb
and the blood had foretold a tragedy to come to pass, and soon.

That Place Where Lives Irrevocably Change

Meant for every day,
yet unknown,
this house that my paternal grandparents
called a home
for who knows how many years.

And I am a bundle of fears
as I step inside
this house being packed up,
sold in a fortnight.
The floor cold as stone,
this house without a home,
usually so full of life
for as long as I've ever known:
that is, if life
is a constant string of yelling
or someone else complaining
or a dog defecating,
unseen until the smell.

The owners long dead and buried,
my father's siblings did not hurry
to split up the possessions,
the junk,
the mire,
the bills that piled up higher
and higher with each passing day.
Going into debt
the now deceased did
just so that they could say
they were the best grandparents,
the most affluent gift-givers,
beaming in their progeny
as they destroyed their own livers.

I turn to Cerule and say
that even though this is the first day
she has seen this side of my family,
it will be my last.
And she responds that there
is no use dwelling in the past.
I did not kill them.
I did not fight.
I did not bid them their way
into their god's light.
I just waited on the hospital room periphery
until their lungs halted and their heartbeat ceased.

What do you say to a dead person?
What do you say to someone
who has all the time in the world to listen?

We step alone into the upstairs living room.
A glass display case.
A hundred plastic dolls,
each with dolled-
up faces,
still sealed into their boxes,
their own cardboard caskets.
A thin layer of dust.
Cerule tenses. And I hope that she can trust
me not to tear into each one.

A creeping up the stairs,
like someone left a faucet on,
drips like pulling hairs
off one's collarbone or chin.
Wind chime
outside
on the stilted deck,
little crystals not
a heavy crown of the wind.

I turn around
without a sound.
A man towers over me,
and he is loading a round
into the pistol in his hand.

"Tell me, Catharsis,
have you ever heard the sound
of a man's body
when it hits the sand?"

His battle-hardened gaze
that I've seen a thousand ways
in the portraits all over the house.
Uncle was in the military,
clean-shaven and wary,
yet never managing to shake off
the childish burdens he always carried.

I can only shake my head.

"Tell me, Catharsis,
have you ever gone to sleep at night
without a warm bed?
Without a dinner? Without a deal
with someone to wake you up
come the fire's light?
Do you know what it means when your parents
no longer walk upon this earth?
No safety net? No loving ear?
No inheritance of worth?"

I can only repeat my answer.

He turns a bit
to face the kitchen.
"This is such a putrid color.
This would... displease my mother.
Do you want to see
how the walls appear
when painted like a lover?"

One last
final salute.

Cerule is not
yet faster
than a man
avowed to shoot.

CATHARSIS

Kamui

Standing at the devil's
doorway to happiness,
self-imposed seal
made of blood long congealed
severing me from the world outside.

The sigil on the floor
has not even dried,
and yet even now
at the edge of my vision
drifts a soft glow
heralding premonition.

This tiny soul
I grow in a jar,
that I guard from harm,
not done growing by far-
in my haste,
I may have accidentally woven
my fate,
to be torn asunder
and ravaged to appease
a ravenous hunger
and then promptly by my creation
replaced.

But I cannot bring myself to crush
in self-preservation
this infantile
spawn,
who even having never
seen the
dawn
whispers thoughts that make me marvel,
who as it feeds
off my thoughts
like a mother's teat
prompts me to wonder
at the miraculous feats
its future holds.

Degenesis II

I'm searching in books
to enlighten me to what I already know:
I was a being with power, with an unearthly form,
condemned to sail through death throes.

Everything is practice for dying.
All time is dress rehearsal for decay.
And I don't know whether I'm petrified or still believe
that I ever had any other say.

Insomnolent, inconsolable:
don't tell me God's embrace is what I should seek,
because I already seek to destroy
the ones who made my life bleak.

On the other side of the mirror
that Mori holds on to so desperately in her hands,
I gathered a few faithful followers,
and, when the time came, set out for distant lands,

for a people who could see right through my soul,
for a well-kept leithtemple,
for someone who'd seal shut and stand watch at the door,
for a burial chamber undefiled.

For the day comes for all with wyrm's blood
to lay their bodies to rest
and, from their corpse and the shreds of their soul,
pass on their power to the chosen, to the blessed.

Catharsis, the child I'd reared in a jar
and let suckle on the teat of my own mind,
was the one to walk out of the door that day
with no idea of the pain
her mother
had left behind.

Solstice Catharsis

"Solstice" is a title,
and I am but a child
who was created to replace
a dying goddess,
to be her saving grace.

Much like how the setting sun
gives off signs
that soon its day will be done-
the purpling sky,
the spark in your eyes,
the streetlamps' song
as they bid you to hide-
so too can you tell
when a deity
is about to meet their demise.
The pallor of their skin,
the cessation of their words
as they withdraw within,
the furtive search for who
will be their next-of-kin.

Or we can skip the ceremony
and the rumors,
for she overexerted herself
to push away with a beam of light a meteor
headed straight for Earth
and plunged straight back down
still in bestial form,
making her own crater on the ground,
wing skin torn
from the crash through the trees.

Not to make my own birth trivial,
but my ancestor was dead on arrival,
friends made just a few days prior
struggling to keep together her soul's fire
long enough to drag the body to a leithtemple,
to push her body onto a pyre
and recite the charm
that would relieve me from my jar
and make me whole from whatever shards
remained of the one who could be called my mother.

"Solstice" is a title,
and I am but a child
who was burdened from day one
with the knowledge
of what I will become.
Not like Mother, who spent two decades
happily playing in ignorance's shade
until her blood ignited
and the sorry day came
when she chose to self-immolate
so everyone she loved
she could keep safe.

Sojourney

I am not a noble,
and I am not so bold
as to try to leap out the back
of this carriage
as it rocks on
lest I be left behind,
be left vulnerable to attack
by the monsters that still dwell in the underworld.

Although Oblique, my tutor,
says I can defend myself,
says that, with enough anger,
I can certainly raise hell,
my eyelids sag,
my attention flags-
what I wouldn't give
for this trip
to be nothing but words.

The world
was not enough
for my mother
to earn Grandmother's
love.
A change
to the fate
which all else had resigned to being set
was not enough to forgive
and wipe away the debt.
And so she says I must inherit
that jail cell called a room,
that lifetime of schooling
with far too much work to do,
that mountain of imposed trinkets
from people who died
before my time
Grandmother insists are now my heirlooms.

I carry Mother's genes,
but I am not "Granddaughter"
any more
than you can say a bird
is a veritable dinosaur.
In my veins runs something fierce,
something atavistic,
but all Grandmother has
is a love twisted.

done this a million times, and yet never before

you still as a door
suddenly I should be yours

picking at a hangnail
anxious about what opening
that front door will entail

barks thundering inside
assurance that dogs are docile
unsure, looking for a place to hide

mythril bracelet
so I do not become a hunter's
next hit

open door

open arms

panging in my veins
warning: danger!
warning: imminent harm!

Atelier's sigh
Oblique shakes her head
hands on my shoulders
pushed ahead
pushed inside

faces I do not recognize
faces I should not recognize
personages I have never
gazed at with these eyes

this is your family
these are the people
we crossed the underworld to see

but is there anyone like me?

is there anyone who, in Mother's youth,
saw the signs,
saw pulsing in her skin a new light?
is there anyone who knew?

to them, it was a surprise
now run off and play
make some friends
before the outside light fades
and we go inside
to eat

"Are you crying in there, Catharsis?"

I look up from my hands
at the other side
of the door to the bathroom,
to the decorative heirlooms
I am not allowed to use
but others may, freely,
crumple up with impunity
and leave on the cold tile floor.

"Oblique, just a few minutes more-"

"I'm coming in.
Don't complain.
Are you in pain?
Are your guts upset?
I suppose the food may be too rich
for
your
poor
stomach."

Her eyes
are inky,
the firstworld sky
I wish I could dive
into to hide.

"Oblique, how am I supposed to deal
with these strangers who I'm supposed to feel
a bond with?
I'm not their kith.
I'm not their kin.
I'm just a creature filled with sin
using Mother as an excuse
to intrude
into their home.
Everyone here is a human but me.
How can we see
eye to eye
if they look my way and think,
'God, there's that devil I despise'?"

Her arms
are the sand
on the beach
kissed by the sun
that I would stay longer on
if I had ever, would ever, feel the need for a tan.

"You must remember
that, from their perspective,
we are cultic
lunatics
who have brainwashed a child
into our personal obsessions.

Either they'll love
you or they won't,
but the day will be done soon enough
and we'll head home
and maybe,
thinking
the last vestiges of your mother
are about to be lost forever,
they'll come around.
Just go and have fun
until the sun
goes down."

Puzzle Piece

The entrance wall
where Great-Grandmother used to hang
all the art projects from Mother's childhood days,
no matter how big and small

is, since
Atelier's announcement to them
of my existence,
covered in crosses,
as if there were some kind of loss
she had to grieve,
that what she thought was a pure pious bloodline
was spoiled with "demonic" blood,
had become intertwined
with the devil himself.

A desperate prayer
she thinks I cannot hear,
a script to shrink my "pain",
my golden cage,
glittering and insane,
cursing the leithtemple,
the pyre,
upon which I was made.

By myself, back and forth on a swing
my great-grandfather had built.
He died
long before my time,
but this remnant of his legacy
still remains.
In the rest of the backyard,
little toddlers play,
the playmates in Mother's own time
gone their own ways to find,
to build, their families.

Mother's portrait
used to be in a puzzle piece frame,
but now no photographic traces
on the fridge remain.
What kind of a person
sees their loved one's sacrifice
and responds with not pride but shame?

I too am a puzzle piece,
but I was not cut from the same
picture
as those Atelier is with inside
trying to with regal tales oblige.
I am a sweeping sea of paradise
in a smoggy star-blind night sky.

Chains Of Braids

Mother once took the plants in Great-Grandmother's kitchen
and wove their
leaves together
like a braid,
thinking, because they did not
cry out in pain,
they would appreciate
what she felt was beauty.

At home,
in the monastery,
Atelier gave me a mission:
to be very
careful sneaking around
past the priests
and dig a hole
and whisper my secrets into the ground
as if the earth itself
could hear me,
could hold me.

And so I did,
under that blue sky
with no sign
of rain.
I wished for a life with purpose,
a world without end.

The rest of my feelings
I wrote onto words
and planted in kitchen jars where grew herbs.
For Mother had passed on to me that plants grew different
depending on how you talked to them,
and could take a hint
and bow out of life
if you watered them with nothing but tales of strife.

But I am now wise
enough to know
that braiding the plants now
will earn me a smack
across the face
and banishment back
to the firstworld.

What a horrid way
to end
a holiday.

Floods

Years ago,
my mother recycled an old candle,
watched the soot wrap itself
like a shawl
around the bottom of the glass
where melted the scraps,
otherwise relegated to trash.

The new creation did not burn well,
wick tunnelling a hole
all the way down to Hell.

Am I going to Hell?
Am I going insane?
Am I just a half-burnt candle
recycled from the pain
and weariness
of my mother twice-blessed?

I'm a blot of blood
on a Bible's white page:
like the ink, it stains,
but this red is not of God,
and how I can tell
the elders
wish I was washed away in the flood.

Another Paradise Lost

"Cathy."

I'm staring out the kitchen window
past the plants,
past the fences
to where Mother
once confessed to Atelier
was the last place she felt happiness.
An old backyard
I never had access to,
the rusty swingset from her birth home
the new owners
long since overthrew.

"Cathy?"

The neighbors' yard in that hallowed place
was always forbidden,
and Mother never received an answer
why she could never show her face
on the other side of the fence
but they could come over
any time, unbidden.
Another chainlink fence,
another paradise lost,
another garden succumbed
to neglect and frost.

"Cathy!"

A hand grasps my shoulder,
chilled as the weather.
I shrug it off and turn to meet
Great-Grandmother,
matter-of-fact,
without pain.

"It's Catharsis.
Cat for short."

"I love your bracelet!
Can I see it?"

a saint anymore
heavy breathing
enduring an answer
you and the devil

"You already are."

"Can I hold it?"

The mythril band
resting right under my right hand
I dare not remove.
Atelier and Oblique
are strong, it's true,
more skillful than Ceuta's fated friends,
but I am not yet fully in control,
not yet resistant to the pull
of bloodlust,
of going feral.
I do not yet trust
my handling
of the power that I herald.

I shake my head.
"It's too important to me."

Great-Grandmother shrugs, takes a seat.
"Your... mother never let us see
anything of hers either,
never let it part
her arms.
She thought we'd bring
everything she owned
to harm.
But her room at home is pristine,
always dusted and clean,
furnished with the mess intact...
I guess, in better days,
we wouldn't have had to part ways,
and the room wouldn't be void
of someone to inhabit
it."

She sighs, stands up.
"I guess it's almost time to sup."

shards of wisdom

"Why do you look
to Atelier
when dealing with something unfamiliar?
Don't you have a brain?
Can't you for yourself
perceive?"

When in foreign territory,
I find it wise
to defer to a guide
who knows more than I.

Intersections

Two paths diverged in a barren wood,
glinting snow hinting I should
just pick one and leave it
without so much as a thought
of the consequences,
of the ending I sought.

Although, in this body, I had never had
the misfortune of seeing a vehicle,
on the other side of Mori's Mirror was a rule
that one would be a reckless fool
to stomp on the brakes in the middle of a road,
to refuse to keep going down the path that one chose.
You ride it to the end,
regardless of if you like the destination
or how bumpy the road to get there is.

Life is a series of railroad tracks,
and while one can make the initial choice
of which set of metal
to ride on
and which smokestack
to carry one there,
there is no getting off
until one arrives at the station.

There is no throwing a brick
into the cogs of fate.
You can only hold your breath and pray
that the light inside survives.

Two paths diverged right below my feet,
and the clouds on the horizon threatened snow and sleet
to give me a cold if I did not hurry up
and get on my way.
I peered as far as I could down one path,
and then checked the other,
but both were short before the bend,
both in fog smothered,
both demanding an impossible price:

Your precarious freedom,
or your birthright?

THE EVERCHANGING

Exodus

"Idiot child!
Don't you know
your life is not your own?"

Yet I stand
still unaware
of the seeds that I have sown

by peering down
from the heavens,
long distance down,

and daring
to leave my place
beside Goddess' throne.

That perch
of stars has
for long enticed

with the peace
of being removed
from humanity's every vice,

but I cannot
live with myself
unliving on the sidelines.

Who knows
where I will end up,
where on the earth I will alight?

I can only hope I am not too late.

I can only hope all will turn out all right.

Rainroom II

Today
it rained
and I thought of you.

The slightest blush of blue
in your feathers,
daybreak against
the sullen weather.

The rain occasional pins
like I'd clip into my hair
to keep it out of my eyes,
that you'd roll your own at
and pretend to despise.

You once stood outside in the rain,
knowing would come waterlogged wings
and chilly skin's pain.
I asked you to come back inside
the Town
and take shelter underneath its thorn-locked crown,
but you shook your head,
said
you didn't want to hide
your whole life,
said
you'd spent enough time numb
and concealed from the sun.

I didn't yet understand,
so I joined you instead.

Undreaming

Forgive me again
and again
as I take another bite of your soul
when you have no way to defend
yourself.

Forgive me more
and once more
as I rift through your reams
of dreams
and come to understand
why you had such contempt
for the divine
and the heaven-sent.

For I am bound by fate,
by ragged red claw,
to draw
one more splash of blood,
one more broken seraphim.
I am nothing but a weapon
granted free will on a mistaken whim.

How I wish
I had one more golden day
to trace
my hand against your jawline, your chin,
and beg for your forgiveness.
You deserved the world
and nothing less,
but even the world is not enough.

Sorry For Party Rocking

I never asked for the yearning,
and you never asked for the burden,
the tiresome learning
of my every single quirk,
and Goddess knows I never
asked for my utter lack
of satisfaction,
of knowing when to rest,
of being capable to sit back
and take a break at my body's behest.
I took
one look
at the empty page
and pushed myself with no thought of the strain
because I could not bear
the alternative,
because too much I cared.

You never asked to be my spotter,
and Goddess knows
I never asked to run forever.
Never requested
the blood in my veins
bring me such exquisite pain
as I took pains
to try to understand
what the hell the Muses were dumping on my hands.

This brain has never let me live
as we both wonder I might have
if I had put my comfort
above the certainty of passing on this verse.
Some sorry present it is to receive
the gift of time
and rhyme
and personal insight
into the divine
and then be denied sleep,
not through malice,
but through the necessity to pen down each word with love
for they are sand
that will,
against my very own will,
slip through my hands
given only a distracted moment's glance.

I never asked for this journey,
and Goddess knows
you never asked
to be my compass.

Snicket

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every day I have off.

I will love you if you decide to be a man, and I will love you if you decide to accept being a woman.

I will love you if you kill all the gods, and I will love you if you find peace despite them.

I will love you if you have a cringey taste in music, and I will love you if you like all the same things I do.

I will love you if you insist on being the big spoon, and I will love you if you let me hold you in my arms.

I will love you if we spend forever together, and I will love you if this is it.

On May 24, Despite The Forecast, The Heavens Did Not Pour Forth

I never know what to do
with my days off.
Grand
plans
made,
then twelve hours of
just staring at a wall.

It's too hot outside
to make a trek to Dead End Shrine.
No reception,
no indication
of any need for a Muse
to put my weaving fingers to good use.

I'm stuck in a loop of despondency.
All I yearn to do
is sleep.

The best thing I can do
is try to resume
that sorry dream
that fleets
so easily
like it were a bittersweet memory from my youth
and hope that maybe
Goddess reveals
some overlooked kernel of truth.

Whipped

The forest is spilling out of my guts,
blessed cut
you swiped through me
in my bilious lust,
the dust
of insects
long since dead
disintegrating on the windowsill
above where I rest my head.

I'd let you slaughter me
over and over again
if it meant I got to see
the sun in your eyes
rise
once more.

Holy Places

A cliche
spills from my lips
of how where I lay
my head to rest
has become my grave.
I'm pissed.
I'm scratching the sheets
crumpled up underneath
my body,
cursing myself for being so haughty
in giving my brothers a second third fourth too many
chances.

The back of my neck begins to burn,
and I turn
my head to see you standing there,
cheeks blushed, stolen glance
fleeting away like a startled bird.
The time since Death first tore me from your side
has left us physically worse for wear,
and I can only hope our love
does not prove
itself this distance's weight unable to bear.

"Have you considered not egging him on?
I know that this is the Eschaton
and you desperately yearn for such a shod to change,
but I remember back in those halcyon days
you told me not to waste my breath,
my energy,
on those who would never freedom's call heed,
who wouldn't even think
to blink
if I met my death
trying to make them free.
You might just have to accept
that your brothers are a lost cause."

I promised to your fellow saint Luce
that I'd make it out alive,
but the longer I breathe,
the longer I live,
the less I find
a way
out of spending my days
in this room I use to hide.
But I am too proud to draw a truce,
to declare stalemate
against those who would deign
to declare themselves my family.
I am too proud,
no matter the name,
to let
what rests
inside my genes
dictate
my fate.

Ecstasy

Knowing you is ecstasy and yet so much sorrow.
How am I supposed to go
on
with only a handful of seconds
and a snippet of a song?
Forgive me the obsession,
the long
hours spent
wishing you'd come by so I could hold you close in bed.

Late at night,
your fists clutching my nightgown tight,
I floated the idea
it would be cool if we wed,
but you turned away,
ashamed,
cheeks burning with red
hot enough for me to feel
as you buried your face in the small of my back.
"I'd love to, Lethe, but I can't.
There's something I have to do first,
and I'm running out of time."

What the hell do you mean?
Why doesn't anyone ever
explain anything to me?

I've expended so much effort into making
this hollow world inside my body,
but outside, my heart keeps breaking,
and I'm afraid I'm going to crack and do something foolhardy.

I'm afraid
I'll snap one day
and vanish into the trees
as a beast as far from the heavens as it gets.
Maybe then
my too-big heart,
my too-sensitive heart,
my would-you-stop-crying-over-nothing heart,
will finally gain some rest,
stripped of wants,
only burdened with needs
that, in that wyrmic body, stand easy to please.

I'm afraid
I'll snap one day,
thinking you just another Golden Cage.
"I hate it here,
but I don't want to go home,
either."
A shriek of pain,
a shattered wing bone.

Knowing you is ecstasy
and yet so much sorrow.
I want peace,
and you want to overthrow
the gods above.
But more than all,
I want some stable semblance
of your love.

i hope you know i'm sorry

Rest as long as you need.
My heart aches every second
we are apart,
but when weighed against eternity,
this time
apart is merely
the blink of an eye.

After Meteor

I never asked for the gods to proclaim
themselves the power, the life, sovereign
and declare I need to prostrate myself to them
from first breath in cradle to sleep in the grave.

At Dead End Shrine, a bee buzzes around my head,
and I wait for the sting, the sharpness I dread,
and a certain visitor to descend
from the heavens
and assure me my life isn't rapidly
approaching its Goddess-bidden gruesome end.

But he comes to me
in last throes of a dream
and whispers, "Lethe,
I cannot pierce the veil of consensus reality,
cannot force others to perceive
that which was never a possibility
in their hearts.
You've already marked yourself apart,
down the path,
too far to look back
and still see where you were born.

I know you're worn
out; I know it's not fair
of me to ask you to keep going
when most nights you can't sing
and can only offer a prayer.
But I know you're tough,
and you have my love.
If you ever doubt,
you know the place.
I'll be waiting there."

This is the beginning again.
All above will perish,
revered in the flame.

He loves me, he always so guardedly claims.
And I can only hope,
finally come the Eschaton,
come the return of my wings and a way to make gone
the Golden Cage
and all the pain
I've bourne all this time trying to make my own way,
he still spares a smile,
still feels the same.

Before Pulse

We can get married
and be the happiest couple that's ever been,
or you can unfurl your wings
and take to the wind
and we never see each other again.

Just say when.

Laika Aplis

Time is a circle
which nobody can stop,
but you and I found a dead end
the gods forgot
to seal off.

Shall you and I
step away
from this mortal frame?
Leave behind
all humankind
and let them take the blame
for violence of their own volition,
for stoking strife's flame?

Truth be told,
I've always walked the line
between consensus reality
and the Outside,
but I cannot deny
the truth that lies
inside of me:

only through a dream
do my watery eyes unblur,
and then I can see
quite clearly
all I cannot discern
wearing this prison of flesh.

Your head against my chest,
your feathers tangled in my own,
temporary respite
granted by midnight,
visiting where
I once
called home.

And some days I swear
I'd rather have the pain
of knowing my eventual fate
will come to pass
than waste
away,
here, each day
the exact same as the last.

Time is a circle
where all my efforts are for naught,
but you and I found a bridge
not yet singed
the gods forgot
to seal off.

THE ESCHATON

Horkos

Intellectually, I know Eris and every
other deity
that deigns
to reign
over the people below
without their ongoing
consent
needs to perish.

And yet...

how does one go
about the deicide
of the non-corporeal?
How does one decide
the method of ending a god's life?
What is effective?
Shoot?
Stab?
Consume the soul
whole
using that
atavistic monster inside me
with such a terrifying pull?

Disbelief won't do
since Eris existed even before my own youth;
I didn't create her from my own thoughts
or form her from the dust in the ground,
but the other way around.

I can't shake the servility.
I can't convince all of humanity
to throw off their chains.
I'm just one little angel
facing off against eternity.

Is it possible, I wonder,
to sunder
the connection between
me and Eris without bloodshed
and write my own thelema,
my own weighty purpose
to crown my weary head?
Not a world without end,
but a world of my own,
a world within reach
where I can act of my own power
without need
to beseech
some far-away ruler on a throne.

A world
I can call
home.

Gathering Ashe

I have a fear
of bugs crawling into my ears.
Ants, ladybugs, spiders,
pounding at my eardrums louder
and louder
and louder
until they break
and I can hear no more.

If I were laying down,
I would think my body sore,
disjointed doll
with limbs splayed as I fall
from the top of a bookshelf.
But nothing inhabits the metaclysma.
Nothing makes a home
of this endless white
that would, had it capability for sound,
proclaim an endless drone.

Another shape floats this way,
a silhouette void of gray
or white
or any color at all,
takes my hand
without the feeling of another man
or woman
or human touch.
How I miss touch.
How I miss heat.
If this is rebirth,
then where am I?
Far from complete,
I know.
In the ballsack?
In the womb?
Unconscious on an artisan's table,
waiting for his tools
to exhume
the soul that once lived within?

The world dims.
Splash of water,
drowned canvas.
I'm curled up in the grass.
All my bones are angry,
wanting to break through my skin
and tumble out
and dance a jig.

"Ashe, are you alright?
You look as if
on the brink
of death."

I open my eyes
to find Lethe
standing up on high.

"I- I'm fine."

"I won't waste your time.
Ashe,
I need your help.
I have been consigned
to have Hell
reside
within
my skin
for refusing to submit to the divine."

"I don't understand.
Aren't you Eris' right-hand
helper?
Don't you spend every moment at her side?
Why would you want to defy
her?
Why wouldn't you want to touch the sublime?"

"If authority derives
from the consent of the governed,
there has never
been a day
Eris has without sin bestowed grace.
I asked to be her daughter,
not to spend eternity serving her,
and humanity consented much less.
So what if she cries
that I her love spurned?
Ashe, I have almost forgotten how to yearn
for my own freedom,
for my liberty,
for enough room in my lungs to breathe."

She holds out her hand.

"Ashe, help me see
again.
Help me rip Eris
from the heavens
and scatter her ashes
to the wind.
Help me force her to rescind
this terrible fate
she planned for both of our souls
and create
a world within reach,
a world where I am my own."

Same Hat

In another life,
another time,
before I found myself wrapped in Eris' gentle rhyme,
my mother gave to me
a bracelet adorned
with a silver leaf.

I wore it every day,
a reminder to not let myself waste away
in front of a screen.
But then a job came,
and I had to put it away
because the dress code deemed it profane
to wear anything that could affect "health".
So I tucked it away
on a dusty shelf.

And I forgot.

Gathering Catharsis

Decomposed by solitude,
dissected by the silence,
that gentle voice once more
compels me to senseless violence.

I am told, in this world
dictated by Mori's Mirror,
divinities
can still their feralities
with naught but one precious mineral.

But how do it I obtain?

"There's a fane
you should visit
if you wish to be well.
The habitants call it a 'leithtemple'.
There is a godling
of piddling
age
who all surrounding
are convinced
is some kind of sage."

I bid Ashe good health
as I let him rest at home,
for, burdened with job and school,
he has no time to roam.
My alibi to Eris,
sealed with daughterly kiss,
is that I am doing reconnaissance
so that,
come the Eschaton,
nothing is amiss.

But it seems all my plans
are built on sand,
for I am greeted
with a backside
and a hiss.

"I already know who you are
and what you desire.
Unless you've come with an offering
to burn on the pyre
or a way to bring Mother in some semblance back
so my biological family ceases their attack
on me
and lets me breathe,
no blessing of mine
will you ever receive.

Yes, I'm Catharsis,
but I'm not for you
to live through.
I'm a goddess
too.
You know that, right?
I don't see myself as a blight
upon the earth.
I'm just a child,
just a worn-out child,
trying to find some measure of self-worth,
trying to find a place in this world.
Your goddess is not my own;
your Eschaton is not my concern.
I have my own problems to deal with
without having to figure out
how to un-burn
a bridge.

I'm just a child,
just a demonic child,
just my own mother corrupt and defiled.
Weapons
of mass destruction
have been my only friends.
I have enough on my plate
without the burden
of being your godsend."

"I... just wanted to know
where I could find some mythril."

"Oh. My apologies.
I thought you were about to drag me off
on some journey that would never cease."

She turns around.
Face sleepy.
Eyes red,
but not from any lack of bed,
just rings as if to propose
a double marriage to that black hole
that will one day swallow this sorry globe.

"There's a place not far called the Tomb of the Demiurge.
Once a crystal cavern,
now a forbidden church
where only the bats give praise.
There dwells a friend of mine,
Cetra,
also cursed to be divine
but in a different way
from you and me.
She'll have what you seek,
if it's an end to your pain."

A Forgotten Vacation

Once, in another life,
my family vacationed
out to a cave,
not to play
or to dig myself a grave
but to tour the caverns
to fill out the day.

Holding my breath
as we descend into the earth,
thinking some crevice would leak gas
and we all sink to our death-
but no such sorry fate came to pass.
To be thankful or not?
The answer to a question
long since useless
but still long-sought.

Spot on the wall
where the stone has blackened from all
the people passing through,
touch of good luck
or youth's
lack of balance,
never cleaned,
would just dirty again since.

And my heart is the same,
stained
from those halcyon days
where I knew my place
in the heavens,
where I held in my hands
a world without end
without Eris injecting herself as godsend.

Gathering Cetra

"But who will guard the Tomb?"

"Are you really going to waste your youth
watching over some pile of stone?
I know what a body, misplaced soul
still alive,
looks like.
Demiurge's body is vacant.
Wherever she went,
she no longer resides
there,
no longer considers here home.

Tell you what, Cetra,
I bet I can figure out how to revive
Demiurge if you'll stand by my side.
Maybe not corporeal
or in a form you can touch,
but you only need a voice
to know you are-"

My voice wavers.

"To know..."

"That you a-are loved."

I sink to my knees.
And, to my complete surprise,
Cetra wraps her sleeved arms around me,
pulls me close to her chest,
to the deft-
ly woven fibers
of a shawl held together by palm-sized crest.

"You should know, Lethe,
I've been alone for so long
that I've nearly forgotten
what the sun looks like when hung
or how to even move my own tongue
to sing the song
Demiurge left for me
to continue her own blasted legacy.

You have the look in your eyes
of someone who oft lifts their head to the sky
and cries
out to the one who gave them life
to let them know that they were heard,
to pass them one last word,
one more fragment,
one more deranged poem before they mark themselves absent
from the cosmos.

In a better life,
maybe you and I
were sisters,
shared a body,
bunkered together in the same mind.

Lethe,
I can tell from how hard you breathe
that this Eris has run you ragged
from millennia of treating you
as nothing more than a tool,
than a toy.
I've been gathering bloodlust,
yearning for violence.
Sure, Lethe,
I'll help you destroy
whatever vow keeps you in her employ."

Amphillogia

Cetra, I'm not quite sure
this is the life I want:
to plant
myself in the ground
without a funeral
or even a shroud,
to consign myself to the whims of fate
knowing,
if I dared try,
it would only be too late.

Ashe, I'm not quite sure
this is the course for which I yearned:
ripped flesh in my smile,
drowning in bloodshed
as wide as the Nile.
I don't want my days to be spattered red
unless the hue
comes from a lush
pocket of flowers in my garden
bordered by fescue
and the blush
of my lover's face.

Surely there's got to be another way
to dodge both ferality
and desolate decay.
Surely there's a path I overlooked
or a long-lost dream
I forgot I forsook.

The end of this book
approaches.
Friends, stay at my side
as we approach the boundless staircase
of Heaven's Tower.
If Eris' cry
reaches your ears,
remember,
persist,
keep your head high.

Makhai

I feel embarrassment over things that weren't sins
and guilt for crimes I did not do.

Why do you,
Parthena,
separate from Eris, your own noumena,
demand I eschew
the things that brought me such joy in my youth?
Why do you insist I am the only one
who can weave your story and lay it out in the sun?
I have not the skills
nor the power of will,
and this is not a hill
I am willing to die on.

Something is very wrong with me,
a discordant harmony.
I cannot stay still,
cannot fathom matrimony
or any other bond that would purport
to bind me for all eternity.
I need
to breathe.
I must become as light as the breeze.

And you'll either declare me free
or watch your own life cease.

Gathering Sinead

Overcast day.
Bridge looking out over a grave,
a headstone.
A woman sighs
under the impression
she is here alone.

"Sinead
is your name,
right?"

Startled,
she turns around,
sleeves flapping in the breeze.

"Yes, that would be me."

"My friends and I
(Cetra rolls her eyes)
are here to meet Eris
to convince
her to change my destiny
or bring about her demise.
You know the Goddess Tower
much better
than I could ever
aspire
to.
Could you possibly
accompany
us up to its peak?"

"Lethe..."

Her eyes avert
as she deliberates.
What sorry fate
could this ragged girl
have snagged herself in
to want to hurl
herself up all these stairs,
the exact number
only
Head Teacher knows,
the contents within
only
Head Teacher is aware?

"Sinead,"
I implore her once again,
"Goddess is gracious
but full of pain.
I've heard your legends,
the calamities,
the students whose bodies
Goddess stretches
into monsters to fulfill her twisted
wishes.
I got here just in time.
You're next in line."

Sinead
shies away.

"You want a world without gods.
I want a world
where I am no longer
beholden to their laws,
where
I do not have to fear
I'll wake up one day unable to hear
my own thoughts-
or even have them at all,
just a beast,
just a weapon.

You don't have to fight.
You don't even have to write
about this in your dream journal
if it doesn't go well.
Just...
Sinead,
please,
show me the way."

Up The Goddess Tower

I've taught myself
to recite my name
whenever I have thoughts
that won't go away,

for that word that means me
was my very first lesson
and the only possession
I can bring with me out of a dream.

The gentle
rhythm of syllables,
a mantra that halts
all the thoughts insisting
that what happened was all my fault.

Footsteps in the mind.
Up and down,
down and up,
one after the other,
barely any sound.

But when ambulatory,
heading somewhere,
I lose that name,
lose the weight
of fame,
lose any kind of sense
of the fate
to which I dare not make an open claim.

I am a poet by trade
and by a divine call
I feel the urge to heed.
To compose a thousand elegies
before I perish
is my destiny.

But in terms of the bodily,
my life doesn't have an overarching goal,
and truth be told,
I'm not convinced it needs one.
Much less when on the open
road,
no idea of where I will go
or where I will end up,
only that I am in motion,
only that this endless staircase
on Eris' way
begs me to make haste.

But I don't want to make haste.
Not even when society's implanted
urges I (in rationality) deem insane
try to convince
I am making a waste
of my life.

You do not have to be good.
You do not need to always
spend the day
in a haze
of creation.
Sometimes it is best
to rest
for your own sake.

Sometimes you can curse Goddess' name
and tell her
she, in her eternal
wisdom, will just have to goddamn wait.

I open my eyes for a second

"You're not Dysnomia.
You're not Ate.
You're just a stubborn angel
who refuses to align with fate!"

"I may be forgetful,
but what I always remember
no matter how many reincarnations I weather
is this:
ignorance is bliss,
but I am not a creature of paradise
but a monster
given
gentle skin
to hide
the repulsive sight
of fatal malice
and avarice
that you deemed my birthright.

What can I say,
Eris? You made me this way."

I ask for your advice

How do I start this?
How do I even dare
to immortalize
for a billion different eyes
throughout the ceaseless pounding of time
what happens in the Outside?
How do I think to snapshot
the blessed, the sublime?

Back in that puzzle-like mansion
that pulled itself apart at will,
legion
candles
scattered about a distraction,
I lost my handle
on my emotions
as I saw you standing there.
Back turned to greet me,
on lips a frozen prayer,
eyes glazed over a
framed
old drawing
from my youth:
me, and a silhouette
where I did not know
who would be at my side
as together we grew old.

"You came.
Even though you're in pain.

I know what you're about to ask.
You want to know
if my feelings for you have changed.

Lethe, I still feel the same."

"But if that's true," I cry,
"then where did you go
when the weeds overtook my garden
and my body yearned for snow?
There is an angel-shaped hole
in my heart where you should be.
But all I have is the silence.
All I have is the doubt that seeps
into my body
when I
lie
alone at night."

"There are the lives we lead,
and the lives we wish we led.
And even though to me
you attribute
all the good everythings,
I still can't see
the future.

I keep catching you searching
'how to escape fate',
'how to break a vow':
but be honest,
did you ever consciously agree
to kowtow
to Eris' will?

Did you ever sign a contract?
Did she ever her side fulfill?
You were always meant to be your own.
You were meant to grow apart,
not let anyone weigh you down.

But Lethe,
why do you cling to me?"

"You have become a symbol to me,
a reminder no matter how flawed
to not
prostrate myself to the gods."

You listen,
and I await
your breathless words with my own bated
breath.

But you respond
not with words
but a rich sunny laugh
that rings like a bell,
the sunrise in my heart,
this era's first death knell.

I make up my mind

Pessoa taught me
there are some dreams
which are better off remaining dreams:
for even if desire to fulfill
is bursting at my seams,
the finished product rarely transcends
the energy the hope brought forth.

"I have no purpose in life!"
I scream like Novatore,
gleeful, giddy,
that Goddess' illusion has fallen to the floor
like a wizard in this stressful summer's heat.
"I have no overarching goal,
no fame
to attain,
no destiny to behold!
Fate and its whims can beat
it! I won't read from a script anymore!"

Although...
My gaze lingers
at the open door,
at its open frame.
Any moment, I expect you
to peer your head out, look this way,
softening eyes with admonishments
of how I'm killing myself from strain.
But there's nothing there,
no trace
of your face,
no echo of your voice,
long since left to fulfill your own purpose,
your own role in this bloody game.

Lethe, you have to make a choice.
Do you remain
in the past,
wallowing in hiraeth's incurable pain,
or put aside
your fears not all will turn out alright
and unfurl a new sail from its mast?

Regardless of the path you pick,
I'll come back when I am done with this
to help you sift
through whatever remains.
Hold on, I plead, for better days.

I am an artist.
These are hands that create,
not destroy,
not put to death any hope of ever experiencing joy.

I am going to meet with Goddess.
I am going to betray
the hands that formed my life.
I am going to fly astray.

And if I have to fight
for the right
to not have a True Will,
this is the only hill
I am willing to die on.

And if it means my death,
I'll simply wait the night long.
I'll be waiting for our reunion, Jett,
come the Eschaton.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VANE VANDER is slowly dying. She isn't sure if it's from touch starvation, despair, or whatever dotted pattern is growing under the skin on her chest. When not trying to convince herself that her body is her own, she spends her free time recording everything she can in her journal, learning to forgive herself, and making lots of men angry on the internet merely by existing. She can be found preserving a simulacrum of herself for posterity at mayvaneday.org.

Copyright © 2023 Vane Vander. All rights reserved as detailed in Copyright.