
Picture taken by Víctor Vázquez on Unsplash
AN INFERNAL CACOPHONY.
INFERNO.
I wore it every day, the monster’s face
It made me swim in miles,
rivers of blood, reaching up,
squelching up to my knees, then my waist,
until it met my chin, had me barely striving to stay
afloat.
Made me feel with fingers pricked by needles
Made me feel shivers down my spine, hands at my throat,
down my back, whispering shouts in my ear at all times.
I could feel its horrid grin forming underneath,
on my own face.
The repugnant mask I wore,
its fat black eyes, like a dead pig,
a master of beetles, a playground for illness,
With it on, I had no need or wish to be something else
It moulded me out of wax, dried out pine needles,
The darkness when a door is left slightly open
and you’re too afraid to close it.
A witch poppet to be used when needed and thereafter
discarded.
Neither Jesus nor the Devil could save me from what I’ve become.
The demon provided false truths in order to undo me,
but it provided safety, and so its will had to be satisfied.
I have destroyed myself, ripped out my own heart,
raised it in sacrifice and held it mid-air
The monster’s long sharp tongue inching closer and closer,
twirling and twisting around it-
But I threw it to the ground and ran anywhere
to start anew; (the only thing left to check off
when I look at my list of things to burn, is you.
But I cannot do that without burning myself with you.)
Perhaps the only way to eat the devil is for you to become the devil too.
I walk through the fire, pass Lucifer by, pay Acheron his passage fee.
I walked as far as I could get-
At the edge of hell I dare walk through the gate of many gaping mouths
Seeing nothing but darkness, hearing nothing but
screams of those damned before me, I fall and fall and fall
I land under a bright night sky, where the stars do not twist themselves
in fury and the demon can no longer reach me.
And to a place I come where everything shines.
PURGATORY.
The man in black says, as he makes me kneel in front of the altar
This is his blood
In my mind, I turn the wine back into water, I drink from the cup
The man in black also says
This is his body
So I bite desperately at the flesh, eat it away
Lick at the sharp bones that remain
Is it too late to take the bread?
The blood spilt on the floor hums back
YES, YES, YES!
It runs down my arms like rivers from
where I pulled out my heart
Father, I pray tell me, in your holy learnéd opinion,
does heaven consider me a sinner
or a saint, for what I have done
and for what I have battled?
Am I pure or am I dirty for the things that I do?
Please tell me, in God’s opinion,
am I Lilith, that first whore, or am I Eve, the first woman
who knelt to a man? Does he even see a difference between
the two?
Why so fearful?
Perhaps I am none. I have been to hell and back,
now it’s part of who I am.
Fuck your holy blood, your God and your whore for
I’ll have none of it.
Maybe I’m God, maybe I’m nothing. Hatred is the only thing
bordering dangerously close to love.
In the midst of the crowd of scared sheep
dying to repent, to ascend,
I catch your sceptical eye. I find you.
It is you.
I want to get closer to you, place myself within
Until we collide inside
the fire; a fever burning your flesh, your spirit,
but which can never kill you,
burning through every naked pore with each
hungry kiss. It makes me forget, only if for a moment.
And if none of this is enough I will see you in the next life too.
I have no need to see, no need to breathe
Oh God, Oh Jesus, Oh Satan
Oh, fuck, I don’t know, are they real anymore?
I don’t know, let’s make our own altar here,
in this bed engulfed by flames.
You breathe out your confessions, and I drink
of your squeezed out pains. You press into me and
I pull you closer into my storm until I taste blood &
you taste my passion until my wrists swell up.
I could let the world go up in flames. Maybe I’m Ishtar,
the Babylonian goddess of war, sex and blood.
Maybe I’m Persephone, heart held out in my hand
like that mythical pomegranate.
Maybe I’m me and you are you
and there is nothing more to it and I should stop
trying to put into words what this feels like-
PARADISE.
But I am a slave to my own writing,
the words hold me captive, and so I must try.
I ask you why do you love me, you ask me what is love?
I have no choice but to answer. I love that you
do not pretend to know. At first, to illustrate my answer,
I do not speak but I scream. I scream out in a language unknown
to me; older than Greek, older than Latin, older than Babylonian.
So old it has almost returned to dust.
I would give up the lofty prospects of heaven
and salvation one more time if it meant that I would
end up in the same place, here with you.
I could not ask the heavens for you to have been
there in hell with me, but rather I would beg for them
to have made me stronger, so that I could have fought back
more, if anything, to reach you faster.
We are alone, and yet together, red threads woven
as one
and in our loneliness
our souls remain unpurged-
let us exorcise them now, in this dimming
light. I light a candle for the living, one for the dead
and one for me, separately, as I do not know
to which I belong. A hidden ritual, secret ceremonials,
no more communions of evil remain here.
You tell me the spell is broken, I am no longer there.
I can no longer remain a ghost, haunting the living,
I must regain my flesh and blood, my human life.
You remind me that I am loved, and though I
may not know the way,
every day is a new step in the
right direction, and thus I say to you, “No more!
I am done with blood, I am done with darkness,
I am done with pain!”
and on this winding path the flowers grow in multitudes.
As I exit the church I hear notes flying
to the ceiling, a violin, a piano, cheering
up and remembering the dead, the living,
and me.
I turn my back and withhold a cry
There will never be a brighter moment than this.
I turn back and see
your hand still in mine. The blossoming trees
sigh with petals, the careless wind blowing
them away now and then.
A dream of spring I have, for that only
I wish. It is easy to forget the green hiding
beneath the grey, the sun concealed between
the clouds.
Finally, as I exit, the god in me awakens
once more, with the spring, with the sun.
There will be a brighter day than this, in
time. I remind myself to kiss your lungs,
kiss your breath, which blows me forward.
And I would stay still, but no walls can
keep me protected from
myself. The heart harbours unimaginable things,
I know. And maybe some things are truly
meant to last.
They say true love doesn’t hurt but then why
is it that your every touch and your every glance
towards me burns me up?
Think about it. Somewhere the sun rises up
from the distant horizon, melting into the
orange skies for the
last time in months. Somewhere Icarus rises out of the sea,
unburned after his desperate reach and fall for
his one love. Somewhere out there, Lucifer never fell,
and is standing in his rightful place next to his
older brother Michael, untainted.
What I am saying is that events are, like people,
unpredictable, and oftentimes unchangeable.
The chance of meeting you was one in 7 billion.
So what is love? Well, I don’t know.
I guess it might
be the way I feel when I think about having met
anyone but you. I think maybe it’s how fate rearranged
itself to have us meet, connected threads
where there were none. It is the way I would do anything
for you. For just a moment, I do not think, I do not worry.
I am with you, even when I am not with you,
and you are with me. And if I never find the answer,
at least I know one thing, a paradox
I love you.
Why do I love you? For every different flower along
the path, I have a different reason why.
For every day that you make me want to become
someone better, and better my demons. For the way
in which you say my name, and for the way I want you to
say it again and again. For the way you make me laugh
at everything you say. For the way my words are so rusty
from never being uttered so. For the way my heart skips
50 beats when you look at me. For the way that you
make me wish I loved myself too. For the way that your hands
do not suffocate me but let me breathe instead. For the way
that you kiss me. For the way your name suggests home.