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dark-woods · 3 years

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January Requiem

*Written January 2020 Under The Name; Seasons In Braken* It’s cold. Not freezing yet.

The snow won’t come until deep winter, for now it is steady rain.

Cold rain.

Everyday we chase the heels of winter, caught in late fall, waiting, anticipating, but we only run as fast as time flies.

The lot of us gather around the stand, begging to eat, to fill us on this empty day.

I hold the bar in my hands. Thin, flaky crust encircles a tart mash of fruit. It’s been too long for it to keep its homemade charm, now only a product of metal and plastic. The fruits here are so different. In the fall a rainbow of apples and honey-sour pears fill the isles of the harvest festival. We laugh as we fill our cups with warm cider over and over again.

It burns the tongue, and tastes like spice, but it is a tradition here.

In the winter nothing grows, even the pine trees look bare.

But in spring the berries fill the forest. Salmonberries, blueberries, huckleberries, boisonberries, lingonberries, they are everywhere. You can walk through the the woods to any hidden grove, and fill your hands with sweet goodness until they stain.

In the tangle of the thicket bracken the blackberries and raspberries grow.

The thorns cut and bite, but you bite back, and sit by a swampy pond, watching the light fall through the leaves.

In the summer it is hot enough to free yourself.

You can run circles in a creamy sundress, wildflowers set in sun kissed hair.

The fruit is strawberries. They grow on the mountainside. It isn’t even cold up there, just damp and dim, and green.

The flowers are gone from the plants by August, and the buds long, long, gone, turned to bushy bundles with green, green, leaves.

Strawberry lemonade and honeydew on the table. The watermelon isn’t from here, nor the peaches and the sun.

It’s all borrowed, temporary. It’s not so bad where it’s warm.

Humid, sticky air in the summer. Mosquitos everywhere.

The rest of the year you can dream about snow, but it won’t come close.

In the last week of May it pours down there I’ve heard.

Here it rains for days upon end.

Soaking the cold into the bone, until you’re numb and your eyes can’t close.

Down there it rains hard as knives for ten minutes, and then it’s done, dried up by the hour.

Here the puddles overstay their welcome, even in the hot of July, when fire licks the air, the mud still stays.

Stupid mud.

In the warm lands they fear September. When for one month the wind roars, and they cower.

They whisper of the geese. That when the birds fly south they bring the wind on their wings, cold wind.

And when they land and the cold meets warm, they scream.

The wind starts out a useless tumbleweed, and then a swirling dust. Then it flies across the dusty plains, blowing everything away. The geese bring a storm of dry thunder, rainless lightning. Silent summer turns to fearful fall.

They say those folks are real superstitious, afraid. Always.

They start at a black cat, a piece of the night come to drink the day.

And broken mirrors, because they can’t live without their vanity, those selfish people. I’ve never seen a mirror. And here I am hidden in these cold hills.

We all are.

But we have so much more to fear.

A sea that walks on land.

An earth that refuses to sleep.

A mountain the cries fire and ash, choking up flame as we sleep.

And sleep.

Sleep is harder here.

At the ocean I lie in the sand, and drift off to the waves in the cold, dark sea.

But not here, in these lost hills, these forgotten valleys, so north, so dark, so cold, cold, cold.

My skin turns paper white, and my eyes ice blue. I can’t move, I’m trapped, and anything warm stings to touch. I am awake.

No thoughts in my head, no light in my eyes.

Staring out the window at the round, white moon.

I feel like a star you cannot see in the sky, and so none of us can sleep.

Not here, where in wind and the rain is our blood, and the salty, briny sea, our inky black tears.

It hurts to much to cry when we are coated in our regrets and each sudden movement makes my heart stop.

On the solstices I remember celebration. Winter.

Yule.

December.

Cold.

I can never say cold enough.

But now a bonfire burns through the bare bone grey of winter.

We wear coats as thick as bear’s fur. Our hair is silver, and braided thin, thin, thin.

The songs I learn on this day make me shiver.

Old, ancient songs for the moon and the warriors that lived so long ago.

Of fjords full of ice and mountains full of snow.

Of the owls and the wolves, and cold, cold, nights.

In the summer the solstice does not make me lie awake in the same way of winter. Instead, I don a lacey white dress, nothing underneath but slim skin and bare feet.

My hair is honey gold, and loose, crowned with a wreath of roses and tulips.

Yellow and pink.

It is just my sisters now.

Not my kin, but girls I share my blood with.

We dance in golden woods.

The gloaming calls us, and a fire burns everywhere. The stars are bright, and we do wild things.

That is what keeps me awake. But it is summer, and we are in love.

In love together, and with the moon and the woods, and the flowers on the mossy ground.

This is season.

And feeling.

Emotion.

Cold.

Hot.

Gold.

Silver.

The contrasts of life.

And I remember them all

#poetry #short poem #writing #writeblr #witch #pagan #cottagecore #forestcore #mushroom #goblicore #gremlincore #naturecore #cryptidcore #sweden #nordic #asatru

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elvagodevil · 4 years

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Sobre supper's ready, la obra magnánima del rock progresivo.

Una piedra angular en la historia del rock progresivo, Supper’s Ready encontró que este género aún en desarrollo estaba apunto de alcanzar su apogeo. Había habido pistas de álbumes de dos dígitos de longitud antes, no menos la propia The Musical Box de 10 minutos de Genesis, pero nada tan conceptualmente épico, tan ambiciosamente ejecutado como Supper’s Ready. Construido a partir de siete partes distintas que forman un conjunto musical irregular, instantáneamente se convirtió en quizás la aventura musical más famosa e influyente en un género y luego estalló en sus bancos creativos con pistas clásicas de todos los tiempos: la plantilla para el adornado, clásico influenciado, lisérgicamente -cargada, heroicamente tonta, peculiarmente inglesa variedad de rock progresivo que luego gobernó el mundo. Según el tecladista Tony Banks: “Cuando lo comenzamos, pensamos que estábamos escribiendo una especie de seguimiento de The Musical Box, y todo iba bastante bien. Luego tuvimos esta canción bonita y bonita, Willow Farm, por sí sola, y pensamos, ¿qué pasaría si de repente pasáramos a esa secuencia de acordes descendentes y feos? Nadie lo estaría esperando. Y una vez que nos metimos en eso, pensamos, bueno, estamos aquí ahora, continuemos, con libertad, y veamos a dónde nos lleva. Cuando reunimos todo y lo escuchamos por primera vez, dijimos: "Oh, esto es bastante bueno". Sin embargo, el ex guitarrista de Genesis, Steve Hackett, insiste ahora en que no estaba convencido de que fuera una buena idea: "Pensé, nadie va a comprar esto, porque es demasiado largo". Las referencias [líricas] son demasiado remotas. Es totalmente ambiguo. Pensé que la primera vez [el jefe de Charisma Records] Tony Stratton-Smith escuchó que iba a decir: 'Lo siento, muchachos, se acabó el juego, se canceló el contrato, recibirán noticias de nuestros abogados' ". En cambio, fue Stratton-Smith quien alentó positivamente a la banda a llevar su música lo más lejos posible, según el productor de Foxtrot David Hitchcock. Al ver su papel como "esencialmente un facilitador", Hitchcock dice que su mayor contribución a la canción fue "explicando que no tenían que tocarla todo el tiempo para grabarla, que podíamos hacerlo sección por sección, con fundidos cruzados y ediciones, luego póngalo todo junto más tarde. Eso les permitió concentrarse durante los tres o cuatro minutos de cada sección, y obtener el mejor rendimiento posible, al mismo tiempo que les permitió traer diferentes sonidos para cada sección, en lugar de reproducirlos directamente con un sonido largo y homogéneo ".

La presión también estaba sobre la banda para encontrar éxitos en las listas. "No en el sentido de hacer que suenen más comerciales", dice Hitchcock, "sino en el sentido de llevar lo que hicieron lo más lejos posible". Las tensiones en el estudio eran abundantes. "Principalmente entre Tony y Peter", dice Hitchcock. "No hubo grandes reventones, solo mucho enfado". Cuando Gabriel comenzó a cantar sobre el solo de teclado en la sección titulada Apocalypse In 9⁄8, Banks admite: “Estaba enojado. "¡Estás cantando en mi bit!" Entonces me di cuenta de que ahora tenía toda la emoción que habíamos estado tratando de crear, especialmente la sección "Seis, seis, seis". Tienes mucho drama en los acordes, entonces lo que hizo en la parte superior lo llevó a otro nivel. Sí, ese medio minuto más o menos es nuestro pico ". La otra gran batalla que Gabriel ganó fue por la letra. "Todos estábamos involucrados como letristas en Foxtrot per se", dice Hackett, "pero Pete insistió en escribir todas las letras para Supper’s Ready". Posteriormente se difundió el rumor de que el núcleo de la narrativa lírica se basaba en una experiencia "sobrenatural" que Gabriel había vivido con su entonces esposa Jill; que Gabriel había estado convencido de que estaba poseída y blandía una cruz improvisada con velas, a lo que ella reaccionó violentamente. Según Hackett, sin embargo, la situación era probablemente más prosaica. "Creo que ha habido un cierto consumo de drogas. Creo que estaba teniendo un mal viaje en un momento dado, y que Pete y un amigo lograron convencerla y sacarla de los horrores o lo que fuera. Así que eso es parte de lo que trata la canción, pero en cierto modo hay una especie de implicación de redención que va con eso

Walking across the sitting-room, I turn the television off

Sitting beside you, I look into your eyes

As the sound of motorcars fades in the night time

I swear I saw your face change, it didn't seem quite right

And it's hello babe, with your guardian eyes so blue

Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true

Coming closer with our eyes, a distance falls around our bodies

Out in the garden, the moon seems very bright

Six saintly shrouded men move across the lawn slowly

The seventh walks in front with a cross held high in hand

And it's hey babe your supper's waiting for you

Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true?

I've been so far from here

Far from your warm arms

It's good to feel you again

It's been a long long time

Hasn't it?

I know a farmer who looks after the farm

With water clear, he cares for all his harvest

I know a fireman who looks after the fire

You, can't you see he's fooled you all

Yes, he's here again

Can't you see he's fooled you all?

Share his peace, sign the lease

He's a supersonic scientist

He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary man

Look, look into my mouth he cries

And all the children lost down many paths

I bet my life you'll walk inside

Hand in hand

Gland in gland

With a spoonful of miracle

He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary

We will rock you, rock you little snake

We will keep you snug and warm

Wearing feelings on our faces while our faces took a rest

We walked across the fields to see the children of the West

But we saw a host of dark skinned warriors standing still below the ground

Waiting for battle

The fight's begun, they've been released

Killing foe for peace, bang, bang, bang

Bang, bang, bang

And they've given me a wonderful potion

'Cause I cannot contain my emotion

And even though I'm feeling good

Something tells me I'd better activate my prayer capsule

Today's a day to celebrate, the foe have met their fate

The order for rejoicing and dancing has come from our warlord

Wandering in the chaos the battle has left

We climb up the mountain of human flesh

To a plateau of green grass, and green trees full of life

A young figure sits still by a pool

He's been stamped "Human Bacon" by some butchery tool

He is you

Social Security took care of this lad

We watch in reverence, as Narcissus is turned to a flower

A flower?

If you go down to Willow Farm

To look for butterflies, flutterbyes, gutterflies

Open your eyes, it's full of surprise

Everyone lies like the fox on the rocks

And the musical box

Oh, there's Mum and Dad, and good and bad

And everyone's happy to be here

There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag

He used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag

The frog was a prince

The prince was a brick, the brick was an egg, the egg was a bird

(Fly away you sweet little thing, they're hard on your tail)

Hadn't you heard? (they're going to change you into a human being!)

Yes, we're happy as fish and gorgeous as geese

And wonderfully clean in the morning

We've got everything, we're growing everything

We've got some in, we've got some out

We've got some wild things floating about

Everyone, we're changing everyone

You name them all, we've had them here

And the real stars are still to appear

(All change!)

Feel your body melt

Mum to mud to mad to dad

Dad diddley office, Dad diddley office

You're all full of ball

Dad to dam to dumb to mum

Mum diddley washing, Mum diddley washing

You're all full of ball

Let me hear your lies, we're living this up to the eyes

Ooh, aah, na-na-na

Momma I want you now

And as you listen to my voice

To look for hidden doors, tidy floors, more applause

You've been here all the time

Like it or not, like what you got

You're under the soil (the soil, the soil)

Yes, deep in the soil (the soil, the soil, the soil!)

So we'll end with a whistle and end with a bang

And all of us fit in our places

With the guards of Magog, swarming around

The Pied Piper takes his children underground

Dragons coming out of the sea

Shimmering silver head of wisdom looking at me

He brings down the fire from the skies

You can tell he's doing well by the look in human eyes

Better not compromise, it won't be easy

666 is no longer alone

He's getting out the marrow in your backbone

And the seven trumpets blowing sweet rock and roll

Gonna blow right down inside your soul

Pythagoras with the looking glass reflects the full moon

In blood, he's writing the lyrics of a brand-new tune

And it's hey babe, with your guardian eyes so blue

Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true?

I've been so far from here, far from your loving arms

Now I'm back again

And babe, it's gonna work out fine

Can't you feel our souls ignite?

Shedding ever-changing colours

In the darkness of the fading night

Like the river joins the ocean

As the germ in a seed grows

We have finally been freed to get back home

There's an angel standing in the sun

And he's crying with a loud voice

"This is the supper of the mighty one"

Lord of Lords, King of Kings

Has returned to lead his children home

To take them to the new Jerusalem

youtube

#peter gabriel #genesis

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artepoetica · 6 years

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Genesis - Supper's Ready I. Lover's Leap

Walking across the sitting-room, I turn the television off Sitting beside you, I look into your eyes As the sound of motor cars fades in the night time I swear I saw your face change, it didn't seem quite right

And it's, hello, babe, with your guardian eyes so blue Hey, my baby, don't you know our love is true

Coming closer with our eyes, a distance falls around our bodies Out in the garden, the moon seems very bright Six saintly shrouded men move across the lawn slowly The seventh walks in front with a cross held high in hand

And it's, hey, babe, your supper's waiting for you Hey, my baby, don't you know our love is true

I've been so far from here Far from your loving arms It's good to feel you again It's been a long, long time, hasn't it?

II. The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man

I know a farmer who looks after the farm With water clear, he cares for all his harvest I know a fireman who looks after the fire Can't you see he's fooled you all Yes, he's here again Can't you see he's fooled you all

Share his peace, sign the lease. He's a supersonic scientist He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary man

Look, look into my mouth he cries And all the children lost down many paths I bet my life you'll walk inside

Hand in hand, gland in gland With a spoonful of miracle He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary

We will rock you, rock you little snake We will keep you snug and warm

III. Ikhnaton and Itsacon and their Band of Merry Men

Wearing feelings on our faces while our faces took a rest We walked across the fields to see the children of the West But we saw a host of dark skinned warriors Standing still below the ground Waiting for battle

The fight's begun, they've been released Killing foe for peace, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang And they're giving me a wonderful potion 'Cause I cannot contain my emotion And even though I'm feeling good Something tells me I'd better activate my prayer capsule

Today's a day to celebrate, the foe have met their fate. The order for rejoicing and dancing has come from our warlord.

IV. How Dare I Be so Beautiful?

Wandering in the chaos the battle has left We climb up the mountain of human flesh To a plateau of green grass and green trees full of life A young figure sits still by a pool

He's been stamped "Human Bacon" by some butchery tool He is you Social security took care of this lad We watch in reverence, as Narcissus is turned to a flower A flower?

V. Willow Farm

If you go down to Willow Farm To look for butterflies, flutterbyes, gutterflies Open your eyes, it's full of surprise, everyone lies Like the fox on the rocks and the musical box There's Mum and Dad and good and bad And everyone's happy to be here

There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag He used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag The frog was a prince, the prince was a brick The brick was an egg, the egg was a bird

(Fly away you sweet little thing, they're hard on your tail) Hadn't you heard? (They're going to change you into a human being) Yes, we're happy as fish and gorgeous as geese And wonderfully clean in the morning

We've got everything, we're growing everything We've got some in, we've got some out We've got some wild things floating about

Everyone, we're changing everyone You name them all, we've had them here And the real stars are still to appear

All change

Feel your body melt Mum to mud to mad to dad Dad diddley office, Dad diddley office You're all full of ball

Dad to dam to dum to mum Mum diddley washing, Mum diddley washing You're all full of ball

Let me hear you lies We're living this up to the eyes Momma I want you now

And as you listen to my voice To look for hidden doors, tidy floors, more applause You've been here all the time Like it or not, like what you got You're under the soil

(The soil, the soil) Yes, deep in the soil (The soil, the soil, the soil, the soil) So we'll end with a whistle and end with a bang And all of us fit in our places

VI. Apocalypse in 9/8 (Co-starring the Delicious Talents of Gabble Ratchet)

With the guards of Magog, swarming around The Pied Piper takes his children underground Dragons coming out of the sea Shimmering silver head of wisdom looking at me

He brings down the fire from the skies You can tell he's doing well by the look in human eyes Better not compromise, it won't be easy

666 is no longer alone He's getting out the marrow in your back bone And the seven trumpets blowing sweet rock and roll Gonna blow right down inside your soul Pythagoras with the looking glass reflects the full moon In blood, he's writing the lyrics of a brand new tune

And it's, hey babe, with your guardian eyes so blue Hey, my baby, don't you know our love is true I've been so far from here, far from your loving arms Now I'm back again and, babe, it's gonna work out fine

VII. As Sure as Eggs is Eggs (Aching Men's Feet)

Can't you feel our souls ignite Shedding ever changing colors in the darkness of the fading night Like the river joins the ocean, as the germ in a seed grows We have finally been freed to get back home

There's an Angel standing in the sun And He's crying with a loud voice "This is the supper of the mighty One" The Lord of Lords, King of Kings Has returned to lead His children home To take them to the new Jerusalem

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lalobalives · 7 years

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*An essay a week in 2017*

I haven’t been able to write for days. For two long weeks, I haven’t been able to write anything beyond a few sentences. Fragments.

Something is shifting in me. This something is heavy and dark and painful. This something is necessary..but shit, it’s so much when we’re in the shifting.

“…Transformation has some very harrowing phases. This full moon will exaggerate all that gets in the way of the balance we need to strike . This full moon illuminates the truth that balance isn’t static.

“Balance is a constant state of recalibration.” Chani Nicholas: Today’s Full Moon in Libra: Beauty Bound

Yesterday, on my deck, after hours on my couch, I wrote this:

There is a hole where my words are. In the hole lives grief. Stealth and quiet with the fury of winds that can destroy. Annihilate. It is warm in NYC. I am on my deck smelling and tasting spring. Wondering when these seeds will blossom like those on the tree that peek into my window. Just yesterday they were tight in their buds. Today they are busting green. Aflame like my envy.

My hands cannot grip a pen. Those lines on the page stare. I grab my phone. I finally rise from where my body has made indentations in the cushions. They rise slowly, searching for space to be full.

Me…I miss my brother.

***

Today, I went to The Women Writers of Color group’s final installment of this year’s Breakaway Writing Workshop Series. The featured artist was Yesenia Montilla, who led a generative writing workshop inspired by women writers of color. She had us read poems by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Aracelis Girmay, Valzhyna Mort, Mary Oliver, Audre Lorde, Laurie Ann Guerrero, and Natalie Diaz. After each poem, she gave us prompts and had us write for ten minutes. It was magical and hard and wrenching and necessary. So fuckin necessary.

***

Yesenia started by talking about duende, the term Lorca is said to have stolen from the gypsies of Spain. Duende is the idea of creating art that comes from darkness, from the ground, from the connection of the bottom of the feet to the earth. It is art created from the body.

Lorca visited Harlem in the turn of the 20th century. That’s where he first heard blues, which he said was the closest thing to duende he’d ever heard.

Yesenia had us hear Kathleen Battle singing “Summertime” at the Met. Then she had us hear the Janis Joplin cover of the same song.

The idea here is that there are two places an artist pulls from, and Battle and Joplin were examples of both.

Battle pulls from the ethereal. From the heavens. “A voice from God,” Yesenia said.

Joplin pulls from the soles of her feet. Her voice is gravelly and gritty. She is tapping into her ache.

My discovery: I pull from my feet. From the mother that is earth. I pull from my pain, like Joplin. I listened to her sing as I typed this.

***

I bought a new journal at an art supply store steps away from Pratt where the workshop was held. I bought new pens. Paid $10 for a mechanical pencil. 10 fuckin dollars for a pencil?

I was inviting duende. Calling duende. I know that now.

Truth is I thought I’d left all my pens at home. I chastised myself on the train. If you know me, you know that I only write with the blue Pilot Precise V5. I found it in the fall of my freshman year at Columbia, back in ’93. I’ve been writing with it since. I thought: How can I write without my pen? I sulked. Then I thought: “I’ll find one.” Sure enough I did. Later, I found that I had brought a pen. It was tucked into The Body Keeps the Score, which I’ve been reading slowly and quietly, digesting the mirror it holds up, annotating it heavily.

***

Inspiration: “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Prompt: Start writing using the few words of the poem: “Listen: there was…”

Listen: there was a girl lost in the woods lost in the spring the earth just beginning to burst with life… the wet of it a pungent, mossy smell in the girl’s nostrils… she searched for the hawk whose cry she heard loud through the canopy.. She thought she felt the whisper of a wing on her cheek, but when she turned, nothing was there… just trees and brambles and bushes not yet fully green but trying for life… reaching for it…

She walked on, this girl who was lost in the woods… she followed trails that had been made by the feet of souls long gone… they too lost… they too, searching…

She, this lost girl, stayed off the paved paths… she didn’t/doesn’t trust paths laid down by men… she needed to feel the dirty under her feet, she needed to be cut by the thorns that tore at her bare legs…

Listen: this girl who is lost, felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around quickly, “Who’s there?” she yelled. The wind shook the trees. A blossom, only days old and still trying for life, fell at her feet. She picked it up, sniffed its sweetness and walked on…

She came to a river. There, she stripped down to her underwear, and walked into the water. She felt something pull her head back, a soft tugging. “This is a baptism,” she thought, as the water rushed into her ears. She opened her eyes and saw her, blurry, hair dancing in the current. “Hija,” she mouthed, bubbles floating out of her mouth. The girl reached, cried out, “Mamá.” She swallowed water, gagged as she felt a push from the soles of her feet, pushing her body up so she could breathe…

When she came to, she was on the shore. Her dress back on her body. A garland of flowers on her head.

***

Inspiration: “Kingdom Animalia” by Aracelis Girmay

Prompt: How do we imagine loss? How do we process death? Start with a line from the poem: “One day, not today, not now, we will be gone from this earth…”

In the red woods where they took me that first day, when my brother died, I looked up at the trees, their long, hairy trunks… I learned that these trees entangle their roots with one another to keep themselves upright… These giants can’t be giant without other giants…

I think of my brother. I think of the last words he said to me: “You have to go write our stories, sis.”

I think of my second mom Millie, who when I told her on her death bed, “Millie, I think I wanna write a book,” she propped herself up on that arm that was perpetually swollen after the mastectomy, and said: “Pero negra, you’ve always been a writer.”

In some forests, trees keep stumps alive by feeding them sugar through their roots.

One day, I will be gone. I know this… I don’t want to. I think: “What will I leave my daughter?”

What did my brother leave me? Permission.

What did my Millie leave me? Validation.

What will I leave my nena? Stories. Love. The knowledge that I loved her like my mother couldn’t, wouldn’t love me…

I leave her knowing that she will hurt, she will ache, and with that, she can make sancocho that will/ can feed. She must gather her own viandas, herbs and meats to make her own sancocho. Mamá will leave her the broth.

***

Inspiration: “Belarusian I” by Valzhyna Mort

Prompts: This love loved to visit us… -or- I was born with… (An Argentinian poet wrote “I was born with red lipstick on…”)

I was born with sugar on my lips. Crystallized and syrupy, I was born with honey on my lips. But mommy was no bee. Mom was salt and glacier. Mom was too much vinagre in sofrito. Mommy was a love song on Super KQ — one of those corta venas ballads that she scream sang, her head thrown back, the King Pine scent snaking up her legs, underneath her bata… to where I came into the world… This girl who was born with honey on her lips.

But didn’t I tell you Mommy was no bee? She’d swat them away with her heavy, little hands. She’d go to their hives and snatch them out, her skin impervious to their sting. She pulled their wings off and cackled as they cried… scurrying over the earth they were made to fly over.

I am the girl born with honey on her lips to a mother who killed bees… I have spent my life trying to lick that honey off. To banish it from me. An exorcism… But bee killers smell honey from far away. Their sense of smell keen Iike a dog’s. They smell honey and think — kill, think — destroy.

These days I am building a hive for this honey on my lips that I was born with. I watch over it, tending and coddling. This hive. These lips…

***

Inspiration: “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

Prompt: Think about forgiveness and accepting forgiveness. Who have you not forgiven? Imagine the day you forgive that someone. -or- A blue door appears in the room. You go through it…

(I didn’t want to think about forgiveness. I wanted to stay mad…so, of course, she who I have not forgiven showed up, despite my resistance.)

Blue door beckons and says: “Come.” The words like a growl, teeth clenched and grinding. It calls to me. I should be scared but I’m not. I was born with sugar on my lips, pero that was a front. Honey to hide the growl in my throat, the howl like the sirens that coaxed so many men to their deaths.

Beyond the door is a field, there are flowers of all variety and color, they sway in the soft wind. They are like whispers beneath my bare feet. I’m not surprised when I feel the roots start to tangle around my ankles. They pull at me. They snare. I look down and I see her– the weaver. She who I want to but can’t forgive. I grit my teeth, the siren crawls out of my throat. I want to whirlpool her.

I wonder how that happens — how you can go from loving someone and protecting them to wanting to destroy them. To curling your lips when you speak their name, and so you don’t. That poison doesn’t mix with your honey.

You think of the girl you were who invited betrayal and disloyalty because you didn’t love yourself. Couldn’t. This was before you grew to own that honey. And even now, some days, when the roots wrap around your ankles and pull, the thorns dig in and you begin to bleed, heavy drops beading into the earth. You let your skin be sacrifice. You drip honey into the open wounds. You call your siren back into the flower of your throat.

You look back at the blue door and smile. “Remember,” she whispers back at you. “Remember.”

***

Inspiration: “From the House of Yemanjá” by Audre Lorde

Prompt: Think of mother figures. Think of the gods and goddesses we worship. Write an open letter to him or her.

Diosa,

Mi madre is my alter and my abyss… Why did you give me this mother who could never love me? Was there no other way to teach me these lessons I need to learn in this lifetime? Could the lesson not be gentler?

Don’t answer that. I know.

I am one who learns through trials. I have to drag my body across fire stores, feel their scarring, ripping at my organs. This is the way for us girls born with honey on our lips. Pero, mamá, madre eres, why could you not gift me a mother who could love?

My mother is TNT. She is dynamite. She detonates and erupts. She destroys everything… but me. Me — she couldn’t. Me — I didn’t let her.

My mother whose body knows the claws of rape, who knows the fangs of hunger. My mother who has wished for death since she was 15 — my mother…

I sit like her One knee propped under my chin The other leg tucked underneath. I hum like her, absentmindedly, while I cook and clean and stare off, into nothing. Here, but not. I didn’t know this until I was 40, after having left her house at 13…

I carry my mother under my fingernails like dirt… This woman who is TNT.

***

Yesenia gave us time to share one piece we’d produced that day. One writer, a beautiful young woman with a hoop in her nose and tattoos on her arms, prefaced her piece with: “This poem is about my mother. All my poems are about my mother.”

And I said “Yasss.” And I felt that shame and anger in my body move and subside…that exhaustion with the altar and abyss that is my mother.

Why the fuck do I always have to write about my mother?

***

I listened to Janis Joplin as I typed this. In the gravel that is her voice, I saw myself, this woman who pulls from her ache in her joints, from the earth, from the soles of her feet…

Today, duende pulled at the siren in my throat. Today, duende grabbed and yanked at my pen. Today I surrendered to duende, and I’m so glad that I did.

Thank you Yesenia Montilla. You be magic, sis. Word.

Relentless Files — Week 66 (#52essays2017 Week 13) *An essay a week in 2017* I haven’t been able to write for days. For two long weeks, I haven’t been able to write anything beyond a few sentences.

#duende #writing #writing workshop #Yesenia Montilla

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artepoetica · 7 years

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