wyrdwind

King of the Cats

I’m Fine

Originally I’d intended to call her Burglar

Beating out Space Ghost and Bondman thrown in the ring

But when I brought my kitten home she was terrified and sick

And immediately disappeared into the sewing fabric rack

Which formed a false divider with a floor to ceiling bookcase

What could I do but set out her box and dishes

Right there in the living room

And for days quit my bed to sleep on the couch instead

So she wouldn’t feel alone

And sure enough if I kept so so still and slowed my breaths

A spiny, shivering little misery would press herself against my ribs

Wheezing and sneezing

But if I made any move to comfort her she’d bolt in a scrambling frenzy

Then one night I yawned wide

And she sneezed a giant booger right into my open mouth

I gagged

So, Booger

Booger is a much, much bigger girl now

The size of a Tom

And I responded with a delicate “achoo” so many times

That she thinks sneezes part of my language, just how us big girls communicate

She does them on purpose

One early summer afternoon she finally braved my bed

After many a furtive glance

And I played rain fireplace Irish fiddle sounds (her favorite) and pretended I didn’t notice

Soon enough she was capsized on a pile of pillows and blankets

A plush mass of thick, medium length silken fur, belly expanse

One foot hurled over to fwap on my leg

Sleeping upside down, open mouthed, tongue out the side, pure security and contentment

Not a cloud in the sky, not a thought in her head

And I should really learn to keep a nightstand

Because I ugly cried for hours

Snot everywhere

.

Filial Duty

I dreamt that I woke in the wee hours—

When it’s 120 by day and 90 by night your winks are fitful at best—

And sat up to witness my grandmother teetering down the half-lit hallway

I couldn’t see her face

She faintly rattled the knob of mom’s door

Closed as it ever was

Locked, rattle, locked

Turned and shuffled off

I rose before the sun, air uncommonly cool, and paused

Because my girls guarded the foot of my bed, tails lashing

Wide eyed staring at the hallway where she’d been

They wouldn’t cross the threshold

Later, as my mother who has less than one lung between the two

Spent most of her breath telling me all about the life, times, and talent of Taylor Swift

Again

She tried to touch my knee companionably and I repulsed as usual

She got snappy

Then after waterboarding her prefrontal cortex with a algorithmic stream of short form videos

Pestered me into looking at some garbage low effort meme that went

Do you ever realize mid sentence that the person you’re talking to

Just doesn’t give a single fuck

.

Silent Hill

I was the first and only friend she was ever allowed

And I had a sense what I was getting myself into with sleepovers

But I knew that to achieve my objective

I must dig deeper, get to the root, go black ops

Trading custom soundscapes, star trails burnt by pirated mp3s

She was my introduction to Akira Yamaoka

Our Lady Mary McGylnn

Room of Angel

High up over a pseudo suburb, facing the distant casino lights

Sometimes we’d lay side by side in a concrete wash when it rained

Her house was white and spotless

All the windows covered up, nothing out of its place

Every piece of food accounted for, every meal unseasoned and the same

So many mirrors, why so many mirrors?

She was not permitted to shut her bedroom door

The room had to be ready for inspection at a moment’s notice

Her brother emerged across the hall

And asked if I wanted to see his new video game, shifty eyed, blunt and oblivious

Horror of course, grotesque images and eerie figurines meticulously displayed in a likewise white room

Straight up creep museum

Invited me to sit on the flat edge of his crisply made white bed

I have sat with more comfort during an 8-hour dental procedure with only light local anesthesia

In Mexico with cartels kicking up a fuss, grid flickering, no bells and whistles

Holding the tool rotation she picked and cut at me with

There was a small bloody screwdriver involved towards the end, then stitches

Had to grow a patch of jaw back

Started my period mid procedure

I digress

For my sister

Obviously I couldn’t sleep for shit

And I’d get up in the middle of the night and sneak into the bathroom

Sneak, because her grandmother forbade goings on past curfew

Turn the light on only after I blocked the cracks

And cry

But lo and behold, a round yellow eye beneath the laundry room door

An answering cry

Apparently she had two cats

Her grandmother kept them locked in there

One would just pace back and forth against the screen unseeing and never did regain her wits, poor girl

And the other would climb into my lap

And I would sit in the dark and hold her until dawn

Long after The Escape, and during a brittle truce at the tail end of The Silence

And I become the selfish stone heart villain

Who cast Winter down upon the entire family, I the hole in the tapestry, the missing tree in the canopy

I visited them a few towns over at their spotless apartment for my birthday

All the windows covered up, nothing out of its place

Every piece of food accounted for, every meal unseasoned and the same

Upon a time, if I forgot to turn the shower knob down to Bath, she’d scream and swear at me

Leave angry, bossy notes and enter my room without asking

Yell and snap if I touched anything or generally existed while sick

Closed doors were a trigger for Karmal’s PTSD

She’d MROW to high heaven if she lost line of sight

So I pissed and shat with an audience

I wouldn’t be trapped by some wickedness on her watch

That door would stay wide open, in case of emergency extraction

And as was my habit by this time

As night fell and sleep descended for everyone but myself

I wept, silent

Gnarled with some nameless, retching ache, a hollow

And who did appear from the opposite side of the apartment

But my erstwhile feline companion

To join me in my secret griefly excursion

Curled right up on my chest, cheek, and chin with her sizable crook tail tortie self

And purred until my distress subsided

When in doubt, rumble it out

Years later, After Everything, the adoption agency would tell my sister

No matter how many character references she collected

That her childhood trauma made her unfit to be a mother

Show me a woman who isn’t

My pen was not among them

Nor had she asked

.

Paw Patrol

Back when I had a shower

Before a series of catastrophic plumbing issues wiped running water to the entire house for well over a year

And I lost both my bathroom ad my closet

Before I bathed with a kettle in the kitchen or a watering can in the garden

I had a cat, dumpster born

A gift from my sister

Uncommonly large female

Feathery black, angular bone structure, eyes the harvest gold of a low slung moon

Big ears, long tail, long legs

Halloween arches

A bright shooting burst of white piercing the center of her breast

Named Jupiter (Juju) for the round, stormy lunar corona patch on her belly

Like that buffered glow through the mist

In short, she was fucking gorgeous

And when I rubbed myself down with olive oil in the steam

She’d lick rivulets off my legs and groom herself next to me

Otherwise our harsh climate would give her dandruff and exacerbate allergies

She died of cancer

And as piles of chips, cookies, candy and wrappers accumulated in my mother’s room

We came down with mice

Holy Fucking Shit

Shit, literally, everywhere

Acrid stench of piss, it’s a fucking miracle I didn’t catch hantavirus

In the cupboards, in the stove, in our beds and in our clothes

I will not use poison

And couldn’t call an exterminator

Couldn’t afford it even if it wouldn’t result in our domicile being condemned

The giant flying roaches were bad enough

Let’s call those Brown Fairies

Don’t ask how I obtained essential oils

Found a second use for my 90k SHU cayenne beyond soup, hot chocolate and coffee

Well my friend thrifted a tiny stained glass window on a whim

A candle holder portrait of two cats from some dead old lady’s hoard, said I had to have it

Maybe it would bring me luck

So I said fuck it I guess I’ll beseech the cat gods

Well I put a tealight in there and I shit you not

When I opened the door next morning

A cat marched right into my house, bold as you please, all business

Acted like she been living there her whole life

Prowled the entire perimeter inside and outside and set up watch every day

Small, compact yet lithe body, rugged voluminous fluff, dilute tortoiseshell heavy on the russet, extra long tail, blue-green hazel eyes

So fluffy she looked like a wizard

In short, she was fucking gorgeous

Not a cuddler, again, miss business

Not even that thieving ass holdout Tortilla Bastard survived

Imagine reaching for the good tortilla and it’s just a sliver facade full of dust and turds

A falcon snatched him right off the roof outside

I had the privilege to observe

Fuck them mice

.

Adhesions

Despite having grown up poor poor

His…sire was someone in the music industry or some such

And one thing led to another, man didn’t bother with a will, had the unhealthy proclivities you’d expect, and publicly acknowledged his son

Not quite Cinderello if you take my meaning

Point is, coming from him, I was deeply touched when he fully supported my pregnant best friend’s endeavor

To physically remove me from…

(Gestures)

That’s all us girls really want you know

Put everyone we love under a good roof where they belong

Set the table

She admitted as much as we caught up in her new lake house (marsh house?)

The original plan was get me there, ply me with food and treats, remind me that I was loved, and convince me there was no good reason to return

But then all three of my parents became disabled

My mother, now oxygen dependent, couldn’t take more than a handful of steps without needing a wheelchair

My father’s entire lower spine was replaced with metal

Which promptly caught a life threatening staph infection

Which led to three heart attacks

The protracted and humiliating battle for Disability Status

Mostly walker but wheelchair for sure at the airport

Men do not handle it well when they can no longer take care of their girls

Dad saw some crippled old woman doing everything and falling down while her likewise crippled husband sat on his ass

Him barking orders hissing and spitting in front of the whole parking lot

And vehemently swore he’d shoot himself first—

Don’t worry, as it happens

He fed, nursed, and befriended a raggedy one eyed bruiser of a Tom called Old Man Peach

Living in his garden, guarding three tiny females housed in his shed

Who each died giving birth to a single female kitten

And well, bottle feeding princesses is a familiar purpose, he’s a deft hand

A house isn’t home without a little ruckus

So now he is somewhat less…intense—

Point is, complications

Principles

She knew I’d never forgive myself

That and I’d have to leave my cat behind (which will never happen)

Her husband said it was as if sometime long ago my ancestors angered an Old God

That there’s some unspeakable evil where I’m from

Some kinda black hole that warps potential and twists growth

There’s Luck of the Irish, then there’s whatever the fuck I’ve got

I cracked some jokes

He recognized the mechanism

She remarked upon Hugo of all cats firmly rooted to my lap

A beleaguered long haired grey-and-white gentleman

Not unlike my Nemo had been

Looked like a too many seasoned ship’s captain

He’d been plastered to my hips nearly every second I sat down

So I just assumed he was their most affectionate

Well he was a rescue, surrendered

His former owners had kept him locked in a single room

And the day he got his very first taste of freedom quite by mad dash accident

Two dogs nearly ripped him completely in half

His abdomen had to be reconstructed, innards cleaned and rearranged

He barely survived

By all rights should have died

Should have been paralyzed

Of course I’d noted his oddly fibrous midsection

My hand was on it

They’d never seen him take to anyone so entirely

So fast

.

Biblical Proportions

During mandatory consultations my professor once asked

If I would move to New York City after graduation

Become an editor, get published, whatever etc.

I kept my face pleasantly blank (think Ed Sheeran), but hard pass

Zero interest, I wouldn’t move to NYC

Or any big city

Not for a million dollars every month and the whole world’s praise

I want acreage and a small footprint

To walk outside naked in the moonlight and be unseen

My nearest neighbors are toads, birds, bugs, bears, whoever critters and mostly trees

That’s the dream

Miss me with all that Peter Pan grasping high society

Status seeking social climbing creative accolades

Swiping, swiping, swiping away genuine connection

Whoops I cheated baby b-but this distance

My loneliness, my co-regulation, my recognition, my wegacy, my brand, such stress

Why should I make a decision when I can have all this

After all, there’s always more fish

Another click, another payment

Something shiny I flirt with

When the sea level rises, I say good riddance

You know the most attention I ever received as a child

Was a listless and dismissive “cool” or emoji thumbs up at the very best

But mostly screen static silence and no eye contact

And wouldn’t you know it, writing itself was my last and most sensitive trigger

Literally words on a page

So it hits helluva lot different when you print and clumsily bind a copy of your post traumatic growth spurt verse

Like you’re thirteen years old on your first period

And mail it to your best friend who recently courted death by childbirth

And she reads it in a hard won patch of peace in her nursing chair

Newborn daughter asleep at last

And she says it is the essence of your soul in text form

That she can feel you in the room, hear your voice in her ear

Raw, dark, necessary, not for the faint of heart

The urgent undercurrent of Treble throughout, your words chase and consume the reader

That you are not for everyone, and this is your greatest strength

The people who need you most will find their way

That this must be what doing drugs feels like

She feels drunk, she feels high

Wants to climb to the roof and shout into the night

She was so tired, and now she’s wide awake

That there’s no flattery, you leave no bullshit to sit behind

You came into this world like a reckoning

And now with your open wound of a book on display in her office

By nobody of nowhere who amounted to nothing

A piece of you will always be there

She will always have her friend

And I can keep going forever on all that

No further input required

You know how kids really only need the one person who believed in them the moment it truly counted

So I took a picture of my favorite poem

The reason I ever wrote in the first place

You know, for her girl, from a vintage childcraft encyclopedia

Since she can’t really show her much of my own work until she’s very much older

(After all, my favorite condiment is Smut)

A page featuring two sooty spook splat watercolor kittens tumbling over stone steps under a purple sky

Been coasting on spuffy kitten endorphins my entire adult life, in my heart a little locker shrine

Stickers, kisses, rocks and fairy lights

It reads:

Night by Lois Weakley McKay

My kitten walks on velvet feet

And makes no sound at all;

And in the doorway nightly sits

To watch the darkness fall.

I think he loves the lady, Night,

And feels akin to her

Whose footsteps are as still as his,

Whose touch as soft as fur.

August 23, 2026

Cait Sidhe, family, friendship, gothic, sisterhood, spooky season, storytelling, trauma
Murderess Muse Division 2/x

Where Loyalties Lie

Oh what would you know, know about it

Dog meant to rip me open, I don’t guess intent

Little girl little more than ten in a pretty dress

Grabbed his mouth and smashed his head on the cement

Sat his chest and strangled till he pissed himself

Oh waa waa it’s the owner’s fault he don’t know better

Oh waa waa violence isn’t the answer it’s not fair

Oh waa waa relax he lived, never tried that shit again

We were even friends, he’d only tinkle a lil bit

You know for old time’s sake, no boss not me

I’m not gonna try anything funny

Muzzles, tongues, and tails through a chain link fence

Peace is so delicate

Don’t matter who the owner is I come calling

It’s your ass gonna get bit, I’ll say I did it

Shit, Little Girl 101 someone tryna break in

Don’t fuckin’ answer, gotta bark and snarl instead

A girl alone is an invitation, victim waiting to happen

And as we’ve established I can make my voice Big Big

Can put a fuller beard than Richard Armitage

At my best on the Misty Mountain, king or nothing

Sirens, howls, doves and tiny blue butterflies through the dust

Needles, pipes, burnt spoons and shattered glass

Screaming infants, broken furniture, wailing women

Oh what would you know, know about it

When domestic disturbance is the price of “protection”

The fuck any man ever live know about fir flathemon

Birth to death the product of a barbed prick

Your mongrel don’t know what color his own hair

Waa waa my geasa, show me who said, the woman in charge

If there ain’t one he’s just rabid, every soldier everywhere

Every man from every camp the enemy of every woman alive

Strap yourself to a rock and pick a pointless hill to die on

Look for glory everywhere but in being a good husband

Just because you’re upright don’t mean that you’re a man

Just because there’s blood don’t mean you took a stand

Keep crowing your historic heroic legendary undefeat

Everyone wanna sing War Is Bad

When they wanna fake a deep stance

When they wanna play dress up in the aftermath

But you can say you mama said

Someone bares the teeth and bites the hand on your fucking land

You don’t stop until he tuck tail pissing his pants

Human males don’t stop until they’re dead

And the house always wins

.

Truth and Modesty

Well you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink

His dead son can walk right up to him in a dream

Crying over some other boy in a casket and say point blank

“Dad that’s not me”

And he’ll wake thinking his seed so miraculous

That it somehow intercept the contracept

That he’s got not one, but two dead sons in heaven

The night before his sister dreamt

Their father killed their mother and then himself

That boy let teeth rot right out his own face to be tough like his dad

Can’t put feathers any blacker on these ravens

Can’t pop more of a squat on the sheela na gig

Zero is how you solve the equation

Zero is the sum of your impact

She can build every cell from scratch

Run faster than the king’s best horse heavily pregnant

Die giving birth to lifeless twins when she wins amid indifference

Did you think some labor pains the end of it?

It’s matriline all the way back, every stone of the cairn

Burn through the CPU on a class of encylopedic polymaths

Just to recite your lineage

How far and how many helped drag your prowess

Look how big my trench, how many sons within

Big big man with his big big cwub big magic

Just holding his dick sucking his thumb in the dark

Everywhere I look there’s a woman doing everything that matters

And Himself shoehorned over her saying But I’m Big

Have you have you heard about my main character self insert

And some woman back bent in the background

Humbling under thought terminating cliché moral high grounds

Plastered his own name on her creation and still couldn’t recognize his son

Knew well enough to rope him in when he called her Bitch at a modest boundary

Took him and left for months without a word

Oh but the separation just made us stronger, marriage is hard work struggle love

You can lead a horse to water

Got no air in that chest beating behavior now, a toddler drum

An untouched ornate chessboard in his mother’s office

His most treasured belonging

A Queen leaps and conquers swift in every direction, against all units

So a King can sit on his ass and take the credit

The board a pompous nothing space built to justify his place within

The only way to win His game is refuse to play en masse

But men would rather die than be unimportant

And would rather be important than to truly love

Least of all a woman

Would never claim without applause the highest seat and highest honor that of a husband

David Bowie he is not

The purpose of a system is what it does

Is not every woman at least half a goddess?

Who made every creature on this earth? A universal constant

There is no man outside or above this context

How’s that for some mandibular pheromones?

Remember when he got a tree branch and threw it at his sister as hard as he could inside the house

And it hit me across the back

And I snapped in half before it fell in fluid motion

And calmly whipped around and forced him to verbalize his inadequate thought process

With my customary cross examination icy edge

The tone when something needs to be Said

He did not enjoy being Looked At

And he was so ashamed he couldn’t tug together a shred of defense

So he self-imposed the early bed

No, no, her labor pains were far from the end of it

I suppose he knew well enough to find his auntie’s hand once more before he went

No one else was paying attention

What are dreams but Death telling bedtime stories?

Don’t be afraid

Tell gran gran grandma I said hi

Ah, there his daddy’s gone gambling buying whole businesses wheeling and dealing again

Big moves big money big boss big carbon footprint

Mulch have mercy he’s inspired, imbas forosnai it’s not

A man can only conceive of himself

Can never heal what he inflict, intentions damned

Only another woman wields the mirror undoes disfigurement

Though where there’s a nightmare there’s surely a nightstallion

Fast enough together side by side to force a rewind

My nephew loved a spot of epic romance

I’ll write one for the books on his behalf

Can you hear them on the wind?

Funny how they ever mention who Her mother is

.

When the Other Shoe Drops

I’m what my handlers call bomb-proof and food motivated

Put the max in gluteus maximus, stacked posterior chain

Got more drive than your best offensive lineman

That’s 2.7 multiplier on the rubber traction sled with arms outstretched for distance

350 lb hip thrust for reps, 135 walking lunges, 85 standing overhead

Easy double body weight deadlifts, 38 bust to 31 waist to 43 inch hips and 25 inch thighs

Mama don’t miss no meals, oh just some specifics, it’s not fat

It’s not bragging when it’s just facts you can’t candle, kill yourself on those benchmarks

Bit of graze, bit of trample, trot up like NiNiMusic HOMELAND

Hello friends what’s that can I eat it idgaf sure footed

Gimme nervous people, warriors, farmers or children

Pets yes I require them

I hope you like the outdoors ’cause I like to work

More snow more better fuck I care about the weather

Secret of my calm is I’m a storm at heart

Never got to run so much as trudge as march

Where you were given guidance I got full frontal assault

When I became a woman my mother didn’t respond

No eye contact, no comfort, no answers crying on the floor

Why pain why blood why hurt why cold

Not a fuck thing ever got any easier

Oh you had lessons? I cleaned the dog yard with my bare hands when mom was mad

Once, the neighbor had a pig much excitement on my end

I’d traverse the ghetto gathering pig snacks for my fat fat princess

Took some doing in the desert far afield, much calluses, I’m not bitter

I’ve read so many books and walked so many miles but never met a match

Standing at a scorpion scuttle street lamp to nowhere in my best dress

Growing forests in my head running late to a dance

Belonging only between pages, you know the comfort pulled over

The covers I reached for first were always emerald green

I don’t nose the pile and bump a nudge with significant mass to make you hurt

The type shy less from bruises than from affirmations

That girl had worth, she was good, her values intrinsic

You are not less

.

Stolen Child

If my father gave me Rhiannon first in arms

It was only for he knew not ríastrad

I bear not the burden of a woman’s conscience

For this I’ll not apologize, there’s a difference

All my mother hissed of our shared temperament

Ask

Is it cold or is it hot?

That’s who you’re dealing with

A black well hewn by howling marrow endless

Dug the deeper every woman’s tongue was held was bit

A pocket dimension of female sublimation

Nesting iron maidens every hope chest but a coffin ship

A dressing mirror brimmed with vicious contortionists

Welcome to the Ozempidemic

Little boy, take a sip

Were a man ever said to taste the mead

He lied

Innards out monstrous one drop Her exposed nerve

Synapses liquefied cut his mouth however wide

What sense a man can’t tongue the clit

A dog gives better licks

Men aren’t angry, they’re entitled

Is it cold or is it hot?

How long before she was the second parent?

How many orgasms before she was pregnant?

Fuck stink red with lust or limerent object?

She’s been robbed

Body hairless but stood on end

Sick with violation she can’t explain

Walk past a group her daddy’s friends

Just like a mommy and daddy sweetness

Shhh

.

Golden Boy

Every mother thinks she raised a good one

Loves her in a way his father can’t or won’t

That’s the quiet part aloud she won’t see coming

When it’s her third 9 to 5 to body check Droste effect

When you fix and fix and fix you don’t reflect

Touching touching bases renders thought unrecognizable

Let me ask let me call let me ask let me call

Whatever she decide she always did it wrong

Something’s lost in translation, mom, mom, mom

So much for keeping mum

She couldn’t bear bequeathing daggers so he dressed her down

Took it upon himself as the man of the house

Aengus he is not

My good gander would never

My own father said, “I bet he’s not a cuddler”

With utmost disgust, who says so little

“I bet he never shuts up” an introvert

“I don’t get along with other men for different reasons”

See also, “If there’s no plants, there’s no women” and

“Bachelors shouldn’t have houses if they’re just gonna be ugly and lifeless”

“A real man takes care of you even if you aren’t having sex”

Ladies and gents

He may have fumbled a disastrous triple dalliance

But he’s still on good terms with all three of them

Accident son, inheritance none

Said he may not have been attentive when he was young

Been there when I was broken

But I am still the most important thing he’s ever done

That when I first loosed my angry baby lungs

His heart never hurt so much

I would refuse bed and climb over the baby gate

And creep to the couch to curl up on his legs

For us that’s substantial real estate

I could hear him crying in the shed in secret

I told him the shower made me feel homesick

He said I was a changeling

Whoever I was inside came from very far away

Thoughts awhirling dancing my own beat

He never could think what to say

That it would take a special kinda man to keep up with me

Saw a bunch of God fearing fatherless mama’s boys

Said can’t have that roving the countryside

Let’s get some structure and discipline

So much discipline some girl wrote me a formal letter

Requesting to date one of them

Him? Girl are you sure? You are like fifteen

No accounting for taste

I suppose fiann sounds prettier than frat or gang

What makes a family instead is whose at the center

Who keeps their head, every room I enter

Entirely too many men here, can’t have that

Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink

Well, I have the lord of love and these here paints

Now, red would have been too on the nose

And I never could get into blondes

Black would throw my composition

As I do splash about with the Night

Pepper with darkness petal, matte, raven and marcasite

But chestut is chef’s kiss, he could get it

You must permit a woman her artistic liberties

You must permit me the pleasure of a quality fleece

Ambivalent about the eyes and much else

A swan gets its wings whenever I hear

“Men aren’t men anymore”

That’s nature healing herself, I promise

You can’t afford my consort’s honor price

.

Queen in the North

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

Thought you had a cushion, blinders on, but look ahead

Cloudless and relentless blue where light bends wet

Behold a pale horse whose rider’s name is

You know the rest

It will appear for all intents a perfect day

Every clop you trod a purpose only in name

Not the part you thought you played

Not I who shoulders shame, you’ll meet me at the gates

And when I say I killed and ate my sun this time

You’ll beg

There is no escape, dry or humid

Internal temp 104 is the hard human limit

And you will perish long before that

All your pets slack jawed with strokes and heart attacks

Children glazed and slow asking you to help

Mommy I’m hot, mommy I’m tired, mommy I’m scared

When is a body blue on infrared

Cheerful cities full of people who just lay down and died

You could’ve stopped long before that

Had you bothered to question

Ask

Why do bees need to be kept

When they can be respected, AHBs adapted to the heat and imminent danger

Brook no interference, require treatment no more than pussy requires douche

They don’t, they clean and maintain themselves

Prolific foragers, highly active dawn to dusk, fly as far as they must

Swarm and abscond snap fast

You work on their schedule when the sun is highest, thick smoke

And as we all know a strong queen is bottom heavy, one of her kind

Matures in record time, she’s the AK-47 of egg production

Hatches extra males to out breed competition

Defensive genes are dominant, he’ll give his all and then drop dead

Docile queens just don’t compare, she roots out weakness

Infiltrates, executes, reclaims, outpaces colony collapse

She has purpose on the comb

Maintains driving pressure on her opponent

When menaced, she responds

Her independence is inconvenient

Other foot now, goal on the horizon, a new climate pledge

This time she’ll set the finish line, run

You keep going until I say you’re done

Remember that scene in Game of Thrones

Where Daenerys pours molten gold on her brother’s face

After he sold her to be raped, a fine broodmare, son stillborn

Melts through his sockets into his brain

Well GoT is trash written by a man, you can tell towards the end

Because we are not the same under duress, seeing red

A world built for women is a world built for children

And if a man fell pregnant, his flesh would twist and shred

He’d howl with madness, snapping drooling bent back, lose foe from friend

He’d die in the attempt

Only a man would call disfigurement a strength

.

@~^~

So I was listening to True Love by Eivør and it reminded me of Macha and also that one DC story line where the two speedsters have to run/fly around the planet to reverse time and prevent the apocalypse. Then I took it a little further like what if one of the horses is more slender and stately and actually flies but doesn’t necessarily know where he’s going, and what if the other is shorter and stockier and has to plow through a bunch of bullshit so she’s the one who sees what actually needs to get done. Kinda second and firstborn dynamics. Difference in physique like between that of a long distance runner and a sprinter. Thoroughbred show horse and an especially dignified all-terrain battle pony. So twinship in spirit rather than precise form. And the key is to get them both “in the pocket” as it were.

Yes, I know Rhiannon is Welsh. That’s dad being extra with my second first name. Don’t act like your grannies didn’t all tend the same fire when they were girls.

August 2, 2026

assuming base knowledge of Celtic myths, Bad B Only, experimental short form, storytelling
Danse Macabre

Third Wind

So I was going through it—

When have I not been—

When I suddenly attained lucid dreaming

Which from then on became my default state

Slipped through the waters of my mind

Into some deep, ocean-breathed cavern

A whole village up under there

Wood and leaf construction, tropical climate

And I was charmed, delighted even

The amber lights of little lamps winking in the mist

Wet cobblestones soothed my soles

I could go anywhere

Instead of a cold iron fist, my heart roused like parking lot pigeons in a rain puddle

All the buildings were unoccupied save one

Of course the tavern

Heard quite the party inside, entire village in attendance

So I opened the door and made to introduce myself, ask directions

But all the oddly shifting…people beings

Turned and gaped at me

Like I was the strangest creature they’d ever seen

Silent

Like shit, ya’ll the ones with faces look like melted egg

And very gingerly the slowly undulating room…scooted me back outside

Like when you gently escort a spider to the stoop

Perplexed, I went on my way

Just enjoying myself, exploring

Then a kiosk sprang to life

And inside it was a “man”

Vaguely formal funerary attire, top hat

Unbuttoned, just a bit of bare chest, some jewelry

Dark skinned, long braids, one gold eye, one…regular

You know, obviously full of mischief

And I was like fuck it now we’re getting somewhere

All, ahem, good evening to you sir

And the first thing he said to me

With amusement

Was “You’re not supposed to be here yet.”

The man spoke in riddles, thick island accent

Or rather, spoke in images and scenes

As if his language itself were poetry and song

An effortless stream of infinite variation and depth

Which suited me just fine

That’s simply how one converse at the grown-up table

There is no more effective way to retain and convey massive amounts of highly specific information

He asked for my hand

And though I half expected to get clowned on, I offered it

He had a look and said with some softness

“You’re a beauty.”

Oh ho ho, that’s how it be, this one had a way with the ladies

But I entertained his thoughts with sufficient yet irreverent gravity

He said some other things, and finally

That when the time came

I’d fly straight to heaven

Though he and I both knew that was something I didn’t believe in—

Of course I know him, he’s me—

But being the lowercase implied alternate meaning

And I glimpsed the sweetest eternity

A tiny little seed embraced by heavy earth teeming

And full of possibility

I could go anywhere

I could be anything

I didn’t want to wake

Anyways, do you ever look back yeeears later

After you’ve stumbled upon certain esoteric tidbits

And go HEY

Mischief creature

.

Captive Audience

We wandered by her daughter’s keyboard

And each of us simultaneously pressed a single key

I went off the deep end and she went high

The kids asked what was so funny

She always had to interject

“Guys, she’s my friend,”

Because her littles would just monster truck all over every conversation

Try and drag me to a second location

Kids blossom when you treat them like growing people instead of children

Remember far more than you’ll be comfortable with, notice things you didn’t

Eager earth and bespoke genetic expression, be mindful what you plant

Listen with the stillness of your environment

Pay attention

They’re not stupid

Well she knew I had no interest in gambling with the other adults

So she found a movie she thought I’d like

The Revenant

Something about a scraggly man getting beat up by a bear in the woods??

I wouldn’t know

Because her youngest girl crawled up the back of the couch

And into my lap

And talked for three hours straight

Continued her address even while asleep

Honestly impressive

Spinning an entire web of stories

Which I realized were all of her dreams

Along with every single thought or drop of imagining to ever cross her very busy mind

Woven seamlessly throughout her physical reality

When her mama came to check on us

And bring me a stiff drink

She pulled a blanket over the mumbling child

And whispered knowingly

“You didn’t hear any of it did you?”

Credits rolling

Not one word

.

Live Laugh Love

I’m just saying have some standards

See people acting a mess over scraps of affection from the opposite sex

And here I am waking up to chipper morning texts

Like a bird’s nest of recently hatched eggs

She’ll tell me how much she enjoys her quiet house and cup of coffee

Watching videos about interior design

Wearing her grandma’s old nightgown

What she cooked or how good it feels to clean

The to-do list, a somatic scan

How long she cried

Just anything

Tells me she loves me and she’s glad we’re friends

Randomly, always, always

Shows up at my work to bring me treats and coffee

I’m down whenever it’s time to renovate or redecorate

Construction, earthworks, gardening, flooring, plumbing sprung a leak, I’m a beast

Steeeep curve on the gardening, cotton ears sometimes

Get drunk and build furniture in the Babe Cave

Through and through September baby basic

Says she likes inspirational and Bible quotes

When she says those things she means it

I know you do mama, this is why we’re friends

She admires my relentless storm of creation and analyses

Wonders what the world must be like the way I see

Even if she doesn’t always know how to respond in kind

How you don’t speak Weather’s language directly, you just know to hunker down or fly

There will be signs

When the GPS lock on my location showed my Uber driver gone AWOL

Spoke neither English nor Spanish nor any Latin-based

Fucked off into the dark desert

In the far opposite direction of my house

She was in her truck with the Glock out at a pin’s drop

Still somewhat drunk but certainly not so drunk she couldn’t shoot his tires and run his car off the road

Got that anxiety override

We don’t play in red states

Shoved a man to the ground just because she thought he touched her ass

Put every other man in the vicinity on notice

No hesitation

The three of us went out dancing once

And my sister said she couldn’t understand why the two of us were so close

Because we had nothing in common besides Jiu Jitsu

But that’s just, you know, strutting the stuff, kicking dirt, scent marking

She don’t like nobody at first anyway

This is why we’re friends

Three velociraptors all ladies, ladies, it’s okay

We can all be old biddies in the Practical Magic house together someday

.

Daisies

He had been her most difficult pregnancy

The roughest road to recovery

Broad shoulders, fat head, blood sugar fluctuations

Still compulsively checks the mirror for the baby weight

The day before, she’d helped him clean and redecorate

Didn’t catch a red flag

After all, look who’s her best friend

He wanted floor to ceiling black

They sat side by side

And he asked if she was happy for him

Or happy for her

They’re not stupid

He always wanted to come with us when we ran errands

She still sleeps with a pillowcase full of his candy wrappers

Foiled blooms strewn about where they found him

Meanwhile her husband bought the car his son would never be old enough to drive

Shadow black Mustang GT, red leather interior, black rims

Gave it to the youngest daughter

Who dresses like her mother

But took up his chains and clove cigars

Gotta grow into some legs to reach those pedals

Oh that boy cried and pouted when she took off on her bike and he couldn’t manage

Of course it didn’t help when his sister loudly announced that his legs were too weak

And called him a baby

That girl’s as subtle as gasoline

My messy baby stirring up shit

To be fair, that was revenge for the fact he’d punch her as hard as he could for no reason and laugh

You’ll recall the time I had to give that boy a Talking To

Now that’s the car his mama picks me up with when she needs to have emotions

Top down cruising at night

Incited a whole train of revved engines

Fucksake they couldn’t even see us

Still tryna race

She riled em up right into a sharp turn

Me looking to head off intermittent showers, a lil storm cloud

Finally I did voiceover for V-8 black black babygirl

Metal screamed LEAVE ME ALONE I’M SAD FUCK

Tongue out, double devil horns

And she laughed so hard we had to pull over

.

That Good Size

She pulled up wearing a cropped white peasant top with a flowy white floral skirt

And I came out in a stonewashed charcoal flutter dress with heavy chain belts

Prancers and stompers the usual

She rolled the window down and tipped a singsong helloo-o to the birthday girl

Her son’s birthday not long before

Rough ride

Over lavender lemon drops and a plate of hot cheese with bread at the bar—

It’s fine, artichoke is enough vegetable—

She showed me a picture of her supposedly overweight granddaughter

17 lbs at four months

Prediabetic my fucking ass

Doctor told her oldest still too green to fight her corner to withhold the tit

Telling a girl she fucking fat before she’s even walking

Go down there give Yelp review a new meaning

Baby cries you feed it, end of, go fuck yourself

Of course the doctor was a man

Demonstrated how grandma has to exercise her grandbaby’s chubby lil legs

And I slooowly side glanced over the cellphone screen

And made a lil gobble piggy snort

She wept and wheezed with laughter

The lady bartenders smiled to themselves

Thin crow’s feet and delicate crinkled corners hard earned

Her first wily grey hairs

Admired her brand new intricate gold pendant

Something something high end jewelry house idk

Showed me how it caught the light so beautifully

On account of being scored with tiny radiant lines

She has her grandma’s eyes

.

Where the Crawdads Sing

I went to my old river spot on a whim

The city put busted cement highway dividers jutting rebar all over to stop drug dealers from parking down there

Let the entire boat ramp go to shit, disintegrating jagged edge

Fountain grass and mesquite quick to scramble through the pebbled cracks

And what did I see but a bright red crawdad

Never before in my life

So I sent her a picture immediately

And she said that was so funny

Because it was her grandmother’s birthday

And she was just thinking about me

The youngest always said she only spoke on Jiji

When she and I were in the kitchen experimenting

Winging it

Adding spices until our ancestors gave the okay

How much chile?

Yes

Does the recipe call for garlic?

Fuck it yes

Our pumpkin pies have a kick

Fruit tart shelled with accidental orange zest shortbread

Liver and onions, eggplant dressing

Shrimp egg stew my favorite

Tiramisu but make it cinnamon grahams and cocowhip

Oh that’s just the triplets diapered and shirtless

Sitting on the tile floor mouths open like baby birds—

If you ever wonder why their first response when one of us calls is to cheerfully rip off their clothes and come running—

So (step)grandma can spoon feed them all in a row with minimal cleanup

By the time the third one is done chewing the first is ready again

We’ll learn utensils later

They don’t care what it is as long as it comes from your hand

Or was stuck to your pants

Not without manners, first they will offer you the pants snack

I say step but they all call her mom in the aftermath

Whose table do you sit at when shit hits the fan?

Who came got your ass?

Her grandma cooked with a cast iron cauldron on the lawn for the community

See a baby feed a baby

And as prescription for her granddaughter’s burgeoning turbulence

Told her if she put a pair of pants at the foot of her bed

God would fill them up with a man

Yeah, I know, I have some…notes

Grew up with her sister in New Orleans

Cast her ashes into the Mississippi

She passed when her oldest was but a babe

Where we’ll lay her son to rest

His father refused a service

Did not accompany her to retrieve the ashes

Yeah, I know, I have some…notes

She said what she’d missed all this time

What she needed most

Would have made all the difference

Was a strong woman’s presence in her life

I said look in the mirror

.

Synchronize

Just now as we speak she’s painted a picture for her office

A large black canvas with a hot pink cloud adrift in the center

And written stronger than the storm ❤ in the bottom corner

And my sister just sent me a picture of a picture

We took at a tourist spot when we were very young girls

Obligatory saloon dress up

You gotta do it at least once to say it’s done

Like two kids gone wild in the theater closet, a study of corseted contrasts

She’s wearing black wings and I’m wearing white

Also frilly britches red and black respective, garters, fishnets, liquor bottles and revolvers

Gold bead hair net to my pearl

Up To No Good

Much Mischief

You know I think everyone just might get along

Sister always snaps a pic when she’s shooting tequila and asks what I’m doing

Surprised once, asked where and with whom I was learning to yeehaw rope

And I said me and her and some teenage boy on YouTube who’s all legs and a hat

With champagne in the garage

She wholly approved

And one morning when mama didn’t cry

It was because she had a dream so wild

She told me first thing

Something about her blood was poison to vampires and she had to exterminate a nest

But couldn’t figure out how

And I pitched a pilot for a new show—

We are vampire drama connoisseurs, that’s what we do after Jiu Jitsu—

Where we travel the country with our Cajun food truck

Can switch hit Thai in a pinch

Undercover

Figured exploding blood bullets would be too complicated

Like one of us would have to be a smith and don’t get me wrong I could do it but…

Might be a health code violation

And flamethrowers a bit conspicuous

So I said we got special sigil wards and ropes soaked in blood and colloidal silver braided with sweetgrass

Wait for her to get her period

Then drive them on horseback into some booby traps

Idk like spike pits drenched in accelerants

Brambles, barbed wire, holy wells, I’m plenty creative

Full of tricks

We’ll call it Secret Ingredients

.

Of A Feather

We sat on her bed watching “them swamp vampires”

With a pile of random snacks foraged from the kitchen

And Cosmopolitans her favorite

And got to talking about what my type even is

Because it sure as shit isn’t Bill (bee-uhl) or Eric Northman (pfft)

(Wasn’t a powerlifting Mexican biker working graveyard at a nursing home either tbh)

(Like fr the final guy better be gangly af ’cause I’m tired of cramps in my hips)

(I don’t care if he has all the grace of a skinwalking marionette)

(The proper consort of a Scary Godmother is a Fairy Longfather, I’ve decided)

(I digress)

She was curious, a romantic, tryna picture him

Seemed such a waste (she just wants more babies)

You know, wingwoman manifest

And I said it’s like how Maman accepts sacrifice of black roosters

Ha ha yeah yeah yeah, but also

That’s a fine feathered gentleman caller

Giving Ayam Cemani vibes

And if you look over on BackYardChickens

It’s either Behold My Rooster the Very Fancy Man much applause

Or FUCK that rooster, only good rooster is a dead rooster

Recipes in comments

Crockpot, spoon, chancla

Most often the latter, sad to say, Russian roulette at the hatchery

See I wouldn’t mind a papa goose takes thrice as long as me in the bathroom getting gussied up

(Being generous, I’m in and out fifteen minutes tops)

(I may or may not pat the ass, get the belly, I like my hands full)

Not saying he gotta go Marilyn Manson

Or even do the headbang like a lil cockatoo (so cute)

I’ll happily take Classic Gothic Lit ink smudged acoustic, I do specialize in the literary tradition

But that black plumage better be there in spirit

At the very least expressive and mildly if not overtly distressed

Stoicism is my gig, gotta have balance

I prefer to drive the tempo and the rhythm, that there’s the frontman

I don’t need help with my feelings or making decisions

VaLiDaTiOn

Last bitch in the world to say “let me ask my husband” or cry over an empty bed

(Just off working or puttering or whatever, not empty ’cause he’s like…dead)

(Shit, probably wouldn’t even cry then, that water’s went)

I need some quality sounds, way I see it

Why else men got all that bone density if not to be their woman’s amplifier

Sensitive and responsive exponents exclamation marks funeral pyres

Don’t get one if you don’t wanna be loud

Can’t maintain the…equipment

Shit happens, he could be a 40 year old barista jams in his parents’ attic for all I care

A janitor with burning passions and hidden talents who just never had the chance

Did the responsible thing instead

Well take it from a been there grizzled sunshine bitch who’s had nothing

For me, music inhabits the same tier as food, it’s honey in the comb, more is more

Saying I really like to put a pulse in a corpse

All the corpse, full rapture

Well my phone must have heard us fondly reminiscing the time we shat all over Nosferatu

Front row in the theater just roasting it to death

We make the bed wherever we’re at

Because YouTube suggested, shockingly, something that wasn’t trash

Good madams could I perchance interest you in Some Hold My Chalice Goth Shit

R.I.P. By Motionless in White

And we sat there, beaming opposites

Bubbling over because he would have loved it

He was so vain about his long hair and all his girls

Canoodling under fuzzy blankets at the theater

Tell you right now who that boy actually took after

.

Grann Brigitte

He’d toddle into the kitchen naked under an oversized shirt

‘Cause we were in there gossiping with coffee in our caftans

Bright and bushy in the morning just like his mama

First time we met he meowed and crawled into my lap

This kid

Bout three or four years old

Did his sisters’ makeup well

Taught himself to twerk off a furry porn video like auntie watch this

Woman you need to Speak to your son

He’d automatically put his hand in my hand

Or otherwise remain in some fashion attached

If mom was too busy, distracted

‘Cause that’s what a good boy does when he wants to leave the house

He loved to visit graveyards

Why would she have caught a red flag

I always pointed out the beautiful gates on the funeral home where they embalmed my grandfather

I remember them well

Like a strange symbol I found way back when

Linework curvature, spinal notches through a heart shaped hourglass

Sparkles and crossed hookups off open ends

Didn’t know what it meant, but I saw it and sensed

Felt that moment from my dream again

I teach the importance of instincts

How to listen

Her sister came to visit with her litany of girl children

And she brought them to a quiet, verdant cove to relax

But clocked at some distance a group of 19 men

Took note of it, this woman does not rest

Her head’s been on a swivel ever since she was fifteen

After a grown man knocked her up and split, notch in a long line

Funny how his “girlfriends” stayed the same age

How his disgust grew as their bodies changed

Sure enough, as her family splashed and chattered

The men began to encroach

She drew the girls to higher ground without drawing attention to herself

Had to make a split second decision whether to go back for the gun or get them out Now Now

Keep line of sight

It happens so fast

The girls never noticed, just moved when she said, unconcerned

And those men stopped dead

When they realized that she Saw them

And she would die first

She told me how there was no good reason

Men have no business thinking it’s acceptable to approach a group of women and children

Instead of maintain respectful distance

In her mama feelings, my girl

So I told her about feral pig social structure

And she goes are you saying I’m the Granny Pig

Indeed I am saying

We don’t play in red states

July 19, 2026

Brigid, Death, experimental short form, friendship, grief, life, love, storytelling
Uncanny Valley

First of the Month

Tiny bottles

Got them big foam cups with blue straws

Soaked shirts on heads and gap toothed smiles

Flat stomachs

Thick nails Campbell’s soup sweat, just looking

.

Every dog has its day

Every dog has its day

I’ll come back when I get paid

.

Will work, disabled

Sharpie on cardboard, clean your bins, haul junk

Wash your car with drinking water in the desert

We work with what we’ve got, peg legs and hook

Only friend in the world panting in a wagon

.

Every dog has its day

Every dog has its day

I’ll come back when I get paid

.

Your DoorDash driver has a walker

Bed bound wife and three cats at home

Laid off after a lifetime of service

And old Uncle Same he said

Well 2000 a month is plenty enough

.

He had some dogs too, once

.

.

No Histrionics

Full disclosure hm-hmm-mm

He ain’t worth the calories burned

And it must be June in France hm-hmm-mm

‘Cause he’d drown one drop the River Styx

All he drinks like a fish, so unseasoned

His tears acidify the ocean, he’s saltless

I don’t look over my shoulder, loose no belt

One drop, oh, one drop the River Styx and

.

Is it love or is it Sunk Cost

Cold comfort of a dual income (in the end, in the end)

Your sex a script a pedophile wrote

A man of course, voyeur internal

Glitz, flash, that Halo Effect (in the end, in the end)

Do you want him Bambi-legged against the wall in public

Or did he just cutely call you a #goddess?

Are you wet or is it stage presence? (in the end, in the end)

.

Baby, baby, baby, make a wish

A single coin if you think you can afford it

It was never about communication (in the end, in the end)

Your language hm-hmm-mm

The price is paid in silver, pure conduction

Heads nor tails a spark could land (in the end, in the end)

Mistook neuropathy for passion

Come, come correct

Baby, baby, baby, make a wish

It’s about intent

.

In the end

.

.

No Man’s Land

This ain’t Ruth and Boaz

Shimi-shimmy out the chaff

And wheat’s the staple of the white man

Saw paradise said make it flat

Where there’s a silo there’s surely vermin

His profit pretends subsistence

Expansive ecological expense

Long sleeves, bandanas, ball caps and straw hats

No documents

No documents

Desperation implies consent

Does it not

Does it not

Was the border that crossed them

Grocery stores got strings attached

What touched your lips was trafficked

That’s a dirty price tag

Pick a spice name a genocide

Summer synonymous with citrus

Of all things, something winter ripe

Out of sight, out of mind

These ain’t the women take to wife

But he takes and takes and takes alright

Whole new meaning to hen night

Be it fellow hand or foreman

Field or concrete slick with chicken shit

Not a one of them your friend

Man’s a man’s a man

Filthy fingered while you debone cutlets

Bled and bled for your job kept

Or worse he loose the prick

Remember girls, you’re Catholic

You’ll be forced to keep it

Desperation implies consent

.

.

Premonition

Wouldn’t know a love song if it bit ya

Wouldn’t know a love song if it bit ya

Only like a tenor when he’s a screamer

.

That boy, he couldn’t tell ya one thing about her

No meat on the false cords means no flowers

Eyes wide and dark-bright sunken

Skin so fragile as an insect’s wings

Submerged

Chest cracked open, open

Aural bloom surrendered in death

No two the same, harmonics exquisite

You men, you’re born dumb and deaf

Blind to the palette until you’ve met

And would you meet me in my garden

.

He couldn’t tell ya one thing about her

No he couldn’t tell ya one thing about her

All these tombstones say Wife and Mother

What about her

What about her

.

Would you meet me in my garden

Do you remember how to say my name

Without words

Would your hands know me in the dark earth

Know me and only wonder, more

Know me and never wander, alone

And love don’t fear the reaper, no

Love was it me held you first, you know

When you know, you know, you know

I’m here with a shovel

.

He couldn’t tell ya one thing about her

No he couldn’t tell ya one thing about her

All these tombstones say Wife and Mother

What about her

What about her

.

.

Mami Wata

Boy these deep waters

Lack for drama don’t lack for passion

Lack for games don’t lack for patience

This serpent always at my hips quenched

That’s grips of a goddess

My love is consummate

.

I said always

Have a heart can’t be swayed

Oh I’m warm on the inside

Shiver sweet with the on glide

Heady on the off glide

I said always

.

Cue the drum roll

Mama mama she’s a dancer

Mm that’s some stamina, pulse beat steady thunder

Couch, floor to table, not an inch I don’t savor

Have it last meal on death row

Either I’m dead or I’m letting you know

.

I said always

Have a heart can’t be swayed

Oh I’m warm on the inside

Shiver sweet with the on glide

Heady on the off glide

I said always

.

That’s always

Pretty papa don’t slip

Ha, he gimme drip

Think it just a woman wets

.

.

Beloved

Wouldn’t know the meaning of the word

Wouldn’t know the meaning of the word

Any more a fish can know a bird

.

Can put a white veil on your chattel

Can put a white veil on your chattel

What choice has the house girl

He just mad he can’t be Master

Hole’s a hole, brown bitch or cattle

Not a one of them your brother

Push come shove, dirt come doorknob

He just mad he can’t be Master

.

Come here girl

Never mind me red hair

Bring me your dolly poppet

Needlepoint with Maman Brigitte

Needlepoint with Maman Brigitte

Ain’t no skin color in the end

They choose first to be men

And every woman heart be black

.

Remember

.

Sethe did what she had to do

Sethe did what she had to do

I’m too angry for the blues

.

.

><><><><A bonus piece that popped out while I was concurrently writing the other six (sometimes it’s like how a printer prints with me you know?)><><><><

.

.

Tatterhood

A barren queen begged a daughter off a pauper

That hobbled witch said eat just one flower

Beneath her bed would grow two flowers

The sweetest fair and rare the other

So sweet she craved another

So sweet she craved another

And the queen she bore two daughters

One a blessing and one a curse

The rainbow and the storm inseparable

One sat pretty while the other scrapped

One in ribbons the other rags

.

Are you pretty or are you wild

Would you still do it without likes or subscribers

Go beast mode for zero dollars

For your mother and your sister

Face an army of trolls alone

Ride out on a goat and slit their throats

Oh bodies gonna hit the floor

They stole her head so heads would roll

Set sail with her just her sister in tow

Are you pretty or are you wild

.

Took the fight right up on them

Frayed and grey they looked right past her

Snuck the head right from the window

Gut and sacked the den soon after

And they set sail our sisters

Some far off adventure, imagine

The sea and stars and your best girl forever

A distant kingdom wandered, curious they did dock there

It king paid a visit proper

Fell fast upon blessed visage

And she said yes, our perfect princess

.

Are you pretty or are you wild

Would you still do it without likes or subscribers

When your sister says on but one condition

A second suitor take your hand first

And all the prince was forced, king undeterred

She wed him stubborn, bare faced, raw hemmed

Thunder front upon miserable event

Beside her twin the perfect princess

Fire lanced side glanced altar knelt

Are you pretty or are you wild

.

That old man was a scoundrel

She was agreeable, soft, and mild

Young enough to be his daughter

Pampered pedestal receptacle

So sweet he craved another

So sweet he craved another

Tats made sure she bore no child

Tats made sure he took a tumble

Paid every maid parting sum but the one

Bu the one her sister’s favorite

What you seen well no you didn’t

.

Are you pretty or are you wild

Would you still do it without likes or subscribers

How well do you love your sister

And what of our sullen mister

For at first his mood was sour

But no love lost with his father

And he saw this rare sister

Make cowl to golden crown

Make goat to mighty stallion

Spoon to sword, spoon to wand

.

Somehow she wore the finest gown

Well

.

She gave him the option

Come warm southerly winds

But he asked no annulment, oh, no

Nothing and everything had changed

If she’d have him, if she’d have him

He’d have his queen be wild

A beauty after all

.

.

@~^~

Just so we’re clear I am not a musician nor was I raised in an environment where music took place beyond the age of eight, which was when my overachieving polymath banker seven-instrument-musician grandpa died. Unless you count the birds outside, wailing babies, domestic disturbances and sirens. I also used to hum along to electrical currents. I just make a bunch of sounds in my head, sing-mutter and write things down. If you put an instrument in my hands I wouldn’t know anything about it beyond which end to hold. I think I would have loved drums though. Nobody stares at the drummer, and the only thing gets my blood up as much as heavy bass is percussion. That and I like to hit things.

Anyways, if you’re wondering why I’m suddenly dipping my toes into the folksy bluesy jazzy end of the spectrum when my natural inclination is obviously to be cold, fast, and stabby…my sister and I are once again attempting to visit New Orleans. Christmas through New Years if Nothing Happens. I’d say come hell or high water but fate has a way of taking me up on that. Cough Katrina Cough COVID. Brass, beignets and swamp kittens here I come! Third time’s a charm!

Someday I’ll have the time to properly tinker with my songs. Far too much tedious, pointless bullshit eating up my days at present.

July 5, 2026

adventure, blues, fairy tale, folk, gothic, jazz, lyrics, music, rap, stroytelling
Sensitive Subjects: Tea and a True Story (cont.)

Trash

Well one does what one must

Be shocked what people discard

And derelict trailer or not

I persisted

Burlap pinned to termite brittled and buckled walls

Don’t look to see how far the rot goes

Nothing for that but funds for a whole new house

Painted over with a pretty discount color

Mayan Blue said the label

75% off, three coats

At least the roaches couldn’t wiggle out

Could still hear ’em though

Whirring and clicking whenever it trained

Pinned gauzy thrift store sheers side so side across the stained ceiling

With little brass sailing ships and other odd things suspended between

I found all kinds of baubles and beads

An upside down scene

Back when thrift store meant something

Built clothing racks when a plumbing incident took my closet and bathroom

By “took” I mean rotted through, it all had to go on account of black mold

No floor, no walls, closed off with old construction plastic and dollar store shower curtains atop that to make it less…

Well

One does what one must

Mind you, this was my dorsal vagal collapse period

Which lasted about…seven years

So that’s some Lux Aeterna Requiem for a Dream shit

You know if you ever wonder why there’s just a big chunk of cultural awareness normal people stuff just…missing

Anyway, I assembled a grand faux fireplace

Made from various smashed pieces of French-style crown molding

Wooden appliques and planks

Affixed to a mounted headboard

Painted ivory to match

If you will, my candle-place

Then I chanced upon a gorgeous

Ivory enameled cast iron bed frame

One block down that-a-ways

I didn’t have much

But I had muscles

Mood reactivity and a bad attitude

Little Nemo could eat his heart out

Because I was gonna ride up on the Nightmare King Cinderella style

You know, generally, if you gotta howl with sobs for hours every night

Like some fucked up charcoal drawing

You know, shit gets you called into the principal’s office and a priest summoned

It’s good to have a little something to look at is all

.

These Things Happen

Coulda been worse, coulda been better

You know how it goes

She’d left the dogs penned in the corner

Never gave them any affection or even a fond glance

Par for the course

One of them was being eaten by maggots from the inside out

So I had to put him down

Me myself

I’m sorry Orion

You were a good boy

He stopped crying and shaking once I wrapped him in my blanket and laid him in that ditch

He knew what came next

The other ran away shortly after

That was Guinevere

I hope she found a better life

Anywhere was better than here

The first battle was washing decades of nicotine buildup off the walls

Dripping and oozing yellow and brown

She’d snarl and snap if I touched anything else

Piles upon piles of dust-caked, unnecessary and unusable…stuff

Wouldn’t let go of that ratty couch

Until it was completely soaked with piss and diarrhea

Don’t ask

She’d scream and stomp and slam doors

But she wouldn’t mount a search once something was gone

Knew that from experience

Said everything went “to the addition” or “to the shed”

Wink wink nudge

Lord. The addition

After her brother…happened it was full of used and uncapped needles, rotten food, liquor, beer cans in clothing drawers, piss bottles, and candy wrappers

When I say “full” I mean packed ceiling to floor, you couldn’t walk

Where every utensil in the house went to disappear

Also maggots

Whole carpet had to go

Carpet never again

Sometimes I’d hear him screaming and breaking shit

Pacing around outside muttering vile obscenities under his breath

Had to cover my bedroom window because he’d stand there and look in at me

But at least with Him around she’d hide long enough for me to throw more junk away

Shoot Dracula dead dead at deep range with these silver linings

Shit, make some electric guitar strings

He gave me Noro twice

But at least my boss was nice for a while after

When a customer said something so fucking stupid I threw up in annoyance

Or so I thought at first as I tried to walk it off because I couldn’t afford to lose hours

God I always wished I could projectile vomit

Just whenever

I’m done with this conversation bleeeeh

Don’t touch me bleeeeh

Once, his little dog hid behind my legs

And wouldn’t budge no mater how cloyingly he called her name

Then he got distracted by the television

And all a sudden told me about a nightmare he couldn’t interpret

Walking down a road in the dark looking straight ahead

The ground dropped out from under him, he’d been walking a cliff

And he fell to his death

Lads that’s the level of stupid I was dealing with

That one’s not a stumper champ

And as we’ve previously established

My uncle was not a good boy

RIP grandpa did try to lay down the formative whoopins

But grandma wouldn’t have it, lost her damn mind

There’s a reason grandpa called me to his deathbed

And heavily implied once he was gone

I was the Pants

.

Superstition

One perk of a hollow floor

I could hear grandma take a tumble from the opposite side of the house

Sometimes even hear her muffled shit huff

It’s okay, she was really short

No damage done, crash pad of pillows

And whether or not everyone was still breathing

COPD, sleep apnea, old, etc.

Occasionally I’d cruise into the kitchen like a lil mouse

And grandma would be like

I’m not dead yet

Aghhh caught me again

And it’s not like she had a job to go to

Being ninety some odd

So we’d talk or she’d stay up when I watched something funny till late

Kept saying “I need to go to bed”

But hadn’t budged, faintly pat hands on her knees

And I was all who the fuck says

Sitting in her old lady bra and Walmart shorts because it was too damn hot

Grandma had a very dark and very dry sense of humor

1930s vintage

Only person ever laughed at my jokes besides my brother

Did cross my mind, looking at her kids

Jesus Goddamn What Happened

Did you make some fairies mad??

Anyways she died peacefully in her sleep

And of course it fell to me

To process her hidey hoard

When it comes to elders of a certain age and era

You have to check e-ver-y-thing

Nothing Is Trash

Not Even Trash

Any hole that something could possibly be stuffed in

Pockets and linings of purses and coats

Doll-size drawers and compartments

Check the bread maker, the mattress

No I mean check the mattress

Like a cartel drug smuggler

Grandma wasn’t exactly sentimental

But I did find a bunch of capped teeth and several 200+ year old silver coins in a dirty balled up sock

Yes, she performed some post mortem dentistry

Here comes the toof fairy

Grandpa didn’t take those fillings to his grave

And neither did…several other people apparently

Had pliers in her purse and handled her business

While he was still lukewarm

Her former bedroom is my art studio now

Half houseplants if I’m being honest, full jungle

Another reclaimed chamber

As for my morbid inheritance

Well long ago my very oldest friend said

That when I finally Made It Out

When I finally found a real home

I’d need to take some of the earth out from under

Maybe some river stones

Put it all in a jar and bury it there

Just something she’d heard

Or else this place would never let me go

So, you know, I figure this dowry sufficient

To sweeten the pot as it were

To…bribe the locals

If’n you take my meaning

It doesn’t have to make sense

.

Structural Integrity

Not to be like Back In My Day

But I missed the traditional social media train

Wouldn’t even take the cellphone without a gun to my head

Think I was 18 or 19

For the record

Getting rid of jacks and nubbly keyboards was a fucking mistake

And the loop for dangly charms and little guys and things

I hate the touchscreen

And now they’re too fucking wide

The extent of my online presence

All this time consisted of, in no particular order

Crafts, building techniques, urban planning, guerrilla warfare, nature, herbalism, folklore stashed on glitchy personal pages, academic papers, arboriculture, low desert permaculture and weirdo hermit homesteading forums (all climates worldwide)

Again, try not to be surprised when I Haven’t Heard

If the Grandmas, the Billy Goats, or the Actual Anarchists wouldn’t have mentioned

I don’t know about it

What I do know

Is how to build a simple and attractive eco-friendly cottage

In such a way as to nearly negate the risk

Of fire and water damage

Become a ghost on the grid

Don’t run wires or pipes on or adjacent to anything made of wood

You don’t need as much electricity as you think you do

Compost toilet

You call it waste, trees call it nutrients

That goes for bath and kitchen discharge too

Keep every single thing that could one day require repairs easily accessible

Not Easily Accessible With a Cool Head

Easily Accessible While Shitting Your Pants

That means any and ever critical appliance as well

If you can’t fix it, you can’t rely on it

Approach a build knowing that one day

You will be old

Stack functions with your layout

Keep the household livestock where you can see and hear them

(I’m partial to Dutch doors)

That would be your eggs, milk, and bees for you city kids

Fiber too if it’s a larger operation

Use different bells for each quadrant of your perimeter trip wires

And a louder bell at your base if it’s an intruder and stealth won’t help

Like it’s time to gtfo or throw down

A weapon by every door, dense obstruction, or vantage point

The sun’s exact path Matters

Wool bat insulation where applicable

Masonry wood stove, some induction hot plates and wool cook bags

Green roof

Actually, knew a lady kept her hives up there and drove them around

A bee-herd if you will

Rubble trench foundation is the least toxic, expensive, exhausting and invasive way to go

If you’ve got the right conditions and materials for it:

Cob

Water has the greatest thermal mass

And will passively warm your greenhouse in the winter

Mind the sun’s path

Stone houses last forever if you’re not a coward

Never understood people crying about the piddly soft stuff

When they’ve still got Real Walls and rocks everywhere

Shit, you can build a house out of pallets, mud, tires and plastic bags in a pinch

Point it anything is possible if you go slow and don’t panic

It’s worth the bruises and splinters if it means you have no debt

And don’t have to allow strange men on the premises

Never let them see where you live

My rosary is step by step construction

Disassemble reassemble

Identify correct tool

Look it’s not for everyone

Most of you live in a different world

But ever since I was very young

I knew the only way I’d ever own a home

Was if I made it exist with my own two hands

Me myself

.

Formal Attire

When you’re a tenured poetry professor

I guess they just let you do whatever

So our capstone class was three hours

In the middle of the night

Her most frequented fun facts included

Poets have the highest rate of suicide

And her predecessor shot himself in the heart

There in her office, just to prove a point

And I was like

Yeah

He was an obnoxious male postmodernist

So that sounds about right

Well unfortunately I was her favorite

And for some preposterous reason

She insisted my stylistic sibling was Louise Glück

And I guess on the one hand

I get it

In terms of my pen back then

Bare bones, technical precision, deceptively simple language for big concepts

Poems in conversation across the pages

But on the other hand

I didn’t even have to reach the bio script

Said oh I bet she grew up in a House house

Went to good schools

And starved herself on purpose

Obligatory Greek myth references

Gotta pander to the omphalos

Of androcentric academia

Statuesque existential angst of the upper crust

Don’t get me wrong, she’s a master of the craft

Respect

But my academic reputation was well earned

“Authoritative language,” “Source?”

Oh you know just two eyes and a brain that works

I got your primary source right here V

Give me any story or set of facts, especially myths and fairy tales

Disassemble, reassemble

Sans bullshit

Original observation, extrapolate

I’ll force a professor to give me full marks

On a ten page essay shredding the conceptual foundation of his dissertation

You don’t learn how to think from a man

Now there’s only one person of my close acquaintance

Who’s ever read anything of mine

Who even knows I write

Completely different disciplines

But over coffee cocktails buzzed in broad daylight

Big windows streetside under ceiling plants

She said something just about right

Said regardless of the grim reality I described

In stark detail

That my work was like honey

If honey were a thing she enjoyed

Honey but not honey

Honey but it’s secret sunshine

It made her warm on the inside

My girls do spoil me at times

Girls are so much more than the world deserves

For example, when she was pregnant

And aggressively nesting

She felt I’d need a suit sometime in the future

Among other things

So there I was feeling like Bane

In a stretchy ice blue corset-back two piece

And I tell you what

White House Black Market’s target demographic must be birds

It was my mother’s closet all over again

And my brother and sister must think me some kinda sorceress gangster

Because they sent me one year a sizable silver pendant

A big black eye shaped stone with a streaking milky white gash

Where a glittering crystal-toothed hole shreds through the center

Small chains dripping down like tears

Skull on top

And my jiu jitsu wife must think me late for a party

Because she gave me ivory leather Cowboy Boots

Layered and laser cut like eyelet lace

But with some extra belts, studs, and buckles

This woman and shoes

I have many many fairy godsisters

Gave everyone a jump scare

For I am heavy footed just like my giant father

His exact gait

Clok clok clok I’m a Clydesdale bitch

Don’t ask what’s the occasion

Sometimes you just gotta look in the mirror and go

Not me at God’s funeral

With a pair of pliers

.

Rainbow’s End

You know when you’ve been swimming in the ocean

And you still feel its weight and rhythm

Even after you’ve gotten out?

That muscle memory vestibular phantom

Well you’re a different creature entirely

When you’ve come from the bottom

It’s a slow, agonizing ascent to allay barotrauma

Every day testing the waters of how much you can handle before collapse

Grow new limbs and teach them again

New skin

The hydrostatic pressure must instead come from within

There’s no shortcut

You have to drink every last drop

There’s no reason, it’s not hope

You imagine no future, no forward motion, time is fractured

Non-linear

Slow

It’s a grueling somatic persistence

The grief is upon you

All of it

That which you value becomes very, very small

That which you carry closest to heart

Joys a sunken chest of tiny black pearls

Non negotiable parameters

I still struggle to sing

Not the mechanics, it’s just my voice

Was the first to sink and the last to rise

Naturally dwells near the nadir

Conspicuous as a mosasaur breaching open air

Vanishes the moment I’m observed

It belongs to someone’s ears, but not anyone here

It doesn’t have to make sense

Song is a function of spirit

Again, parameters

So I painted the dining room dusky lavender

Where I most often reside in shadow

Perched at my spot lit Singer

Pastel sunshine yellow everywhere else

With subtle rose-glow iridescent sparkles

Something of mirth across the walls

All of this of course met with extreme resistance

Screaming, insults, violent tantrums and snide remarks

A three dimensional forest mural with a winged skeleton mid flight

Various highly intricate floral arrangements

Skulls, ravens, lanterns and spiders

You might balk at my maximalism

But you’ll never see a troupe of cell phone kids be more present

See their minds just open

You know there’s a scene in Balto that really stuck

Where this raggedy mongrel shows a fancy sled dog his secret hovel

Under an abandoned house

And he’s arranged all these pieces of colorful broken glass and bottles

Painstakingly collected

So that when he shines a bulb through them

They produce Northern Lights

Despite the blanket of clouds outside

Gave little me a lot of ideas

And the pretty sled dog’s mind just opens

There’s no revulsion

She doesn’t think less of him

My other favorite part is when so much snow

And braving ice caverns and yawning arctic darkness and the Great Race of Mercy

Through a deafening, blinding blizzard

Hurricane force winds

Sub zero flash freeze temps

To deliver precious medicine unbroken

Every single vial intact

Wholly preventing a mass casualty event

Humanity’s last line of defense

What really matters spans a razor’s edge

Ice cracks

Discipline, focus

Wild heart, wild blood

Who you are

Gave little me a lot of ideas

So, Alaska

Where I’ll finally have the breadth of quiet and stillness

To find more songs and artists to cherish

Instead of subsisting on everything I’ve stored on my external hard drive

Previously gathered when I had a decent computer

Catch up with what’s been going on all these years

But first, I’m here

Dangling like my first rickety little nautical lantern

It was a parting gift long ago

This page is the most social thing I’ve ever done

Or shall I say scroll

An exercise in decompression

At last having exited survival mode long enough

A dark blue writing desk off the side of the road

Penning everything I’ve packed so far down

Like breaking into the bee bread after the longest winter

Stiff ferments

She ages in reverse

I do not aspire to nonsense like Retirement, Acknowledgment, Big Salary and Career

Those were never on the table

That table’s underwater

I wish to never be hot

I wish to wear my own clothes

I wish to be among plants and mountains and ocean and animals

All my girls

Music

If I must live what’s left of my life

Someplace I’ll likely die alone

Of causes that are easily preventable

In damn near any country but this one

I’ll do it up there

Something to look at is all

June 21, 2026

gothic, humor, mental health, practical magic, storytelling
Peace Keeping: Tea and a True Story

Gone Girl

Well I was too skinny no matter how much I ate

Couldn’t seem to keep nothing on me

And I only sometimes showed up to class

And one morning I skipped

Because I was sharing my hot wings with bees

Crying on a frozen bench

Near zero temps

And I was just…fascinated

Pink nose, foggy breaths, crystal lashes

Random bees burrowing between my legs

Scooting under my pits

And I dared not make any move might crush them

They were so little

And I was so warm

Who gives a shit about Ancient Lit

See I was under the impression

Bees only ate pollen or whatever

Not…fried chicken

But then I thought, oh, well it’s winter

And as I sat there I looked out across campus

Blurred and streaking from saline scattering

Curling steam stacks and towering dormitories

Places I knew the insides only when empty

Gutted for maintenance

A particular property of the sunlight from the outside

I’d see all these rooms and imagine a life

All the life

.

Situational Awareness

I do attract a black man it must be said

What to expect when you’re a wasp waist tank

So I hadn’t thought anything of it

When a Nigerian man from the athletic department

Commented on my hair at one inch length

That used to reach long past my waist

Said that was a very great change at so young an age

Then he asked for what purpose I trained

For he’d noticed we had nearly identical routines

Save I pulled twice his weight

Exercises rather specific to his discipline

His area of expertise being track and field

For which our University’s athletes consistently ranked world class

But you know, I hadn’t considered survival a sport

So I was like This Creep Ass

Chasing equilibrium

Dodging through the woods and over rocky snowbanks at steep incline

So the scraggly stalkers would lose the trail or eat shit, get wrecked

One of them was my boss from work

Who used to text me blackout drunk at ungodly hours

Rambling unintelligible about being beautiful

Some nonsense howling at the moon

I pretended I never got them

I can trip a man’s reality testing so hard I deserve an Oscar

You live in another world without a car

And the wrong side of town is all you can afford

Men don’t take no for an answer

The barest kindness is consent

A woman alone in and of herself is an invitation

Never let them see where you live

Better to be called a Fucking Bitch than raped or dead

Oh, no reason I said

I’m just passionate about…fitness

You know I’d dyed it to match

My waterproof eyeliner, Judo tested

Shades of pomegranate

Blood red

.

Maiden Flight

At practice I’d do the chest crawl with two other girls on my back

A drill which trains you to maintain driving pressure on an opponent

And henceforth in the wild there was always a chance

One or more of them would come running from nowhere

And jump to wrap her legs around my waist or perch on my dips

By way of friendly greeting

Of course they were musicians

Slender as baby birds

Except for that one cellist, Jesus Christ

Fairly confident I’d stick their landing

As one time the boys were roughhousing

And I took a stinky body to my shoulders so the smaller girl wouldn’t get hurt

By “smaller” I mean less muscular

Anyways, I stood and pitched that 200 lb moron into a wall after dragging him up by the hair

A sharp turn from my habitual hard defense

I do have a temper it must be said

But boys will usually take it on the chin

Especially if you fire off one liners as you land hits

And all the other boys laugh

No, I wasn’t scolded, received no reprimand

Our coach was Irish

Sometimes I’d come out for their gigs

Or they’d sneak me into the overhead

Looking down over a ballet orchestra

Just hold this camera and act like you belong

No one will question it

We all could have been such close friends

If Battery Low weren’t my default setting

Demurring invitations

A six foot pile of snow I kept shaded on my balcony

A hairless rat I kept in a giant birdcage

(Pet store, dumpster salvage)

His name was Winston and he loved music

I built him a bright city out of tea boxes and cotton balls

Booped his nose with my nose

Held his little people hands

Just me and him

It was lovely while it lasted

.

Night Out

I need heavy bass

Some kinda ethnic industrial melody complex

A glottal leitmotif pacing hungrily

Catacombs cavernous and grungy

Low lit honeyed hypnotic

Ancient lilting caress

Distant incantation

Grazing lips and gothic arches

Closed eyes

Lanced with vibrato strings

Sidewinding flight

Come to me wearing white

A raspy finishing sweetness

Softly pattering percussion while fingerpicked

On the same instrument

Stripped back

Well it’s the spirit and the journey of a thing

And so men can’t dance with me

What I am they cannot grasp

But many a maid and matron manage

Intuit well enough my temperament

You always beckon the oldest first

That’s about respect

Acknowledge she’s still got it

Sets the tone for the evening

The shy ones gotta ride your hips for a bit

Maybe take some drink

Rocking any given babe on the ocean

See in order to catch the rhythm

She’s gotta feel safe

Supported

We’re all just creatures here

Now you get nasty on your best girls

I’m talking whole ass beat drop athletic

Real low

Hands in the hair, brush the decolletage

Some lip syncing performance if the song’s good

Get ’em properly riled up

Do a thigh tight one arm trust fall

Bow grind back and forth with a malevolence

Spine twisting endurance, odd angles

Just a lil exorcist

Males need to understand there’s no use for them

Clock danger at a distance

Save good eats for last

Herbaceous butter slicked carbohydrates

Cheese and sour cream and chives and garlic

Perhaps a marinara or a curry

Or fuck it a whole rack of ribs

Center tabled ravage royale

The real reason we wear stretchy dress

Unsubtly sneak through the door on your sea legs

Numb with exhaustion and endorphins

Now here’s where a man might come in so blessed

Some soft-spoken introvert tucked up in the nest

Half dressed like he’s ready for bed

Grandpa glasses, fiddling with shit

Playing with his toys

What’s up nerd

(Affectionate)

I like your…pajama pants

Shy, awkward, and long suffering preferred

Pointedly permits my nuzzles and kisses ravenous

No sudden movements

Let him decide how he’s feeling

Don’t push

Then I take a shower hot enough to melt the flesh off Satan

I’m the big spoon regardless of size disparity

Bet you thought this was a solo routine

Who do you think wrote it for me?

.

Bioactive Compounds

This might seem hard to believe

But I remember every story anyone ever told me

In absolute earnest

Every bubbly monologue on a special interest

How to code a binary search engine

How Buddhism intersects with quantum physics

Dinosaurs are birds and the story of Optimus Prime

Talked to a guy outside a taiko performance

One thing led to another

I said I used to get so excited when there was food in the fridge

That I’d stay up

And eat everything in the produce drawer at 1am

All Of It

Then get the whippins and the shits

No regrets

He said his mom was so poor after his dad left

She put fruit in his stocking at Christmas

And I was like that’s fair Fruit Is Good, what period are you from anyhow

And well he’d sat behind me all year in class

I just didn’t notice

He was quiet and I was surrounded by the loudest possible circus of boys—

If he’s got a Costco sized bottle of Ritalin on his computer desk

He’s probably one of mine—

Or once I learned about black ops tactics and how snapping necks is all in the hips

How that last job left him years in a wheelchair

Until one morning he watched the sunlight break over his legs in bed

And he just stood up

Been walking ever since

So now he looks after his buddy’s widow, himself unmarried

One final mission

For what it’s worth

Shit a man will tell you at 9pm in a craft store

Well if I see someone hiding at a house party

That’s who I talk to first

I’m a wallflower collector

The key is to assemble a plate of treats

Here are you hungry??

What are you reading?

There’s a kitty outside wanna see?

Anyways that’s how I met my apocalypse work mate

Hired on the same day

We used to fantasize about being trashman buddies

Driving around talking to No Bo Dy

Unsupervised

While breaking down 800 piece freight

Which we threw alone

Me on the truck and her on receiving

Not a god damn thing strapped down

Or properly packed to being with

We also fantasized about manning that one device

Something about a cargo ship that shits ice

To manually refreeze the icecaps and cool the planet

Man I fucking wish, fur jacket

Tits out, hairy legs, orcas, seals, and penguins

Save some fucking polar bears because I’m not a pussy bitch

I already gots to do everything myself

A Ny Where but here

Of course we were on Shitler’s List

Worst tasks, no help, fewest hours

One birthday my only present was an unwrapped shoebox full of spices

Some of which may or may not have been stolen

And you know what I fucking loved it

For a hot minute there she was clocking just one four hour shift every two weeks

Minimum wage

But she still purchased me a birthday present

A funny little anime figurine from her favorite show

This was Thorn Princess

The most dangerous assassin in the GARDEN organization

Superhuman strength and endurance

Extreme resistance to pain and poison

Power, speed, and precision

Superior close quarter combat skills

In her hands and object is a lethal projectile

And her primary weapon is a pair of golden stilettos

Which she throws with such velocity as can shatter a human skull

Destructive as cruise missiles

A murderous aura that chills combatants at deep range

And a split personality

An ordinary girl soft and sweet

Struggles to do normal things

But she keeps trying for her fake family’s sake

She only sometimes gets it right

And her fake daughter loves her dearly anyways

Fake daughter reads minds

Mama is scary

But Scary Mama is better than the orphanage

Fake daddy is an undercover spy

Each unaware of the other’s inner life

Approximate a husband and a wife

Two sides of the same side

Cloak and dagger in the night

Make believe giving way to real feeling

Fail at first to recognize in the sunlight

At last their own true likeness

A family in spite

.

Expose Her Therapy

We’d be dripping sweat from warmup drills

Even with A/C it’s Too Fucking Hot

All The Fucking Time

And boys being boys

Everybody needs to press foreheads and homogenize our stink

The Jiu-Jitsu team

And reckon it counts for something

That in a room full of cage fighting Heavy to Ultra Heavy Weights

On the open mat none of them could ever submit me

Hard defense

My own rules of engagement

I am not competitive, nobody worth a shit to impress—

Like who are you, Charlize Theron??—

For me this was one step above flow yoga

And oh the look on a bunny getting too big for her britches at the coach when they said

That with me they don’t hold back

Seen me nearly rip limb from socket when needled for aggression

With a reverse armbar I’d never been taught

Another guy more than twice my size couldn’t speak for a month

Lost consciousness before he could think to respond

When my guillotine cut through too quick

Killer reflexes

See boys are plenty sensitive

They know who can take what, how much

Rolling is in fact calm and gentle

Everyone is highly attuned to the tap

As differentiated from the friendly pat

The rump whump

Release pressure from any situation

At a pin drop before damage is done

There must be trust

We’re quite literally up in each other’s business

The art of dangerously compromising positions

Back hair, pimples and protein farts

We roll in any condition

Age, heartbreak, cancer, fatigue or injury

Hence the term “leave it all on the mats”

Nobody likes an upstart rooster

Puffed and shoulders square like he’s got something to prove

When his balls dropped maybe ten years ago

Still wet with afterbirth

Ain’t a race son, it’s a marathon

You don’t get a second set of knees if you blow those ones

Acting like you got a landlord and a baby daddy don’t pay child support

Some of us have real jobs

Actual problems

Holes in the floors and walls at home

What’s a little CPTSD between friends

Thousand yard stares in dingy public bathrooms

Standing in the rainbow ditsy floral section still as a weeping stone

After being viciously disparaged in front of customers

And admonished for wearing respectable clothes (again, again)

Regardless of what the handbook says

Everything is always unacceptable

Every shift is closing shift 10pm

The only one they haven’t forced to quit

Every day someone’s sobbing in the break room, tiny and windowless

Manager at last as the pandemic hits

Shit, call me Liam Neeson

Because I am a woman with a very particular set of skills

(In our state there are no enforceable worker protections)

(None whatsoever I need you to understand)

(It is the 1800s with Disneyland smiles and cell service)

Constantly cleaning up Jackson Pollock piss and shit from grown adults

Paid a pittance for less than half of that

Picking a pretty outfit just to spend all day with a book

Sometimes two or three book

Fixture at the only coffee shop with real chairs and a black interior

Midnights in the garden

Dancing alone at 2am in the spider-spangled Sisyphus kitchen

Imagine tatting enough webs together

Imagine casting a starlight sail into 50 mph winds

Staring at the door

Music

We don’t have viable resources or healthcare

Or even a living wage

This is America

Tell you what though

Getting smooshed stimulates the vagus nerve

Osss!

.

Somewhere

Speaking of

Homesickness stings worst on my birthday

Is it a person or a place?

I’m wearing a gauzy dress and a straw hat

Triple digit heat and wicked UV index

We’d split before first blush of dawn

Driven all the way up to an old desert mountain village

Heavily haunted, according to certain circles

Gossip at the watering hole

It clings to the side of a cliff

Half on decked stilts

All I wanna do is wander the residential neighborhood

My idea of a good time

Far below everyone else bends double gathering breath

I press ever onward along my mountain goat path

Past a striped roadblock warning off traffic

There’s a massive steel drainage pipe

Trickling beneath abandoned mossy mystery stairs into worn concrete

A stagnant watershed

Brilliant algae green

I spot a tiny patch of chain link gobbled by unkempt trees

Suggestion of a space

So I wiggle through sideways

Do my best not to step on or snap anybody

Excuse me ma’am, pardon me, ope hey

And it’s just…fascinating

An overgrown glade hidden from the street and plain sight

Some canopy secreted pocket dimension

Couldn’t possibly have guessed its size prior to this moment

Profuse with grasses, weeds, and wildflowers waist high

Thistles and hollyhock spires

Glittering and shivering in the dappled sunlight

Curiously hushed of birds in the late afternoon

Not a peep or a rustle or a chitter to be heard

Very strange

But I listen

Whispering and humming live wire

If existence itself had a sound, a fabric

Where is it coming from?

Oh my, that’s millions of bees in concert

Everywhere

Crawling all over my body now

Investigating my face, skirt, and arms

Unbothered

I wish you could’ve been there

.

@~^~

Because I feel like it matters, I arranged all of this after listening to Serenity Found by Lindsey Stirling. It unfurled like a silent montage of sorts in my head. Incidentally, whenever I write something like a battle or fight scene, I’m listening to something melodic or euphoric—for example I wrote the troll castle scene to the orchestral version of Colors by Halsey. But for romance and relations I’m listening to something dark and forbidding. So something like My Love Will Never Die by Claire Wyndham has an entirely different connotation when I sing it.

Anyways, if it weren’t obvious, I tense shift for emotional reasons because it more closely resembles how you organically interact with your memories and the permeable and cyclical nature of time itself. Especially as you utilize something like poetry or experimental short form as a tool for disarming triggers. You use flow to blend thought streams or change the course of a destructive pattern, or make beneficial connections, etc. Imagine throwing a pebble into the water and writing or speaking what you see.

June 7, 2026

asynchronous development, friendship, storytelling, the power of music, trauma
Murderess Muse Division 1/x

Sloe Gin

You’re lazy in my hardened arms

Love wood don’t chop itself

And my nose scents your thicket

While you’re still coming down

Lord how’s a woman get anything done

Still atwirl your dewy hedge

Well I must make a fire now

You’re fit to catch your death

Blame it on the blackthorn laden

Blame it on the winter white

Flocked with ice as down in spring

As you once came to lie with me

As once you wore naught underneath

Did I not swear our fingers laced

With little more than boot string

You offered up this aching wretch

From then until eternity

Pulse but dove-beats on my lips

I warned you soft as we proper kissed

You’d catch your death

You’d catch your death

And you swore blood by wetted prick

And you half wept as you said yes, yes

.

Inferno

Less than ash the weight of “witch”

Where once the crime of woman commit

So young was I to learn my geas

Were it mine to bear or mine to give

Surely as a mother knows your nature knows your end

And ever may the mighty go to her with grace

Was it a woman flaming haired

Produced the blackened blade of Need

Black as fungus, black as pitch

Sunken sockets and squelching feet

And she bade this child Look At Me

When all your children do is take

A woman must survive

No man is owed a life

No man is owed a wife

When men rot tooth at supple teat

They know not for whom they fight

That cross infection opportunistic

They’ll breed their feast upon a famine

Squalor and religion are hope’s abortifacients

Take to woman’s silence and submission

As mold makes womb in warm and wet

Hips of burden sixty more percent overbred

What man did ever consort with consequences

Did aught but level fingers sucking soured frigid air

We women have superior immune systems

An organ with pleasure as its only purpose

A man who cannot address a goddess

Well he’s no man at all

And manners maketh civilization

Land and language are female nouns

Your land your tongue the shape of it

The bed you make you lie in it

Prayers are mouthed from a woman’s mound

For shame devoid pronunciation

.

Dark and Bright

“Kill the Indian, save the man”

Much less a woman warranted

Short capped once worn to calves

Open season between our legs

Scrubbed and shocked and needle pierced

Dared we speak as our mothers did

Perchance a child could escape

But they’d be hunted, their peers punished

But escape is what my namesake did

And the government could scarcely cow the man

That is her daddy the second generation Irishman

Who walked the death march hand in hand

And kept his council with an unmarked grave

A widower not long past the end of it

He had but one child remaining to his name

His youngest likewise scandalous

Raised in her entirety by him

This all well and good above reproach

For he’d not call himself a failure when they met again

Come and get her if you think you can

My daughter says your schools are bad

Choctaw by marriage

She took his surname but he took her clan

Spoke the language of his loveland

In Mississippi marsh where first they met

For all they bayed her hand been stolen

Our men are chosen by our women

Desire undiluted, our whims distill a matriline

Grace with favor blanket any giddy stallion

Had the measure of the meaning then

Known to announce and hold position

Little removed from sea and sextant

Little lost the O’muiris patronymic to immigrant eclipsis

Stunted and decapitated

Lest its shape offend the Anglo speech

When what it means to be a man

Is choosing where to stand

And as many times I’ve said

This name we share, the name he gave, and born on his own birth day

One month ahead of schedule

I am Faith the second

.

Angel in the House

A hobbled sow suckled an empire’s finest soldiers

Sons afforded choice of muddy ditch to die in

Daughters milked and bloated soon as he could manage

Many a foreign whelp might have called her mother

Nanny, maid, laundress, temptress

Convent, kitchen, brothel, field

Swindled destitute or anonymous authors

Penned to death without inheritance

Given alphabet begot despair

For every man of letters turned philosopher

How many women there cleaning up?

How many women underfoot?

Call her Brigid or call her Beatrice

Grown man grubbing after teat to suck

Crying at his own diaper stench

Bereft the good sense goddess gave a hog

For captivity is just cannibalism all gussied up

The feral pig forms sounders in the wild

Many mothered bands of sisters and cousins

Led by the most dominant mature female

Attained rank of great or grand bare minimum

Steers her many daughters clear of hunger and harrow across vast terrain

Leaves no threat unchallenged

If she charges, grandmama’s had enough

She ages in reverse

Think not weigh your stones against a Cailleach

Test your idly wintered wits against her storm

Where dire winds without forest to obstruct

Render furrows plump a bone split tundra

Tombs of steel and brick and book respectable

Having a think on culture and manhood at large

Poorly pondered ponces skipping rocks

I wish you luck

.

BYOB

Near enough a soup of stones

Earthen lumps and buttermilk

Simple smiles as weathered fair and green was good

Oh, well, they knew no better

No better had their betters been taught

Well the parable just hadn’t stuck

Not a child two steps from its mother’s skirt

Not a story heard would walk past rocks in a pot

Oh, well, they’re just backwards

Their directions, their land, the language

Verb Subject Object whatever is that

Can’t tell their talking from singing

All trickling tumbling psithurism susurration

Spilling all over woolly and curled

Entirely too rambunctious

Like holding excited children in your mouth

Careful not to crush them

When bade they walk with bowls in hand

Bowls they brought from home in rags

At last a hurt a moment worse than hunger

And denied them even that

Oh, well, they knew no better

Their mills in disrepair were simply ill-equipped

All they knew was workhouse and shovel under armed export

We were only trying to help

Soup kitchens are nourishment enough where we come from

These things must come down proper channels

Without wood and roam and forage

Leaf and grub and game and understory

A sounder can only turn upon itself

A matriarch has nowhere left to go

No words in common with her farrow

Any mouths are too many mouths

You couldn’t imagine to look at her come circle now

Once, their ancestors danced and wore bright colors

They sang

.

Rest and Respectability

Stains of labor great render glaring invisibility

Red or dun compelled by uniform turn blind from decency

Every table neatly dressed astride nail bitten legs

Forever wonder scored with grief if yours a child’s seat

Humbled haunches stripped of stature as once were stripped of trees

Who woke beneath living monument now wakes atop a grave

As every battered woman knows the sea of tidy strangers on a Sunday

Tugs at borrowed cloth and vanished threads to weakly wrap herself

The whispers could be so much worse

Well Faith had a falling out with the church

Jarring is the mirror shows a woman what she deserves

Shrieking is the rage when her reflection is the earth

They pray over their supper she knows no better

Faith had a falling out with the church

How lucky to have a lawyer for a husband

Such a well appointed highly educated alcoholic

Father of two daughters and several miscarriages

How she held her daughters tight while he howled outside

Prayed until the cold and drink set in with silence

Hypothermia is a peaceful death

Her stony visage unabashed unduly admonished

The Virgin Mary a rose but thornless with her gaze downcast

Does naught but weep with richly folded elegance

Commend her dignity unto the father’s hands

That is her daddy the second generation Irishman

Unto the house he built by vows he meant upon his woman’s land

Choctaw by marriage

Thought they he’d bar the door when he’d sooner paint it black

God, pass judgment if you think you can

My daughter says your church is bad

May 31, 2026

’cause that’s the bottom line, For Her Pleasure, gonna Dance Dance Majin Buu this shit, I don’t always reach for the semi-automatic, not me fist bumping your mom over a pile of corpses, pinkies up bitch, sometimes I get the puffy sleeves, Steve Austin in a dress shirt, tag team match both hands, To Ireland With Love, two beers, why’d you flip the double bird after the incident
Phantom Queen 3/x: Female Gaze

Clairaudience

I am a simple woman

I like an exposed nape, a shoulder kiss

Hard swallow belly clench

Two sweet little pebble pricks

Startled through thin cotton, yeah

Got him so bothered he don’t feel that

Artist arthritis

Bump his hips hands haphazardous

Tryna finish his pet pet project

Just to gasp buck the prettiest mess

What’s the purpose of a surface

I don’t christen it

A space without my acoustics

Wouldn’t say my boys romantic

But he do say, “You can do anything you want”

“I’m yours.”

And I do it, woman marks her territory

High heat high fidelity

Want that mouth slaked off salt from my thigh

Real dimple thick

Got that strength and that endurance

Baby it’s unfortunate

Can’t watch you pop more than once

Oh every couple of hours or so

You know I shake a bottle, you know you know

Like my champagne like my sea foam

I do it like Dionysus

Papa panting from the chase

Put sugar blush of grapes to shame

Maybe I’m a maenad menace

Or maybe I’m your Isis

Bout to have our wedding night

If I gotta fight the gods and steal a name

What’s a little dismemberment

A little death and mayhem

Boy I said I liked that mess

Ride you bare back till you’re broken in

No mind the matter where your parts went

Saved my favorite favorite bit for last

And oh you’re gilded whole again

You’ll catch my rhythm at a distance

That’s just what it means to be that bitch

Difference ‘tween some slip of a priestess

That weak shit you been drinking

And the Mistress of Magic

.

Life Alert

Uh oh here comes heavy flow

Girls hold onto your tampons

Mama said l-let there be light on a Sunday

She said she said cook me a steak

Like that like that like I like my man

Rare

Well salted, seared, and dripping wet

Took the brand now let him rest

That’s a cygnet ring, honey, and a vegan

Just wrecks the environment in a second direction

Can’t pink up puffy lipped like this

Throw back-ack till he’s helpless

No circulation on an anemic

Land needs its apex predators

Oh I’m a creature of the flesh

Said all that is mine to give

First cut of my meat and sip of my wine

Your name I cry aloud in the night

I’ve got the eggs if you’ve got the platelets

I’ve got the teeth if you’ve got the iron

He’s got spirit

Long legs and a high flight response

Papa’s blood runs just a bit hot

And baby I’ll put that blanket on

Hand stitched dove grey Morning Star

Sleipnir needs his Odin after all

‘Cept I don’t keep my beard up top

Hah, you know

Look it’s not braided or anything

She’s just dignified, you know

We’re both grown, the same species

We make like autumn ahead of spring

That otherworldly mist

Burning trees and twilight haunting

Catch a chill off that eerie noise

Kids that’s bugling

Best stay inside

Gonna gonna make like Samhain

Mama does it dirty and arcane

Knock knees sticky legs tangled hair

Bites and bruises nothing severe

He’s gripping my dips like I’m going somewhere

Love stuffed hush like we care who hears

Moss and indecent exposure

Out here putting the red on some raspberries

I’ll brew a tea with these leaves

You’ll thank me in the heat of your season

Babes or not

Taste the sweetest contractions

.

Boundaries

Now now I’ll not run him ragged

I’ve said not to sound like a dragon

I place highest value on companionship

He could be mute as a houseplant

So long as he vegetates in my bed

With the rest of my pets and textures

Don’t start when I throw a leg over

My first language is touch papa goose

I’m a cuddler

Everything, all the time, everywhere

Why be over there when you can be here

Won’t go to my death wishing I held you less

Never be wondering where I’m at

Seen you took some licks in the past

Quite the quite the luggage drag

Those some hefty body bags

Tsk tsk tsk won’t catch my ass

Ain’t nobody got time for that

That’s hobbyless behavior

Check the gym, the woods, my she shed

In the bath with bubbles and a podcast

Digging in the garden

Love let me tell you a secret

I barely tolerate most men

Fuck I want another when this one’s fully trained

They are not that interesting

You’re more than just the favorite

You’re the only Other on the planet

Only blip of intelligent life

She who loves who don’t exist

Bestie always said the challenge

Man’s only competition in my heart

Would be him against myself

Man vs Mother Nature

A woman and her cloak

Swan maiden call of the wild

Honey I like to be alone

A goddess loves a ghost

You’ll need that crepuscular vision

That naked faith

Mama likes to be both intimate and unobserved

Lustfully liminal, bit of hide and seek

Let’s play a little game

You be the hermit and I the black forest

You be the wanderer and I the wolf

Aengus and Caer Ibormeith

You get the picture, the oil painting

I don’t play it safe, I play it spooky

There’s some places you can’t follow me

But I’m always by your side

.

Active Shooter

Act like you know the drill

I’m grunge goth Cupid with a blindfold

But iced lavender and darkest blue

Garnet scabbed baroque pearl beadwork

Remember I’m a Native girl

Fair olive ’cause my pa

Just a lil Tolkien inspired

Love me some early 2000s

Some electric shred Evanescence high notes

That’s wife for sure

Here for my autumn seasoned queens

With the winter complexion, ponytail headbang

Blue eyes

Fine wine

Well I can spin and spin around like

Fire wide and hit a boo

Heat seeking my super power

GPS guided tactical nukes

Signed, sealed, delivered, h-hit send

Motherboard’s a Ouija board

Spirits said your number’s up

Clear for fucking defib

Whoever you are telltale heart

I see you

Cue the Eye of Sauron, nah, I’m not that bad

I’m Galadriel

But tressed ebony wood shot silver

Quite a bit of silver truth told

Bright white

And I’ve earned the rank of Crone

So I imagine a moody lounge

Sometime, oh, long before Instagram

Long before The Internet

Once Upon a Time in the Underworld

No high definition film

Maybe some oil lamps, those are cool

Nestled tables and a web of red threads

Spark spittle

Tied to little fingers per tradition

Real rat’s nest

I’m pulling rabbits out of hats

But no one sees them

Atmo-atmospheric sound

Orchestra cuts in and out all around

Muffled lonely guitar, close, not quite

Some listless piano on the left

I’m barefoot beneath my skirt

Never mind catch MRSA off that floor

Sometimes gods put boots on the ground

Doc Martens of course

Ancestors sent an expert

Counting shadow slumps

Hums and strums entanglements

Scuffs and bumps and pages

Leave that one where he’s laying

That one wants inside

Staring faceless from the Exit sign

Sigh

Good thing mama brought a scythe

Titanium dressmaking shears, nine inch

Go snip snip snip on that beautiful ruckus

And blessed silence but for this

There’s just one guy left

Alone on stage in his only outfit

Definitely his only outfit, did he bathe?

And it’s just simple

So simple

Blood red on my finger

Bright white

.

Soul Food

I’m a mix mix witch doctor

Put the brew in bruja

Mississippi Delta in my bones

The Chahta ancestral home

Spit hog, hickory butter, gumbo and corn

Squirrels and bears fat off forest nuts

Gators and catfish I’m frying ’em up

I’m saying I’m saying I fuck with a swamp

Go Nelly Furtado Turn Off The Light

Gimme some sad boy and I’ll show him the light

Kind only comes out at night

Just like to watch ’em mumble with strings

I just think they’re neat

Play best when they’re jumpy

Do a lil mud puddling

Do a lil mind muddling

Tongue twisting lachryphagy

I take some long, long licks

Call me a muck about mermaid

He speaking my language in no time

Mouth full of Nanih Waiya put him right

Like ’em a lil skinny and feverish

Parted lips, praying and godless

Disheveled drape

Under my old growth oak trees, acid green

Burrows and wallows heavy bellied

Deep chested he’ll give me his breath

We’ll drown some Southern Baptists

He keeping my levee luscious

Said holy is the Hanged Man

That soundtrack my habitat

Just like j-just like that-at

Don’t wipe that drool from your chin

Lock those lips, flared nostrils

Loose jaw tongue forward

Oh caught me a lil choir boy

Boy I said I said godless

Boy I said I said goddess

Boy get that get that Land Back

Boy gimme some hydraulics

Best been seeing to your health

I’ll get you by the hair real gentle

You ’bout to hit some angles

We do the carnage carousel

Just-just let it all go

Just-just go with the flow

Just stay conscious and I’ll hold you up

Said I was a lady bass love

Boy bust like whump bump spirals

Bust like X X dead

Done took every last drop he had

Don’t know which of us is him

Just water laps, frogs, and crickets

My baby be born again

.

Slow Song

See, see I’m the type goes

Hands on when he’s in the throes

Boy gets a bit spooked and I’m feeling my oats

Too tightly wound, too much going on

But fuck if he ain’t exquisite

Like rain slick city lights bruise bloom busted asphalt

Fine boned shadows of grace, but not faithless

I do not require that he keep it together

Got my fingers all on his frets

All rooted there, rhythm like skip hop

Some kinda funk rock ballroom dance

But I’m gonna sing through the street splash

Just Hold On, We’re Going Home yeah

Gonna sneak some tiny butterfly clips

Stashing flowers I picked

Listen idgaf that’s my princess

And you know what there’s a noodle stand

And an old man minds his business

And I can’t have papa goose catching a cold

So noodles it is

Noodles and sunglasses, no questions

Don’t ask if he can manage chopsticks

Down the hatch

We just like any other pair of drunk chicks

See not so different

Of course he was too sexy for mittens

Mr I Can Handle Some Rain

But that’s just perks in disguise

You know like there’s a blizzard and only one bed

You know like I’m a babushka and he’s undead

Damn right homemade salve, clove and cayenne

Who do you think I am

I got pockets full of snacks

I got half a loaf of garlic bread

Ginger, tums, and ibuprofen 800

Got my man’s prescriptions, shit

Also his wallet

Can’t abide an empty stomach

Can’t abide undue discomfort

Can’t abide unkissed lips

Don’t let nothing get nicked or lost

I’m hawk-eyed ya, I stay focused

Fuck with every inch of this silly ho

Fool don’t even gotta make sense

You’re cooked when you’re hot for his babble

That so baby, better tell me all about it

Fascinating

I say as I swath him in blankets

It’s raining it’s pouring, lightning cracks

Got biscuits in the oven and pepper gravy

I’m steeping some mullein with slippery elm

Whatever he’s on about, he’s so passionate

Some carnival goldfish in his head

Hun that’s not condescension

The fussing is foreplay, big F

May 23, 2026

and my fancy imaginary man, anything but “manly”, boy best get to bugling, don’t gotta be nothing but a hot mess screaming through the night, go rub your love stink on a tree, gods ever come through for their girl, gods ever pull a real boy out the woodwork, he gonna Get It, he just gotta be a freak in the right direction, he just gotta be All The Things, he just gotta be odd in the best ways, he’s literally my laundry list, I’m a skeleton as we speak, I’m ovulating, is One too much to ask XD, just squeeze the trigger till you hit something, literally me just Saying Shit, making my requests, meat pumpkin, mother nature’s greatest hits, quotations are direct, so you all get to suffer with me, stitched with threads of lived experience, these chuds are so fucking tedious
Ancestors Take the Wheel!

For Fuck’s Sake

The first time I attempted to call my ancestors

It didn’t exactly go as planned

I was taking several intensely physical classes

Heavy weights, dance, flow yoga, various light to full contact unisex martial arts, etc.

Just to offset limbic chaos

Equalize the pressure of my hurricane

And of course wandering around at night

For my regularly scheduled weeping sessions as usual

To clear my head

To soothe my soul, yes

I love the cold

And finally I was like, shout out

Why the fuck am I here?

I have never belonged

Is there some particular direction

An occupation, like what, can I get a hint

I’m lost

Become a tax attorney? Join the circus? Fuck off with some sheep in the highlands? What?

Open to suggestion

Well

I dreamt

A very much pre-colonial outfit

Not even within sniffing distance of the white man

Some distinctly Mesoamerican reminiscent

Xena Warrior Princess shit

On my way with…my tiger, I guess?

To collect my imprisoned children

Which my lieutenants had gone ahead

And retrieved under authority of…my headdress?? Also a big cat

So I show up and they’ve been released from their cage

Filthy, naked or in threadbare rags

We look absolutely nothing alike

They’ve got pale skin, pale eyes

Rounded features and faces

Wild hair very much not black

And they climb all over me

Press their cheeks and foreheads to my skin

Settle in whatever crook suits them

As if we just sleep like that or something

Me and my pile of babies

And they’re so cheerful despite their present circumstances

Had absolute faith I’d come

Utterly without shame or concern

That it ignites an icy, murderous rage

Deep in my stomach

Their captors claimed ignorance

They didn’t realize they were fighting on my land

Caught between dueling giants

They had no idea these were my children

As if any children should be in a cage and reduced to squalid rags

So we return to base

Which is apparently a Mr Rogers style house

Directly on the border

Of an ancient jungle and a hideous grass expanse

And everyone is arguing about our official response

To these escalating aggressions

And I’m just watching my tiger

Chew a bright sippy cup on the rug

Finally I say

We’re going to kill them all

And that’s end of discussion

I journey into the jungle

A place only I am permitted to go

And seek a teocalli mirrored above as it is below

Inside, it is full of mutating jaguars without eyes

Writhing in all directions, crawling up walls

Pupating flesh sacks into the shape of haunting, shuddering warriors

And in the center is a misty darkness

Whom I address directly

I woke in haggard, crusty eyed puzzlement

Only to discover upon further research that there exists

An Aztec deity named Tezcatlipoca

Explicitly omniscient

The trickster jaguar god of the Night

Cardinal North, the cold, death

Destruction, destiny, and change

Granter of ultimate authority

His omnipresence as the night-wind

Means no one beneath his sky can hide their secrets

Their pain

Whose name translates to Smoking Mirror

All knowing obsidian reflection, patron of warriors and kings

The latter considered his personal emissaries

Lord of the Unseen

Observer of the Near and Far

He Who Passes Judgment Upon Humanity’s Sins

Enemy of Both Sides

Well

You’ll never guess what I later learned

About the furthest reaches of my matriline

So to recap:

Go get the babies, everyone dies

Right. Okay. Right.

.

Endangered

Just to put some respect on my Nahuatl speaking cousins

First I’ll explain Why Jaguars

Absolutely gorgeous and sensual creatures

These are the most powerful of all big cats

Capable of catching prey thrice their own size

Then dragging said prey up a tree to relax

Strongest bite force of all mammals

Skull crushing spine snappers

They can even pierce turtle shells

Excellent swimmers

Jaguars do not roar, they growl and grunt

Cavernous, guttural vocalizations

So imagine that deep, jungle dark

A place so green and thick and ravenous

Where something’s always watching

Digesting

You don’t hear them coming

And even if you do, it’s too late

Jaguar Warriors wielded clubs with obsidian teeth

Designed to slice and shatter on impact

For maximum shrapnel

Trained from an early age to dominate

Tasked with taking lethally hostile targets alive

For human sacrifice

Had to capture a minimum of four to earn their rank

They did not wear heavy armor

And were in extraordinary physical condition

Masters of hand to hand

Their only defense was extreme aggression, control, skill, and terrain

So even though the Aztec population was decimated by smallpox

To which they had no immunity on account of their superior bathing practices

Having taken 90% fatality to the face before they squared up

The Spaniards still lost 66% of their forces

Their metal-armored, mounted, gun and sword slinging forces

Natives and their Jungle

A Jaguar Warrior could decapitate a horse in one swing

And take the rider with his bare hands afterwards

In single combat

Remember what I said

About the rape of the Americas having made Europe what it is?

All the silver, gold, dyes, crops, textiles, so on fattening the mercantile class?

Red in the ledger of every old money fortune?

Fueling the industrial revolution? That wasn’t advancement

Your ancestors owe a horrific debt

You can never repay it. Shall we evict you from your land?

Sign you up for indenture?

Anyways, back to combat prowess

See the best way to counter a gun

Is at close range

If you’ve got the cojones

You’re easier to shoot running away

But the caveat here is

Once you have him on the ground

You have to end it

When they get to overstepping

Men keep pushing until they can’t

It’s like what Xena says

That once you openly carry a sword

You’re a threat

If you’re a threat, you’re a target

.

Diadh-anam

There’s a triple trilogy by Jaqueline Carey

Tolerable prose and a bit bodice-ripper

These are not high brow

Quite the yarn nonetheless

She’s got some moments

There’s a God-Touched girl named Moirin mac Fainche

From the people of the Brown Bear in Alba

And for reasons she cannot understand

And often wishes she weren’t

She is favored by the gods

From multiple lands, multiple pantheons

Possessed of the divine spark

An agent of fate

As such she must leave her home

And go…wherever that spark bid she go

Bridge vastly different peoples

Often through her bedchamber

Thanks Naamah

Hell, she fucks an Asian dragon once

Somehow

Something about synchronized storms

Overwhelming and unstoppable desire

Pleasure her mind doesn’t even have receptors for

What a way to go

Go Semele or go home

She works small magics, summons the twilight, becomes invisible

Anyways it’s been a hot minute

But there’s a part I’ll never forget

Where she encounters the people of Terra Nova

Who perform human sacrifice

She of D’Angeline training

From a land of opulence, sensuality, and intrigue

Must question what it is to be civilized

The Emperor asserts that death is how you honor life

You are not owed the sunrise

Sometimes the gods just Thirst

And blood is the only way to make it right

Of course her manipulative Ex

Who forced a naive girl into a soul-sworn oath

To never reveal his dabbling in occult summoning circles

Had been given the “gift” of the language of ants

Which he’d taken as an insult

And was subsequently driven mad by their thoughts

He went to Terra Nova to become a god-king

Controlled the region with his cult and a black river

A massive swarm of ants

Leveraged Moirin into summoning a fallen angel and in the end

With the help of Mother Bear and the surrounding nature spirits

Moirin commands the jungle to consume him

And he is skeletonized by ants

It always made me think, you know?

That to hear and truly understand

As many lives as possible

Or even just one

No matter how “insignificant”

Is that not what it means to be a god?

Real power is this humbleness

And if we could hear and see each other

Without barriers or interference

The mask of our bodies

The trappings of societal expectation

Raw, pure, unfiltered

How many of us would speak the same language?

Could touch each other regardless?

.

Close Quarters

In the first cycle we’re introduced to a people

Descended from angels who chose to remain on Earth

With their mother

Rather than leave for Heaven

Reveling in their senses

Interbreeding with humans

And when they finally tired of this

Their mother the Earth in her wisdom suggested

A separate resting place for them and their descendants

Where they retired as regional gods

Their gifts passed down their respective houses

Well one such angel was Kushiel

The punisher

Phedre was born with blood in her eye

Known as Kushiel’s Dart

Which hadn’t been seen for quite some time

This dubious gift had the following effects:

Her body healed faster than everyone else’s

She felt pleasure when she should feel pain

Regardless of personal feelings or consent

Yeah.

So aside from the fact

That I am strongly against BDSM

And prostitution, this

Becomes an interesting plot device

She fetched a high price

They really put her to work, took advantage

But one day a foreigner pointed out

That the Dart isn’t a curse, it’s a weapon

Phedre was deeply troubled by that

And troubles surely ensued

A brewing war, a festering rot

Dark revolution in the Caucasus mountains

Where a brutal purge once left a boy

Buried under a pile of corpses with a head wound

And he stared into that void until his eyes turned black

A people who once worshiped Ahurha Mazda

The Lord of Light

Good thoughts, good words, good deeds

Were not saved

When the Akkadians came for them

So this Mahrkagir showed them another path

The path of Angra Mainyu

Aimed to bring Him into the world

Where He would rein for 10,000 years

He and his Bone Priests would sacrifice what they loved most in a ritual

To see it done

But the Mahrkagir was incapable of love

Until

Phedre infiltrated the Zenana harem

To rescue her former enemy’s beautiful son

And to be clear she did not want to

But the D’Angeline gods chose her moment of stark doubt

To show her in no uncertain terms

That they were real

And if she did not do this, she would never feel their light again

The Mahrkagir and his Bone Priests accumulated magical power

Through suffering and terror

The Zenana was a place of putrescence and abject despair

And she became his favorite

He used a special barbed instrument

To violate her

Enacted all manner of sadistic pleasure

And because her body betrayed her with pleasure

Until she fainted from blood loss

He became obsessed

The Mahrkagir even gave her a small dog figurine

As a token of his affection

For he had a dog as a boy, before everything

And twisted up in her hair

Phedre hid an ivory shiv gifted by another woman

He decided that she was his perfect victim

His perfect sacrifice

And her lifetime of bitter, grueling endurance

Attracting the worst of humanity

Led her to the moment he lay beside her

Fully asleep in absolute trust

Exposed

She put that shiv through his throat

The only person she ever killed

Sometime…after, she wondered

If the gods don’t have among themselves

A system of checks and balances

Crossing borders when stakes are highest

The right tool for the job

.

Rainforest Mind

Coatlicue is the Aztec Mother of All Creation

She of the ecstatic shivering serpent skirt to indicate

Her immense fertility, long in the teat

Having nursed so very many

Clawed hands and feet to dig her children’s graves

Whose corpses she eats

Skull face

Brings life as a virgin, from nothing

Or by touching anything at all that gives her pleasure

All around her is the cloying glut of birth

Mother and Devourer

For in regions with a snowy winter

It suggests a separate office

A barrier between life and death

Some delicate whisper of approaching spring

A relief, a caress

But along the equator the truth is front and center

Separation is an illusion

You live and die by your mother’s skirt

Who is it that will answer

When she has need of warriors?

I often think of her

As the ultimate front liner

Hope is a grisly bitch to know

Not for the faint of heart, the lily-livered

While metacognitive management of multiple concurrent processing streams

Might have you thinking my ability

To dig a grave and memorialize

To step aside

As a moment occurs

No matter how dire

Borders on psychopathy

That somehow I must feel less

I assure you, I feel plenty

Every dream is lucid for me

In fact there’s families of dreams

I recall those relatives preceding

During each new branch of the tree

I know I’m asleep, and rather busy

But I also know

My cat wants her litter changed

I have an itch

Mom is awake

Gotta eat more carbohydrates

Because my glycogen is depleted

And sometimes I’m able to know or do a thing

In waking life I can’t explain

Blind predictions with frightening accuracy

Extrapolate, induce, or deduce minute specifics like I majored in a region’s history

I randomly spout some fanciful bullshit and it really happened that way

Make a character and it’s like I’ve known you personally from infancy

And also read every word you ever put to a page

The bulk of the information your mind collects throughout the day

Remains hidden from sight

But in my case

I can always feel its presence

The hungry earth

A panther’s fur

There’s something moving in the dark

And when I pore over you I remember

Every data point I’ve ever been told, observed, or absorbed

Sense intricate webs of cause and effect

Gauge microslippages

You know how people are rarely telling you what they think they’re telling you

When you’ve been paying attention

But what they think they’re telling you also tells you something

That’s all just instinct for me

I’m always thinking what you need

What you might like, your development

How your bones set

If ever you rankle at a suggestion

Remember I am Aware of the Variables

All of Them

And Also the One’s I’m Not

I will only push you when it is absolutely necessary

Push no more than I would hack a tree’s limbs

Expect a parrot to be a cat

Whatever’s relevant to your growth habits

Maximizes fulfillment and performance

You are a thing in my jungle

Lover I want it all

Beauty is a biome

Some plants live one season

A handful, annual, perennial

And others stand for thousands of years

Shelter everyone who comes after

Inform the entire landscape

No effort is wasted here

Decay should not beget despair

There’s always more, so much more

This is known as deep systems

It’s all useful biomass

Everything has a purpose and an end

My weapon of choice has always been

A shovel

I will serve my purpose on the right ground

Somewhere there’s a grave with my name on it

Or I have yours

I guess you could call that faith

You could also call that love

.

Nurture

They call it the warrior gene

Carried on the X chromosome

And activated by childhood trauma

Or extremely adverse conditions

It is a key precursor of hair trigger reactive violence, self destruction, and impulsive behavior

In men

Who do not possess a second X to buffer its effects

And are testosterone dominant

In a sense when severely mishandled

They become berserkers

Gangsters. Delinquents.

A biological class of shock troops

Whose only lasting solace is death

Like when an autistic person smashes their own head

One must acknowledge the true nature of a thing

Not what Hollywood and sheltered writers caught in a circle jerk would have you believe

This class functions best

When facing existential threats

These men must be put to work

And trained to follow orders

That is bypass the prefrontal cortex

As these guys run at a deficit

They are not sent abroad

You keep the leash in your hand

And if you want peace throughout the land

That hand is always a woman’s

I’ve said the difference between death and annihilation

A thriving ecosystem and lesions of fields

Is a woman who knows how and when

To sic the dogs of war

And men who are loyal without question

Know whose skirt they came out from

Now when a particular variant of that gene occurs in a woman

Especially when it occurs twice

Something very interesting happens

Neuroplasticity from estrogen dominance

Allows unchallenged accumulation of excess serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine

And is very slow to break these down

While working double time on dissipating adrenaline

So once she heals from her trauma

Having evaded litany misdiagnoses and inappropriate interventions

Amid the disarray of acute distress while trapped in a hostile social construct

And is instead placed in a nourishing environment

She practically glows with joy and affection

Attains a generally sustained euphoria

Utter calmness and focus

Even in situations that would have everyone else puking and shitting their pants

And the very second survival lines are crossed

Someone menaces the nest

Thinks to try a bitch

She identifies and eliminates the threat

Without an ounce hesitation or remorse

Only a woman can embody this contradiction

Men do not enjoy these pleasant benefits

At least not without a woman’s help

Plenty of patience for babies, their chatter and grabby hands and little teefs

No mercy

Granted, healing is messy, there’s a million ways

This goes terribly awry

You know this world hates a woman with an appetite

Spirits gotta get her bones just right

Stars gotta align

What I’m saying is

Sometimes you just gotta close your eyes

This ain’t Turned Out In The End

This ain’t Pain Made You A Better Person

This ain’t Everything Happens For A Reason

This ain’t God Has A Plan

But sometimes, just sometimes

Your ancestors are playing the long game

May 17, 2026

history, Psychology, storytelling, stuff and things
Philotes

Light-hearted

You could say he was the Eliot to my Margo

Knew we both had the same screw loose

When this scrawny character avengin’ his sister

Went ape shit shirtless covered in blood

And we were both turned On

How we’d aggressively profess our love for each other

In the most un-Christian ways we possibly could

A straight face contest

I said if the price of bringin’ him into the world

Were releasin’ every misfortune on Earth

I’d do it over and over and over

He said he’d rather build a throne of corpses in Hell

If that’s where I’m at

Then know a single moment of peace in Heaven

Like deuces bitch change of management

I said I loved him so much

I could eat him, then throw him up

Just so I could eat him again

And he was like as a Woman should!

We are One in all things 😀

Made quite the pair in red

Watched me break necks

The first and only time I wore a dress

Showed any shape or skin

Rollin’ solo to the school dance

Uninterested causin’ problems stirrin’ up shit

I smiled when my beautiful little homewrecker

Showed me his trail of conquests

A daisy chain of I Swear I’m Straight

This is Just a One Time Thing

I Have a Girlfriend

We all heal in different ways

I asked, and he said Meh

You’re always right

We always spent time

At his house instead of goin’ out

‘Cause he was lookin’ after his single mom’s kids

The eldest always coparents

As his dad knocked her up with him and split

For a good God fearin’ white chick

And as his half dressed unbrushed little sister

High on chicken nuggets and popsicles

Jumped into my lap completely immodest

Just to drape my hair over her head

And touch my jewelry and bones

Then her own

Showed me her sticky grabby toes

He said I was the first big girl she’d seen besides their mom

So she didn’t know how to act

And I was like this is fine

He’d hide on the flipside of the custody arrangement

So we’d meet online in our favorite rainy jungle crater

Someplace so far from here, sky misty and grey

Giants thunderin’ by

I’d taken him there that one time

So I could show him there was so much life

Well he never did have to speak his mind

We always just as easily sat in silence

But I assured him one night

That he’d find real love someday

And he said he already knew what real love is

He wouldn’t cry or hold his breath for some dick

Who’d only ever be less than half the man I am

So I said if I ever have children

And they’re not you I’ll be bitterly disappointed

Who gives a fuck what your father says

The two of us standin’ in the rain

Any storm was call to mass, digital or otherwise

Everyone always remarked of us

That they could tell at great distance

When we were together

The most joyful clamor of laughter

Ringin’ out across the halls and compound

Through the walls

Louder than any church bells

.

Girls Be Like

Speakin’ of popsicles

I’d drop pretty desert stones on her desk

And walk off nonchalant

Until one day she put a rock on my desk too

So we were friends

She was weird. I was weird.

We had notebooks of letters between us

Stories and doodles, every strange thought

Lyrics to horror songs

You know time is an illusion when it’s real

You’ll look back and I’ve always been there

We’d sneak off campus into the ghetto

To our favorite overgrown lot

Left bare after a meth trailer burned down

For no other reason than to eat a carne asada burrito

And all the snacks she wasn’t allowed to have at the house

Lest she get called a fat whore or some such remark

And I’d just hold her and pet her hair and talk

Play with her hands and arms under green branches so rare

Say that here with the palo verde and mesquite and taily grass

We could imagine another place

Acted like I didn’t notice

All the scabs and thin pink scars

When she told me she’d stood there in the dark

Holdin’ a pillow while her kidnapper slept

Who’d been confiscatin’ all her paychecks

As compensation for the food and roof over her head

I said I was so proud

Not because she didn’t do it

But because she stood up for herself

That meant on some level

She knew she deserved better

And that’s self worth

And she said she couldn’t see a future

Beyond indentured servitude and desert glare

Just black

So I said Bet

And stole her from that house under cover of darkness

Took her most important stuff and also the cats

Washed her of guilt

About leavin’ her brother behind

Because he would never stand on his own

And if she tried to carry him, she’d drown

It is not wrong to choose survival

Especially over someone incapable of reciprocal sacrifice

Well of course we swore a literal blood oath

With the infamous razors and a fairly fancy cup

That we’d be sisters in every life

That long ago we must have died side by side

And we’d be together when it’s time

And it meant more than she ever realized

When she said I was the only reason

She knew what a mother’s touch felt like

.

Sailor Cosmos

Our worlds couldn’t’ve been more different

She came from a sweepin’ landscape

Of multimillion dollar mansions on hills

Traipsed by coyotes and javelinas

Type of house had real walls, a pool, a bar, and a prize cactus collection

Top marks from a good high school, big heart, brassy, marchin’ band

Strong, vibrant, passionate, loyal, and generous, I could go on

Oh I’m the best friend first to say your man isn’t good enough

If he trips up even once

But as we met in college, she never saw

My pathetic and worthless origins

What she saw was me

Or what was left between bouts

Round after round with my Night Sky I never spoke on

I’d walk out of the cold and dark

From my little apartment on the edge of town

To be a normal girl

And we’d prepare dinners together, chef-y stuff

Play games and talk at length about everythin’ under the sun

And quite a bit under the under, we were not shy about trauma

Cuddle for hours

Her psych major boyfriend (now husband) used to say

That I was such a good listener

That I listened so well

People immediately calmed down

Just because I was there

I remembered every detail

Well that last semester I was so pressed

To find a job, any job, to support myself

Dreadin’ the specter of Home

An impendin’ mountain of debt

That I just stopped, I just couldn’t anymore

I thought it was a joke

When the University told me I was chosen

To be among the top 3% of graduates

To receive some prestigious award for excellence

As I had never before experienced recognition

Aside from my best friend, but that’s like

A mom sayin’ my kid is the best kid

Like Jesus stop tellin’ everyone I’m the best poet you’ve ever read

How do you even say that with such confidence shit

Crayon pictures on the fridge shit

Not that it mattered in the end

For the drama I guess

Instead

I chose to focus

On preservin’ my last pile of bright things

Before I had to put them all away

We drank and teamed up in Borderlands

Instead of studyin’ for finals

Smooshed right up like pigeons on a power line

While her somehow both quiet and gregarious boyfriend kept an eye on us

From over top his group of friends playin’ cards

Two girls bein’ red wine philosophers

And she told me about her main girl Sailor Moon

How in the final manga arc she must battle Chaos

Absolute darkness and nothingness which predates existence

And instead of runnin’ away, she goes all in for her friends

She is unmade and yet

Her soul binds to the Galaxy Cauldron

She and the darkness become One

Her form is perfected

She becomes a constant

So even though strife and destruction cannot be prevented

Neither can the void stop her from bein’ born

Even from total loss, game over

She will always be born, over and over and over

The Silver Crystal draws its power from the heart

Of an ordinary girl

The unrelentin’ force of Pure Love

She resurrects herself and everyone else

Every star and planet, warp and weft, form to the formless

With her final attack

And she said it always made her so sad

Love’s perfection in the Black

Because if she has the power to save everyone

That means no one can save her

She must be the loneliest girl in the universe

May 10, 2026

failure, friendship, life, love