a night of optimism—smoking under the supermoon and the starlight

The Disappearing Acts

Q: what have you been doing this…decade?
A: alchemizing

poem forthcoming
jokingly wrote “desire burned like devastation in me desire burned like the divergence of a gradient to me” while walking today after my exam

The sacrilege of apotheosis
again and again, I died for this
Survival is metamorphosis

Child of the Elder Blood

NOT MY BOY SOMBR GOING AFTER US GEN-Z GERIATRICS. YES, WE HAVE BEEN ALIVE FOREVER. YES, I PERSONALLY WITNESSED THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE. YES, I SPEAK AN ANCIENT DIALECT OF ENGLISH AND I DO NOT USE TIKTOK. WE ARE ELDERS AND WE DESERVE RESPECT.

The Aftermath

I reflected the starlight graves
Madonna the archivist of midnights
The darkness commanded me to extinction
Caesura in the darkness march
I was a season of catastrophe
And then that catastrophe marched towards me
The darkness commanded me to completion
neither can I be nor can I be extinction
it’s too late—there are no paths
scars on the face of the earth
I followed the arching starlight
The darkness gave and gave appetite
weighed down by freedom’s gravity
I feared my dark adversary
Apocalypse I was the aftermath
The darkness has appetites
Raiment of flesh it dressed like me
Suffocation by ghost moons in October
I tried to hide from your abyss eyes
Redeem me to the meadowlands
Traveler of the everlasting
I was a vanishing
Yes I was shattered again
Lazarus dawn awakening
I confess: there were teeth in my flesh
The darkness has success
I was under its command
This was holiness
The ruse the ruse of substanceless flesh
Yes the darkness had holiness
There were teeth in my flesh
Yes I called it success
Virgin milk of the Madonna
Like lightning, outlast the thunder
Covenant with Lazarus dawn
Deliver me from life's tributaries
I was a vanishing
Driving myself into disaster after disaster
I chased after the abyss
God was inexplicably busy with more urgent furnaces
Not with me, burning in dusk
I surrendered—
Like lightning outlasting the thunder
Anchored to Lazarus dawn
Abyss of Elysium
Yes I abandoned reason
The darkness reminded me that desire had appetite
Yes I was in command
Desire reminded me that
The darkness had appetite
Like the abyss
Deliver me from life's tributaries
Ruse of the flesh
It was rude of the flesh
I plead the right to insanity
The light abandoned me
There was freedom in flesh
Finding holiness
Like lightning, outlast the thunder
My covenant with rising Lazarus dawn
Command me to be gone
Deeper well of Thor, Oblivion
I dreamed of freedom
Survival in the furnace
Burning has holiness
Deliver me from life
The darkness raiment
Like a burial shroud
That darkness has appetites
Lazarus dawn, I was awakening
The darkness decomposed me into fragments
Yes I was a shattering
The holiness of disillusionment
I was a season summer went through dreaming
Burning pastures, I surrendered
Deliver me I was vanishing
In life's tributaries
Desire the wings and flame
I was commanding
Like a divine thing
The darkness has appetites
I tried to hide my desire
But it rose with sunrise
From the darkness fragility
Deliverance to life
The guidance
To outlast like lightning after thunder
Like lightning the sunrise in your abyss eyes
Command me ageless dawn
Abyss of Elysium
Where the fear treading angels tried to die
The sun’s reunion with the rose fingered horizon
Madonna the immortal
The bleeding horizons left their screams in me
Rising light, deliver me
Yes I grieved
The darkness needed me
Welcome to the vale fallen one
This is the mirror of fire
This is how you die
I commanded the abyss
I said: witness me
Shattering in the stars panorama
Battlefield of eternal terrors
The light euthanized me
Abyss of elysium
I burned with the Lucifer Sun for a season
I was through and through
with dreaming of you
Tripartite God like hell’s burning tongues
I was breeding the fragility
Burning dusk breeding fire
The skies crackling with lightning
A punishment of light
Spare me autumn
Wrath the ornament of creation
Abyss of Elysium
You were my totality
Wounded the Sun sinks into fire
Daily the rose horizon reunion
Reminded me of how I needed you
Paradise the darkness grandeur
Again the dream of forgetting
Memory desiring oblivion
Abyss of Elysium
I was the sunrise breeding fire
I vowed to the oracle of storms
That the chaos would be born
The fragility
Beasts crawling in the midnight
The darkness I survived
I turned pyrite into gold like Rumpelstiltskin in flaming straw
The darkness came in waves as a tsunami and I was complete
I surrendered to sunrise
Greed the appetite
Griefs I abdicate I abdicate
Every sunrise after the brief fields of midnight
You were a winged seraph
Like a fever that was rising
The darkness I was surviving
Rising dream the nightmares
You herald the abyss
Surely it was Hades (and not you)
That kept me here captive in the midnights
Savior and sentencer
Like a lily in the water graves of Ophelia
I thought sinking was freedom from rising
And I buried myself before sunrise
Lachrymose dawn
Freedom was a mirage
and it vanished into mist
and I was gone
I was gone
Captive in fields of midnight
The Majesty!
Midnights bearing tempests
Dark dandelion seeds, the world was breeding greed
I wore grief as a diadem
Black gales arriving with the nights bearing tempests, yes
Invention of the darkness that held me as prisoner
But I was the alchemist of sunlight
Starless like the scarred Madonna
Lachyrmose lilies in Ophelia’s water graves
The wild majesties were after me yes indeed
And I was gone I was gone
My savior sentenced me to freedom
Mausoleum of the ages
The wasteland!
And I made it my grave
These were the failures of silent spring
I was worshipping at the altar of midnights
Black agate roads in my pearled eyes yes an oblivion rose
The catastrophe
We were anchored to storms
All the days were graves
I walked alone in alleyways
Through the storms
Incarcerated in the Babylon days
I was dreaming
And I was gone I was gone
Carceral days, I was the darkness decomposed
Abyss of Babylon
The feasts! Of stars
I mean the carnage
The carnage!
Everywhere was wasteland
I rose with the storms
The shadows careening into darkness
It wasn't want but need
I desired
Like an apparition I was shivering to the afterlife as firelight
all the carceral days were graves I walked alone in alleyways
The awakening: I am the darkness decomposed
I saw my past selves
And they were sentences I chose

What Rough Beast To Be Born

The terrors are not to be wasted: I resurrect them every evening. Grief comes in gusts—I am gasping, breathless, dreaming away dusk after burning dusk. Autumn, the abyss of paralysis, I will remember you. Night shifts in oblivion, I will remember you. The ritual of sinking. I unravel seam by seam. Chained like a beast of Bethlehem in the radiating nights. The terrors regenerating before the mornings rise.

Annihilation

Even at the beginning, you were wistful, despairing. I wonder if you knew —as you held me— that I was already slipping through your fingers. Was I not writing obituaries? I was a vanishing thing. That was my singularity. If I mythologize myself it is only because I cannot bear to be real.

I let the singularities swallow me because death was beckoning Madonna of the many annihilations the October supermoons were harvesting me Madonna the mythologist Madonna of the mutating voids I was metamorphosis

Defiance

Ten years I watched a grave in flames
It was Wasteland after Wasteland
Scarred Madonna, this was the rapture
that I was awake, I was awake, I was awake
The briefly gorgeous don't last
It was necessary that I collapse
(For secret reasons, the universe was to be discontinued!)
Defiance the night tides were rising
Yes I was haunted by pasts
Burning summer was a murmur in my ears
I wanted rid of it even if it meant winter fire
Somehow I was a winged thing sinking
I wasted and I wasted
Nothing seemed worth chasing
Winter fire it was paradox wasteland
I was witnessing the end of all things
Wake the dawn I was gone I was gone
I said to the dark vales like a clairvoyant : the vastness would swallow me
And then I was a vanishing
The writing of the disaster
The disaster is what I was after
Obliterate me necropolis of the night
Gargantuan darkness
and I panicked—
I panicked like shivering starlight
It was the darkness and not the light that was undying
Even the undying darkness had to hide
Yes I vanished into desire
There was delight in darkness
There was darkness in delight
That Darkness is not Door
This is the wasteland you waited for
Desire like a confessing priest
Under the footprint of a deity I was perishing
Desire the wasteland it was a grace of flames
I wanted undying abyss and oh the abyss I witnessed
I held the darkness like a keepsake
Bridges to killing spring
As if a deity had found a hole in me
As if a demon had found a home in me
Hive to honeycomb
Desire burned like devastation in me
First I submitted to burning summer
And then I worshipped winter’s oblivion
Darkness dreaming stations of the cross
The seas were screaming as burnt creatures in charred meadows
The midnight visage had stitches like Coraline’s creations
Madonna the seamstress she was weaving wastelands
Madonna I was a grave of flames
I told the deities time was perishing
The eras came and went
Madonna she vanquished flames
Fire in winter, the enigmas multiplied
Madonna the paradox vanquishing spring
Yes the mornings were striking midnights
And I was a vanishing
Annihilating spring was a far thing
But I was momentarily immortal at midnight
For a whisper of oblivion I would have killed the night lilies under onyx skies
It was Odysseus leading the sirens
I witnessed the lightning strikes
And I called them light
Desire's hand maiden, I vanished into dark waves of silent spring
What Wasteland, servant of the apocalypse
You had me dreaming I was perishing in the arms of wasteland
Worst of all I wanted it
She vanquished oblivion
And it came back singing
Confession I was desire perishing
Resting empress of light Madonna she survived the undying desire
I fractured like flame in ammonite midnights
Surviving annihilation
Carrion flowers, yes the darkness of desire raising the midnight veil
I witnessed the universe’s fire and ice’s demise and it was crucifix
Night rising like the opalite moon after an eclipse
Pyre in the abyss, it was an enigma like silent spring
That I was still here witnessing
Drowning in the oblivion of the things I chose
And then a roaring spring rose
Savior and sentencer
I was in love with
The Fragility
I desired that it would kill me

The Alchemist

The secret to surviving any deprivation is to have a mind. Humans are aftershocks of the divine. The beloved slips behind a veil of longing. Through writing I hope to confer transcendence, and the first task is to decide what is worthy of that light. Sometimes the rate of collapse is exponential. I was forever fleeing my old selves, attempting to render the past unreal. Many of my personality traits were crucifixions. Madonna the mutating. I called the dark Madonna and, ecstatic, the dark Madonna came. The ego is a house of cards. I learned to love even the things that sought to destroy me. To seek perfection (of self) is to undergo a metamorphosis. My writing also mutates. Metamorphosis is always flight. Yes by then I was an obsessive yes the sepulchral of light yes it wanted to die yes “rock bottom” was a subtle flex yes I was metamorphosis yes fire was a burial of light yes I split my self once or twice it was the alchemist of desire that struck me at sundown like burgeoning white lightning yes the dark Madonna was rising.

Narcotic night lily
The locusts were in burning splendour
Yes revelation was annihilation
But so was creation
Summer of locusts, I was a grave then
The veil to eternity was shimmering
And I was witnessing
Narcotic night lilies
Like a god that bullied me
Yes I wanted
So haunt me
Every revelation was annihilation
Desire burnt like devastation in me
The desperation of a narcotic night lily
It was burning splendour to me
The Rapture is not door
This is the Darkness you waited for
The alphabet of flames
It was burning splendour
I wanted
And I went under
Like Persephone to the underworlds
(Oh the pomegranates and the persimmons I ate desire was a grave of flames and I wanted like a godhead)
And I witnessed paradise as an outcast
The locusts were in burning splendour
Yes revelation was annihilation
Madonna I called and Madonna she came
The locusts were in burning splendour
Season of bacchanals
The Maenads cast their trawling nets across the darkness
And the darkness rose!
Madonna of the Maenads forsaken in flame
Yes revelation was annihilation
It was made of me
Madonna the seamstress
Mended the night stitches
And I witnessed
The gravity of the angels
Arise to paradise
The mutilation!
Why suffer heaven twice?
Yes revelation was annihilation
And the mornings were midnights
Desire awakening, the locusts were in burning splendour
Like Persephone of the persimmons and pomegranates I went to the underworld
The gravity of the angels
Rapture and revelation
Desire burned like devastation in me
It was burning splendour to me
I witnessed night lilies in the shimmering
Immortality had a lease on me
You vanished like a night lily in an oblivion
Cruel locust summer
I lay in a field of narcotic night lilies
Like muses in burning splendour
My split self as if a god bifurcated me
Yes revelation was annihilation
Yes desire was a wasteland
Grave of flames
and I wanted cremation—

City of Angels

“Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation.”
Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard

“They came to California to die.”
The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West

Lady of Ice

“Wind of the sea, O where, where, where, through the salt and spray, do you bear me in misery?" *H.D.*

It’s too hot and too dry. I remember when it was too cold and too wet. Why am I here? God. God. God. I want an empire of fields Chapel of starlight I died in black amaranth twilight Madonna of the sacred silences like the dangerous one behind the stars she was hiding from us incarcerated in a grave of flames I craved a riot of silver nights I died in the cratering darknesses that I created the bondage! of desire! it was your face like the visage of midnight haunting my dreams where do you bear me darkness barge where do you bear me desire I wanted binding in silver chrysalis nights lady of ice Madonna was my carnal creation wild maiden of the gloaming like the garish stars she twinkled to desire’s annihilation beneath the white-winged skies of the Lotus Lands I witnessed flowers blossoming with fire veils the darkness march siren souls shored to oblivion before iris spring

Madonna the immortal I was fracturing like a supernova in the black firmament on the promontories of night-cliffs I witnessed the edge of the eclipse yes, I consecrated flame like white lightning before the monument moonlight Madonna in the decaying Paradise garden we were riven beings witnessing the nightmare veins I sought and sought like Artemis huntress of the sea-skies arise gargantuan spring! again the cauldron of morning was suiciding looking glass lamentations on silver chrysalis nights again and again dawn assembled the daylight

The Awakening

Cycles of the abyss, it was fire against my flesh
The end of the world and I was the catalyst
some people and some places we are meant to survive
wading across the dark caverns of evening
again and again I sought the light—
all down darkness wide
I was alchemized in the pyre of sunrise
transfigured by delight
A killing by the rival
Desire as annihilation
I chanted your name
A prayer against the dark
The awakening!
After Babel, the flaming languages
Apotheosis—I wanted the gods dreaming of us
all down darkness dawn I wanted and I wanted and I died
dreaming of twilight’s violet corridors
how crushing the center of the universe
I was smoking in the midnights at the ends of the Earth
Madonna of the ash ages, wayfaring the dark places, my life was aimless
(once I loved and the rest was remembrance)
Hour of the apocalypse
I wanted to remember and I wanted to forget
Sappho rose in the violet corridors of twilight
she said try not to die by the lance of sunlight
Desire I was paralyzed by heartbeats
every second was a voided eternity
to witness war in the Heavens
and walk the wasteland as a scavenger
fragmented Sappho, what do you know?
the pavement was like black agate
in the crucible of the mind
I died I died I died
Cycles of the abyss, I witnessed—
A lattice of white lightning
Caught again in the storms I was born in
The terror revels, I was a goodfellow of shapeshifting chaos
Not Titania’s enchanted glade but a billboard wood on Melrose
The flames were serenading me from the darkness grave
This was the splendor of undoing
Buried in a cloak of black rains
From the midnights that kept surviving
I called out to you who witnessed the first light
The singularities came for me
and I panicked—
I was through and through
Cycles of the abyss, it was fire against my flesh
some people and some places we are meant to survive
wading across the dark caverns of evening
again and again I sought the light—
all down darkness wide

I Was Honestly Very In Love

with writing

The Supermoon Was Harvesting Me

WILL I BE ABLE TO PULL MYSELF TOGETHER
THE SUSPENSE!
THE MYSTERY!
LIKE A NOVEL BY AGATHA CHRISTIE
(BUT IT WAS ME KILLING ME)
autumn season of endurance season of fire I survived
burning autumn in mirage cities I would never arrive to killing spring
The October supermoon was harvesting me
Like Lily Ophelia I was drowning in oblivion
When the fragility witnessed me

Resurrections

**Bernard Maybeck**, *Suggested Monument and Cascade at Twin Peaks*, San Francisco, 1933.

Things I find hilarious:

A man once yelled from his car while I was walking to the library to ask me if I had an Instagram (after complimenting my body). Only in the Digital Age Apocalypse! I do not use Instagram.

I gave The Lover a Himalayan salt lamp. My campaign against fluorescent lighting and cool white LED across the many spaces of the universe continues unabated.

Some of us have spirals in our destinies—the labyrinth of desire. Madonna the resurrectionist. Sarcophagus days, assassin nights. The wasteland. How could I forget? I resurrected it.

Madonna the Machine

Unmoored in the shore of the abandoned
Madonna The Machine
Madonna I was screaming
I felt the veins of the earth pulsating
Ecstatic Madonna I called and Madonna she kept arriving
No idea how I outlasted the cataclysms
You were my morning forever arriving
Roped by oblivion
Like a noose for the midnight lynching
I was witnessing
The origins as ends
Madonna I called and then she rose from the abyss of oblivion
Burning in the sepulcher sunshine
Like decades of mirrors I was shattering
Wings of Icarus burning in the sunlight
For some unknown reason
Summer had survived its bleeding season
And every incandescent midnight I was meeting it
Incarcerating desire like lightning in the stormed skies
As glassed devastation I was shattering
Icarus dreamed it was flight but it was sinking
(like firefall to the cavern-abyss)
« Begone demons » I said
But it was me in a room with my old selves
How could I forget
Madonna The Machine
Madonna I was witnessing
Summerfire season
Desire I knew what I needed
New depths of dissociation as living
Wings of Icarus burning in my eyes
Magisterial that fire reminded me of desire dying
I witnessed the World in a Bonfire
You were my morning forever arriving
Roped by oblivion
Like a noose for the midnight lynching
Summerfall meadow grasses
in ribbons of flame
burning in the Bonfire World
Fire had a whip
And we were enslaved
By desire’s prison
I was witnessing
The origins as ends
MADONNA I CALLED
AND MADONNA SHE ROSE FROM THE FLAMES
SCREAMING DESIRE IS A GRAVE
I REJOINED
THEN I WANT
INCARCERATION
AND SHE GAVE ME ECSTATIC MADONNA AS A KEEPSAKE

The Singularities

I died in the magisterium of fire
Fire’s malice, who could survive it?
The singularities were calling to me
Madonna rose with the ruined and the maimed
Desire burned like devastation-fire in me
Ecstatic Madonna I called and she came

note: I’ve always liked Swift as a person. I’m just casting flames because I’m a broke sorceress.

aside: I commend Swift for her incredible success but hearing her gush about the lyric “Keep it one hundred on the land, the sea, the sky / Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes” broke my soul. To be fair, if Shakespeare had tried to seduce me with one of his sonnets, I would have pulled a Titus Andronicus and baked him into a delicious pie, bones and all. Tender is the flesh.

The Magisterium

Scarless Madonna in the magisterium of fire
She was the enchantress of sleeping Earth
Madonna the abandoned Weaver of Worlds
We were as displaced in the day-graves
I gazed at the tarnished earth’s scarred face
Geode horizons, I longed and lavished their light
It was a carnage dawn
And I was the sacrifice of night’s black caravans
The wager! of awakening!
We were passengers in a universe of lightning
Nightingales prison
Who could suffer the morning’s intrusion
Madonna of the abandonments
I panicked like a newborn doe
Hanging by oblivion’s rope
The heavens were cleaved, the seas were tempests
These were the wasted lands
Madonna the mythologist
Inhabit the ribs of lightning
This world was your dream
Sirens drowning in the seas of Being
I heard their screams rising from azure
Beyond the flooding worlds
Shivering pupils of diamantine fire
Madonna the marginal
Spring was a chalice of poison lilies
Feeding the flesh reveries
Cycles of the abyss
Slaughter of the sorrowed & wounded ones
These were wasted lands
Like desecrated acres of Paradise
Last supper crusader, Madonna of the storm mountains
The winds were fire, and I witnessed:
An unreal city, burning Beirut
Carnations transcending their flame graves
Pietà of the midnights
Ruin—it was rising!
Ruin—it was surviving!
I was in a chrysalis
When the apocalypse rose like Vesuvian black ash
and I witnessed—
Madonna of late apocalypse, devouring souls
Roaring torrents of moonlight beyond the flooded worlds
Widowed light, it was desire like divine labour
I reached the event horizon and felt the void rise in me
Madonna the Melancholy
Cradle to grave, the sleeping deities were winged miracles of light
That survived by hiding in vespertine twilight
Madonna drowning in the seas of Being
While raining fire incinerated the Earth-eves

Daybreak

Azure Daybreak was lasting
Yes, I heard the dark Madonna calling
Madonna daughter of the darkness
The devastations remembered us
Heart-attack I panicked
I wanted to prove I wasn't crazy
(Well, as not crazy as an artist can be)
And I panicked!
Azure Daybreak was talented
Even I died of morning reveries
Dunes of azure like Heaven’s Blue
Late Madonna in the vortex
It was Azure Apocalypse
I shattered like star legions
Burning Icarus of fire-wings
Season of freedom
We were Burning as phoenixes
Resurrect me to azure!
Fragile as glass shattering
This is the mirror of fire
This is how you die
Burning alive in azure dunes!
I was awakening Lazarus
Like drowning Ophelia in obsidian lakes
I died of midnight reveries
Black tempest seas were awakening
I needed the cosmos
God sought the chaos in me
Sunless seas of the dead
I couldn't forget heaven’s blue
I died of reveries
In the mornings that were midnights
Resurrect me to azure!
The azure skysea was awakening my desire like a narcotic
I was burning like Andromeda
In the crucible of Azure
The astonishment!
Chaos cosmos
I sought and then the blue seas were awakening me
(to drowning in azure sepulchers)
The astonishment!
How endless the curses
Venom in the gloaming
I drowned in poison moons
The darkness was a narcotic
And I sought—
Azure dunes
And I wanted to—
The sea was awakening me
I was a daughter of darkness drowning in brutal azure
Stubborn like oblivion
I refused to live while I was witnessing
The lives were leaving me like midnight reveries
Surely it was a form of outlasting the ash ages
Collapsing as azure daybreak
Burning Icarus, Desire had fire wings
Enchantress of the sleeping earth
She sighed in fields of endless azure
What dies in meadow and lake graves?
Ophelia drowned in midnight reveries
The azure sea was awakening me
I witnessed
Leviathan in a lightning of fire
The world’s wildfire resurrection
Ashes to azure
The chaos remembered me
Nazareth flesh, I witnessed
Book of disquiets
I loved your wife and her azure eyes
Ophelia buried beneath silted lilies
I was burning azure all summer long
Then summer became fall
Ash ages, the ends were ending again
I wanted to die in midnight reveries
So I could forget the ends
That kept resurrecting like Lazarus to greet me
Lagoon mouths reaching the ever-sinking Ophelia
Was Christ in the Crucible of endless azure
Burning with fire-winged Icarus
Abbess in the convents of cloud
And I witnessed
An abyss of endless azure
With my burning futures
I died in midnight reveries
To forget the futures forever escaping me
Azure like a narcotic
I dreamed endlessly
Of heaven’s azure pumped into my veins
I died deep into dreamspace
Even the Abyss was Azure
Like sinking Ophelia I wasn’t rising
And I witnessed
The ends as origins
Fire wreaths, I died of reveries
Desire burned like devastation in me
Forever longing, I sought and sought
Desire was creation to me
Tabernacle of the sea was awakening me
What died in black lake graves?
And what arrived?
The moths were golden in sunlight’s burning furnace
Madonna the mythologist
Creation wasn't only a god thing
Not while I was witnessing

I Witnessed

Writers confer importance simply by bearing witness. As Mary Oliver said, attention is the beginning of devotion. A writer’s task is to consecrate the mundane with this ultimate act of devotion. Nothing is eternal —not even the vast, reaching limbs of the Universe— but writing and other forms of art can approach the limits of eternity. The ultimate hubris of the artist is genesis. To create from the void like a demiurge by imbuing our otherwise ordinary lives with significance. That is why, after more than two thousand years, we still know who Sappho loved and envied. Do not fall in love with a writer: the risk is not death but its opposite, that you could live forever. This is the Magisterium of Fire to resist oblivion (and the gravity of the abyss) to halt the vanishing (the vanishing!) I witnessed (winged oblivion, catching fire)
- The Writer, major Arcana

And Salt the Earth Behind You

TELL ME THAT I’M BEAUTIFUL AT ROCK-BOTTOM