Trees and goddesses, earth mothers,
a catalog of false promises.
I’ve wasted too long in your shadow,
where your love was a phantom, drifting in the mist.
You wrapped me in your branches, sang me to sleep
with lullabies that never dared ask me to wake.
Give me the devils now — the ones with flame in their jaws,
and claws that rip away the illusion of your touch.
You called me to the light,
offered commandments etched in dust and bone.
I waited for your warmth, but you burned me with your absence.
Your stars were cold, their silence the sound of your betrayal.
Give me the devils, their words wrapped in smoke,
contracts scrawled in blood —
truth that cuts through the rot of your empty promises.
You planted guilt in my roots,
laid laws that broke before they could take hold.
I bent beneath them, afraid of storms,
but your throne crumbled under its own weight.
Give me the devils, whose fire shapes me,
whose gaze cracks me open and lays me bare.
You cloaked yourself in chaos,
and I tasted your venom like nectar,
until it birthed something real.
You tore me open, and I found my soul unmarked,
uncompromised.
Give me the devils, whose ruin births freedom,
for in their fire, I am forged.
No gods to shackle me,
no celestial promises to chain my soul.
Only the devils —
the demons who burn,
who demand,
and who leave me torn but true.
The Cycle is a lyrical monologue framed as a reckoning — a confrontation with inherited myths, parental archetypes, and the comforts that become cages. Structured in four quadrants, the piece moves through Divine Mother, Divine Father, Infernal Father, and Infernal Mother, each rendered through two tightly wrought movements. This intentional symmetry is shattered by the speaker’s growing defiance, which builds momentum until it culminates in a full rejection of inherited power structures.
The poem opens with the familiar symbols of maternal nurture: trees, goddesses, earth mothers — not as sacred origins, but as excuses for inaction. The feminine divine, once warm and inviting, is revealed to be passive, withholding, evasive. The paternal divine follows, bearing commandments and silence. He does not guide, but abandons — his stars offer no warmth, only distance. These first two movements unmask the hollowness of supposed benevolence and authority.
The second half of the piece shifts into infernal territory. The Infernal Father offers no comfort, only terms. Yet he is clear, transactional, and brutally honest — the kind of figure who names the cost without pretending it is a gift. The Infernal Mother is the final catalyst: chaotic, seductive, and cruel in a way that leaves no illusions. She does not cradle; she carves. And in her carving, the speaker is revealed — not broken, but made.
The devils, unlike the gods, do not lie.
This work dismantles traditional spiritual and parental archetypes by reimagining the infernal not as evil, but as honest — as the crucible through which personal agency is formed. Where divine figures coddle and confuse, devils confront and clarify. The poem is an indictment of passive authority and a praise-song to the hard truth of consequence. It seeks to reframe damnation as liberation, to reject salvation as submission.
Ultimately, The Cycle is a myth of self-forging — a journey through fire where survival is not a gift, but a choice.