All's turned to ashes
And they say that's good -
That flowers pop up from death
Like stars
And there's talk of a bird
Made of red and orange and yellow
Made of fire
That rises up
Covered in its remains
New.

But I am no Phoenix
No flower
No tree
I'm not even the wind
That blows the ash onto
You and me.

I am a girl
In a world of hot white, grey, black
Destruction
Left to taste the things they say
And they taste of ash.

In a golden glade a woman foretold
To me a farrow tale where I grow old
And yellow like books a breath's brush away
From becoming a dust so fine and grey
That even the wind, with his silver hands,
Will not carry me out to sea from land
Lest I demand it with my empty throat.
Ha!  Laughed the lady, then she took her leave,
Violet light now falling from between trees
As I had nothing but my mind to cleave
And my skin to scratch free of biting fleas.
I left soon after, hearing her last words:
You are not alone, I collect all herds.

Is that a black mote I espy,
Or a still, simpering fly?
Breathing the words of our king,
So soft the susurations ring
That I must strain to hear
And still it come not clear?
Must I sit and wonder
Of I've lived asunder
When the tiny, dark vocalist
Rests calmly from Life's cold jest
On the white wall adjacent
To me?  Oh! If only I knew what it meant
When he lay glassy and grey
In the receding light of day -
I bet, dare I say,
He doesn't matter in the fall -
He doesn't!  No...
Not at all.

Sometimes I don't know if

I'm a lamb, an amorphous white cloud
Drifting across dry, green oceans.  
The bringer of dreams, of peace
Woven in my wool.
I live slowly, softly
Until I don't -
And that's okay.  

Or a wolf, a sleek slick of oil
Running through thick trunks
That I smear with blood
I've stolen
Because I can't help myself.  
I cry at the moon
And I live like a falling star.  

Am I hiding beneath sheep's skin?
Wolf's pelt?
Am I nothing
More than a collection of both?

How could that be!
To be both, to be both is impossible -
                                                 Tenderness
Exists only in the absence of
                                                  Ruthlessness. ­ 

Yet here I am
Stealing your dreams
With my blood covered wool
Crying at the moon
With a slow, silent bray.  

                                                        ­                                                           Perhaps...
                           It would be best
                                                            ­                                                       I not exist
                          No, not at all.

I was told today
That I should step back
And look at myself
My thoughts, my beliefs -
Because apparently
I don't know myself well enough
To know who I am.

My hands had strychnine spasms
Until they became stuck fists
And my stomach acid
Licked up my throat to tickle my tongue.
But I'm not allowed to be angry
Because it's wrong, it's dangerous
So I felt my hot cheeks grow damp
As I grew to hate
My plummeting heart.

How dare You!  You,
Who is not Me,
Can never understand
The way red balloons lose helium
In my head making it float high
Until all that He has leaked out
And then I fall
But it's good,
More that good,
Because I can feel my skin tingle
As I learn to fly.

You'll never know of the
Grey ash in my blood
Filling up my flaming heart
With dust and dirt
Slowly smoldering past my paper skin
Until I burst into embers,
Scattering in the breeze and on the seas,
Burning for a second
Before I'm out.

Self entitled
Pretentious
Damnable
You,
Who dare to presume
You understand Me,
When You've barely begun
To know Me.

I'm not scared
Of a great nothingness
Ready to consume me
Like a gust of wind,
Nor do I fear
The void in the sky
Telling me that what I do
Is as pointless as the rest.

I fear that it matters.
That what I have done
That what I will do
Matters.

Because if that's the case
Then what am I to do?
I can't simply go on
Breathing and blinking
Like that's all there is to it.
I can't exist without some greater calling,
Some booming voice that stretches
Past my lovely, infinite void
Telling me
I'm not enough
And I never will be.

I can't stand
Smooth sidewalks,
With their smooth skins shedding smoke
Like a deer sheds velvet,
Made up of the leftovers, liquid rocks
Made to pool in little, wooden rectangles -
It's not real.

I prefer the crumbling, the cracked
The spiderwebs lacing up grey arms
Like deep, black veins - granular and gritty
Like the air I take in against my will.
That is the earth I want beneath
My calloused, weary, walking feet
Because then I shan't fear
It fading into emptiness,
Leaving me to fall -
                                                                              A fool.