Welcome, Samhain, the Festival Of The Dead
The year draws to a close and we look to the New Year ahead
With the veil at its thinnest, spirits freely roam
Its time once more to welcome your Ancestors home


Listen to their messages and take note of their advice
For they know things we cannot, except at a price
Raise a glass in their honour, then bid them farewell
Though they never really leave us, and this we know well


Tomorrow brings a new day, though the Dark Lord slumbers on
The New Year has begun, let your voice raise in song
Set out your hopes and desires, for it’s a time to look ahead
Ask the Blessings of the Ancients as on your path you tread


May the coming year be fruitful, may you prosper and grow
For you’re a walker of the Old Ways and this is what we know
We are children of the Ancients and so we are doubly blessed
For we are the chosen ones, each on our own Sacred Quest.

Blessed Be.


Samhain 2012                                        
Nerwydd Dragonborne

To walk the Path be both brave and true

From deepest night till daylight too

From fire's crack and water's tide

Naught will keep you from our side

With light within and light without

Keep from us far the stain of doubt

As above so it is below

Lady you've shown us this is so

Listen now to my Word take heed

AS I WILL IT SO MOTE IT BE

Harken My Daughters
by Solitaire Archer


Harken My Daughters I bid listen to me
And as I say these Words So Mote it be

Teach her from now till time is forgot
Teach her broom and teach her ***
Teach now no reason to hide
Teach her scents and times and tides
Teach her hues and Teach her to bide

Teach her Moons and teach her flowers
Teach her herbs and to keepsafe Our bower
Teach her Air and Water and Fire
Teach her Oak and Teach her lyre
No buildings of Stone No meter high Towers
Let her Dance in the Snow and Dance in the Showers

Hark to me my Daughters dear Teach her so she has naught to fear

Show her Signs and cards and runes
Teach to her to call down the Moon
Teach her Sight and Teach her Bane
Teach her to invoke my Name
in my Place too- call down the Power
In our Circles or in our Bowers

As I have taught now you must too
Pass it forward your line ensue
Daughter to daughter your line in Light
for this moment forward as far as Sight
Witch follows Witch for eternitys Flight
Daughter to Daugther gives Power and Might

Harken My Daughters Listen me

Child go live it
So Mote It Be

These are my words, This is my way.
Doyenne Solita Arcanna ShadoeWalker @2012

I say “tomato”
You say “toe-mah-toe”
I say “I want to pierce my nose”
You say “don’t you dare scare that ivory skin”
I say “ I want to be a poet”
You say “but that doesn’t make much income”
I say “I am never having a baby”
You say “you’ll meet a nice man, settle down, and change your mind”
I wear this silver pentacle
Around my throat like a noose
String me up and hang me
Like my sisters from Salem
Condemn me because I don’t fit
In the box labeled “Christian” on your questionnaire
Call me a ****** for finding the beauty in another woman’s curve
Brand me a ***** just for existing
Pull at my heartstrings
Like a puppeteer
Guide my every movement
Cut out my vocal cords and replace them with yours
After all, you know best right
If I dye my hair a color that isn’t
Blonde, black, or brunette
I’ll never land a job
If I don’t quit with this feminist ****
No man will ever want me
You’re only looking out for me right
If you know so much about me
Tell me who I am
Tell me how I felt when I was thirteen
And stealing my brother’s straightedge
To carve Jack-O-Lantern faces into my upper thighs
Tell me how I felt when my mother
Grabbed my cheeks and told me
To pop my pimples
When she asked me if I ever wanted to be beautiful
As if I wasn’t already
Tell me how I felt when I sat across my sister
In a mental hospital
After she gorged herself on unknown pills
And she said
“Don’t ever die. Dying isn’t fun”
Tell me how I felt when my parents
Showered me in gifts
After I finally told them I was depressed
Like they were trying to buy back my happiness
Tell me how I felt when the boy
With the beautiful smile and cigarette stained breath
Stuck his hand into my *******
And whispered
“You know you want it”
Tell me how I felt when my body froze with fear
When early onset rigor mortis snaked through my muscles
When I clamped my knees together
And denied him access to my body
Tell me how I felt when
He pushed his blushing appendage into my mouth
After I said no
And how I felt when I kept my lips sealed
How I let him get away with it
If you are such an expert on my landscape
Pinpoint all my scars and beauty marks and moles
Locate all the intimate areas my fingertips explored
Tell me how often I shave my legs
Tell me how much pride I feel when I remember to put on deodorant in the morning
Draw a map of all my
Forests, canyons, and lakes
Prove to me you really know me
Prove that you’re really looking out for me
Prove your advice
And remember
No good deed goes unpunished
And if you still maintain that you know what's best
Look me in the eyes
And tell me who I am

When you're 15
With a spotted face of acne
And a wild mane of curly hair
And boy who is two years older
And can drive
Tells you you are beautiful
You will let him touch you

When you're 15
And his fingers curl up your sides
Like spiders
You'll want to *****
But you will swallow the toxic insides
Of your stomach
And smile
He thinks you're beautiful

When you're 15
And its a week later
And you feel like something
Is dying inside of you
You won't tell anybody
This secret will die
With the thing inside of you
Remember, he thought you were beautiful

When you're 15
Your friends will invite you to a party
Where you'll take up cigarettes
You'll bite down on your tongue
And lock yourself in the bathroom
When they mention
The boy who thought you were beautiful

When you're 16
And you finally forget about
The boy who thought you were beautiful
A new boy will come along
He will think you're special

When you're 16
You will go to your first Homecoming dance
You will feel like you are
Drowning in your dress
Like you are choking on your perfume
And everyone's breath
But he will look at you
Like you are special

When you're 16
And he tells you
He likes you because no one notices
You are there
No one looks twice at you
You will realize
He never really thought you were special

When you're 16
And it's been over a year since
The boy who thought you were beautiful
Talked about you
Like you were meat
And two months
Since the boy who thought you were special
Has spoken to you
You will crush your cigarettes under your boot
Smash Mike's Hard Lemonade bottles
On the edges of the kitchen table
Open your wrists for the first time
In four years
Wake up in the morning
Covered in cat hair and pen marks

When you're 17
You will write a poem
A poem you'll only let strangers read

The air conditioning is on and
It makes the hair on my legs stand up.
Old women wrapped in tradition sneer at my
New age, new wave
Style of living.
Boys like girls who keep their mouths shut.
Who sew their lips together with choruses of
"Yes dear"
"Anything for you dear"
"Whatever you say dear".
Boys like girls who know when to put the pen down.
Who don’t play with words
The way babies play with rattles.

In the winter
I’m told I have the perfect body.
In the summer
I’m told to cover up.
My thighs roll with thunder
And wave like the ocean.
I spit blood onto the hot pavement
Next to the cigarette butts and newspapers.
Girls don’t do that.

Girls shave
And cook
And clean
And purse their lips when someones mean
And keep their curls under control
And don’t bite their nails
Or eat too much cake
Or say no.

And when the air conditioning is on
They don’t shiver.
They don’t feel their natural armor
Stand up to fight.
When the air conditioning is on
They smile
And say “thank you” to the sun.

And the cigarettes paint our teeth yellow
Like the coffee and tea
We bathe our bones in.

Poems scrawled out in chicken scratch
On snow white wrists
While the spiders under my skin dance
A forbidden 8-legged tango.

Scars paler than my pigment stand out on my thighs
That are not unlike thunder.
My ribs press up against my torso,
A jail cell.

Once again the panic sets in
And I am taken hostage.
It feels as if my lungs took a voyage on the Titanic.
I named the left one Jack,
The right one Rose.
The right one always lives.
The cold creeps in
Followed by shouts from the audience
“Theres room for two on that door!”
But its too late.
Good ol’ lefty is already gone.
Sunk to the bottom of the ocean
Along with all my journals.

The teenaged feminists bare their fangs
And I smile.
So happy to see solidarity.
Blood drips from their teeth.
**** the pig.
Slit his throat.
A female Lord of the Flies.

He smiled at me from across the room.
Or maybe he smiled to the girl next to me.
She is prettier than me
And probably smarter
And easier to deal with.
I am stubborn and
She looks like the type of girl to lay down her guns.
I have got to stop thinking this way.

Metaphors and similes unravel on my tongue.
I mumble into the microphone something about
Not knowing what I should be feeling.
Should I feel happy
Because I survived while others,
Who have gone through way worse,
Are stuck under miles of dirt?
Should I feel empty
Because he took the very last of me
And he doesn’t even care?
Should I let the apathy set in again
Like rigor mortis?
Should I
Should I
Should I

I have got to stop using repetition to fill in the empty spaces
Between my words.
And I have got to stop staying up until 3 am
And complaining about how no one will love me
Because I am so difficult
And stubborn
And indecisive
And anxious
And ******.
And I have got to stop tearing myself down
Like a once beautiful, now broken building.
I write about self love a lot.
I should practice what I preach.

Where was I?
I don’t even know.
All I know is
The spiders have broken out in a full on dance battle
And the cigarette smoke is curling
In my one lung,
The one named Rose.
And my feminist friends eye my hairy legs
And whisper about ******.
And the solidarity breaks apart.
And my scars start to tear open again
And oh no,
There goes a spider.
And the boys make fun of my thighs
And I shatter like the glass I am

And I open a new journal.
And I write another poem.