Part One

Mercury is in retrograde.
And people who do not believe in astrology
Quake in their collective boots.
Mercury enters the living room and kicks the dog,
Flops onto your couch and tells you to get them whatever they need.
You listen, Mercury is, after all, in retrograde.
They will travel across the sky backwards,
Throwing off your life in all of their
Roman god of thieves glory,
Until you give them what they want.
Mercury switches between burning loved ones and freezing them,
With a sunrise and sunset sense of reliability.
With no atmosphere to keep themselves warm.
They don sweaters in July to hide their withering orbit
And even if mercury is in retrograde,
It seems they are not moving.

Part Two

Eris rotates the sun,
Brings an apple to a wedding party
She was never invited to
The apple reads, “To The Prettiest One”
And starts the first war among men.
And Eris claims she meant no harm.
Cries on her mother’s lap,
Aging a year every 88 days.
Her mother covers her in a cloak dark as night.
Her mother is the night.
Eris rotates, stares at Mercury,
Breathes Cigarette smoke deep into her own lungs,
Blows it in Mercury’s face.
Mercury is trying to quit
Eris does not care.
Eris wants to see Chaos.
Wonders why no one asked her who the stupid apple was for.
She thinks humans are stupid.
We are, she’s never wrong.
She dresses herself in her best to come see you at work
Every Sunday like a religion.
Baggy jeans, and a not so clean t-shirt,
Makes Mercury mad that she forgets the wig every time.
Mercury does not want to see the hair Eris has pulled out after every cigarette
Like a body count.

Part Three

Mars was born from pretty.
Yet he seems to be anything but pretty.
He’s going to war with everyone,
He burned a boys shoes once,
A boy who dared to love the solar system,
To accept the sun, and every planet and satellite
Like siblings.
Mars is fighting the stars,
He wants to land among them, and shoot all of them out like light bulbs.
Mars wants to protect his solar system from the stars,
From every boy.
To keep the sun burning for eternity.
Eris reminds him the sun will burn out, eventually,
And Mercury hides behind your couch.
Mars lashes out with the sun,
Breaks the sun’s knuckles off eris’s face,
Sets your carpet on fire.
Mercury starts to cry, notices the bruising on the sun,
Tries to patch it’s sunspots.

Part Four

Venus tries to mediate.
In all of her fifties house wife,
Goddess of beauty perfection.
She tries to keep the meteors from hitting all her sun-mates.
She is tired.
She wants to live in a kitchen in front of her bay windows
With her favorite book,
Watching the sea foam and hoping it with birth her a companion.
She can not handle having Eris burning the sun’s lungs,
Or Mercury wanting to die.
Or Mars being angry,
Much longer.
They set her Sunday best on fire.
A dress with petticoats and flowers.
Her white shoes she keeps perfectly polished for tea with her mother.
Venus dresses the sun in a matching dress made of silk,
And rubs rouge on its cheeks,
Like her own little baby doll
And cries over her own infertility.
Mercury consoles her,
tells her she might not meet her purpose
Of love, and ***, and motherhood,
But that they will love her at least.
Eris tells her “Who needs that crap?”
And flicks a cigarette out on her own arm.
Mars gets angry at her crying.
Slaps her with the sun.
Singes her perfectly smooth cheek.
She cries more.

Part Five

Mars storms out, burns your shoes again.
Eris lights up cigarettes like birthdays and lovers
Off of Mar’s fires,
Venus tries to put them out with her tears,
Her bay-window-kitchen-room-favorite-book-dreams
And her battered, childless body,
And Mercury falls further into retrograde.

Eris

The press of
some boy’s
Levi rivets
on my hips
and liking it.
School girl poppets,
******* scraps
thrown in our faces.
A policeman
asking Eris
the colour of the
wanking man’s pants.
Fleshy pink she laughs.
Mysteries at 14.
Eris knows men
with fast cars.
Fast hands.
We fast forward
to forget most bits.
Never question
why we are taken,
we never
speak of it.
Why bother,
my mother’s drunk
with the man
whose daughter
Eris is.
Mysteries at 14.
I’m told
no alcohol.
There’s nothing
worse
than teenage girls
disgracing themselves.
Stay nice.
My father’s charcoal
drawing
on our wall
of the woman
with the
pointy *******.
She is Eris’s mother.
Double standard
mysteries at 14.

Eris is taller than me,
blocks my way
with her back
as I try to leave.
Stay she says.
Scent  of lemon
on her blonde hair,
caught up in a ponytail.
I flinch
as she flicks
it to one side,
like a stamping palomino.
Strands caught
by the butterflies
pinning
the gold studs
to her ears.
Blonde in my mouth,
lemon on my tongue,
best friend,
girlfriend crush.
She turns,
dissolute and desolate.
Eris says we’re enjoying it,
all the mysteries at 14

The lacking is killing,
And it is chilling,
Us to the bone.
Eris is cold.

The Goddess tricks herself into warmth,
Holding an item of memory,
Close to her withering body,
Shaking uncontrollably.

The realization of guilt widens her eyes,
And violently destroys her control.
A promise of eternity,
Becoming a shallow story.

The ties were weak,
But she tugged them as she climbed,
Laughing at every quivering tear,
Of the breaking rope.

Wind blew her out of her body,
And the lacking came.
There was nothing,
In the everything she promised to throw away.

Feeling overcame the Eris of discord,
And she fell to the bottom,
Splattering a story with her blood,
And she swept her conceit into the bloodied earth.

Goodbye, Eris.
Hello, Eris.