Molting
Time and time again
I wonder what change would feel like
Maybe my body wouldn’t feel like a shell
I wonder if I could leave the pain with this body
When I shed my skin does the trauma go with it
Molting
Would I feel new again
I wonder if I would like this new body
This new skin
Free from scars and sores from 2010
Maybe the mind would be new too
Molting
Thinking of molting
Molting the idea of me
Molting the body of me
I want to feel fresh
I want to feel clean
I want to know what it’s like to be me again
Molting cause it’s necessary
Surviving requires molting
Molting is a necessity of survival
This body is battered
It’s scarred
The mahjong doesn’t look so bright anymore
How does black turn blue
Molting
Honey don’t taste sweet no more

Chewie hasn’t touched his food
I hope he’ll be o.k..
It hasn’t been the same for him
Since Leia passed away.

He’s a melancholy Wookie
as anyone can see.
He mopes around the ship all day
And he’s molting terribly

Twas bad enough when Obi-wan
was struck down by Darth Vader.
But it’s no surprise when an old man dies
That’s expected, now or later.

Our Princess was a force you see
Bringing gales of laughter
which is why we want her here
and not in the hereafter.

He’s a melancholy Wookie
as anyone can see.
He mopes around the ship all day
And he’s molting terribly.


I hope one day we’ll meet again
In Mos Eisley’s Cantina
That gold bikini may not fit
But we’d still be glad to see her.

Maybe you're the colosseum. The code to get through the glass doors is actually just '1954'. You could put up the painting of me at auction, or I could take a cruise from London to the Islands North of Siberia, a stop in a department store in Northern Greece. I stop and take a ride in the middle front-third seat of a older friend's younger brother's car, and force all of them to come outside and see the spider's eggs at Bob-o-Link. Massive cornucopias of cotton walls entwined with silk.

In the department store I ask to be introduced to someone who can take me by the hand and recognize me by my number, show me everything I'll need to shoot a full-length feature, even how I can get to Prague so I can do a little shopping. But the horror of seeing is so frightening, and the girl that I came with wants to do nothing.

I find a little shop selling Czech candies, music, and newspapers, so I try to buy everything but the horror is getting closer. I'm in a lazy Susan, how often does that happen? One more turn and I'll lose my stomach contents and then I won't need anything.

I take a climb up a street that says "Smrzlinu Ahead," but the houses on the street are all either empty or boarded up. I drift in the soccer field, watching my legs, looking over my shoulder. I fall for a pile of clothes that can hide me but are also very soft to lay in.

Another cruise- tropical, perhaps? Somewhere for coy adults, who shed their skin in Winter when their eyes start molting off. Someday I will place both hands into the ocean, I'll dream huge, and go swimming until I start to laugh. One day I'll sink to the floor of the bourn, maybe the same day I wake up and I'm not swimming alone.

I feel so detached some days.
I am not who I was. I am not
the girl who walked those high school halls,
red lipstick smudges and sidelong rejections
of boys who didn't know the mess they were after -
I am her and I am not her; at the heart
of things, the real truth of it, yes
we are the same, but I now
would not say those things she said
or do those things she did, or think
even as she thought.

Detached from the past I am now wholly
freed from the fetter of past selves, free
of their guilts, their regrets, their desires;
I am floating, minuscule distances above the dust,
I don't belong in that skin anymore, I can't help
but feel itchy in it, wanting to claw my way
out of my own skin. I don't know
what it was that tied me to her before
and is now gone, I can't see
the ribbons of gravity that held me
to the surface of this luminous planet:
reforging those bonds is a task invisible
and out of reach, something I won't know I'm doing
won't know I've done until it's over -

and on it goes, the floating and the molting,
and I can't quite see the places
where my new feathers are coming in,
but oh God how they itch.

Today it was putting
the shaving cream in my left hand
that reminded me of the time
in my basement bedroom,
prompted by Mighty Ducks
or some episode of Salute Your Shorts,
we filled Eric’s hand with shaving cream
and brushed his nose with some equivalent
to a feather. There was no way he slept
through it. Rather, he played his part,
conscious
                       that this was the way he saw to fit
in. That moment, we didn’t know how shaving
cream felt on your face, or looked on a woman’s
legs in the shower. We weren’t aware yet
of the hair that would crawl out from us, the scariest
places
           armpits and ***, frightening
our sense of normal. Or your friend
telling you the embarrassment of her boyfriend’s
mother walking in on him shaving,
you didn’t know that men shaved any embarrassing place,
but she tells you right then (not knowing you loved her)
that it is better when his ****’s in her mouth.
                                                          ­      
                                                                ­        The women drag razors

over their legs every morning for a sense of clean
and then the people who dig the razors
into their arms, legs. We weren’t ready. Hearing
about the couple whose marriage counselor advised
them to have the husband shave the woman’s genitals,
her cuts, her sense of emptiness, his wild-eyes. Who do you love
now?
                                               The woman in the peace-corps with legs-
unshaven 16 months.
                                               The shaved teen naked on your computer monitor
or the woman shaving
                                               in the shower next to you, legs, then armpits
apologizing, blushing.

Tethered no more by this umbilical chain
We break through the shell - Burst through the seed
Fingers laced and reaching up toward the big blue
Eyes gaining sight, sight meeting light
We bathe ourselves in the warming glow
Sol's sweet kiss to ease and simmer
Terra's touch to point the steps
We haven't much further to climb
-
Tree of Life - Home - Mother - Bed
Your roots we leave for Eden
Sky of Thought - Dream - Father- Blanket
Your wind will guide our wings
We gain friend in fire, rock, and storm
To tinker with the gifts of Titans
Together we rise and seek the stars
So we may spread the songs and preach the past
-
We go by Gaea, We go by God
Underneath our pagan star's shine
At night, symphonies will charm them
And we dance together until we fade
gain we lay into the palms of dream
The fingers of sleep, clench to a fist
Grinding us down to the finest of dusts
To glow and blow into the zephyrs
-

A bird in an aurulent billed mud-face,Living as a four foot two inch dragon in a San Franciscan cave,
Lifts off from a hot breathed murmur of Gideon.
Even in night the whole grandeur of movement
Soaking in red beeping heart-pangs
Fasten to the thrusts of his arms.
This post of vainglory was the opening of the year.
In July's open pores,
On a spatial plateau of Dodonian oak.
The Penguin
Unveils his weakened voice.
Flattening into a wide arrow
Draped from Carina he
Sails Westward. Barefooted through the Anavros
Molting under deep helplessness and melancholia.
With his inlaid eyes faced askance
The penguin broods
Among the day's songs
Cast into the poetry of the lyre,
Stretched upwards from Paradise Bay to Colchis,
Where his ebony wings
Soak into the palms of Peleus
Suffering only where the arrows have flung.
Downside up, with children in a pocket of blood,
Among supergigantic siren songs and muse poems
Sewing teeth into a spot of Earth
Races towards a column of toppling strakes.

Naked and raw  
I bear my soul to the sea
Freed from a shell outgrown

Natalheme was on the balcony gazing up at the moons again. She always did this after talking to The One. And, as always, she was awestruck by their beauty. Perfect spheres of crystal, with a scintillating sheen due to the shield that surrounded her world. Three there were. The largest was ivory, the second aquamarine, and the smallest the color of Tourmaline lilac. This is the human equivalent of the shades. But these colors only the Seraphs could see. For they have a much broader spectrum of color to enjoy.

The child yawned, and stretched her graceful arms as if to grasp the one small moon, now the color of heather, as it was moving behind the largest ecru orb. She then looked out at her home planet. The balcony provided a spectacular view. In itself, the cantilevered balcony was a feat of engineering without par. Gracefully it perched on the side of Natalheme's home like a dove would place itself with spread wings upon an olive branch. It had a texture like mother of pearl, but with a subtle sparkle like marble. The child went on the tip of her toes to look over the edge of this edifice.

Her planet was the loveliest this universe can provide. Her people, the Seraphs, were created by The One just as we were, but their female could not be tempted by Evitamar (their name for Satan). Therefore, their world, and indeed the Seraphs themselves, never lost their original Glory. Enormous trees spread like umbrellas of emerald and turquoise. Some were the shade of peridot. Others had leaves that were molting, and were every shade of fire. A mist swirled up from the foliage beneath the gargantuan trees. Flowers of every color (and as I said, their spectrum was endless) and shape graced the garden beneath the shade of the beautiful trees. The Mist watered everything growing. It never rained on her world. Cathedral like crystals erupted here and there from the russet earth. Natalheme (pronounced nat-al-eh-may) could hear the azure ocean. The waves sang and sang...

Above her an enormous eagle-like raptor soared on the thermals provided by the Mist. It looked down on the child, it's eyes having the same natural frown as our species of bird. But its eyes were ruby blood. It had feathers the color of alabaster and amber, and were crystalline in nature.

All of the sudden it positioned itself to swoop... its body angled down and rushed toward her with blinding speed! Its talons extended like landing gear, and snatched the child up like she weighed as much as a cotton ball!

It hauled her into the air by her light tunic, took her miles above her planet... And proceeded to drop her!

She shrieked...

... with utter delight!



(To be continued)


SøułSurvivør
(C) 7/13/2017

I come face-to-face with my Shadow
hungry
devouring
depraved.

The lupine
before a full hunter moon
bristles.
Hot saliva
falls
from hurtful pointed rows
in pearls.

This
in Goodge Street Station's
Underground
where a poster
promotes
The Hunger
a page-turner

The Clown in Soho:

3 Chocolate Martinis
4 lagers
1 gram of *******
300 press-ups
7 mile run and
1 sachet of Kamagra

… the night begins …

I howl with delight
- that’s me -
cracks open
a smile
yellow eddies swirl
in thrawl
to that shadow beast o’ mine.

This monstrous
I
can never satiated be --
a beast to straight jacket under the influence of the waning and waxing moon
and on the night of the carmine moon
release

My phone rings
(Excuse me, while I take this).
‘Hello, am I speaking to Ashley?’
‘Depends on who’s asking,’
I respond
licking my lips.
‘You Ashley Chapman?’
I like this kind o’ game.
‘Like I said,
who’s asking?’
Frustrated he repeats, ‘Confirm your name.’
I yawn and tell him as savagely as I can:
'No!'
Wolves
know 'no'
to the pack.

But as in Beauty and the Beast
(the Cocteau 1946 version, of course)
beneath that thick molting hair pelt
beasts have culture
and feelings, too
(a lion's heart?)
and mostly
(occasionally not)
given
space
food
The Den
a willing mate (or two)
we’re okay
affectionate dogs.
For when all is well with my shadow
-- no problem
   in peace
   in chains
'til the looped moon!

like the legend of the phoenix, all ends with beginnings*
-Daft Punk

sometimes
my heart creeps into my mind
like young lovers' hands
reaching for palms and fingertips.

my mind tells me to forgive you
but my heart is heavy with pain

my mind tells me to accept what has happened
but my heart is full of memories

my mind explains the pain away
but all my heart does is feel

my mind tells me to forgive you.

it is seven twenty-four AM
there is a violin playing in the distance
and I am still haunted by you.

I am slowly letting you go though,
like feathers falling loosely
from my fingertips.

I watch you float slowly to the ground
where you can no longer hurt me.

I feel myself grow taller
as you lay beside my feet

and maybe someday a soft wind
will lift you slowly
into something else.

There's a certain kind
That holds you hostage
Way up there in the bleachers
In a red-light district
Cold and cheap
It lures you because you're lurable
Attach and you're stuck up there
In a certain kind
Of dilapidated ivory tower

It's only later on
When you're broken
When the nights have woven
Their history and the light
Has drained
Only when you're pushed out
Only when you're shoved off
Only then does the truth
Begin to talk

Until then it's been silent
Though gradually loosing appetite
For despair, denial, dilemma
Only when unhooked
Does that fierce, quite dismissal
Begin to beg for something else
Only then does
A certain other kind
Begin to go wild for itself

You wonder how yourself
Moldy and molting
And mad with lies
Had so deceived its own
You wonder how
If there is a god
S'he coulda watched you bleed
With self-betrayal
And sat there idle
While you slowly crumbled

But admit it
You were terribly cocky up there
In the pink and belly-full
***** and hookered
If G O D woulda spoken
You woulda spit in the face of divinity
And you probably did

So that certain kind
Watched and waiting
For another
Certain kind
To choke the bejasus outa ya
'til you slowly faded to full stop
And dropped to your knees
To a certain other kind