what does the preacher get by lying?
doesn’t he know that people still wouldn’t believe?
does he really think a purple light would make them flock like flies?
hasn’t he met skeptics who find it hard to dream?
is it really that hard to admit you’re not perfect
to imperfect people who are trying to be set free?
do you not trust the flock you shepherd to care for you?
did you forget that you are still a sheep?
although my lips wish to sing your curses
for leading many others to a place where they can’t see,
my heart empathizes with pride blocking your straight path,
and I pray your scars, your shame, and what holds you find release.

Dude, cultists are so awful.
Double-speak, indirect action,
All this horrid pageantry.
The intelligence is so lacking,
The feebleness so evident.
Not only in the strength of their arguments
But by the content of its body.
Frankenstein & the monster.
Very stupid.
Arrogant, ignorant?
Yep.
Short-sighted, unintelligible?
Absolutely.
It would stun to think
If it weren't so simplistic.
To take such a reductionist view
On things so complex,
I do understand that need for you.

Baseless threats
And poor attempts at intimidation.
Meek control
Where everything is construed as favor.
Cannibals,
Obsessed with their palate & others' flavors.
Barbarians,
Bastardizing the words of others.

But to run with it
After you understand it,
You're a ******* imbecile.
To not build upon it
But to take it as gotten:
You don't get anything.
It shows.

when all the birds have broken their wings
i will cradle your blood in my palms like holy water.
it’s warm,
warmer than god’s voice ever was.

time does not speak to me.
it only gnaws.
i lie beneath the floorboards, fingernails black with rot,
scraping remnants of lace and dried sweetness
from the soft decay of forgotten girlhood.
those torn seams, those salt-laced dreams—
what is purity but a ghost in the mildew?

O hearken!
the lilies are shrieking again.
their tongues curl like burnt scripture.
and i—
forever entranced by the acacia with the broken branches—
watch it weep sap like blood from an open wound,
as if to mourn something
only the trees remember.

i have swallowed the nightingales,
pressed their hollowed bodies
to the roof of my mouth
and vowed to keep them safe.
put your hands within me
and you will know the breaking of their wings—
each bone snapping in rhythm
with the pulse beneath my skin.

Our God sees everything
but he blinks often.
how could anyone have a mother?

your ribcage—once cathedral, now ruin—
shatters under the thousand-eyed weight
of dead saviors.
their halos clang as they fall.
your conscience flickers like static,
blotted out by the black geometry
of the insatiable void.

cassiopeia screams into her chains
but the stars do not loosen.
the universe unfurls
like a paper body
set alight.

O hearken!
kneel for the Great Reprieve!
when all the birds have broken their wings—
may we bleed beautifully.
oh mercy you, oh mercy me.

every time i open my mouth to speak
my tongue tangles up in the branches and bitter blooms.
long limbs knotted up in christ and the
front yard of my childhood carry
green suns instead of rib cages.
i have called you a ruin!
i have called you the home i was torn from!
now that i can only speak in flowers,
can you hear me?

the orchid bears my naïveté
the rose my wounds,
the dying nettle my tenderness.
what if i am small forever? will salvation reach for me?
he sits there, on the willow with the broken branches.
and my mother, she asked him this one sunless sunday:
how can i help her find the light?
but i have already done it all. i have
torn out all my past lives from under rotting floorboards
and i have cut off all my fingers
(i cut off all my fingers just to touch you!)
no, mother. the question is
how can i help the light find her?

salvation spits on my grave.

it remembers me.
the sky.
the mouth above the mouth.
the lightless gullet where clouds go to rot.

i kneel in the driveway
and my bones click like prayer beads.
i say nothing.
the wind fills in the blanks.

above,
the bruised vault peels open.
something pours out that smells like me—
ozone and old milk and motherlessness.

i know this feeling.
the ache behind the eye.
the tug in the marrow.
the static in the throat right before god speaks
and forgets my name again.

the sky remembers me.
like blood remembers stain.
like salt remembers wound.
like hunger remembers teeth.

and so i let it.
i open my mouth
and taste iron,
and ascend.

not float.
not rise.
just—
dislocate upward
until every tendon sings its own name
and snaps
like wet string.

there is no rupture.
there is no goodbye.
only the soft gulp
of return

I wish to love you religiously.
To find my religion in the cracks of your lips.
Feel your holiness through your callused palm.

I’d worship the temple of your soul.
Nurturing and loving,
a spiritual healing
restricted to the sanctity of your love.

Salvation meant existing by your side,
fulfillment was being your shadow.
Purity meant being solely yours.

And if hell meant eternity with you,
then I’d burn the rest of my life with the fire you started within me.

If it was a sin to love,
then I have become the most immoral person in your name.

I continue loving you religiously,
submitted…
entirely,
wholly
to you.