Week 1,
Safety. Asked myself what I'm afraid of.
How to calm myself? Nine cups of nectar
tendered. Eight daggers dance, and seven strong
and hefty boughs and and rugged trunks exposed.
And what was I afraid of? Being on
the table, scared, submitting to your clean
and careful knife. Casting, for a spur
of kindness, reaching only mask. What,
afraid of? Letting all to see the secret
shame of my misogyny. And what—
so scared, I was—of judgment and submission,
to be unearthed by paid attention, airy
insight brought to bear?
What could I learn?
What favor gained from soldiering on, from aiming,
slipping, folding, getting up to strive
again, to glare the mirror nauseated,
not a friend? Safety!
Wresting God,
I read my poems loud, so loud they echoed
round the world in zeroes, ones. Safe!
And welcoming a lover to attain
and agent me, I welcomed her to husband
me. The strong one, one who gives her potent
beast to tame and train. I ventured deep
into my woundings, opening myself
to dread, neglecting to protect and rescue
beggared, destitute, bereft, and abject mum.
I opened self to terror, mousy mumbling
at the mandible of mighty, munching
mantis.
Finding safety where I feared,
invited lordship over me of Queen,
crying to receive her comforting,
my patroness.
Week 2, Integrity.
I slipped a little when I was betrayed.
Squirmed and squealed and desperate, hurling cruelties:
inept, ridiculous, through threshold, gate,
a wall erected. Only with integrity,
recorded odds to be redeemed, to carry
counsel from a friend, to hold my joy
in conversation with a beauteous
and lonely man.
Integrity. I brought
myself before the court and testified,
not knowing every fact, but baring open
heart to gush the tidal wave, to wrench
the staff unstuck. I brought my eloquence
to bear, refused recanting orders from
pretenders who demanded I retract
to shelter, retire gently into night.
Integrity. I pitched the net for listeners,
wrote, requesting readers, losing few—
repercussion to my daring, sharing nasty
promiscuities: willing not
be split, no longer missing from above,
below the waist.
At twenty-eight, we cut
the cord. At thirty-nine I find the starting
line. Maturity, a hurdle: many
vaults and jumps ahead of me. What happened,
seventeen, what happened then? Awakened.
Passion apprehended own heart beating,
reading, blood-red, in the staff, a melody
of swords—one, two, three, four, five, six—and planted
in the earth, and boarding, shoving off
to California. Twenty-eight, for home:
the five cups fully tipping over. At thirty-
nine, the four staves standing tall.
Integrity.
You called upon my cruelty, succeeding
only second, only for a second.
Integrity. I listen to the voices
in my head—you hear them too. I let them
speak their vile, disgusting hate. I lease
them mouth, but only mute, I pay attention.
Soldier, march your form up to the end,
collect your salary in healing. Then—
what next? A week of Power. Subconscious strong,
already meditating on the Power.
But of my power? What of my power? What will
I learn? How shall I learn to form, to frame,
to fabricate, to mold, to shape and sharpen
power? What angers will erupt as lava,
loosens from the center, springing anarch-
y? What falcon's screeched critique to capture,
hold and hear, to guide return of king?
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