Glamour Magic: the art of aging backwards isn’t hard to master if you (make them give you their magic), set the places & practice.
I set the altar. burn the candle and think of my bright smile, my naturally auburn hair;
long, thick and become more Cheshire.
face full & fresh
spectral yet ebullient in flesh.
my place, cracked and full of red:
a carnelian web.
you see my long legs
dangling before you
see the rest of me.
“heart” or “Arachne”
May the Earth take my shame and
make me a boastful garden.
and I keep recounting this old ending
of A poem I wrote:
and when they ask what you are
tell them you are humbled
I did it.
I built an empire and let myself rise with it.
generally, I go against my best intentions
for sport. learned how to read maps by getting lost
in the woods. thirsty, right leg numb,
shoulders could be fried from sun
or luggage and
it’s not death I am afraid
but of re-emergence.
I dont know how to end or
describe things.
Or know what to tell them
when they ask what I do for fun.
There’s a garden wrapped around my arm
with Lilith’s name etched into it.
The giant purple flower is datura.
determined to scare off as many passersby as possible,
i ask if they can draw Baphomet on my thigh.
snake, spider, centipede, heart shielded
by my handsome scorpion
both in black ink and in real life.
I quit kratom so my hair would stop falling out,
I say as he etches the outline of my dead’s cats eyes
into the back of my right arm. bright green and
they won’t tattoo you if you tell them
you havent eaten and i think
oh fuck
I’m about to faint.
and the little girls that like to yell at me
start laughing.
My mottled skin stretches
across my lower abdomen
stopping right above the navel.
thick red tree branches
begging for warmth,
water.
let’s see what we’ve eaten this week:
6 adderall, 14 cups of yerba mate,
15 cocktails, 4 cigarettes,
some toast and cracker
and grape. I take one iron supplement.
exactly one glass of plain water.
and I don’t even count the heart stretch
of the weed:
the rising pulse,
or her pressured breathing.
I’m about to faint.
no, youre fucking not, they say. you’re just fucking really thirsty
and constantly anemic. close your eyes.
make it go away.
make it go away.
“the dopamine series”
I don’t want anyone to know me.
“limerence”
“and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”
I am God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively testing my edges
and binding myself to
new conviction;
my need for fluctuations
in behavior,
lifestyle and mood.
baths are my only sanctuary.
my only drop of still
in a particularly icy winter.
begin bleeding with
every new moon
and begin thinking it means.
something. I begin lighting
the sky with votive &
recitation. begin pouring
the blood brinmed cup in the bubbles
with angle, slight motive:
an offering–me; any time
or any way she likes
forever.
you say: define haunted.
I named them all.
starting with the first one.
starting with the first time
I felt wanted by God.
“lilith”
Apples are hard to eat now.
Bread too and other things
aggravate the throat.
But loss no longer devastates;
imperfections no longer force me
into cessation—
breath, existence, love.
I could try again.
Loss no longer floors me.
Suffused with so much grief,
time brings turning
& often material things.
the locket hanging back on the mantle
front and center. I don’t
have the letters but my head
without caffeine remembers and
time brings
maturation.
What I’ve always needed:
the deepest place I can go is
completely still.
Still, you don’t mean a thing to me,
nothing means a thing to me.
When I speak, its merely compulsion
to expel whatever memory of feeling
lingers.
And love?
I want this thing gone.
I did it.
I built an empire and let myself rise with it.
generally, I go against my best intentions
for sport. learned how to read maps by getting lost i
in the woods. thirsty, right leg numb,
shoulders could be fried from sun
or luggage and
It’s not death I am afraid
but of re-emergence.
daturamoon.com 