Confessions of the Burning Phoenix


Angels in archways,
I ran my car down the
dirty ditch road and into your
peripheral vision,
bloody and bruised,
crawling towards the air and earth,
my hands dug in deep,
and freed myself from crunched metal,
warped screaming seatbelts,
tire track stains,
upside down falling to the gravel
as the headlights race by.

I don’t mind resting here
for a time,
seconds had strung me out
like new meds
mixed with liquor and crushed ice.
Watching you popping pills
was boring me and so I slept instead
and tried to forgive you for not
fucking me every night and morning.

Damn it,
things were swimming and going well,
and then that
cancer sickness spread and
left us lurching,
back and forward.
Through late nights
of hysteria and tantric consecutive visions of
death and sex,
as hours drifted over
our weary heads and
we felt we were losing it all.
The battle degrading us further
into silence.

And with that flooding
of trauma,
back into my bloodstream,
I began to awake,
once again,
in the middle of the night
with dreaming of past hauntings,
that man taking my little innocence,
over and over,
with lies and cruelties,
without asking first,
a violence so brutal
it left me numb for years following,
I cried and wanted to
bleach my brain for thinking
of that year I danced
with the devil
and he grinned and giggled
at my bloody suffering.
Id love to forget
all the acts of anger and aggression
that he played out
on my bare bones,
but the senses and memories
stay and like to linger
in the morning.

And so,
though the abuse still
faces me in the mirror,
from time to time,
I remain breathing
through the pain,
living love and better,
forgiving louder,
dancing and
performing my sexuality
with vibrant beats of my heart,
and stamping feet on the ground,
shouting,
I survived,
and Im still staggering forward.
Phoenix burning
and yearning a revolution
to its knees, at least,
looking and howling in the moonlight. 

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