ardent poetry

of what living once felt like.

our visits with the wolf have happened less and less over the years, long or otherwise.        at first, we waited. that absence defined those hours, then weeks. now, the visits are what they are, transient and happy, but the truths the wolf brings still hold the same bite.

that's where we found the wolf, persisting in what we knew to be incorrect. it wasn't, but it took us years               to realise.

we swore much, dedications to gods, lower case or otherwise, and gave our fealty, blood bound, neatly cut and stacked to causes, nations, people.                  we knew what we'd break, and what we wouldn't. it was a renaissance of creative interpretation, legalese, fine print of promises sworn by an honest, but unwilling                heart.

figure eight of flowing ink, words of slate, rock cliff crushed to nothing in our hands, an apology that vines through conversations, faced and denied, refuted need in the name of hurts not made, but felt, till time brings understanding -- what and who the words are for isn’t always clear while they’re being said.

shift from life to live alongside the sediment, the rock we sought to know. changes drip through the earth and touch all that’s come before. care take the darkness, burrow beneath the wreckage, love places that can’t be touched by the living. walk with the dead, what they were before the winds shifted and left them here. here, here we found the quiet.

i will allow myself to be furious about this. to feel it build in the blood, uproar of upcoming vindication, correction woefully ignored or misunderstood. it is what we are, what i wish i was. i don't have a right to this, the rage is borrowed, bound to a story i have not lived.

let's make a go of this, morning one, bringer of light. you, most beloved, and us, the shale. impermanent mollusc lives, washing up across your shores. what does that feel like? we knew what you did in spilling blood in heaven, but the why would be nice.

wolf, you brought me fresh silence stretched and torn with little pockets of gravity and star-stuff. it’s mostly new, i think, more deliberate and considered than i’m used to. we’ll come to know it well, wear out the spine till it refuses to close completely, in well-read protest. sketch some battle lines in fitted quiet.

the water grows dark, castle walls fall, and we decide to keep swimming.

stand amongst, bare thought, honest.        it’s all you’ve got, rainfall, thunder, giants.  guide, bring us – yourself – to edges, yours, jagged little tears.   learn the precision of them, run hand along the frills and cuts, then, then you’ve a map, and nothing on the road can surprise you.

we’re all old gods if that meant something, we’re all points, scratching wrists to jigsaw piece conversations. bright light of midnight phone text app thoughts that mean something, books on broken pagan statues and unhelpful narratives and mostly blank notebooks, at least half, can’t write on the left it’s wrong                        i wonder if gods have panic attacks.

grope through reoccurring images, applying them to fresh-paint souls, beheaded statues, and historical names.

i can’t remember when i realised there was blood in the roots.

we’ll grow to stone, reaching up through the garden, leaving little placards of names, dates, and deeds. cultivate the narrative with flowers, lilted prose and pre-aged marble faces. wonder if we’ll be broken too, one day.

now they're in the museum, ripped from their home. i should remember that when i see them, instead of forgetting all but rough hewn necks and three gods.

is no place for Athena.