Shadow Solstice

"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"

Bram Stoker 'Dracula'

Shadow Solstice

I am back in the desert

where I can hear my heart beat

where I am willing to bleed 

for the pleasure of my shadow.

(This is my home.)

I watch the desert moon

agitated by this winter’s sky,

here in the land of wild

where creatures would rather die than go frigid,

I stand among the beast and brutes.

(By design

all souls eventually break:)

____ it is always 

the tension between light and dark

that opens our eyes to the living.

We do not have to apologize 

for being mortal

or wait for the storm to break open

before we taste the rain.

Is it the redemption a poet craves,

the religion of love 

the mood of forgiveness

or is it ____

the fear of being possessed

the guilt of flesh 

and the lust living inside of us all?

I let the dark water of winter

drown the dying sun;

I assemble words

to plant into poems

to let my nakedness 

weave between the noteworthy

____ and my nothingness.

The boundaries of self

are burdensome illusions

the body is constantly ebbing and flowing

as a woman

I will touch the moon

and leave behind a poem.

(I will try to keep a distant love 

from going back to sleep)

Words are my footprints

phrases are my landscapes;

and in my human clumsiness

I hold a shadow soul

____ and give myself to you.

Poem © Gesso Cocteau

Photography © ___ Ana O