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
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