Self Portrait as Scared Disenchantment

A letter to religious abuse

distant in a mountainside shades of religious green

the disillusioned wind scatters through a courtyard

filled with pebbles and an absence of footsteps in

spite of a constant breathing through the freckled

white paper window blinds creased evenly i eyed

through the creased organ behind my face dusted

with the nauseous drum of chants and ritual defile-

ment indignation contortion and disgust and held

dear for so long things festering dark behind the

closed orange doors of shrine rooms the bursting

like swelling wound clots the paradise hiding the

wretched in the cellar grime and gold-foil idolatry

trinkets in the dew fucked fields under moonlight

where you held me like a liar the night i burned to

death at a distance in the mountainside shades

when trust became a question and truth became

an elephant groped by blind ignorance in drunk

fingers palms reading empty pages and spitting

in singing bowls thick phlegm fish all the bile red

yellow and gilded in mold-web fairytales humid

revolting and pretty to the dead man stuffed shit-

faced and laughing in a shiny podium his ashes

pinched around the lip of a cocktail glass cracked

smudged fingerprinted the swirls of a conch shell

against pipe-dream lips picked bloody from bites

of boiling dread and how far away a mother can be

when we fled guttural into thick nights and switches

of larch pumping full the sky with smoke the ghosts

the kiss I wasn’t ready for the fire I soaked my shell

in dizzy expecting the skies to care and craving the

wet soft of garden dirt the green bristled scent of un-

ripe tomato vine and hoping so hard I could die spun

scattered crying by the creekside locked in contact

with deluded bug yearns skipping up the wrong way

run of currents and time its casual hydraulic press

peeling angel skin through the clench of my teeth

until unraveled on the same sand like a beached

whale it all comes back and nothing changes just

like the last time it stays choked in sweaty knotted

stasis half-buried like a buddha-head mostly moss

now lost along the tiger trail a snake in the needles

diving faithless pledged to life and no notice of hope.