spellcasting

Believe in dancing in the shadows,

spell-drunk on a voice filled with vinegar memories.
Let foreign tongues compel you
with their strange rhythms.

Darken the moon,

darker, her perfume.

Beneath her pillowy cape, the incense of memory

burns camphor clouds of shadow imprints on the night sky,

transporting us to the holy time and place.

Believe in writing in the dark.

Feed on the poetic hunger

for a language without an alphabet;

Drink of the nonsense that quenches the soul,

a page against the breast

a light away from light

casting the profile of her wild leaves of hair against the wall.

I pray to the one who hears the cries of this world

and shows mercy to those sincere

- her words have the power to give life 

and the power to take it away. 

Lady, who will still be with me 

when I am alone, 

I call to you as friend - or child. 

Sister, mother, be with me

as only you can. 

Teach me to be near the light 

without losing sight of myself.

Darkness, my beginning,

hidden side of the moon. 

Hope, my life

The moon, my greater power.

Be the beginning, my creation, 

the miracle of the new moon.

I writhe, yearn, and strain for proximity in darkness,

where music and dance take us all.

See how freedom breaks the years - 

what hunger does to fear!