sore in strange places, hands shaking, skin raw and spirit pricked,
whole body spent as with lovers exhaustion
lungs fold and unfold like bird wings with whatever you smoked, whatever you confessed.
Io Bakchos, Io Bakchos
you feel like an inspired incident, something that happens to a room or a time --
a storm that, once passed, is only notable in its wreckage.
moments return in infrequent flashes
pantheric pacing
a rumble of music shaking your core
dancing and falling
into some chasm of sorrow
was there a logical progression? you can’t remember,
but after some strike, you were suddenly weeping, from the deepest part of you,
pleading and begging for the god to take your heart
JUST TAKE IT!!!
and you kept diving back in,
mumbling maniacally, “I must be crazy…”
and then the hit came where your body fell away,
and you didn’t feel your heart, didn’t feel anything at all --
certainly not afraid,
in spite of being forced without form through teethed corridors
with their guardians and serpents and many-fanged questions.
your voice was clear as a bell, as if your voice was always the most real part of you all along--
(strangely beautiful, the way it rang incorporeal)
“I am a child of earth and starry sky. Bakchos himself has set me free.
Let me drink from the well of memory.”
you didn’t remember until you said it, but yes, you were quite thirsty indeed,
and then you fell--back into the thrust of life
back into the god’s embrace, back to the surface, this time...
That was nothing. There’s so much deeper to go.
I know.
you’re still talking to yourself like this, because it’s all too fresh.
you lick your lips, bitter remembrance
(so that’s what happens when you drink your past)
sometimes your hands seem so old
So did you learn more about yourself, like you wished?
the question hangs like a girl in a tree, mostly motionless
in the dissipating smoke and an inhaled breath.
ghostly memories of strange images and sensations still flicker around your periphery.
Not really, to be honest. I have a lot more questions.
I’ll drink to that.
exhale.
Evohe.
