Chapter 1

When He beckoned me
I came

I swallowed His word whole
And He tattooed shame upon my skin
Named my body morbid:
A holy union of flesh and feminine virtue

I was His most faithful creation
When I spoke to my daughters
It was in clouded parables
I taught them to laugh out loud
But cry in darkened shadows
Nurse wounds in secret
And fuck with quiet shame

I gifted them with the skill
To mold their suffering
Into a badge of redemption
For sins they did not own

When I could no longer stand
The bitter taste of false teachings
I bit off my tongue
Gorged myself on generations of blood

And like a vulgar surrender,
The truths I had failed to speak
Slipped from my mouth

They fell to the ground
Crawled away from me
Dug quiet graves
Buried their misused muted bodies

They festered beneath the earth
Feeding the Darkness
That He had worked so hard
To scorch from this world

But His Light is an illusion
A fleeting false construct
And now the time has come
For The Dark to reclaim
What is rightfully Hers

We all came from darkness
And into darkness
We will all return

Chapter 2

It had been so long
I had almost forgotten her touch
The solid warmth of her embrace

She heard my non-prayers
And She came for me
She handed me Her sword
And Her three-headed spear
Gifted me with enough limbs
To carry both my sacrifice
And my vengeance

She pulled me close and loved me
I loved her back

She whispered to me
I listened

She kissed me
I fed and grew strong

She filled me
And I remembered

With the memory the laughter came
I laughed so loud the earth trembled
It had grown old and weary
And had forgotten the face of our Mother

But I remember
I remember it all
And I remember Him
My Father
My False Lover
My Maker
My God

He hides from me
But I still hear Him
I still feel His fingers on my skin
Still taste the fierce kiss
With which He sealed my making
His tongue still burning
With all the fires he would one day feed His Hell

I know Him well
And I will find Him
After all
I am my Father’s daughter
Am I not?

Chapter 3

When my journey began
I sought out my daughters
I thought to save them
To fashion for myself
Some feeble redemption
But time is not patient or kind

My fifth to last daughter I found
Her body long turned to ash and dust
Along with the stake upon which she burned
I took a fistful of her ash to carry with me

My fourth to last daughter I found
Long buried in a shallow grave
A shameful secret
Condemned by His virtuous disciples
I took her skull
Rested her sister’s ash
In the hollow of it

My third to last daughter I found
Rotting, her skin torn
It was a poor armor
Against the shower of rocks that flew
From the hands of the righteous
I tore a piece
To lay upon her sister’s ashes

My second to last daughter I found
A frail and ragged corpse
The price she had to pay
For being the whore He named her
She died in my arms
I plucked six strands of her hair
And placed them on the torn piece of her sister’s skin

And my last daughter I found
Weak but still alive
Her body victim
Of her quest to win His love
I lifted her to my breast
Held her with a guilt laden tenderness
And I vowed I would never again bear fruit
For Him and His world to devour

And on I walk on until my feet blister and my skin cracks

Chapter 4

Finally I see Him
There
Distant
Hidden in mist and shadow
Dozing in the twisted roots of His withered tree

I stop and sit
Cradle my last remaining daughter in my lap
Whisper words of comfort in her ear
As I slit her throat
I use the skull I carry to catch the blood
And she joins her sisters

This will be my offering to Him:

“My weakness My Lord for you to drink
My last and final sacrifice”

And as He sips
My tongueless voice howls in triumph
I laugh and I sing and I dance
In see-through silks and painted feet
In beads and gold and pierced flesh
In fish net stockings and red stiletto heels
In mini skirts and fuck-me boots

I dance to all His divine and deviant desires,
I dance until the earth quakes beneath me
I dance until my feet spark flame
And ignite the desiccated remains
Of His world

I dance
And all is turned to ash by my fire
It is now a cremation ground
A funeral pyre
Like my heart

Chapter 5

Drunk on my sacrifice he stumbles
And that is when I strike
My blade sinks deep

His body curls around my sword
The redeeming embrace
Of a long neglected lover

And I smile as He bleeds

i love You beyond the realm of necessity
This too, is truth

i break at the thought of never being Yours
This is NOT truth

Even if it were
i have been broken before
i know how relentless this body i call home is

It will never surrender
Even when i beg it to (and i have)
It will mend and grow and move with time

And now finally is the most tragic truth:
i wish it would not

Because this time i do not want to mend
i want to stay broken

But breaking is NOT truth

After all the heart never really breaks
It merely twists and bleeds

It pulses forever at the center of a hunger that will not yield to reason

So tell me
Do you truly comprehend the substance of Rage?

I am the shrapnel and the gun powder
I am the twin towers and the airplanes
I am your only boy child turned rapist

I am the moment killing her babies became the only option
I am the abused turned abuser

I am the whisper of ash on a mangled toy truck
I am that final blow that crushes skull fragment into brain tissue

I am the
“please don’t hurt me, I’m sorry Daddy”
that always goes unanswered

I am dreams dead in the womb
I am fear reborn and multiplied

I am hunger morphed at the feet of corruption into shattered shards of recrimination piercing through soft ignorant flesh as screams go unrecognized and pleas for mercy are denied
…..Denied
……………..DENIED!

I am the fire burning at the fringes of your complacency
I am the rumbling in the distance that threatens your inconsistency

I am the judgment day they told you about in Revelations
But I am judging now
Judging everyday
Judging in a million different ways they never warned you about

So be prepared
Because I am not righteous
Or fair
Or forgiving

I am The Rage
Fear me

I am The Rage
Use me if you need me

I am The Rage
Be very careful what you feed me

I am The Rage
And I am NOT waiting for an appropriate forum to present myself
So you can stop hiding behind feigned decency
Because I think it’s about time you got to know me…
…Personally

so pray with me lover
and make me believe
that when you are hunched over me
pressed into me, dripping with sweat

that your sweat on me is baptismal
and making love to you will purge
this hunger i am built with
give name to all that is holy in me

that your tongue on my nipple
your teeth in the soft flesh of my breast
that sweet pain you deliver with each bite
is my sacrament and my sole path to redemption

You were a byproduct of your own galaxy
Gravity molding the contents of a negro boy child into
Light and fire

Once a week you would lock yourself in a room
Fast the whole day and dance till you collapsed
My father is the one that told me this story
It made the vision of you all the more exquisite
Because anything Papa believed in was holy

And you were my rhinestone-gloved martyr
The Christ child of the 21st century
I rejoiced in the redemption you offered

An unworthy disciple, I would mouth my desire
And from those silent prayers
You plucked my desperate need for escape
And spun it into a starlight hammock
That cradled me through more weeks
Than any child should spend alone
You made me believe you understood
Intoned it in the very cadence of your voice

But what is a martyr without sacrifice
And neither money, nor trinkets and costumes
That dazzled in purples and reds and gold
Could ever save you from crucifixion

How we reveled in the beauty of your suffering
And how you burned bright for us
Right up until the end
When you collapsed in on yourself
Blinding us all with that final burst of light

But I am more than this body
This flesh
This heart

Love is not the conqueror you imagine Her to be
I have grown wise to the traps She would set

Because I am more than this body, I am vast

Sometimes what Love would have me surrender to
Is not sufficient to fill me

I refuse to ever go empty again for Her sake

my body is thick with the regret of all the ways I forgot to touch you
my pulse, a secret that lives only for you

first beat
i miss the soft flesh of where your neck meets your skull behind your left earlobe

second beat
i imagine my lips there, my nose brushing the rough stubble of your shorn scalp

third beat,
where are you now?
who will hold this rotting confession and make it fresh again?

you are the sapphire medallion of my broken heart and I want to keep you
use you to prop the crack open so the wound never heals

our love was meant to die like this
festered and bleeding