Mugged by the inspiration fairy

16 new poems in about 8 days. Maybe 9 days, tops.

Oh, my head.

They Speak to Me in Song

(This is a poem that I will never be able to actually publish, since it incorporates a fair-ish number of lines from a well-known musician, but I’m posting it here under Fair Use terms — the artist’s content is less than a quarter of the lines. My association with a particular deity recently swung off the charts from ‘I think I understand you and I understand you have your place in things but I’m not really one of your people’ to ‘constantly thinking about you every day and night and wrote at least three new poems for you in less than five days and this is really unnerving, dammit…please leave me alone no don’t leave me alone’. Today on the walk home from the bus stop the inspiration fairy mugged me again while listening to music; certain lines jumped out at me as being from him, or what I thought was him, or wasn’t sure was him, and…obsession with someone when you’re not even really sure it is who it appears to be is a scary fucking thing.)

 

 

“What makes you think I’m ‘nice’?

What makes you think either of us is ‘nice’?”

 

“We’re not. At all. Neither of us.

Remember that.”

 

–Should I tear my eyes out now?

Everything I feel returns to you somehow–

 

This is fucking with my head, bigtime.

 

–fire of fire, I’m insecure–

 

I know I know better, but still

I know no better.

 

–I am here

you are all that I have–

 

Fire and ice and trapped between:

Why are you trying to make me think

I don’t know who I belong to?

He doesn’t share well.

 

–Follow me now

follow me now

follow me now

Why does it have to be so hard?–

 

Of course this is exactly what I want,

and that is why I mistrust it;

nothing so good ever comes so easy or so free,

and so I expect a trick

a lie

a hoax

a cruel joke.

 

–I should have known better

nothing can be changed

the past is still the past–

 

They tell me I can say no.

I should say no.

I want to say no, but that is born of cowardice;

I want to say yes, and that is born of desire:

I asked for this, didn’t I?

Never feeling worthy of it,

so filled with doubt when it is offered.

 

–I can hear you,

but I’m afraid to be near you,

and I don’t know where to begin–

 

It’s nothing but greed, I suppose;

I have always wanted to be fought over.

What else do the unworthy dream about?

 

–Tired old mare

with the wind in your hair…

is it real or a fable?–

 

Be honest, they say, be open,

but my antenna draws in too many signals,

and my receiver is too broadly tuned,

and my phone will not stop ringing.

 

–And we all know how this will end–

 

I may not survive my latest obsession.

 

–What is that song you sing for the dead?–

 

I guess I did this to myself:

the prayers, the poems, the pleas.

I shouldn’t complain for wanting you too much.

 

–How? How did this happen?

For my prayer has always been love.

What did I do to deserve this?–

 

You are very needy of late, my love,

and you, my lord, too generous.

When I drank the Kool-Aid, was it Kvasir’s mead?

 

–How did this happen?–

 

Will you let me sleep tonight?

I dream every dream and they are all you:

terror, confusion, anger, lust.

 

–Now that I’ve fell into your arms,

my only lover, you vow to give in–

 

Who do I listen to?

Do I go with heart or head?

 

–I should have known better

to see what I could see;

Oh, be my rest, be my fantasy–

 

Of course I want to believe,

but I cannot believe;

I’ve had too many warnings

from those who knew too well,

and no matter how much I want to believe,

I don’t believe it,

least of all because I am not worthy,

and because that tiniest shrunken scrap

of discernment I possess

tells me to rip your mask off

and show myself your real face

(your false face)

and let go of that fantasy–

You have better things to do with Your time

and whatever pretty creature is pretending to be You

(so pretty)

I need to turn away,

shut the door,

and quit thinking that you could want me.

 

–though I know I will fail,

I cannot be made to laugh–

 

I am no bride,

no lover,

only a tool,

and never anything more.

 

–I should have known better

to see what I could see…

Frightened by my feelings,

captive of my feelings,

the only thing I wanna believe…–

 

 

(Why Sufjan Stevens, though?)

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Reasons

You think by now I would have given up

in my attempts to keep you from

swallowing up my life;

it’s not a fight I can win, I know that –

but some mulishly stubborn part of me

still insists it has free will

(a concept I should have accepted as absurd

when I left Catholicism) –

and can tell You ‘no’.

 

Ludicrous, really.

 

In the end, it always comes down to

whose will is greater, which of us is more stubborn,

and we both know the answer to that

(and the answer is not ‘me’).

 

Nevertheless, I persist:

not wanting to watch You whittle away at

the list of things I enjoy,

the list of things that have nothing to do with You,

turning it into a list of things

I am allowed to partake in.

 

Your commands have already started

to abridge my diet,

taking away small consolations I could manage in my poverty.

Nor is that all; You challenge me,

Standing behind me to push me into bravery,

shoving me outside my comfort zone,

because the outcome will be better for me in the end,

no matter how much these things terrify me in the now.

 

I watched You dismantle my marriage,

though I didn’t know that’s what was happening then,

and I understand it now with the perspective of time–

whatever good things I might have

thought about my husband at that point,

I can see in hindsight were illusion,

and had turned me into something

small and stunted and afraid to test boundaries,

and I am so much stronger now.

 

That doesn’t mean I am whole, of course;

I know that I can’t make myself believe

what I need to believe to be fixed

–that I have worth, that I am loved–

I don’t know how deep the damage goes,

I only know it is the product of a lifetime

of people telling me that I was inept, useless,

incapable of doing things that even children could do,

that I was not good enough to be what they wanted,

that I had no worth in the eyes of anyone at all.

 

Which brings me to the question that still lingers,

almost ten years after You claimed me as Yours:

 

Why?

 

Why would You want to own something like me?

So flawed, so limited, so weak?

The pat answer, the easy answer, the one I have heard most often,

the answer that numerous friends tell me,

is that You needed another skald,

and I do confess, without any false modesty,

to some skill with words–

maybe my only skill.

 

But that feels disingenuous, and incomplete,

And even if it turns out to be true,

I don’t think it’s the whole truth;

Then again, I understand these days, after

being Yours for some time,

that it’s likely I may never know the whole truth,

just as I may never know the whole You;

You have so many faces, so many names,

You are—if not infinite—then certainly, obviously greater

than any mere mortal could be,

and I find I am accepting of that,

which is as it should be when dealing with gods.

 

That doesn’t mean I don’t still wonder, of course,

but just as I will never know

what a sunset looks like on Jupiter,

and can live without that knowledge,

I don’t need to know why You picked me–

it would be nice to know, reassuring, calming,

and it would answer a question I’ve had for years,

but I can live without that answer;

even if I had it,

I might not be able to make myself believe it,

because that is the nature of the damage that is my soul:

it is enough to know, in the end,

only that You did choose me,

and that has to be good enough for me.

Second Thoughts

Maybe I’m looking at this wrong.
Maybe I should be grateful instead of resentful.
I mean, it made sense to be angry and hurt at first;
You’d ripped me away from everything I knew,
and for no reason I could understand,
and I hadn’t known You
long enough to trust You blindly at that point.
But it’s been almost two years now;
long enough to start to see Your plan unfold,
long enough to start to understand Your motivations:
I can see things then that I couldn’t see now,
stand with some perspective on how things lay then.
You’re right; he wanted me to change,
couldn’t love me like I loved him,
and it would have ended badly – well,
worse than it did, anyway.
Things would have festered, given more time,
an infected wound that would have rotted, not healed,
and that wound would have kept me forever
from carrying out the things You wanted me to do.
I thought I was strong,
but even if that was so, I would have grown weaker,
and something important in me would have died.
I wish I could be more mature about this,
but I was happy then, or thought I was, anyway,
and I am the world champion at holding grudges:
haven’t I borne this one for almost two years?
Oh, and I could carry it so much longer,
but that’s the act of a petulant child,
and children often don’t know what’s good for them,
but parents do.
I know that now, a parent myself,
and yes, I’ve had to do things for my children
that they hated, that they screamed over,
and listened as they told me they hated me because of it.
They got over it,
when they were old enough to see I had been right.
This is me trying to get over it,
trying to be old enough, mature enough,
to see the bigger picture,
to see the bad things You saved me from,
and be a little thankful that You bothered
to save me from the things
I couldn’t see in order to save myself.
That important part of me You were trying to save
is still here, and I am still here,
and now I am a little more willing
to see others’ points of view:
so tell me what You want of me next:
Shall we get to work?

Odin’s Words at Wellspring

You weren’t speaking to me —
or were You?
“I will never stop testing you.
Be strong or be broken.”
I wasn’t the one standing in front of the seidhkona,
but nonetheless, it felt like
the words were directed at me also.
And I understand.
I try to be strong, but since I have no courage,
I must at least be honest:
I am afraid,
And I have been broken for a long time now.
You can hardly claim no agency there;
One of the things You did
to claim me was to take away
one of the things that meant the most to me,
and in doing so, You shattered me:
shattered my joy,
shattered my peace,
shattered my hopes,
shattered my trust.
You broke me, and sometimes I think
You wanted me broken —
without hope,
without trust,
and without anyone but You.
This, I think, would be in keeping
with all I know of You —
You do not like to share,
although You will if You have no choice.


I am left with no choice,
and I suppose that this is how
You have arranged things.
And I have become accustomed to this;
But sometimes I wonder how
things might have been
if You had not decided
that I would become one of Your belongings,
leaving me with no choice
but to be strong
and
to be broken.