a word to describe my thesis-writing experience so far? terror. terrified of beginning, terrified of ending –i know, as if beginnings and endings were real things. but i decided to pray through the terror then write something crazy, shoving myself off the ledge in a sense. mugwort and calendula are native to most parts of ireland, the only place i know for sure my ancestors are from, so i burned them. i shuffled the deck with my eyes closed. the temperance card popped out twice.
this is me heeding a soul-urge.
prayer rituals materialize in times of despair. what am i meant to create? what am i meant to destroy? my experience of prayer is something like mechanized thought. my my my! fingertips move my my my! soul. now here are some more words. possession is a kind of artificial intelligence, mine and not-mine.
consider the fragmentation of my mind, my body, and my soul in the last few years. one mucus-yellow bolt of lightning wedged itself in the upstairs. its deeply sick mucosal color tells me i am not a cyborg, which is not entirely true. i’m never not plugged in. while i charge, prayers lift from the floor (i never imagined a cyborg sitting, no less on the floor, no less in prayer) and tickle the mucus-bolt. i feel it in my nose! the lightning bolt illumines my teeth. (you can see my permanent brace!)
all of my head shines brighter than any color i ever was or ever tried to be. this is what mechanization does to me, a lonely femme wearing her grandfather’s sweaters and pants bleach-speckled with angry memories of someone else. theology is a ghastly machine, isn’t it!
the sick and crazed lift the veil – compressed layers of evaporated skin and mucus of our before-loves – and become possessed by the rhythms of truth hidden behind it, behind them. prayer leads me to sway, warming tarot cards with my hands (am i warmed by them?) and falling magnetically, too close to cherry pop candleflame. like a robot or demon, i appear to become mad as the result of someone else’s programming. i appear to be under someone else’s curse.
because who sentenced me to years of employer abuse, besides myself and all the loveless femmes who have come before me? who sentenced me to eternally scavenging hair clogs from the drain and softened lipsticks from pockets in the middle of nightclubs? if transgressing is glitching is spasming; then sentencing is programming is cursing. i could never be a cyborg if i hadn’t first been a demon. i wouldn’t be here, in the infernal ballroom, if not for my inheritance of a brain that does what this one does, or eyes that do what these ones do –– that is, a brain and eyes that roll back in my skull even while sober. (whose brain? whose eyes?)
horror is about what may consume you and terror is what may absorb you. my coat check ticket is tucked into my tits – a small papercut in underboob –– so my spirit can be possessed. i need only space to be consumed by the mirror at the bottom of the well. knowing you elbow my side or you spectate, every night i become the one who is absorbed by your visions of me. even if i am not-there. pockmarked by light, i move like something that will overtake your dreams.
mugwort and calendula smoke their way into your sleep. calmed by whirligig frenzy, agitated by buzzing quiet, i dance for you as salome did. my breath twists and wrings phantasms of smoking herbs. say i am a smoke machine. you call me possessed when i court what is beyond sense. say i smell like burning rubber. say i sound like the carousel breaking down. when you are there and i am not-there, there is smoke. say you’re getting too high on what is beyond sense. then say, “thank you.”
i am smoking you out. i am fully in my own care. i want to cut off your head. you want to crush me. i still want to cut off your head.
y’know whose dream this is?
