Fire Belly

Tremors

There’s a little shaking of the earth tonight

Just a little twitch

But it’s stronger than yesterday’s

and it grows like rabid drums

And my feet, they’ve known the ground

But now they are uncertain.

Pebbles dance like mad men

Where pebbles should be still

And now my heart, it tremors.

I do not know this beat.

The sea himself rolls back

Away from mountain cliffs

And the creatures that are his

Streak beneath the blue

I want to hide there too.

The oracle is chanting

Eyes glazed over, white

Something is coming, he screams

Growing, coming, crawling from deeps

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Birth

First comes the wind

tearing trees right off their roots

            Father?

Second comes the ripple

popping like bones breaking tendons snapping

What’s happening?

Third comes the thunder

cliffs splitting, mountains shattering

The ground becomes the sky

            Save me.

My father’s city crumbles

Rubble on writhing ground

Screams of hundreds maybe thousands sinking through the dust

Father, please!

But we cannot move at all

The earth, she holds us hostage

As she opens to her core

Her womb, it’s nearly bursting

As something warps within

The mountain shrieks in pain

As twisting writhing burning

Births a beast that’s born of flame

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Jagged Edges

The Sea, he is angry for the earth loves him less

She’s chosen another, birthed a new son

Passed over, forgotten

His jealousy is ice

He throws waves like arrows, all his might to destroy her

She’s already broken as he cuts her and stabs her

She bleeds in her dust, her edges protruding

The Sea in his fury throws himself at the cliffs

reaching for the infant

her baby, her fire

Straining the bounds of his watery domain

But he cannot

he cannot

kill the fire he hates

so he must find another

and his eyes fall on me

---

Which King

The sea, he thinks he’s won

He beckons me to come

Approach and be my soldier.

My father is dismayed

“He’s asking you for murder!”

The sea, he is persuasive

                I can heal your tattered land

My father, he is angry

“Don’t listen to his bloodlust!”

The sea, he is determined

                I’ll give you twice what earth has given

But my father, he is desperate

“Do not become his pawn!”

I know not which king to heed

My father or this god

And so the sea rears up

takes my father in his grasp

And drowns him beneath the waves

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Please Don't

My father’s crown fits heavy on my head

Every edge of this broken land cutting through my temples

                Please stop.

I lift my father’s sword. 

Lips mouthing a covenant I know I cannot keep

                Don’t make me king.

I watch you bow before me.

Prostrate on the ground.

                Please.  Stop.

Because you don’t know what the Sea and I know          

I’m a prisoner

His prisoner

Trapped like a fly

Lacking courage, lacking strength

You demand I calm the Sea

Demand I chase his monster

And the sea demands it too

Please.

I’m your whimsy.

I’m your puppet.

I’m your king.

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Nymph 

If my world is shadow

She is soft morning light

If my world is blue

She is auburn and bronze and gold

If my world is winter

She is spring, beautiful and pure

She is birdsong

She is sunlight

She is cricket music and summer air

She is the daughter

come to beg for the life of her brother

to save the infant

and to spare her own flesh

For the marks on her body are red  

Some old

Some fresh as the sunrise

As broken as her mother

And the murder I am planning

Will tear her skin again

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