Ode to P.M.S.

Posted by Sunni on May 29, 2012 in poetry | 8 comments

it’s odd, how I can feel this body
blooming
and yet dying
all at once

a part of it
shedding it’s monthly
skin

a grotesque tri-weekly
fanfare —

an appointment with
my demons.

It’s like clockwork
for radical healing.

Every time
the demons look new,
but they’re old.

So old.

Every time
they wear flashy new colors
and parade around in my
clothes and spaces -

they’re such whores
for attention.

And I love them
that way.

They ask to be seen, humbly.

and then,
not so humbly.

They demand to be seen.

They soak my confusion in combustable’s
and they throw in
the match

they dance around the ring of fire,
and spell myths into
the rising ash

and I lye, hypnotized
by their audacity
and penchant for
storytelling.

The smell of the earth
intoxicates my view,
and there in the corner
the shadow spins her loom.

Her tapestry is weaved with the blood
of ten thousand years,

a staggering line of feminine effigy
culminates in the crankiness of
one. modern. girl.

a centuries old pain
about the violence – and danger – of curves
made new.

I told you these stories were old.

The shadow cuts her tapestry
and wraps it around me
tightly

she warns me to be still.
and I have finally come to understand
she means me no harm

so I breathe
deep —
into the cocoon of her weaving,

I watch the sparks fly from
the fire,

and I sink
into this offering.

This chance to burn,
and rise again.

This chance to let the myths
detach,

and pass away.

And as the heat of her intensity rises
the threads begin to bind
to my very being

their colors grow vivid
and wild with noise,

and I lye still

while the reverberation from this cacophony
winds it’s way down to the
marrow of me

so far down in fact
that it’s no longer distinguishable
from the whole.

what had felt like a prison
of corded threads — vanished —
into the vastness of
entirety

… and me with it.

Where once was a body
and blanket cocoon
was now a

beautiful void.

A night moth
with wings outstretched

hungry,
once again,

for the flame.

© 2012 Sunni Chapman