Lighting my Shadow

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My mother earth gave me my shadow.

Her heart relished

in thieving light out of my body

the way that dusk takes wrinkled hands

and a sewing needle to stitch

the sun into the seam of the horizon.  

 

My light sunk into her center but left

subordinate skin to freckle from the ways of the wind.

In fluorescent power she was known

by all who lived in the gaze

of her fire pitted abdomen but 

exposed by a shadow who knew no way to win.

 

Darkness spun ribbons of

ice to burn away her fire

so she slipped her body

under the veil of a velvet curtain

in hope that it would seal my stolen light beneath it.

Time was not to move backward, but only forward 

and so she shivered in my shadow before the rise of the sun.

 

The stars shifted light like promises

and the distance of their glow

mocked my mother earth.

She drew a glass sphere

from the midst of her palm and demanded what

little light was left

in the wake of my shadow so as to 

hide it beneath the velvet curtain for her own.

 

And so I did to my mother earth

what spring does to summer.

As she whirled a rhythm of her own design 

the pulsation of water spat down her body

bunched in braided heat and let her drown.

I tore her curtain and ripped her off the stage

so everyone could see the games she played.

And in the flood my mother sunk

into her earth to light her fire in its core, 

fueled only by heart to heat that world under

the obliteration of a velvet curtain.

 

The sky was no longer black

but swam in navy waters, so deep as to

remind me that my shadow was permeant in its way.

The mask of darkness dusted over my face,

the only light a reminder that it was never

enough to be my own.

 

I wove the bleeding branches of

the broken forest into 

my own black city 

where the curtain finally did not take my light 

but cradled me in its earth

to let the glow of my mother

illuminate the footprints of the

masked shadow I finally called home.

Comments

alexgroth

This poem describes the battle between consumer and enviroment. I often hide behind the mask of what has both destroyed and inhabited me to live. Both aspects need each other to thrive in our society, but neither can wholly acknowledge that truth. It is a human's job to connect the ends of the spectrum, but I, however, have not been able to do that so I continue to live in the shadow of both.

alexgroth

Thank You! And thank you for bringing the typo to my attention, I just fixed it.

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