METAMORPHOSIS

by Cashavelly

The Crossing

I dreamt I wore a crown made of a ball and chain.

I dreamt I stood in a crowd with ashes smeared on my face.

I dreamt I entered my own heart as a red stone cave

And found my old age was a hunter who stays the same.

I dreamt I processed like a bride to the horizon’s groom,

The sun, my truest lover who provokes my every bloom.

I dreamt I danced in a field shedding every cloak

Of daughter, sister, wife, mother, skin and bones,

Until finally my spirit was free and all alone

And I danced until I ascended with no shadow.

My dreams are more real than my waking.

I’m an executioner who never began weeping.

I’m a mother who lit her children like candles burning.

I’m a white man beneath black branches dripping.

I’m a soldier who breathed ashes till his lungs were screaming.

I’m a freed bird whose feathers it kept on plucking.

I’m the hands that stole the weapon for burying.

I’m a messenger who never began speaking.

I’m a dead man who kept on living.

I’m on my knees.

I want land to make water of me,

And now my dreams are more real than my waking.

I’ve come to a crossing.

Will you come to the edge and keep walking?

Every kiss of my conception lifting.

I may never know the ending.

The other side may have no water.

I’ll be willingly lost there forever.

Ashes of omens and symbols

Held tenderly on my fingers.

I’ve come to a crossing.

Come with me, keep walking.

I’m crossing.

Come with me, keep walking.

Hair Hang Long

Behold me.

I’m sending out my voice.

Breath it in.

It’s all I am.

Across your tongue,

Heading for your lungs,

Down your throat,

Down I go.

Surrounding your heart,

Surrounding your heart’s sword

between the eyes of a horse.

How long it’s cut in turns

By your crimes every law birthed?

I want you.

I want to see you.

I want you.

I want to see you.

Come out, come out and hear my sound

All around you.

I’m calling

And the whole world is coming.

I’ve been here all along

And it’s where I belong.

I want my hair to hang long.

I’ve been here before.

Is it mine or is it yours?

We meet in the woods,

Kneel down at the brook.

I want you.

I want to see you.

I want you.

I want to see all of you.

Come out, come out and hear my sound

All around you.

I’m calling

And the whole world is coming.

I’ve been here all along

And it’s where I belong.

I want my hair to hang long.

Behold us,

The tribe after the hunt

The whole world wants.

We’re orphans. We’re beggars.

We’re liars. We’re killers.

We’re lovers.

I see you.

I see all of you.

I still, I still want you.

Come out, come out and hear our sound

All around you.

We’re calling

And the whole world is coming.

You’ve been here all along

And it’s where you belong.

You want your hair to hang long.

I want my hair to hang long.

Metamorphosis

In flight, loose and light.        

Black eyes dipped in white.

Drawn to my Fahrenheit.

Will you land on me,

Tiny thing? I’m milkweed.

I belong to nothing.

My hand reaches light above            

While I still touch

The dirt to follow my blood

To be made of love.                           

If you hold it as hard as you can

It will leave ashes in your hands.

I come to you,  

Unfolding cocoon,

Unfolding you.

Will you come to me? 

Your patterned wings

Beating against me.

Your hand reaches light above

While I still touch

The dirt to follow your blood  

To be made of love.

My hand reaches light above

While I still touch

The dirt to follow your blood

To be made of love.

Look at all the pinned specimens.

Now I’m no longer one of them.

Wild

The desert night fell cold so I drifted to a city.

Concrete cracked with white lilies.

I stole boots from dead police.

Down the drag, buildings sagged.

I stole a knife from a swollen bag.

No one’s comin’ for it. No one’s comin’ back.

I woke to screams.

A vulture couldn’t wait to be fed

Is what it looked to be, pecking that last lamb to death.

I killed both with my knife.

Struck fire for a feast.

Plucked and skinned in no time.

Hid the rest for safe-keeping.

Wild came to me and ended all my plans.

I said, “I can’t,” and it said, “You can!”

I found a prison full of men scared to wait.

In the dark, they prayed power would open their gates.

I touched them through bars.

They each said they loved me.

I spoke of the stars and sang to close their dying.

Wild came to me and ended all my plans.

I said, “I can’t,” and it said, “You can!”

Then I found a child who’d been stealing my meat for a while.

He’s a joker, a fun little liar and we decided we’d stay in one spot a while.

Then Wild came to me, said, “I’m afraid you’ve forgotten me.

Be my love and roam with me. Be my love and roam with me.”

I said, “Be my love and help me stay free,

to remain or roam to my yearning.

Love me and my child and make our love wild.”

We talked for a while and I nearly dropped off tired.

I was ready to give up Wild and live tame with my sweet child.

Then Wild said, “I can,” and I said, “You can!”

Wild said, “I can,” and I said, “You can!”

Hounds

All my hounds,

They run around town

Sniffing out

What’s buried underground.

I watch their teeth

Bared in lines.

Spreading scent all night.

Mark my territory lines.

Everyone’s got their own cure.

I’ve got mine,

You’ve got yours,

But when will you hide no more?

I call, they come,

Running in formation.

Get what I want,

Come back mangled with blood.

They guard my bed

While I sleep well-fed,

Full of Bones

Of the departed.

Everyone’s got their own cure.

I’ve got mine,

You’ve got yours,

But when will you hide no more?

You can’t hide

The truth I’ll find.  

My hounds drag it out

Right out of your mouth.

I run with them,

Artemis with bow in hand.

Laughing in the night,

Going free like men.

Everyone’s got their own cure.

I’ve got mine,

You’ve got yours,

But when will you hide no more?

Whoever You Are

I’ve looked up at stained-glass panes

Where it’s so easy to call up in the vaulted halls

To hear my echo and call it God.

I have loved lost boys

Who joined legions of the paranoid

Before they disappeared into a pile of toys.

Walls of cathedrals,

Walls of houses coming down.

The wild world all around.

This landscape won’t break.

Muscles in my back ache.

My heart’s open and now I wait.

Jane, you’re gonna wish you’d gone away.

There are no roads where no one’s been before.

Jane, what you following the pavement for?

Jane, you’ve spent your whole life leaving.

This, this you will not believe—

They need the big guns. You’re lethal enough.

Walls of cathedrals,

Walls of houses coming down.

The wild world all around.

Jane, you’re gonna wish you’d gone away.

There are no roads where no one’s been before.

Jane, what you following the pavement for?

I’m Not Afraid of the Dark

I beg to be let out

To drift in darkness.

I want to be new

And innocent.

I surrender to what I cannot know,

I surrender to being alone.

All I’ve ever done may never make any mark.

I’m not afraid of the dark.

At times I think I’ll die

From loneliness.

I own nothing

But my own caress.

I’ve never gone this far.

The blood of my birthmark

Is as faint as a watermark.

I’m not afraid of the dark.

I want to ask questions when we speak

And just confess.

You have nothing to hide.

Every law is absent.

I’m so close to my beginning.

Atmosphere beyond my body.

Can you see the smoke from that first spark?

You’re not afraid of the dark.

I’m not afraid of the dark.

Match Me

We’re in the desert.

Raw bones of a lion’s jaw.

You look tastier than anyone I ever saw.

No, you can’t taste me.

It’s my turn to eat.

I’m gonna show you a new part of me.

Why you so afraid

With my hair over your face?

Can I lead you blind?

Try it and don’t ask why.

You think my power

Makes you a coward.

Match me and you’ll be braver.

Show me your weakness and you’ll be stronger.

We’re in the desert.

Raw bones of a lion’s jaw.

You look tastier than anyone I ever saw.

No, you can’t taste me.

It’s my turn to eat.

I’m gonna show you a new part of me.

Here the sand storm comes.

See that wall on the horizon?

It blinds the sun.

All you can do is trust.

You think my power

Makes you a coward.

Sovereignty

Against the sun,

On the horizon,

Crowned in sunlight—

Divide, unite.

A dandelion crown

As a girl I wound—

Braided into woman,

Braided into human.

I have no need

A willing man must give me.

All the loose strands

Thrown from my hands.

When I find you,

I’ll lay my heart bare,

Laid bare to love

Even if given no care.

When I find you,

I’ll lay my heart bare,

Laid bare for pain,

If no love returns from anywhere.

I can be discarded.

I can be hated.

I want you. I don’t need

You to give me anything.

I drag my fears

Kicking into the dark

Till they shrivel away

Leaving me unmarked.

Throw me into the sky

Where I must fall to death or fly.

Race me up hills

Till I’m so strong

I can’t be killed.

I have no need.

Come to me,

Or leave me.

I’m the only one who keeps me.

The Rafters

So that’s where you’ve been hiding,

Up in the rafters.

For years you’ve had no work,

Like a blacksmith for hire.

So every hammer hit in its place

And you’re not the man they wanted you to be.

Looks you’ve got nothing to build a fire.

You can’t admit how much you need me.

This roof’s gone to rot.
Let die what’s dying.

See me plain when you come down.

I too must show you what I’m hiding.

I see you’ve been picking the same wound.

I’ve seen the same on every proud man’s son.

If it bleeds, you aren’t a fool,

But you aren’t fooling anyone.

Come down, come down, come down,

Come down from the rafters.

You’re not the one who’s guilty

Or I must be guilty of the same.

I know the long hours alone

And how you’ve smoothed your own hair from your face.

Your hands won’t fall empty.

I love in you what you hate.

Now come down and we’ll build a fire.

I want to kiss your shame.

Can I kiss your shame?

Come down, come down, come down,

Come down from the rafters.

Badlands

No, you didn’t need any savior.

You were just holding your own shoulders,

Walking along a river

All alone, all alone,

Staring straight at it.

There to see, what is it?

What is it?

The wet branch this paper used to be.

You began in your mother’s belly.

You were there even when she was a baby

In the belly of her mother Mary.

Now you teach yourself how to sit.

Now you teach yourself to clean a fish.

No, you didn’t need any savior.

You were just holding your own shoulders,

Walking through the desert 

All alone, all alone,

Staring straight at it.

There to see, what is it?

What is it?

Tethered between the dark and light.

You’ve got a grip now, you don’t have to fight.

See for yourself alone in the night

That moonlight changes what you saw by sunlight.

You see the wind turn sand dunes over time.

You learn in storms how to be blind.

No, you don’t have any need,

Now in canyons of badlands so steep,

with lovers alongside you who also know

What it is,

What it is.

With lovers holding you who also know

What it is,

what it is.

With lovers letting you go who also know

What it is,

What it is,

What it is.

Nameless

My love, my nameless love,

Holding your hand is enough.

It’s your spirit I want.

My love, my shapeless love,

Hearing your voice is enough.

It’s your music I want. 

My love, my timeless love,

Gazing in your eyes is enough.

It’s this moment I want.

My love, my boundless love,

Beholding your tremble is enough.

It’s your love I want.

Dragging our fingers

In a river,

Making ripples

that go farther,

Farther than we could go.

Dragging our fingers

In a river.

My love, my nameless love,

Holding your hand is enough.

It’s your spirit I love.

Hieroglyphics  

I promise I won’t tell any lies.

I promise to keep my eyes.

I built my own house and I burned it down.

I took every gust of wind into my mouth.

I made my name and cast it away.

My age is sand blowing away.

I see nothing but your belt with hieroglyphics in the etching.

I come shirtless toward you without hiding.

Here I come

Into love,

Listening to its strange tongue,

Listening to its strange tongue.

To know love,

To know what I’m made of.

You know you don’t scare me.

Tell your desire it hasn’t met me.

I want to sleep with you in an empty field.

I want us digging up roots for our next meal

To keep moving through the dark.

I don’t care where or how far.

I want to know your wild and your captivity.

I want to know your lonely and your holy.

Here I come

into love,

Listening to its strange tongue,

Listening to its strange tongue.

To know love, 

To know what you’re made of.