Cartography of the Psyche

In the abattoir’s chambers,

wild bay horses

splayed on metal benches,

eviscerated innards

blooming with maggots—

purified into white paste,

rammed through sieve.

The scrawny foreman collects it

in a scarlet bucket,

devours me with his eyes

as he slurps the serpentine offal—

spoilt, unflinching.

Below, Kronos gorges pain,

swollen with lust, leering.

Above, Wisdom dwells

between the living and the dead.

———

My face, a cartographer of trauma manifest:

nodules brewing under the surface,

rising up the middle-left arc,

from chin to nose to eye—

screams smoulder in the womb’s hush,

psyche smashes glass—

relentless, to break free.

Just when a brute latches onto my core,

I burst forth through a narrow gape.

The shards of window glass

pierce my belly as I writhe loose—

the price of deliverance,

a rite of passage to unleash

the flaxen-haired girl,

barefoot, linen-clad.

———

The abyss beckons.

The great white shark,

the colossal Stygian jellyfish—

hunt me endlessly

in the inky underworld.

The archer girl training for battle,

gathers her breath in the deep,

as she takes aim at

the Leviathan beasts.

From a depth beyond time,

descends the primal notochord,

streaming with

milky love, life force, will—

the ancient crones

witness and beam.

———

Ascending to the realm above,

with Wisdom beside me, I face the battlefield,

one soul yet our own,

separate yet whole.

And I,

return to my body,

to the truth cradled in my ribs,

my sacred face, belly, bones,

my soul.