Sparkle and Zest

---

I wrote this piece several years ago and later it was published in an anthology by Girl God Books.

I read this poem the other night at my embodied poetry reading and several folks asked for a copy, so I am posting it here.

I also made a recording of myself reading it aloud some time ago and posted that here.

Enjoy!

---

No no no no nonononononononono no! I don’t want to feel like this again. This dark October feeling blowing in.

Please dear God, dear Goddess, please help me, don’t make me go here, don’t take me here again, into the dark dead feeling inside myself.

No no no no nooooooooooo! Where is it, where is this feeling, where does it live in my body right now?

Feel in there and peel back what this is, in my face, in my head, a fog, a gray, a grieving.

Yes, grief and anger.

For what?

For all that I don’t have, for all that is missing, for all that is changing, for my children growing, for another year gone by, for life spinning, for the leaves falling,

for the cold coming, and the dark coming, and the rain, the gray, the winter, the heaviness, the wet, dark, cold loneliness.

I am screaming into the emptiness, the darkness, the void, the nothingness, the vacuum, where I am all alooooooooooooonne.

I am screaming this inner scream, or is it Her screaming, is She screaming in me?

She is here, the Phantom Queen, the Morrigan

She enters with her raven feather cloak, her dead leaves, her smoke and gray, her cold, wet and darkness.

She sits on my chest forcing me to notice her.

Takes my face in her hands and makes me stare her in her eyes and she reminds me, she says,

“Here too, this is a part of life. This death, this grieving, this giving up, this letting go, this crumbling, this destruction.

This is the other side of the coin, the coin you covet, but you only want to look at the bright side, the shiny side, the alive and sunny blossoming side but you

YOU

are also the dying side—always being re-born, yes—but always dying.

Make love to the Void. Dance with me.”

This Morrigan, is another kind of Lover. She is wise and deep, she is frightening and powerful.

She will scream through you, as she is screaming through me.

She is a crone, a shapeshifter, a magician, a dark goddess, a warrior, a reaper.

She is Nature. She is Change. She is Death. She is Wild. She isn’t clean or pretty or predictable.

She isn’t happy. She isn’t Joy. She isn’t soft and nurturing. Her nurturing is brutal.

Screaming, crying, howling, destroying–

Lose it all to her! With her dark kiss and cutting glare.

She will call you into your wider, deeper self over and over again in the most crass and honest, howling ways.

You will wail. You will be stripped. This will all be taken away from you.

All of it!

You will be barren, empty. You will be naked and decayed, destroyed, a pile of bones, and then nothing.

She will howl through like the wind and blow you and all you know away and you must bow to her and thank her and make her offerings of gratitude.

For without her, nothing comes about. Without her, there is no change, no growth, no evolution.

Without her, the shells won’t crack.

Without her destruction there is no creation and there is no creation without her destruction.

She is wind, she is fire, she is storm, she is death, she is out of your control.

Can you dance with her? Can you let her in?

Can you kiss her? And be consumed by her and feed off her wisdom?

She is screaming for you to look at her, acknowledge her, be whole by uniting with her too, with your own emptiness, with your own grief.

Howl, shrivel, turn to ash, vacate, die–so that you may truly Live.

With the wisdom and the knowing and the depth and the darkness and the wholeness the dark goddess brings.

Call in the Morrigan. Dance with Her. Surrender.