October 26th, 2023

A libretto, a fragment of a libretto, a study of a mother goddess with a missing child. Demeter after the abduction of Persephone; a spoken word unraveling over a texture of aggressive beats and noise.  I wanted to leave it here – unfinished and flawed, but raw and special right after the making..
 
​
I     have     been    lying
 
Asserting / indoctrinating my daughter,
simulating idealism…… ignorance
that she/one/they/I/have/has agency. 
that within these systems within these confines
she can control/change/impact/better/define/create her-self.
                                    That she/her beautiful will won’t be broken.
 
Shhhhh, baby. quiet. 
 
It took me forever (a lifetime) eternity (a moment) to learn that my body is not mine. my being/my-self/my time is not mine. identity is not of my making. it is draped over me and assigned. gifted by authority. it would/will be used, a weapon against me. separate from me. I climb in and out of it
                                                                                    [repress/restrain/regulate/subjugate/subdue]
 
discipline, authority:
            Pried loose in violence, eroded
                        [grind, shiver, rasp, erode]
 
ignus fatuus:
                        control through desire
                                                manipulation
            the inevitable need/want/loss
 
but I thought I could erase the transgression of subjecting her to this place, these systems, this rotting sphere and its flawed architectures. as if the crippling social norms and constant abuses of power could be undone through love and gentle teachings:
            reach out gentle fingers to trace and caress
when we touch it, the landscape shudders and bends.
            I/we/you become real in the touching, the shaping, the sensual
For a moment: speak. 
Arch toward something and finger it loose. 
Pry it up and open with small hard teeth.     
            [t’s are hard for her right now]
 
but you are not me and I am not her and they 
are not…listening.  
                                                                                                                       
they cleave her from me
            patriarchal hubris appeasing lonely want
            a bauble of light between shadows
her cancerous absence, a hollowing
            metastasizing the fields
                        blight and drought take root
without her green witch hands to prune them back
 
I become goddess weeping ash  
Untethered in my grief,
tearing at my own skin to be free of it, splintering
The shards of this self, piercing deep into earth
           
I am the goddess undone
Seeping bruised and wasted into the beckoning void
I/she/her/we/us/they become delusions and wraiths
 
you, your body, your hands (conspicuous/persuasive)
me, my cry, my possession (ephemeral, invasive, contrived)
differentiated.
   (please) let us make [or believe] - you allow me this deception.  
            that I am not being [now]
            that I am not mute [here]
            that these attempts at begging the world be different than it is are communicative, not feeble.
 
But further and further I am/I become, in this impossible 

In this, I am broken – prismatic. Voice cleaved from body, body reft from thought, thought stripped of the illusion of agency, of control. possession. 
 
and in my heart’s dying, so stills the world