Supranova

“I'm melting!”

cried the Western witch,

& I can feel her pain

as I begin 

the newest year

in a hospital bed 

high on morphine,

fighting

off the effects 

of a greasy cheesesteak

& a defective pancreas.

I must be melting,

I imagine as I swipe

across the images hidden

behind a digital brown bag:

Lotis licking 

a glass phallus,

legs braided 

like pretzel stix,

toes pertly pointed

towards Her sacred 

altar, & those wicked eyes

saying nothing,

telling me everything,

drawing me in 

like sirens into waves

sure to break me

against jagged

rocks hidden

under perfect

pools.

I am already broken,

I laugh, as pain shoots

through me: lightning

riding my swollen,

tattered guts—

aboriginal abdominal

chaos—ancestral

gift!

“I am no witch,”

she says. Lies,

or perhaps yet to realize

her power, or lost

in the perjorative,

or…

evolved

beyond the labels

used to frame rare

strength & compassion

forevermore feared,

misunderstood.

¿Who am I

to define her?

a poet, melting

on a hospital bed

in Baltimore, hoping

not to expire here 

like Poe, for

while Death

& I are intimates,

I have no desire

to consummate

that bond.

I want only to live

long enough to melt—

melt into the arms

of unparalleled

beauty, into pain

so perfect, so pure,

we burn bright:

stars merging,

forming,

forging light

white hot 

enough to pull

the whole

of the Universe

towards us

& melt it all

away.