Sanctuary

Sometimes I contemplate the old times. I was writing a lot under brass oil lamps and a pen between smudged fingers. Fingers that played all kinds of dirt with charm. No penny for bread if it wasn't for that. Despite the pen and the muse, the male pen name, the publishing on print and poetic collections for the brandies and soirees, the same gentlemen would pay more for the flesh than for the spirit. I'm not making a fool of myself. I had chosen this life with pride. I enjoyed it even. You see, you're not seductive. You're the very lust itself. The type of lust that everyone desires but can't possess. The cheap and ephemeral. The truest of kinds. Then I'd feel the dirt all over me. I'd smell the stench on my skin. I'd scratch it off for hours with green soap, I'd wash the hair in distilled nectar, I'd spread on the neck and wrist aromas picked from spice markets of the East, potions and elixirs and herbs, I'd sip the absinthe and exhale the roasted tobacco. Nothing. The magic would disappear. It was only the curses that stayed. Because the stench had soaked and rooted in the inside, emanating. Poison brew simmering in the cauldron and the fumes intoxicating.

I had found another way to cleanse the soul. I'd dig the hand deep into my ventral core, I'd pull it out right from the root. I tossed and flicked and spread it open on the wooden table with the holes crunched by the death watch. It was now a piece of paper; white, pure, virgin.

I knew to hate men and to love my misery. My pain, my grief, my sorrow. To hate the others and to love him. Not because it was he. But because it was him. He could be anything. A man, a woman, a flower, or a rock. Anything that would be carrying a soul, his soul, and I'd love it the same.

It was rough times. Tough. Raw. Deep. Violent. You could say not much has changed. We're still murderers. Cold blooded ones. Only then you could smell the sweat and the gunpowder. Isn't it with the same ease that we pull the trigger though? We just don't look in the eye anymore.

Damn it. It's not even life's fault. I am to blame. I am constantly in war. We were always many but unanimous. It's just now that I have no one to understand. I tried. You see when that weight I'm trying to share pulls everyone down, I'm left with more and more bodies to lift. Pointless. I need my hands to pull me together. Easy if I were torn but I'm shredded. Pieces and strips in war, in peace, in joy that brings more sorrow and so on, so forth.

Oh well. I sigh and shrug. At least I got something to write about now that no one listens. Sanctification through purgatory. Sanctuary for the sinner. Refuge for the outlaw. Asylum for the mentally ill.

Tomorrow it's life's command again. Perfume sprayed and mask on.

Come in. Come closer. Take off your jacket. Lie on the couch. Comfort and pleasure awaits.

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⚜ Pictures are selected and combined in a collage to capture the aesthetic imagery and symbolism of the poem.

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