1.
super impose me neon, berry-tinged
fingertips left smudges across everything I touched.
I hadn’t eaten raspberries in decades,
but on all the even days their half-rotten
musk fills my nose decadent, spoiled
beyond all good taste. there wasn’t a word for
blue for so long I’m forced to wonder
if the gods’ favorite could really be electric
wild blue raspberry, synthetic all the way through.
forget wine-dark, honey-tongue, this is the holiest of all
and here we can share in it. locked
in perpetual motion. machine give and take;
human only retroactively and exploding—
are you not entertained? dionysus is confetti.
2.
are you not entertained? dionysus is confetti
covered from a taylor swift concert, rocking up bloody
lipped and grinning from someone else’s teeth,
his knees haven’t stopped bouncing since beyonce; twirling
the she’s, they’s, and gays in tidy spirals in the parking lot
to sound check waiting for the doors to finally open
and everyone knows better than to blush,
eyelash flutter, ask just what he’s into, if it could be them,
even if they love how they felt just so right,
a little on the far side of mad in his arms. a breathlessness
that can’t only have come from the bass that’s still too far off
to really reach their bones the way they wish it would.
at some point the song stopped being words,
became all tone, ripped from the back of a throat.
3.
all tone ripped from the back of a throat
I gave up after every unanswered
prayer, sent to voicemail. returned-to-sender.
love me. all I wanted was escape,
to be wanted, what if I don’t want
to be a person, what if I would rather be a tree,
a blurry picture of the moon, a god
in my own right, beyond touch. I, ironic,
couldn’t love after a silent god, but still found myself
producing the open secrets of my lungs,
little sins, enough to pierce my lips to his ear,
make my every utterance a confession.
how honest can I be before it simply becomes obscene?
tear me apart. make me ecstatic in your honor.
4.
tear me apart. make me ecstatic in your honor,
I tried to drink to forget god, but he simply twisted
around my hungover spine as I begged and he
[god, dionysus] countered get drunk with me, get sober
with me, pulling bottles of sparkling cider off fridge-top,
there are rules to prayers: never ask for anything
you aren’t ready to receive, never accept
anything you aren’t ready to pay through the nose for.
I need to know—will we be happy when all of this is over
radio silence and everything melts into a song
I never could hit the notes to —
dionysus doesn’t love you. dionysus wants to be loved,
desperately. dionysus doesn’t want your love—
dionysus is the only sober person at karaoke.
5.
dionysus is the only sober person at karaoke,
where the lights are the only thing to brush unasked
over skin and by morning no one will remember
he never hit a single note. that’s how he likes it,
high on the anonymity of a party that’ll never end, a name
no one will ever say. worship him
lost in the ecstasy of someone else entirely—
but tonight a woman tells dionysus he’ll be alone forever
and all the neon blows out at once
to blacklight. the party’s over, now you have no choice
but to witness the aftermath painting the walls, carpets, spent
bedsheets, bottle pyramids in all the corners.
it was a punch in the gut, cop out from the woman
who’d given everyone else happily ever after.
6.
he’d given everyone else happily ever after,
in a way. a blissed out mania, sugar
coating bones. ‘alleluia,
with a high like that they’d follow him
anywhere, conga line to the ends of the earth,
but there was no soul, no licorice bite,
only flatlined serotonin—televangelize me,
give me something to believe, talk slick
enough and I’m brittle in my need for anything
that might be able to break me open, put me together
again. darling, I need you to want it. earn this shattering.
in my eulogy just remember they asked for volunteers
for this sacrifice. I offered myself to this worship,
I neophyte not to have a god’s love, but to become him.
7.
I neophyte not to have a god’s love, but to become him;
all his glory most radiant
in the way he becomes my crown.
let the uninitiated believe he pressed
under my skin, that was how I became
holy. I know better.
in the harsh light of day we knelt
facing each other. clasped hands and stared
until we knew each other. resembled
each other. the air passing between us,
our bodies, in that still room couldn’t tell one
from the other. equal blooded.
now more god than woman;
now more woman than god.
8.
now more woman than god,
dionysus could never be a subject; embodied, dis-
embodied, bodied only for another’s pleasure. object.
never subject. it’s kinda like this,
take away desire and it should hurt less
(spoilers, it doesn’t). wake bruised; saintless
and sorry. lit incandescent with someone else’s
pleas in this manufactured twilight, I can’t say I didn’t
feel for him, something more kinship than pity.
that I didn’t want him; a mockery
of every god who could have loved me,
if only I believed in them. now he’s someone else’s
god, someone else’s ghost—
but he’s not the kind of god you can worship forever.
9.
he wasn’t the kind of god you could worship forever,
but sweet on my tongue, oh how he could linger.
wanted but not wanting he could devour; love me only
from a distance, flat palmed. some days he’s fed so much
from everyone else’s desires he wonders
if he ever had his own, hasn’t touched anyone in years
but still wakes with the marks, someone else’s teeth in his throat —
somedays he’d change it all if he could,
a blaze of glory, one last alleluia, a shower of falling
constellations to half-remember him by.
hypocritical in my own disbelief,
I still find a prayer on my lips on the bad nights,
praying to this god I can’t believe in reflexive, recursive,
even as I wonder if my name was ever on the tip of his tongue.
10.
even as I wonder if my name was ever on the tip of his tongue —
holding onto a god who would answer
prayers with honey and something truer.
an embracing of wild-eyed panic that let me see
as he saw. I don’t know if he knew I was there or
if I was parasitic, symbiotic at best. fingers
knotting into threads of reality
I had no reason to be tangled in—everyone
was clamoring for a god they could believe in,
they wanted to know if this could be him,
if he could really be real or, for the chronic disbelievers,
if they could pass him off. mass hysteria, a chronic
outbreak of wombs wandering out of place,
but this is what I know, he existed.
11.
this is what I know, he existed.
he had a mouth, two eyes, a nose, ten fingers
& ten toes, the usual mess & matter assembled
in a recognized order and pattern; the same old god
plastered over with new names—in the end
it doesn’t matter. your belief, your disbelief, fingers
smudging through half melted wax, spoiling all the offerings
—do you want to know how forever tastes? electricity
& iron. blood & eternity. the colostrum,
the milky way. you can’t hold it all, but you never had a choice. god
will never give you more than you can hold [ still we all know
you’ll find it spilling from your fingers ].
you’ll recognize this holy, even if not by this name.
I know you’ll still find yourself willing to curse in his name.
12.
I know you’ll still find yourself willing to curse in his name—
[enter chorus]
a haunting rendition of “you fucked up” lyrical and accompanied
by all the appropriate instruments. accompanied by his laughter;
that should have been all the warning she needed,
she didn’t take the hint. I’m my own forever, darling,
drunk eternity to the worm and even it wasn’t enough to dull the party,
I’d ask you to dance, but you’d buzz kill any beat—
you know forever doesn’t mean a god damned thing, only ever lasts
until one or the other hits the floor, that’s the difference
between you and me, the beat won’t drop my bones, but yours?
she fell, string cut marionette, a carcass to be swept away
— did you think him benevolent? above it all?
here. offer your prayers, your burnt offerings.
13.
here. offer your prayers, your burnt offerings.
sacrifice only the bodies you don’t need anymore—
where do you keep your gods? in which
kitchen drawer. the pantheon is primed
for its next venerable extinction,
you offered all hymnal, all sound,
but this too was never what he asked for.
god-death is a quiet sort of forgetting;
the kind of murder you do in your sleep
until the day comes when past worship is only
half remembered nostalgia.
all my cups are upside down and empty,
I haven’t forgotten forgiven him yet, dionysus,
prick god in his abundant absence, who left me longing.
14.
prick god in his abundant absence left me longing
in my prayers tonight. confessing again into empty air,
I want to believe — is it so wrong
I wanted you to call my name?
so I knew I still had one and you knew it. proof
that mirrored me, that mine was the name you called
in the dark. mutual belief, a shared worship.
holy singularity until all the world went still.
there was silence again and I found myself
in another god’s church, chasing the taste,
blood on my tongue one more time
— is that so wrong? I can feel everyone else fading
into myth in my bones. I’m praying
once more, super impose me neon, berry-tinged.
15.
superimpose me neon, berry-tinged,
are you not entertained? dionysus is confetti,
became all tone, ripped from the back of a throat.
tear me apart. make me ecstatic in your honor.
dionysus, the only sober person at karaoke,
who’d given everyone else happily ever after—
I neophyte not to have a god’s love, but to become him.
now more woman than god
he wasn’t the kind of god you could worship forever;
even as I wondered if my name was ever on his lips
this is what I did know, he existed,
I know. you’ll still find yourself willing to curse in his name
here. offer your prayers, your burnt offerings
to this prick god who in his abundant absence left me longing.