Open Sorcery

Category: Our Poetry

  • I wrote this today. It’s called “why I love you”.

    you asked me once 
    suspended over a chasm of grief 
    why I loved you 
    I couldn't string the words around you to tell you then
    so I shall attempt to tell you now 

    you are a lavender field 
    earth still wet from spring rain
    and loving you is learning to dance again 
    hair still wet through the rows of flowers on 
    these crippled legs 
    no matter how long it takes to get the steps right
    no matter how long it takes to move without falling 
    you are a game of chance 
    and loving you is taking the tenderest risk I've 
    ever known 
    loving you is lilac, pale blue, and gold like the 
    subtle ring around your irises when you look at 
    me

    loving you is slow mornings and evenings that 
    always seem to go too fast 
    loving you is enough memories to fill a Martian 
    year and enough emotion to fill an entire planet 
    loving you is savoring 1001 days and nights 
    for all they're worth and never, ever taking each 
    other for granted
    loving you is allowing myself to be broken open
    and reborn, again and again 
    loving you is allowing you to do the same 
    and loving you is meeting the people you love 
    (because it's never just been us against 
    this crazy world)
    and finding that I trust you even more after doing 
    so because they're some of the finest people 
    I've ever known 

    you are multiverses 
    you are adventure 
    you are passion and fire 
    you are the ripple of time dancing 
    you are everything and nothing at once 
    loving you is learning to hold all of that
    in a single touch (and God does it feel so good) 
    I bet everything I had and then some on you
    because the moment I saw you, I knew I was 
    yours 
    and I would fucking do it again in a heartbeat 
    that is why I love you. 
    -Allēna 12/1/2025

  • I wrote this early this morning. I’m very proud of it.

    I've spent too much time
    wrapped around the axle of your love 
    three “I wish I didn't miss you” winters soured 
    I am regretfully tightly wound and solemn
    every day’s a funeral and I break the cold ground 
    hours before daybreak 
    this is one burial that is long overdue 

    I don't hate this city 
    I have come to love it perhaps in spite of you 
    I make praise to its neighborhoods and 
    the lake effect snow 
    my world is finally becoming bigger than the 
    four walls that we share
    you no longer dictate the pace, nor do you set 
    the price of it
    there was once a time that I would have gone out
    and bought the entire city for you if only you'd 
    asked, unto half my kingdom, but you never did
    and now you hate me for things you never 
    had the courage to say 
    and the lies that I drank from your mouth 
    like a perverse communion, for
    when I laid us to rest, you
    had only ash to eat and 
    nakedness to wear 

    so wander these cold, crooked streets wild
    calling for someone to cover up what you did
    some new soul to eat your sin
    while I repair the frayed ends 
    I tore from you

    -Allēna 11/27/2025

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  • This is a new poem called “your god is a boning knife” about my time in the Mormon Church.

    the god of your dreaming world is a boning knife
    made to pry black from white
    good from evil, the same from the other
    the wheat from the chaff
    you’ve made the sacred into a weapon, a tool
    and reality into delusion

    the god of your dreaming world is a crowbar
    made to pry denial from the self
    love from fear (to you, they are one and the
    same)
    blood from stones, beauty from ashes
    until the souls you’ve carved in the name of
    perfection, divine judgment, are not souls anymore
    they are vessels for your unholy scripture
    and their too perfect smiles don’t look
    joyful to me anymore
    they look like silent screams

    the god of your dreaming world is a club
    you use words to bludgeon when you can
    no longer pry
    slow violence and promises of an unsafe world
    outside of these walls to
    keep followers in line
    you’ve made faith into such a violent thing
    I never want to touch it again for fear of holding
    the same weapons you used against me

    the god of your dreaming world is a noose
    and I am still suspended upside down by my
    left ankle when I sleep sometimes all these years
    later
    as the blood rushes to my head I wonder what I
    did to deserve this, how I fell for this
    as I scream for someone to cut me down

    I got out from under the shadow of your god
    just barely
    I am not perfect, I don’t want your vision
    you will not pry anything else from me

    -Peri 11/18/2025

  • untitled 11/16/2025

    the wind in the trees outside my window
    sounds like waves
    and occasionally I get a scent that takes me back
    before four unhappy new years wore me down
    I am less agoraphobic now
    but this smell is fall’s last breath as it
    collapses into winter
    and I collapsed then, too
    I thought I’d seen the last of me
    I tried to warn you in songs that were everything short of a scream
    when nothing else seemed to make sense to you
    sparse like the first weekend of a midwestern
    december
    (just as cold as you became)
    (black ice dead eyes and all)
    and failing that, I vanished
    into the empty western sky

    but once it looked like I could be happy
    once it looked like I could have it all
    you chased me through the autumns, the winters
    and the years as if none of what you’d done
    to me before mattered
    over and over and over again
    I never understood it
    why was I so important
    and ultimately
    why do you pursue a vision of me
    that was never real at all

    -Allēna

  • I pitched an idea for a spring themed multimedia show to a shop and studio here in town in March or April. They say they’ll get back to me next week.

    If this goes well, I want to do it again. I think I’m going to put it together regardless, though.

    -Allēna

  • This was the result of a very special workshop on ekphrastic poetry today.

    I am a sorceress, twice in exile –
    they claim my magic is merely madness, but
    those with the eyes to see know better
    I am the voiceless breaker of curses, until now
    bearer of grief no one knows about
    I am no one’s prisoner anymore

    to know myself is to know my power
    to know myself is the key to my freedom
    I have all that I need
    there is an embarrassment of riches in my heart
    and though you may not like what you see
    you might be shocked by it
    terrified by it
    I have looked within so I can look without
    I see you for all that you are now
    and you hold no charm for me
    I am made of night and waves and song
    water and air, wrath and lightning
    while you are made of nothingness
    I do not need you, you need me
    you will no longer have my pain

    so here I go, I’ve broken my chains
    and the ties that bind me
    and I take my first steps into the dawn and
    the red world

    ~”the sorceress”, after breaking the vicious circle by remedios varo, written by Allēna 11/9/2025

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  • I am so happy that I performed my “Invictus” style poem that I wrote on Inauguration Day this year on what turned out to be a very historic election night.

    Thank you to all the people in the US who turned up to their polling places yesterday to make their voices heard. This one is for y’all.

    WE are the masters of our fate. WE are the captains of our souls.

    Not some clown in the White House.

    Remember that now and always.

    I love y’all.

    If y’all want to read more work like this, my Inauguration Day poem previously appeared on this blog under the category Our Poetry and is published in our zine easy to hate like everything you love.

    -Allēna

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  • “un-lotused”

    I’ve never been one to meditate on regrets
    of paths not taken, universes unexplored,
    for my regrets are few –

    when I want something, I show up for it,
    I find a way to it or I make one
    and the primrose path to success builds upon itself

    I would far rather meditate on failures,
    iterations where everything when wrong
    and then I made something beautiful from the
    ashes, lotus petals unraveling, daring to ask if he
    loves me or he loves me or loves me not,
    than the zest of life left unnoticed

    -Allēna 11/2/2025

  • I found this gem from 9/20/2022 in our Google Drive.

    I am longing for longing’s sake
    I’ve struggled to let my heart want
    what it wants for so long that I’m going to
    let whatever haunts it haunt me.
    And fuck, I want so much. 

    there’s a man back east
    mysterious and strange
    fascinated by everything
    I think he may have been thirteen the
    first time I met Death
    I want nothing less than his mind
    but I want nothing more
    and I think I’m fine with that.

    There’s a woman in a hypothetical west
    with slender hands and tapering fingers
    come here? I ask her
    and she walks through rooms older
    than both of us combined
    she walks home, despite the fear
    through the years
    she walks home
    to me

    I want afternoons and gold dust evenings
    I want to let the world enchant me again
    one song at a time
    I want to be enthralled with what I have
    and what I will have
    and what I will lose
    The world is not a dead place.
    It is not made up of stark black and white.
    I may be tired but Death has yet to find me
    again
    Until then, I make my way home
    I will do what the man in the east did
    what the woman in the west will do
    And become fascinated with everything
    again.

    -Castor

  • “paper mind” – written 12 march 2018 by Allēna

    write something
    anything
    there’s cerebral spinal fluid
    where some of my
    brain used to be
    and it’s one of the many
    possible scapegoats
    to blame
    for why i am like this

    humor me for a moment
    picture a house with a single
    flap for receiving letters

    one letter enters
    	
    you don’t want the letter
    you set it on fire

    (but they’re like a hydra)
    (the more letters you burn)
    (the more come pouring in)

    	so you get more letters
    	and burn them
    	until you are suffocating 
    	in them

    my brain did that a decade ago
    i remember the very first thought
    it found a girl beautiful 
    and the panic set in
    the letters poured in
    and i drowned in thoughts like paper

    the mind full of paper has become 
    the paper mind
    people and places like wind
    blow through it and blow it open

    write something
    anything
    do not burn this paper mind
    though you can do so quickly

    quickly
    		quickly				
               still
    -Allēna

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