Open Sorcery

Category: Our Poetry

  • “haunted tape” by Eight, 10/10/2021

    you may want me dead
    and sundered into pieces
    smaller than grains of sand
    but you’ll never tell
    and I will never know

    such is the punishment for twenty hours
    of touch that is torture in hindsight
    such is the punishment for
    shattering a fragile peace
    and believe me, if I could destroy
    myself that utterly
    don’t you think I would have
    already?

    surely you also know the hell I’ve
    seen?

    is it strange that I can still
    see her face in nearly perfect detail
    square jaw and blue hazel eyes
    I rewind the tape again
    and again –

    how do you not get what you want
    when it is offered freely
    before you even ask?
    before you even consider
    what it is you want?

    you only wanted security
    and safety
    and the comfort of routine
    I wanted her
    and I wanted you, too, once or twice –
    now I hold in the pain you
    wish you could see.

    someday you might get your
    wish. someday I might
    be broken into
    twenty six billion pieces
    just like I did to my
    dreams

    like you did to my trust
    and faith in a found home

    and I will go my fate
    head unbowed
    still wondering if I
    deserved it

    but still I carry on
    intact on the outside
    I find my strength in
    brokenness

    do I leave a piece of me
    in everything I leave behind?

    -Allēna

    Fediverse Reactions

  • Here’s my best performance of “hurricane lazarus” yet 💛

    THIS WAS SO MUCH FUNNNN!!!

    “hurricane lazarus” does in fact appear in fear not the brave pain, which is a part of the fantastic fundraiser bundle my friend mk compiled to help me with survival costs in this hellscape. Please check it out, it’s pay what you can 💛

    -Allēna

  • Well, I finally got over my odd fear of performing anything from Field Notes last night at Poet’s Monday.

    I performed “samson” and “rehoboth” (not shown).

    The fundraiser mentioned in the video and caption is here.

    -Allēna

  • “answer”

    I could ask my body
    what will I do when it has fallen
    and regardless of which side I try and
    coax, pry, cajole, or beat an answer from –
    the deaf side or the silent one,
    the answer is always the same:

    it already has.

    sixteen percent of my brain died before I was
    a year old, I fought tooth and nail to keep
    my own heart. (I was finally removed from
    the transplant list when I was 12)
    I’ve had to re-learn how to walk twice,
    I spent this past july remembering
    how to talk again
    after nearly dying for the nineteenth
    time. I couldn’t form a coherent sentence for
    a month after a seizure episode approximately
    twenty five minutes long
    I’ve been everything short of shot
    and sometimes I wish I had been
    just to get the dying over with
    because “what doesn’t kill you makes you
    stronger” is a goddamn myth
    sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you
    wish you were dead

    the deaf side of my body and the silent side
    are asymmetrical, imperfect mirrors of each other
    an invisible remnant of the stroke in ‘98
    I can feel the right side but it doesn’t often
    tell me anything anymore because where it should’ve been able to talk my mother screamed
    over it and told me I was faking my pain
    and my sadness, my fear, that I was just
    looking for attention, and it was beaten into
    listening to her instead (she had a knack for
    going for the face)
    it took 24 years to fully break free and by that time
    my mind had shattered as well

    so, what will I do now that my body has fallen?
    same thing I’ve done since I was a child.
    rest, get up, do the damn thing again
    and try to listen for better whispers

    -Allēna 10/27/2025

  • We did blackout poetry in workshop today. This is what I came up with:

    I got this from an essay on Shakespeare’s King Lear.

    -Allēna

  • “quizás // unmaking” – 17 April 2023

    maybe I’ll write about the things
    I want nobody else to know about
    in code
    long after I get home –
    or maybe
    time will burn the pages of my diary
    make me ozymandias,
    and sand and hate will clear my name
    from everything and everyone I made

    to make way for birch trees and the wheat
    field behind your house
    and open skies when we drive

    I haven’t decided if I want to remember us
    or if I want the fire that robes these mountains
    or the brandy on your mouth
    to wipe my mind clean and absolve me –

    maybe death is a metaphor here
    either way
    maybe I want you to kill me
    as much or as little as you’d like

    -Allēna

  • “treasure trove” by Eight, 2022

    These are the things I keep tucked
    beneath my ribcage
    that the last remaining part that is human
    in me tries to keep hidden –

    my anger at death is just longing in
    disguise
    society is too scared to let me have
    my anger is really passion
    and fear

    (except for the dull ache that lives
    beneath my bottom left rib)

    (he wants god to burn and the houses of
    my enemies set ablaze
    to light the way to heaven’s gate)

    I keep my loves small
    my happiness smaller
    I fold joys innumerable –
    millions of them –
    into my chest cavity
    but I never learned to cherish them
    so they’ve always faded with the sun
    melted into nothing

    I hide my longings poorly
    To be seen, for a silvertongued
    lost king made from the same stuff as me
    I’ve looked my angels and my
    demons in their myriad eyes
    and ask them why they don’t leave me
    alone
    and they all say
    “all we ever wanted was your love”
    in a thousand different ways

    Fediverse Reactions

  • “salvo ii”

    last night I made you a promise 
    of a spiral staircase worth walking down 
    a poetically just sort of kick to the chest -

    your heart nearly stops on a good day
    screaming odd time flutters when you're distressed 
    well, I've got some words 
    that will keep it pounding 
    right from the box I keep 
    locked tight in my head 

    I don't know why I love you anymore
    I'm just as much a prisoner of the emotion 
    as I am a prisoner here 
    the confusing as fuck 
    fact of the matter is, I 
    just do 
    I feel like less than half the person
    than I did three years ago when this 
    began 
    and the time has come for me to 
    break these unseen chains for the last time 

    and I don't know what keeps me from exploding 
    spite, sheer force of will, practice, 
    compartmentalization?
    you say you want better for me, then deliver
    if you can
    otherwise I'm no better off than I was
    with the manipulative would be jailers 
    that attempted to control me before

    so sit with this, torture yourself like I know you will
    when you see it
    let it burn a hole clean through 
    and simultaneously cauterize 
    what's left of your mind
    I don't fight with guns, fists, or steel
    I fight with words and the silences between them
    and win 
    and frankly 
    that's much worse

    -Allēna 10/23/2025

  • I wrote this based on a conversation I had with a cool fellow poet after Poets’ Monday last week.

    “fog kisses”

    the lake visits me and gives me little fog kisses
    as she’s been doing since before the house
    reached out its unforgiving arms and swallowed me
    they caress my skin and turn
    the street lights into stage lights
    every turn on the drive home is a perfectly framed
    work of art

    I once called her my wife many years ago
    when I had a different name, a different life,
    practically a different face
    when every nerve from
    my neck to my hands screamed pain and
    fatigue
    I was angrier then, I think, to keep myself alive
    but the rage served its purpose
    that name served its purpose
    as did that life and that house
    but I never stopped loving that lake

    I’m still here, sifting through the remainder of
    what was left behind when I found her
    where do I go now?
    how do I leave the wrath behind when it’s seared
    itself into every cell in my body?
    she’s more home
    than my own skin…

    -Allēna 10/22/2025

  • “regarding an incident on october 20, 2020”

    dancing off the edge of the world
    tired of all the motion and the sickness 
    it's been five years and I'm not sure if I've gotten 
    better or so much fucking worse 

    (I feel like a walking corpse)
    (a snake in your garden) 

    I still hate you for what you did 
    except 
    I tell myself I no longer care 

    I still build bridges to spite the anger and the fear
    you drilled into me 
    I still flinch when someone knocks on the door or 
    a bell rings too loudly 
    or when someone looks at me too close
    what could they possibly want to know 
    what could I possibly have to offer them

    it couldn't be 
    anything genuine, I thought for the longest time 
    those curious eyes must be another face 
    I'd inevitably want to spit in 

    but no, five years later, I find 
    I simply want the luxury of 
    not having to see your face when I close my eyes 
    and never having to hide myself from you 
    or the world 
    again 

    -Allēna, 10/20/2025