Open Sorcery

Open Sorcery is the world of Lazarus Halliwell.

Excellence and batshittery, done on purpose.

I’m Lazarus. I make art, music, poems, plays, and magic for the quiet, brilliant, broken ones. If that is you, welcome home. I adopt your kind.

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More about me here.

Please note that, with rare exceptions, any and all names mentioned in this blog are pseudonyms except our own. We want to be able to speak freely without doxxing anyone.

Blog

  • “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

  • Eight wrote this in 2022. It’s called “salome”.

    my teen years taught me nothing of 
    importance 
    except how to write clear and deep
    about what hurts
    I've written enough by now 
    to fill a small library, so
    look back with me - 
    I prayed for an ideal in cold rooms 
    and I still became the only one who could
    save me 
    you look at me at my worst and you
    tell me I've healed 
    you look at me at my best and say 
    I'm not enough
    you told me they only recognize 
    greatness when it's in a party dress
    dancing, not a day older than twenty
    so tell me why I got more done 
    half dead with godlike confidence 
    than I ever did the way you asked of me? 

    would you have given me 
    half your kingdom 
    a wild prophet's head on a silver 
    platter 
    if I'd only been nice enough? 
    I'm not your Salome, I'm not your 
    beautiful daughter, 
    I'm iron and blood with war in my veins 
    I am the wild prophet you tried to kill
    call for my head all you like,
    I will no longer be 
    a pawn in your game

    11/20/2022

    -Allēna

  • I wrote this at the poetry workshop today. It’s called “strange entanglement”.

    I love you in a way you cannot love yourself
    in a twice divorced, second wife way that never happened, you want me so bad you don’t care
    if your chokehold love is killing me
    and I think it would kill you to stop pretending
    I think it would kill you to let me go
    even if it would save my life
    you call me wife and spouse and leave me
    screaming, but
    when I touched you that night I think we
    both knew it was over
    and I was grieving, I have been grieving
    and you don’t know how, you never did

    one time, you took me out to eat
    and everyone in the restaurant gathered to you
    like flies on a carcass
    I’d always wanted to be invisible, forgotten
    but not like that

    when we met you said you’d been wandering
    since before sunrise, trying to stay out of the
    house and away from your partner at the time
    it had been at least seven hours and you
    were covered in sweat
    as you spilled all the things you thought you
    wouldn’t there to me
    at that table

    it’s been three years of riding as a pair of ghosts
    you’ve never stopped wandering
    and I’m very talented at grieving
    it’s practically one of my best friends now
    I never thought I’d have to waste so much
    of my youth grieving for the living
    grieving for myself
    grieving for you

    -Allēna 10/19/2025

  • I got labs drawn to definitively check for a peanut allergy today.

    We’ll see what happens.

    I’m eepy now, though, so it’s probably nap time.

    -Allēna

  • Dear blog people..

    Emerson did my nails today while we watched the Usual Suspects.

    That’s it.

    That’s the post.

    -Allēna

  • My friend wrote a FANTASTIC book and I think you should buy it.

    It’s called BOY APPARITION by mk zariel. Here’s a bit about it:

    There are two transmasculine genders: the butch anarchist, and the tiny atemporal gremlin who really needs a hug. In BOY APPARITION, mk zariel tackles both. This chapbook is full of love letters to the BashBack tendency, chronicles of insurgent trans boyhood and its ties to lesbian culture, unhinged teenage rants, and the kind of love poems you’d write in lipstick on the mirror of the gender-neutral bathroom. Through it all, one question is central: what it means to be transmasculine beyond hegemonic manhood, beyond hierarchy, beyond linear time itself.

    Here is a post about it by the author itself.

    Dive in and enjoy!

    -Allēna

  • BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

    My friend mk and I are doing a joint performance in December and we hope to see you there! Here’s the flyer:

    I’m so excited!

    -Allēna