Open Sorcery

Tag: bettertogethermke

  • I had this odd realization during my post-writers group smoke break today.

    I think I – as well as my system as a whole – approach making art the same way that jazz musicians play music. I was thinking about this because the piece I ended up writing today in group pulled heavily from “My Island” and yet putting an entirely different spin on it, and it got me thinking about all of the different times that I’ve done that while making music especially.

    And honestly, if I had to sum up my approach to just about everything in life, I would say that I approach most of my crafts like a jazz musician even though I don’t technically play jazz. I don’t believe in just one final product or making a recording or a piece the be all, end all. A single song can inspire me for over ten years and I’ll keep coming back to it lyrically, musically, poetically, even, in a sort of self-referential game of call and response, making something new with each iteration and reexamination.

    In the process, I’m building a recursive universe the longer I make content and art.

    I fucking love jazz.

    -Allēna

  • “still life (2019)”

    “untitled still life (2019)” 

    I don't want to give names
    to your fistfuls of hollow 
    coffee cup still half full, overturned
    baroque broken words, reaching for something
    that forever seems older 
    than you or I in every language 
    well run dry, and yet 
    despite yourself 
    each moment in atemporal space
    teeming with life

    when we met, I 
    wanted to drink myself into the ground,
    an inelegant death like hemingway perhaps 
    after bleeding worlds onto ten thousand pages
    inspired by black coffee and gin 
    I'm sober now and you're still empty glasses, 
    the smell of pages, wine
    and cigarettes after two years of silence 
    I can still vanish into the liquor darkness of you
    without ever tasting a drop
    I don't want to die anymore 
    (most days) 
    and perhaps I am a fool
    for wandering through your still life fortress of 
    melancholy 

    but you keep coming back to me, 
    three hundred year old moment 
    or perhaps you are a memory 
    I've never been good at untangling how I feel
    and some days I feel like I am made of iron
    but today I feel like nothing more than glass - 


    Allēna 3/1/2026

  • I wrote this at workshop today.

    I am the candle you allowed to go out
    you would bind yourself to me but you’d never
    bleed for me
    and if you had fifty million words to say what you
    meant
    or anything at all
    you’d ramble on, talking in circles
    and in your haunted sound and your fury, you’d say
    nothing –

    did I ever mean a goddamn thing to you?
    was I nothing more than another withering body in your bed,
    another meal, another drink, another drug,
    another stepping stone in your unanswered,
    unmatched ambition?
    there’s no way to tell now in this optimized
    emptiness, is there?
    I’ve tried to see through the cage of your lies
    one too many times
    so now I go about my petty tomorrows and you go about
    yours on opposite sides of this compound fracture town
    we are all bleeding at the seams
    at the end of the day, aren’t we?

    I don’t think fate was involved anymore
    only hunger clawing at your insides
    and when you finished devouring me in your
    desperation, you corroded your soul
    with something and someone else
    another victim wrapped too tightly in your spell
    who are you drowning with now?
    of course they won’t see that the cords wrapped
    around their neck aren’t love until far too late
    of course they won’t have words for how you’re drinking
    them dry, and
    of course you won’t tell me their name
    but I’ll hear their screams through
    the grapevine anyway

    out, out
    brief candle
    again and again
    oh, that I would have
    died hereafter
    after what you did to me
    but
    watch me rise like the morning star
    instead
    burn out
    shimmer and fall
    knowing you can never again
    touch me

    -Castor 2/1/2026

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  • “supplication”

    you have taken the world that I was
    and left me empty 
    craving 
    longing
    is there anything that I can use to fill the chasm 
    on the side of the bed where you once slept 

    I stumble home 
    if I can even still call it that 
    for in the taking, you 
    took more than just yourself 
    you took everything that meant something to me
    from this space and left it ruined 
    just like me 

    now even the flies are starving

    sobs wrack my threadbare chest 
    everyone that I once knew is turning
    away from me and into their own personal 
    darkness, tired
    can you come back and give me anything 
    even undo me again
    please 

    -Allēna 1/11/2026

  • We wrote object poems in workshop today.

    faceless blessings in disguise 
    looking askance at gift horses
    with bejeweled eyes
    are they empty or full to the brim
    do I hoard them 
    or do I give them away 
    is it finally my time to come out of hiding
    after all the time that was stolen from me 
    this little thing is winking at me offscreen 
    I think it's telling me everything is gonna be alright 
    but that's what they said before 
    and if I stuck them in a lineup their dead eyes would all glint the same 
    people told me when I 
    got up from the piano bench that fame 
    would be inevitable 
    I was always going to be someone 
    I was always going to do something 
    (as if I wasn't already a gift)
    time after time I tried to run 
    time after time I tried to just be 
    dissolve into winter nights and simply be 
    unremarkable with the man I swore I had chosen 
    but what I know of myself is in the doing 
    all I know of myself is in what I choose to give
    away 
    I let the rest of myself die 
    collapsed into dead star self hatred 
    lost somewhere deep in kaleidoscopic shadow
    The object I based the poem on.

    -Allēna 12/21/2025

  • I went to the poetry workshop with Emerson again today and as such, I come bearing gifts.

    This was the result of a TTRPG roll and it’s called “everything’s coming up lavender”

    i was 17 when you first came to me
    mind threatening to unravel in shades of crimson

    now i swear everything's coming up lavender and
    golden brown, i'm much madder now and 
    while i can't say things are fine in this pit 
    of snakes we live in, at least i feel
    somewhat safe now that i found the melody i
    was looking for 

    the problem is that i sought you high and
    low in all the wrong places, wrote my best songs
    and lines to all the wrong people
    it's sad to say that you found me at my worst, but
    you loved me anyway

    i'm a stubborn piece of shit and i know 
    you know that, so are you
    that's part of why i love you so fucking much
    neither of us know when to quit when we know exactly what we want

    so are we living the dream? maybe not yet
    but do we have the grit to get there?
    absofuckinglutely. and one thing's for certain
    i know i will never be bored again

    so thank you. thank you for not
    giving up on this raging bitch 
    thank you for sticking it out because
    i loved you endlessly then and i love you endlessly now

    -Allēna 8/3/2025

    Here's the TTRPG if you want to snag a copy for yourself!
    Fediverse Reactions