"Jo-Isis" & news

I'm about to take a step back from working on poetry to edit my short story collection & novella, but within the next month or so "Inanna" should be available, once I've finished formatting and getting the cover I have in mind in order. But in preparation for the ascetic lifestyle that comes with editing longer works (i.e. locking one's self away in the tower, fasting on avacados and water for the whole day while you try to get this damn story in order, because who has time to cook, am I right?), I wanted to get all of the poems sitting in my notebook in order and realized that I had not only "Inanna" coming out of that morass of text, but also another chapbook tentatively titled "Trifecta: Maiden, Mother, Crone; Girl, Monster, Toy"














So far, the running thread of these seems to be targeting the problematic notion of feminine divinity in neo-paganism, which is the reoccurring motif of women dissected into three neat little categories of "maiden-mother-crone." If I am recalling correctly, it's largely a notion that has come out of Wicca and has influenced goddess centric spirituality.  Now I myself definitely would say that I fall under the "neo-pagan" category as I simply have a hard time adhering strictly to re-constructionist beliefs, but I definitely am not Wiccan, as it's really too dualistic and simplistic for me. For our purposes here, I will just say that I am a pantheist - which is the belief that the universe itself is divine.  But I do firmly recognize that human notions of the divine often reflect what we believe to be true about ourselves and our values. The "trifecta" of maiden-mother-crone has a tendency to put women into little boxes and I feel this fails to recognize the inherent plurality of identity. It misses how our lives are essentially gradients, for lack of a better word, in which the self is at any one time many layers of inter-sectional states. And if we view the divine in such a fashion, are we not underestimating the beauty and chaos of the universe itself? But I don't intend this work to be wholly religious in nature. So far it is definitely more of a sort of path finding for identity while navigating the spiritual road posts culture has laid out in front of you.  I really look forward to sharing it with you once it is all in order.

Since it is Mother's Day tomorrow, I figure it would be fitting to share a poem from this collection which feels ready to be shared and is about the matriarch who kept my father's side of the family together for decades.
***

girl into maiden into mother into

every death

are these the tests of my faith?

didn't get the memo

that goddess equals  the many color

gradient

fire is not contained in urban decay

summer pallets

you can pop out Robert Graves all you like

but I met my grandmother once,

and in her eyes, I saw her running

the length of the earth, wild, jubilant,

crushing whole cities with leaps

and bounds, all the while to come home

just a little tired, collapsing in the

depression era dining set where she smoked,

and dreamed about flowers

that really grow

in beds she spent her whole life

collecting the egg shells of yesterday

laying down her own body as glorious

americana compost

Sea Shattered

So here it is, another poetry chapbook I finally edited and compiled that's been sitting on my back burner for six months. I've spent the past week working on the edits for "Inanna" but that cover will have to wait awhile until I can get a hold of the resources to make the cover I have in mind, so in the meanwhile I used all of yesterday to finish the touches on this little menagerie of words inspired from my trip to the Gulf last October.

I am pretty worn out from all that screen staring I did yesterday, so here is the link to the Smashwords page where you can find it. You can have it for free or, if for some reason you think this pile of poems I conjured up while sitting on stormy shores for a week is worth a coin or two, you can pay me what you want. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it, and I am grateful for the time you take in reading it (insert heartful emojis here)

When I visited the Gulf for the first time in twelve years, I was sensually overwhelmed by the power of our Ocean Mother. She's out in the waves, and ever true to her siren self, she's looking for a meal to shatter, for a wayward human to wander too close to her rip tide. Like the seagull bashing shells against rocks, the sea has a way of fragmenting you as you stand face to face with her alone on the shore, the edges of yourself fading into the misty morning light. These poems are from that experience of confronting Ocean Mother for the first time in what seemed an age, and I'm still trying to discover if I myself shattered on those shores, or if I ended up taking other pieces home with me

click here to go to Sea Shattered @ Smashwords

Illuminated Anatomy of an Annunaki

you open up your books

to your diagram of goddess

where all my arterial rivers

which run into your Eden are displayed

girl child keeps thinking all she sees is

bone chalk clogging up the tear ducts

from which the original, that primordial

mercy conjuring pollen conjuring helix ballerinas

conjuring tears of Baghdad and Ferguson,

you think of that old Inanna,

with her vulva splayed out

like the folds of lotus into which

all of you keep pissing

your radiation in

but don’t worry children,

I’ve had my mouth open

for your terror of

a father for a long time

this cum shot of industry

the money sequence through

which dollars countdown

like a doomsday clock

for your little rioting, bloated, quaking

world

No one knows how to extract

hope from chaos better

than old Inanna

I stole the code for civilization,

I’m willing to break it down again

just to bring lovers and children alike

back into the folds

a vicious flower hug,

dragging you all down into my nectar trap

Reset is easy, when you are the sum total of Desire

gather all the pieces

the board is clear, and my tears flow

like atoms looking for the spark

Mine is life eternal when the elements are here to party

you keep thinking I’m so angry I would burn down your beds

just to watch you wither from girl to granny

but honey, I’m just craving, yearning

for all the children to drop their technicolor screens

and follow me home

a seven pointed star hovers over a young girl’s thoughts

I’m trying to get through

beauty is a transmission that often dissipates in space

giving into the frequencies of other, brighter stars

honey, you’re never as lovely as you were in nova, just wait

it will come around again,

incendiary, grand, and vibrating on a string

that cosmic wake up call of your realization

and when you look at your anatomical drawing of me,

consider the ovaries

I promise you are witnessing yourself

a star’s light as a time capsule

of when you were dying,

and in dying, you were the best you ever were

A long overdue poetry chapbook

As it looks like I just keep failing to live up to expectations by actually submitting anything with enough frequency that it would have a chance in hell at being published, I have decided to at least let my work have a little bit of air beyond the trappings of my notebook and hard drive. I find that as I get older, as much as I would love to see more of my work in publications beyond this blog, it really isn't the end game to be honest. I have always loved the thrill of putting the words together like so many pieces in a puzzle that I have no reference for, and so I am free to assemble to something as close as possible to the world that waltzes around in my head. For me, in many ways, it's this creative drive that keeps me moving in and out of the cycle of days.

But really, I want to give these little sons of bitches a chance to play around in the recess of the reader, and so it is with gratitude and warmth that I put into your hands, the first of four chapbooks I hope to publish in their entirety and share here.

Receipt Dandies is the first poetry chapbook I ever wrote and it's more or less a collection of poems I had been working on for nearly two years by the time it was completed last October.  I really feel that more or less the poems seem to touch on this muted theme that what you put into life seems to have such muffled and jumbled returns, and if it were all on a receipt, they would be politely worded out to say so much as "What a waste that all was!" But enough about that, I will let you all be the judge of whether or not that theme is executed well.

For now, I am publishing under the name of Michelle Lore, to differentiate my poetic attempts from those of my prose fiction. It's not an attempt to hide my identity, but to give my different mediums a separate space to grow in my head.

The chapbook is 100% free and is available through Lulu.com, and they claim it will be available through kindle, nook, apple, etc, but I have yet to check. But here is a link to the pdf file on my google drive as well as the page on Lulu.

I hope to update the cover as soon as I get the chance, but goodness knows when I can get that up and running.

Links:
Receipt Dandies PDF
Receipt Dandies at Lulu.com

Right now I am currently working on chapbook themed around Inanna, the Sumerian fertility goddess. I may have a teaser for it here in a few days.

Enochian Rituals for Clerks (entry 1 in 'Receipt Dandies' Series)

mucinex, vaseline, and tampons

can you guess what demon I am summoning today?

No, not the pervy Baphomet seeking to impregnate

every bar queen ever to make a pit stop

at the altar of Magnum

I am making a wicker man

of cotton balls and guaifenesin

and glitter glue

to burn away this haunting

of coupon slips that never seem to add up

to more than seventy five cents of the retail total

of a babe caught

in the trafficked chutes and ladders

children’s mayhem

leaves my livelihood

nothing more than convenient store nanny

gotta summon demons

to fight demons

and I’m not afraid to use receipt slips

as papyrus scrolls

to request the aid of Babylonian horrors

to make me a ward

a shroud against broken letters

which rain down

on those of us helpless enough to try

reeling in a living

in the midst of this bloody Nile

the flotsam

of deposit slips surge by like a watery omens

an emblem of time spent

hoarding roasted dollars

never to be tasted

starlight

deflated of breath

you are the doom

at this drugstore crossroads

before Cerebus  comes to call for his nine to five

buffet at your confessional

or his sunday sacrifice

This Hades likes to think no one

whispers of him to the White House Muse

She knows he’s buying the skirt out from around her thighs

but a girl has a right to bitch, doesn’t she?

you can only steal Persephone so many times

before we open our eyes to see

Wallstreet Demeter, hanging limp

from the platform of the infernal marquee

Etched Facets Along The Strasse

I faced away from the window

but the blinds were projected onto

the inside of my glasses

trying to make a spectacle out of

AM nothings

sunlight filters in, a dance

I’ve long since grown

used to

as it shines in a pirouette circle upon a carcass

we called it a feast

but it was a extermination

of a pest in my bed

wearing my skin

I once went outside to discover

that changelings were the new vogue

Bodies along for the ride

while our eyes read the story

of a nativity in which the infant DOW

was hallowed, wrapped in streamers of Nasdaq,

and endless marquee of wealth, lined in the thread blood

of our veins

I sit on my patio, drinking my share of imported blood mocha,

and wonder how does one’s skin always return it’s shape,

with so much writhing always undoing its attempts to reform into self

as the beast that longs for more tries to always remodel it’s design

waiting to see

if you could at least

somehow bargain to get your eyes back

in the divorce proceedings.

The Well

What do a pile of submerged pennies mean

to an aquatic fae queen?

How does a cent turn into a wish?

Do you trade them, pawn them off

as golden tokens of a secret network

of well wishers, a society who grants open doors

at the sign of the copper?

Or are you a dragon, biding her time,

less inclined to ravaged

and more interested in

the story of a pauper

wishing to be king

You collect dreams

You give wisps of hope to the barren

they sprout up children with five heads,

only one survives,

weak, returning, allowance in hand,

to you

the dream gatherer,

the hope counterfeiter

but once in awhile

you throw in a doozie

a warrior’s vengeance

a queen’s demise

And as you slumber between visitors,

you weave a tale of humanity

with your scales, each one imprinted with a wish

each  a refraction of desire

and it holds in your fire

like a holy vessel