This poem is something I wrote at the beginning of the 1st draft of So Speaks the Ruinous Light (the book I just published… Which can be found at this link). Since that was the beginning of the 1st draft, and there’s been a whole host of changes since then, there realistically isn’t a lot of carry over between this poem and the final draft of the book.
But, the vibe of this poem, and the core motive of pain causing someone to seek out destruction, definitely set the tone while working on the book. Even if specific details are by no means canonical to the finished work.
So with that said…hope you enjoy!
***
Take me on in a full frontal assault, boy,
take it all head on and scream at it
with your broken vocal cords
yaruba cry.
Sensicallessness
eses ga;ga;agha;
I want to be your dark one.
I mean that
I do
in the provocative power of how it startles an audience,
unsettles them
(whisper, I want to be your dark one),
I want your hands pulling my strings,
I want you to call me by your name
to make me annihilate the world
for some all-consuming, black heart love neither of us can escape from.
I am already powerful; test me.
In my heart, in my words,
my night ambition carries me through to every dawn,
“Do not break, you can’t afford to,
I can and I will forever burn.”
I want to be your dark one,
your annihilator,
my fury
crackles for a thunderstorm’s release
my anxiety
craves no longer needing people, fearing people
my wrath
squeezes a searing magma stew inside me
my wild dreams
scream beneath my skin
my reckless abandon
has crescendoed into a savage psychic need
“I am all laid bare
haunted wherever I go,
“I am all laid bare
drained by the business of bed and force-feeding my body
“I am all laid bare
my mind chaining me with her demands
“I am all laid bare
Heedless ambition propelling me onward every
single
n i g h t
“I am all laid bare
believing that makes me free
“I am all laid bare
maybe her chains come by my calling
“I am all laid bare
broiling in the sunlight
“I am all laid bare
is this my origin story
Or obituary?”
I live, every day, inside a fear world, like a dream world, but moonless.
People, places, skin, time
erode me,
I build up my courage
But they tear it back
down
agghaag
gaah;
I want.
I speak.
Dear
you,
make me your dark one to destroy,
for a night in a ravaged world may treat me better than any days here
pull my puppet strings
so I will do what I want to do but am too terrified to try
CALL me BY your NAME
so the wailing curse of mine can cling to only an ownerless tombstone
make me annihilate the world
So I’ll unearth the self-love buried so deep
It requires ripping apart this planet just to catch its fragile glimmer
(in that aftermath, do you love me?).
Scream it like my dreams:
I wanna be your dark one,
your night,
your desiccating poison rain,
your dragon tongue,
your cobra contortionist
and femme fatale
your black-fire blade
your ash bones
and crown–
for destroying their world
is how our hope unfolds.
Jordyn Saelor 