Change, and a New Poem

“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.” – Octavia E. Butler

TW: Mentions of suicide attempts.

As I get nearer and nearer to the completion of this latest poetry collection, I can’t help but reflect on what brought me to this point where I am writing it: my journey through who I was to who I am now.

Many of the things that forced the three collections that comprise In All the Ways, a Drowning out of me still haunt me to this day, sometimes feeling as much like the freshly opened wounds they were more than half a decade ago. But it is always with a new perspective that I revisit those things, because I am never the same person as I was the last time I wake up from a vivid dream about it.

An occult organization called the Temple of Set* has this concept called Xeper (pronounced like “kheffer”). It’s basically the process of self-directed, conscious change of the entire psyche through the positive growth of psychological complexity. The path toward that looks different for everyone, but it seemingly always leads to the same result if you’re consciously pursuing it: you look back, and you get hit with this kind of whirlwind of “oh, shit, I have changed.”

I don’t think that this process can lead to any kind of metaphysical immortality like many of that organization’s members do (more power to them, though), but it’s a very real process with very real results. I think about it every time I look back, especially now. These moments where we realize the total evolution of ourselves are important.

And those moments are certainly not without pain. Realizing that things are dramatically different than they used to be always comes with pangs of nostalgia, or deep wishes that those who were there then were here now to attend the series of funerals and rebirths that we endure throughout our lives. Realizing the absence embedded in the latter can certainly be excruciating, even if you know that it is much better for you this way. The pain is valid, and it's worth examining as long as it doesn't become rumination.

I have changed entirely. And I realize the path of destruction left in my wake, wound up by my own self-hatred which I am well on my way to resolving after almost seven years of consistent DBT and trauma therapy, really just cleared the way for me to become who I am now, and I hope that is clearly reflected in this new collection.

And I know it could have been different; I could be scattered across several urns on the mantles of people that love me right now, a collection of ash and fragmented bones. Hell, I tried and came close a couple of times, causing more trauma to one of my best friends that witnessed it twice: he had to be the one to call 911 once, and he basically carried me to his car to rush me to the hospital the second time. But I’ve since buckled down and made the right decisions to pursue a better life for myself, which resulted in two beautiful children, an amazing career in two fields that I love, and me on the journey to living as the person I have, deep down, always been and wanted to be.

I just wish I could truly make amends with certain people that this anger at myself was taken out on, even if I do understand that sometimes the best way to make amends with people we’ve hurt is to just leave them alone. I just wish my brain would let it all go. In time, hopefully, it will. But these events over the last seven years have been the most significant of my life. So I’m sure there is a lot yet to be resolved.

Anyway, thanks for reading what basically amounts to a weird public journal post. I just needed to write this when I woke up this morning.

Also, I saw that friend this past weekend, and multiple weekends before that, at punk shows at the venue we lived in during that very dark time. We’re still great friends, thankfully.

Here’s a poem from my upcoming collection, which will be published this autumn through the Uncomfortably Dark Horror imprint Blood Moon Poetry:

A NEW KING

And I still find myself going

Where your pretty ghost haunts me,

Where I buried my cold, dead body

Beneath the splitting gray concrete

Behind our empty castle, kept

By the hand of fading memory,

Where your voice no longer sings—

Elsewhere warmed by your new king.

I know that passion’s swirling, burning

On new thrones where you find your seat.

And my corpse mouth smiles with you,

But it will never cease the apology.

*For clarity’s sake, I have heard from trans folks that representatives of this organization have told them that their existence is “worthy of debate.” My rights to life and happiness are not up for fucking debate. There are also many members of this organization that are sympathetic to Nazis and Nazi occultism, including some of its highest ranking members. So, fuck the Temple of Set, and this is not an endorsement of the organization in any sense, even if some things that come from it are good concepts based in general intellectual examination of the human experience. Also, while they’ve mostly broken away from this in public view, they’re essentially an off-shoot copycat of the Church of Satan (see: Hoisted by His Own Patois by Anton Szandor LaVey), who at least had the balls to expel a transphobic-ranting member of their priesthood in defense of its trans members within the last decade.