Ode to Ophelia: A Woman Shaped Machine

 

I am celestial

I am a nymph

I am a goddess

I am the woman who swallowed the moon.

 

The one the sea didn’t take

The limp lady dangling stretched from the rope.

The woman with her wrists slashed and her arteries pumping;

spilling out their crimson honey into the bathtub.

The woman with the stomach full of paracetemol, co-proximal and drain cleaner.

The girl they laid low.

 

The beauty queen fizzing in the heart hot tub;

rickled fingers clutching her hair dryer.

The rock chic jacked full of junk

petrified and gaping.

The sleeping beauty in the front seat sucking on invisible death.

The pallid diva stiff and slouched, head lolling on the porcelain rim;

life leaking from her perfect nose.

 

The desperate housewife;

fixed pupils

empty

starring through the misty, scratched plastic.

 

The fem fatale with a knife in her gut.

The ancient figure head with an asp grasping her teat

The smudge in your diary, the stain in your heart        

The woman with stale spittle and vomit on her lips

The tragic smart feminist with her head in the gas oven

The woman who left a dark stain on the pavement

The woman who blew her brains across the dashboard

The woman tangled in the mud amongst the duck weed and lily pad stems.

 

 

That is I,

The celestial

Goddess

nymph;

The woman who swallowed the moon.

 

But tomorrow I must cease

Cease butchering

Crying

Shouting;

Dying.

Stop killing myself and listen to the silence song.

 

Reclaim my lips,

My cunt

I will rip the moon

Her fat silver roundness from my belly and stagger into the street drenched in my own blood.

Letting my sinew and song soak their sidewalks;

Leaving a trail of where I once trod.

I will hold up my face to the sky,

Fingers raised to the heavens,

Letting my insides paint me.

 

I am woman

I am celestial

I am a nymph

I am a goddess

I am the woman who swallowed the moon.