My sanctum
My cave of vine and moss
Is to my right about ten paces into the thicket that surrounds me now.
So dense grows the swampland that sometimes it would take me
Up to thirty minutes to find the little hideaway ah had fashioned
Though ah had been there hundreds and hundreds of times
I would look for the strips of white sheet
Bright like bush ghosts, that hung along the woven walls
They would tell me where
All about me were mah treasures
The stained bandages like flags
Boxes of nails and tacks
A create of electrical cord
My hammer
Candles and plastic bags full of matches and tapers from the church
My Bibles
Twine
Animal bones and feathers and bird skulls
Shells and nests
Some of mah shoeboxes about ten
Pictures ah had cut from magazines and threaded through the walls
The tiny blue glass bottles of scented water
And with these I kept my Life trophies
My God tokens the parts of her left behind blood mementoes
The whore's hair
Her nightdress
The portrait of Cosey that ah had delivered
From the hands of those who rose up against her
Sheared her
Cast her out
The kindergraph and the instructions she had written
Aback of it in verse
The painting of Beth of her fastened to the
Walls and ceiling of the grotto
Angled so that it hovered above me as ah lay in mah shell
On a carpet of pink silk and frill yes
And the ten pearl buttons leaving their
Evanescent impression down my back or belly
The stroke of hair
A ruby bead sailing down a yellow strand
A trembling scarlet drop
The bittersweet
The lifetimes lost in queer congressul
Most powerful.
They taught me
He taught me how to deal with mahself at first
Then later he taught me how to deal with the others.