Mah Sanctum

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 30 minutes
To find the little hideaway I had fashioned
Though I 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 my treasures
The stained bandages like flags
Boxes of nails and tacks
A crate of electrical cord, my hammer
Candles and plastic bags full of matches and tapers from the church
My Bibles

Twine
Animal boxes and feathers and bird skulls
Shells and nests and some of my shoeboxes, about ten
Pictures I 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, the blood mementos
The whore's hair, her nightdress
The portrait of Cosey that I had delivered
From the hands of those who rose up against her
Sheared her, cast her out
The kinder graph and the instructions she had written on the back 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 I lay in my 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 sip
Oh, the lifetimes lost in queer congress, holed up in that dark retreat
Holed up in that dark retreat
Holed up in that dark retreat

A felled tree trunk, carved down the middle by a cleaver of lightning
During the rain days, I guess
Made a kind of a pallet where I would lie stretched out
Between the two halves that I had padded with cardboard and moss
Encapsulated by two walls of umbrage
That twisted about a few clapboards, I had nailed to the trunks as supports

The vines intertwining overhead to form a low ceiling
I could sit up with a full foot's grace
Room enough for my angel, too
Who would come in my later years
Appear on the tree stump at the foot of my cocoon
Then come inside and lie with me

Sometimes I heard thousands of voices, for God is many-tongued
Whispering things to me as I lay there all alone
All my feelings of fear and of anger and of despair
That I ate daily like bread would leave me
And I would feel most powerful
Most powerful

They taught me
He taught me how to deal with myself at first
Then later he taught me how to deal with the others