Ancient bronze bells draped with ornate cloths on a stone altar lit by candles.
Ancient bronze bells and sacred offerings create a mystical atmosphere within a dimly lit cave temple.

My every surface exposed disrupts
perfect poison delivery system
specious propaganda machine moving
all that sweet rot to your tongue

Plastic ideal mirrored in every place
I try to see myself, so I can know
what I am, what I was made for
smooth skin, perfectly imagined visage

Artfully created by a man,
a reflection of his desire,
a frictionless encounter
controlling the interface 

that keeps me blind to my own agency
an education and liberation reckoning
I am the nucleation site of society’s pressures
beleaguered mystic transforming, nonconforming

spilling it all out into the world, refusing equilibrium
when I am rough, alive, and aware
no longer silent, compliant, clean, and flat
on the polished surfaces of your looking glass

You are not my intercessor, my priest, my lord
I am not your doll, your toy, your priceless art,
your credit card creature, your dead-eyed wife
but a sacred self looking not for a mirror, that
insatiable engine of an economy, but awe,
an ecstatic communion, an embrace

your army of shining liars
your false kingdom’s crest
cannot keep my heart out
5,000 years of her resonance
compel me to enter the temple
to ring Enheduanna’s secret bells 

En-hedu-anna’s Secret Bells (the Free Verses)