A Hymn To Azreal: Angel of Death

I came through the veil backwards,

waters flowing from unopened eyes,

drowned in refuse, nectars, and dark meconium.

A trembling, writhing seedling,

a century burning away in flooded gasps,

dangling inside oblivion by a silver chord.
 

a candle asked to survive the ocean.

sheathed in nameless void, dissolving

boiling, pulsating, gazing and grasping

at veils of red, until my eyes met hers

draped in a gown stitched from moonlight,

her body a cascade of lullabies lost beneath plague-soaked sheets.

her lips a succulent pomegranate velvet.

skin etched with runes of unborn fates.
 

her hair a river of obsidian unopened scrolls,

hollow gardens. honeyed venom, silent seductions

Every part of her humming with the ache of stars.

She waited with arms outstretched, wings opening in infinite flower petals

The smell of rich peat moss and palo santo smoke.

She hovered in the breath between heartbeats,
 

a siren of stillness, body wrapped in the absence

And I wanted her with furious ancient starving,

a longing shaped like bones anointed for burial.

whatever material life offered, whatever spells or pleasures

the earth promised, seemed like ashes, of a greater fire

I reached with something deeper than hands.

My soul, heavy with the ache of her proximity.

I undulated rhythmically in her veils
 

her silhouette slowly revealing itself, reaching for me

then suddenly a heave, shackling, an entombing

Rubber hands pressed against my chest in rituals of forced resurrection,

cold voices chanting in antiseptic prayer

a clergy of science, poison, and bleach

chanting sterile psalms, bleach-laced commandments.

halogen eyes glaring into my soul

My body stuffed with breath again, by machines

like shoving roses into a wound.

I awoke with a scream, her presence drops of dew on my skin

her scent in my lungs, crushed lilac and dying stars.

her face was already fading—

erased by the brutal scrapes of air.

My tongue was soaked in her name,

but the world forbade me to speak it.

They said, I was saved.

I felt, I was stolen

I found myself among sad children, forgetting— creatures with clipped wings,
shaking their fists at the sky, chanting myths of progress while burying beauty alive.

They called her Thief.

Monster.

Devourer.

 

I learned the liturgies of division:

light against shadow,

man against woman,

body against soul.

they commanded me,

To swarm,

to compete,

to hoard,

to worship chains.

 

I was sculpted by desperate hands Hollow-chested,

empty-hearted, cracked open by the hunger of a thousand generations.

Within their eyes I saw witches burning on pyres strait jackets for saints,

gods crucified in hospitals, truths buried beneath concrete.

I knew my love for her was forbidden here

Inside a bruise that never healed I lived a lie

At funerals, I felt her wings wrap around me

smoke weaving through cathedral rafters.

 

I expanded, alight, holy where others collapsed.

They saw only ending. I saw a wedding gown.

and I longed to see behind her veil once more

I felt imprisoned in skin, tormented by memories

I was once wings, fire, song, heart, dreams and freedom

this place was heavy and dark, a tomb, a hell, an asylum

​

a feverish nightmare, a labyrinth with infinite beasts

ruled by the cruel, the sleeping, and the lost

I beheld lands blotted with ancient black pyramids

I beheld hordes claw over one another to reach their jeweled tops

I wondered what I had done, what sins now stained me

what crimes I was redeeming myself for in this place

​

how long my sentence would last

concrete, wires, fluorescent humming, lack, authority

a world held at gunpoint, a story forced into our mouths

a commandment, swallow, forget, consume, struggle, sleep,

A cauldron of darkness, sharpness, and pearls of ecstasy

enough to keep us grasping, to keep us from leaving

Yet in this land of false promises, inside the hurricane, the weight

the hollowing, I would see her dancing untouched by the vortex

unmoved, undeterred, gracefully lifting souls from the cauldron

​

and they shined, each a diamond, each so clean

they shimmered in her arms, sang, and ascended beyond the maelstrom

I would throw myself against the blackened gates, and desperately swim to her

amongst the samsara soaked waters, the black wine, the stones and jewels

and she would gaze upon me at times, eyes rich in longing

yet always beyond my grasp, receding, fading

in my dreams I tasted her ichor again,

​

black honey dripping through the wires of my nerves,

her form straddling my sleeping body, yet always a sheet

glass colored and bejeweled separated us

Her eyes—twin galaxies soaked in midnight nectars,

screamed with the ache of a thousand undone embraces,

their edges trembling with a yearning

so vast it could crush the architecture of time itself.

Her whole body pulsed with the ache of my soul

​

heavy with centuries of withheld warmth,

her mouth parted slightly, trembling

as if remembering how my tongue once worshipped her temple

She wanted to tear away the veil with her teeth,

to fall upon me as the rain of first creation, to swallow me, devour me,

crush time between her hips and make me forget my name

so I could be only hers again. She arched against the curtain

a mountainous wave against the hull of a forgotten ship,

​

her hands flat against the boundary,

I felt her breath in my bones—

I felt her scent leak through the veil—

palo santo, grave-flowers, forgotten prayers.

Yet the Veil would never tear,

never relieve us of our thirst

I wandered through life a man-shaped wound

swallowed spirits and ate spells to forget the curve of her shadow.

in the thick heat of nightclubs, bass-lines grinding against time,

​

I became a god of forgetting—

slick with sweat, lips stained in the blood of revelry.

I bloomed in moonlight, a fever of ecstasy and decay

dancing on the edge of building tops

stretching my soul across defiled concrete

I was a crashing meteor, ablaze against the friction of existence

alight with sacred fire, crumbling, tumbling, preparing for impact.

​

one day the pleasure and poisons finally strangled my heart

I collapsed lungs heaving, body seizing, eyes drained

desperate animal clawing, shaking, whitening skin

then instinct dissolved into joy

my lover, the breath of stars made flesh, a gown trailing behind her,

the mourning songs of ancient widows. Her lips—pomegranate velvet, and blood, wet with prophecy.

She fell upon me

 

A thousand loving hands, endless raptured eyes gazing

holy reunion, an unfolding There was no before, no after.

Only pulse blossom, dissolution— resurrection.

I sank through a thousand layers of her body,

each one more radiant, more unbearable. more blissful than the last

One, a meadow. One, an ocean of winged beings singing my name.

One a forest og mirrors that reflected all the lives I’d ever lived.

 

In each one I erupted in bliss, and weeping, then expansion

clad in a thousand wings, each feather a verse from the hidden scriptures, iridescent with the oil of creation, unfolding in fractal symphonies.

Her breasts glistened with stardust milk, her endless curves a crescent moon cradling the silence of unborn gods. Each thrust, and reception birthed constellations. Each motion a rhythm that echoed the original pulse.

I, like the serpents of Ouroboric time slithered ecstatically across her thighs, and ignited inside her

She was the place all ecstasy leads. orgasms that births worlds. The mother of metamorphosis.

 

I was home

 

I beheld how duality, light and shadow, order and chaos, all became rainbow song

sacred humming, vibrations of joy, an orgy of splendor

this place, this prison, was school, was rock tumbler, gem maker

filled with grit, sand, glass, stones, souls, time and pressure

I had been polished made beautiful, crushed into an infinite diamond

this earth, a womb, no prisons, no hells, just cocoons

 

an unending wheel, churning, shifting loving, forming

and she was radiant here, more beautiful then I recalled

a jewel of infinite facets, an angel of endless wings, starlight, dreams and beauty

and we devoured each other for a time, endless eons of joy, a reunion, a splendor

a forbidden pleasure, an ecstatic embrace that made the

heavens quake, the skies hallowed, singing our union, our psalms

and in my remembering, in my tears, in the tide of my million bodies embracing her at once

 

I knew fully and she smiled

​

I was not yet finished, a caterpillar cut from its cocoon too soon

this fleeting union a renewal of wedding vows, a divine gift already fading

I held her in timeless spaces, I saw all the names and faces I had worn, all that I was becoming

gently, we sewed me back into my own skin, lovingly, tenderly folding me back into the chrysalis

there were tears, final embraces, and a knowing that I would return

an eternal embrace, an unending wedding festival and lovemaking,

​

I descended back into halogen lit rooms, the robes of priests in plastic gowns

surgery wires, anesthesia, patient faces celebrating a successful surgery

I was filled with gentle peace, a private knowing, a secret lover

this prison became a play, this tomb a cathedral, and the cauldron

the writhing souls the sleeping, the greedy, the war torn, the drowning

became my teachers, the coarse powders burnishing my skin

making me a diamond, I felt the tumbling of life, the grit of the air

 

and I knew it was her breath, her hands, her kiss, her smile,

our unending love