breathing fire

About writing poetry and all the mystical things that make art (and what births it) as enchanting as it is. About feeling reconnected with my creativity and drawing power from it.

Listen to Choreomania and King by Florence + the Machine before / after / as you read this :)

I breathe fire into a burning world –

I am a poet,

                I am a woman.

My tongue in flames,

                  a witch tiptoeing on my lips

threatening to spill

my secrets.

Her long white dress trailing close behind,

stained in places with blood

                                          or ink.

I cannot tell which,

but they are often the same.

When I hear the old drums beating –

the pain, the love, the laughter, the curse,

the kiss, the shove, the blow to my ribs.

I begin to tap my feet

                              to this sweet music,

my fingers tracing and pulling the air

like an instrument.

Dancing as I walk

                   into the belly of this beast,

I twist its fleshy insides with my pen,

rest a blank page on the scales of its skin

and begin

to breathe fire

again.

The glowing purple orb,

                  the old woman in the woods,

the oracle, the planets and stars,

all told me the same thing. The truth -

and they don’t want you to know this -

is that you are not only made of the world,

but that you can make a world

                                            in turn.

In here, in here,

                  the blazing center,

where the letters first learnt

to rearrange themselves

and sing.

In here,

where the rhythm is born over and over. In here,

where the witch on my lips

                              was tried at the stake,

and burnt, and now I use her ashes to breathe

fire.

My body,

            this soft weapon –

it is not sacred or holy, but it still

reeks of God. I still

reek of God. I feel her

on the edge of my fingertips

from where I hold the pen, on

my flaming tongue

that speaks in verse, on

dips and curves and lips and nerves.

But do not mistake me

for your angel.

Do not place a halo on my head.

I refuse to be your light,

your symbol of purity,

your warm hearth patiently waiting

                                         to be stepped on

each evening when you get home.

You can keep this love,

I do not want it.

For I must let my hands and legs be free -

you never know when the rhythm

is going to come back, when

you will have no choice

                               but to dance.

You can make me the monster all you want,

if only you make me the artist

first.

So that I can orchestrate

                              beautiful ruin into being,

so that I can keep breathing

fire

into a burning world, keep being

a poet,

       a woman, and speak

in my flaming tongue.

So that the witch

on my lips

won’t have died

                      for nothing.

-Pia Oza