Feminine 101

This poem is based off of the biblical story found in Mark 5.

Round me gather the muted dead.

To them I scream, proclaim my dread.

Ears they may have, yet do not hear

Hearts lie still unspoiled by fear.

My companions offer but poor company,

Decaying in tombs they guarantee,

That no one can help even know my need.

And it matters not how loud I plead.

.

Once I laughed and joked and danced,

With a pretty girl had been entranced.

That was before the voices came.

They promised much, they knew my name.

To my eternal shame, I welcomed them in.

A sinister plot played out in my own skin.

And I withered, a fool with no voice,

No friends, no hope, and certainly no choice.

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I spiraled in despair even as they gloated

My prison complete, jailers spoiled and bloated.

Rich fare was my soul ensnared in their lies,

For they could not feed on the happy or wise.

Hungry and stupid even when I could speak,

I was careful to mask that I was so weak.

Caught in their grasp, the only chains I might shatter,

Were those on my wrists and they didn’t matter.

.

Oh, in prison men put me to languish away,

But the bars and the shackles were mere child’s play.

I tore them apart with muscle and sinew,

Made superhuman so that none might subdue.

How did they ever induce my surrender,

And bring me out here? I cannot remember.

But these corpses keep fellowship as I sit,

The only company for which I am fit.

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The roar of those voices ever accusing,

Drowning out even the mildest musing.

Joins them my cries undistinguished, unheard.

The lines between us grow increasingly blurred.

Whose fingers are these, nails grimy and jagged,

Scarcely decent in wraps filthy and ragged?

I do not know that face in the water.

Is he a farmer? A weaver? A potter?

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Only rarely now, do my own thoughts intrude.

My legion of “friends” are much too shrewd,

To allow me more than the basest despair–

Only enough that I ache and claw at my hair.

No one to hear, to help, or to know,

How dire my plague, how boundless my woe.

Who will save me? I think only death.

Yet even in that, I am forced to draw breath.

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In the dust, and the ruins that I daily haunt,

I scribble, I scratch at flesh wasted and gaunt.

Hark at that sound? Is someone there?

Deafening silence bids me now stare.

Approaching, a figure in ordinary garb

With ordinary face, hands not yet scarred.

Resurge the voices louder than before,

Their cruel babbling edged with something more.

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They know Him, my stirring thoughts recognize.

They know Him well and, well, they despise.

A passenger only, in this body of mine,

That hurls prostrate at dusty-footed shrine.

Surely they mock and are not awed.

Did they truly name Him Most High God?

I, witless, join their pleas that He might spare

From torment and agony our well-deserved share.

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These long days, months, even years.

The monsters answered my countless tears

Only with scoffing, hatred, ridicule.

Now they answer Him whining and pitiful.

“Our name is Legion for we are many.”

I, not they, look to face more uncanny

Than my dulled senses originally thought.

Hear me! Cries a soul strangled, distraught.

.

To this day, I know not what command,

Drove my captors to drown, lifted me to stand,

On my own two feet of my own volition,

Redeemed me from irredeemable condition.

I know not how I–how any–couldn’t see,

The infinite wrapped in flesh One and Three.

He hears the perishing by the perishing guffawed,

But to them whom He hears, the power of God.

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