Triolgy of Fire

Preface

These were not written. They erupted.

Each one came like a visitation—

unbidden, burning, complete.

The Muse touched me three times.

Possessed me three times.

Burned me deliciously three times.

“Living in a Poem” came first—

a battle cry against games and mediocre romance.

It declared what it means to love from the soul.

No shame. No holding back. Just fire.

“I Sing the Body Electric” came next—

all flesh and spirit, hunger and holiness.

A hymn to embodiment. To sacred touch.

To the divine chaos of wanting.

“Wanted: A Man I Could Be Jealous Of” came last—

An uncompromising unmasking of soul-ache of the holy woman: possession by Eros/the comfort of the gilded cage.

The cost of living on fire. The gift of release.

I didn’t plan a trilogy.

But they found each other.

And now they belong.

Together, they speak a life where soul takes precedence over survival.

Where love is not a negotiation,

but a vow to burn beautifully,

even if it consumes us…

because it consumes us.

—

I Live in a Poem

A woman with the essence of an erotic angel opens the gates.

Poems are not fiction.

They’re our best attempt to touch the eternal.

To speak it. To sing it.

They are real.

Some of us live in them—

in a reality unbound by rules, rationality, or the petty instinct to control.

Those of us who live in a poem

can’t play games with divine fire.

We don’t count how long to wait before texting back.

We don’t hoard “I love you’s.”

We don’t strategize who said it first.

We’re not here to win.

We’re here to burn.

Whoever hides in games isn’t powerful—they’re cowardly.

Whoever hedges love isn’t clever—they’re manipulative.

We are not.

We are touched by fire.

We shout our love from rooftops.

Fiercely.

Without shame.

Without fear of the ones who can’t love with that much heat.

And if our fire burns you—

it’s because you’re not a dragon.

If our love drowns you—

it’s because you never learned to swim in the ocean of God.

And if you can’t match our fullness,

then like Whitman said:

“I will dismiss myself from impassive women…

I will go stay with her who waits for me,

and with those women that are warm-blooded and sufficient for me…

I draw you close to me, you women,

I cannot let you go, I would do you good,

I am for you, and you are for me…”

If games excite you—

if you become infatuated by neglect and distance,

if you’re turned on by being ignored,

if you chase hotness over holiness—

then you’re not for me.

And I’m not for you.

Even if it hurts, I would want you to go.

And still—

I would love you.

And pity you.

Pity that the world broke you so badly,

that you mistake manipulation for intimacy.

That no one ever held you long enough

for you to believe you were worthy of deep, steady, spiritual love.

But I won’t let the world pathologize divine love.

I won’t watch while you call God’s passion a “disorder.”

As if the flame running through us is an illness.

As if this kind of love needs to be managed, controlled, regulated by cowardly “rules.”

If this is illness, then praise be—

let me die drunk on divine madness.

I feel sorry for the sane.

Let them enjoy their tidy cages.

But don’t get confused—

you don’t get to shit on the Divine Poem.

Not on my watch.

—

I Sing the Body Electric

“I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.”

— Walt Whitman

There are mornings when the soul doesn’t rise—it spills.

Into the room, into the day, into the world.

Today is such a day.

Eroticism. Soulfulness. Not lust. Not sentimentality.

The sacred heat that returns us to our bodies and says:

Here. You are here. And this is joy.

I’m in it now. Steeped in it.

And Whitman’s words arrived like a psalm—

a gospel for those who know that the cure isn’t sterile.

It’s ecstatic.

The armies of those I love engirth me…

They will not let me off…

And I don’t want to be let off.

Not from this kind of communion.

Because this—this—is the Dionysian blessing.

It isn’t madness. It isn’t frenzy.

It’s the opposite of depression.

The opposite of soul-leak. Of mediocre romance. Of spiritual exile.

It’s a return.

A pulse.

A song sung not from the throat but from the whole body electric.

Depression dis-members.

Dionysus re-members.

In the ancient rites, grief danced with pleasure.

The body wailed, moaned, laughed, trembled.

And something holy was touched.

We don’t touch enough.

We don’t tremble enough.

We don’t let the beloved engirth us—

and we don’t engirt them.

But when we do—when we let ourselves be surrounded, held,

kissed by soul and heat and beauty—

we’re not cured, but we’re made whole again.

Or at least given a reason to stay.

And in my case, the ones that engirth me are not an army.

They are very few.

Sometimes only one.

A hand on my chest. A gaze that doesn’t flinch.

A body that says I see you and I stay.

That’s enough. That’s more than enough.

Not everything that heals comes in silence or solitude.

Sometimes healing arrives like a body pressing against your back in bed.

Like laughter in a room of misfits.

Like salt on skin.

This joy isn’t naïve.

It’s what waits beneath the sorrow if we don’t numb it.

It’s what Whitman sang.

What Dionysus embodied.

What depression tries to bury.

The body electric.

The soul erotic.

The love that engirths—

coming from a soul forged in doubt, and chains,

and yet, brave enough to touch.

—

Wanted: A Man I Could Be Jealous Of

I can’t be everything.

My nature won’t allow it.

I live in the world of living myths—

among the God-intoxicated,

in the inner chambers of Eros and Psyche,

where fire speaks and poems breathe.

But she can’t live here all the time.

She needs the world.

The bliss of home and hearth.

Shared mornings discussing grocery lists.

Someone who builds a life beside her—

one morning, one meal,

shared errands.

I want that for her.

The wedding.

The honeymoon.

The ecstatic agony of giving birth.

The glory of raising her children.

She deserves a man whose nature is rooted in the world.

A craftsman of domesticity.

A provider.

A robust husband.

A dedicated father.

A man who fixes things.

A man whose strength shows not in wild poetry,

but in domestic love.

And I—

I will never be that man.

I have wings that keep me from fitting into the world.

When I try to fold them to squeeze into worldly reality,

the pain is unbearable.

I live in the Palace of Eros.

I live in a poem.

So if you’re out there—

real man,

good man,

solid, steady,

kind enough to hold her,

and strong enough to let her fly—

Come find her.

She’s worth it.

And love her in such a way

that when she forgets what she is—

you’ll know.

Unconsciously, yet knowing.

Not with resentment.

Not with fear.

But with a quiet, masculine wisdom

that senses what she cannot say.

That she needs to visit the Palace.

To burn again.

To be set aflame in the mythic fire.

To remember.

And when she returns—

glowing, singing,

fierce and soft and fully alive—

you, the children, and the world

will be better for it.

I will be waiting,

in the shadows of flame,

keeping the Palace lit.

Not to take her from you.

Not to own her.

But because I was born for this.

Because someone must tend the fire

for women like her.

The half-made men,

the man-children,

the “boys,”

and the “bros”

need not apply