April Poetry: Lillith’s Bloom

Poem #9 for National Poetry Month

This poem is arguably one of my oldest poems. Originally composed in 1999/2000, it spoke of a return to writing after seven years of writer’s block. Over the years, I’ve re-written it several times, finally with input of the editor of Pink Panther Magazine where it was eventually published. After twenty plus years of pushing and pulling at the words like taffy, I was ready to be done with it.

Below is the final version as published after edits. I do still have the original version which I have re-named “Lillith’s Blossom.”

This was originally published in The Pink Panther Magazine.

Photo by Serge Kutuzov on Unsplash

Lillith’s Bloom

Sweet incantations have not dripped from my mouth.
Words like poisoned honey rivulets flow
from my lips, a betrayal
of the womb’s lush decadence.
Though I have not spoken 
or heard the sacred language
these seven arid years.

My jaw is a struggling pike caught on a hook,
my tongue bound in linen. 
Without the Words they’re dry and dreamless.
The Magic has vanished.
Burned at the stake with a pharmaceutical flame,
they cauterize the passion from my soul
till all my words are ash.

Like awakening from a beautiful dream
so vivid it crushes your head
into the pillow to drink 
the last of its exotic scent, I become mortal 
and learn to live in their world.
My heart cut out like a human,
I forget how to feel.

When the Demon Queen finds me and calls me out 
by name, her fiery lips sear mine
and fill my lungs with her 
famished, living fire.
Black sunrise, blood-red rebirth,

I remember my true name as the flames trace
the edges of her whispered Lillith.


Originally Published in Pink Panther Magazine, Volume 15, September 2024