Crowned from the Inside

A poem of apotheosis as unmbecoming

Crowned from the Inside

———————————-

I said the name.

I meant to.

I wanted the flame.

The left-hand trail.

The kiss of rot.

I just

didn’t know it would bite so deep.

Now my skin doesn’t fit.

My breath isn’t mine.

My reflection hisses

and bows.

They call me god.

I call myself

whatever’s left.

I came through the blood-rune

through the ache behind the rite.

It wrote itself

in silence

where thought used to be.

I am not

as I was.

I remember wanting.

I do not remember why.

The prayers come now,

but they sound like insects.

Tiny legs of praise

scratching at what I became.

I cannot refuse them.

I cannot answer.

I am

the opening.

The hunger.

The name

that names itself.

And he

(the one who wanted)

is gone.

Apotheosis

is not a crown.

It is a mouth

that never closes.

xxx

I didn’t write “Crowned From the Inside”—I survived it. It came through me after a working that opened more than I expected. Not a clean initiation, not a moment of light, but a rupture. A quiet tearing. I had invoked something I couldn’t name at the time—only wanted. I whispered the name, asked for the fire, kissed the rot. And it answered. It entered. This poem is what was left behind when it was done with me.

It’s part of my unreleased grimoire, Poems of the Wound-World—a collection of ritual verses and scar-songs pulled from real transformation. Not metaphor. Not aesthetics. Magick that breaks the teeth and remakes the mouth. “Crowned From the Inside” came in the aftermath of that kind of work. It marks the point where I could no longer tell where I ended and the hunger I had summoned began. The part of me that wrote it is gone. What remains is the name that names itself.

This isn’t about elevation. Apotheosis isn’t a crown—it’s a mouth that never closes. This poem remembers that. This poem is tI didn’t write “Crowned From the Inside”—I survived it. It came through me after a working that opened more than I expected. Not a clean initiation, not a moment of light, but a rupture. A quiet tearing. I had invoked something I couldn’t name at the time—only wanted. I whispered the name, asked for the fire, kissed the rot. And it answered. It entered. This poem is what was left behind when it was done with me.

It’s part of my unreleased grimoire, Poems of the Wound-World—a collection of ritual verses and scar-songs pulled from real transformation. Not metaphor. Not aesthetics. Magick that breaks the teeth and remakes the mouth. “Crowned From the Inside” came in the aftermath of that kind of work. It marks the point where I could no longer tell where I ended and the hunger I had summoned began. The part of me that wrote it is gone. What remains is the name that names itself.

This isn’t about elevation. Apotheosis isn’t a crown; it’s a mouth that never closes. This poem remembers that. This poem is that.