Otep

Bible Belt

There are nights, so vacant and hushed, I can feel the texture of my tattered soul moving within me. Black tar, dripping, sticky and thick. A soft, slow secretion of indifference slopping through the hollow suit I use as a body.

They say these are the words of a damaged mind.

But not I.

To me, this is insurgency.

I used to dream of being inside the womb. Fetal universe, black holes and emptiness. Orbiting the massive planet of my mother's booming heart. Tiny yolk body, tethered like an astronaut, adrift in the tranquil spume of desolate bliss. Tiny fingers inching from chubby stems, reaching for that great thumping whoosh of blood and power that wobbles like a snarling god above me. My fibrous head, translucent as a bell jar, would search with great staring eyes deep into the godless dark for a light, for a sign, for anything other than indifference. But the universe would never oblige.

Look upon me: a daughter of a child and a monster.

Frozen without cold, feeling nothing, unsure, uninspired, veins full of air, soul fading into the umbra.

Who are they to say what is moral when they are broken?

Who are they to say anything about us?

All this, all this,

And I want to sledgehammer

And leave nothing but dust

To dust

Strangled by a Bible Belt