The power of emptiness

My mother is full of the ghosts
Of women weighed down
By the hunger of children
They could not feed
She is a serpent
Who twists in on itself
In order to feed
But bites her seed instead
She eats her young
To save them from the mean
My mother is a whip that lashes out
And then recoils from the sound
She is a bitter herb that boils down
To sweet
My mother is a dreamer who speaks
In nightmares and terrors
She is a drummer who beats the brains
Of those she allows to march in line
With her mission
She knows fear but is not afraid
A roaming queen with roots everywhere
I owe my biting tongue
And raging wit to her
Inconsistencies are her armor 
She is the tree that raises it’s branches
To trip the careless
And forces you to take notice
Of the depths of her countenance
My mother is a typhoon, a tornado, and a hurricane
Of untapped vengeance waiting for release 
She is buried up to her neck in the mist of
A fighting demon
She is holy, beating back the monarchy
Of self loathing with the newly formed
Pan-womanism of sisters and mothers
She is awful and wonderful and magnificent and terrible
My mother is not my friend
She is my patron and my master
My mother is my arch stone and healer
She is my burden and liberator
We are complicated and broken
But never beaten