Ichor Never Tasted So Sweet

 It is strange that I find pieces of myself in women made of words and honest tongues. These are figures entrenched in history and rebellion, and I, a man with fondness for other men, find myself in the company of like. I think about how I am perhaps how my mother would have been if not for her family by marriage: scathing, whipping voice, and wit to make up for what she lacked in height. She is intelligent, and sometimes mistaken, and yet her witchcraft would take the world by storm. Witchcraft, because I once read that it is the only power women have not derived from men. Divinities like Durga and Athena come from male gods, cavorting around like teenage boys who have just learnt the wonders of their cocks and what an orgasm feels like. Forever chasing that rush. Witches, sorceresses, enchantresses are much harder to come by, always with silver tongues and a tendency to make foolish men come undone, especially those who came banging at their doors like entitled kings. 

Spells in wisps of winds, woven around our fingers and goosebumps, that one raindrop that strikes us unexpectedly. The power sung by the voices of silver tongues, witness the ecosystems cracking, kingdoms shattering, egos ended.

Why is it that then the witch always begs for her life in front of the heroes whose tales are told? 

So many questions for those heroes. Did they return haggard, with rug burn on their knees from when they did the begging instead? Was the sheen on their brow mistaken for remnants from their supposed sexual conquests and not from the terror of being stalked by the echoing laughter from the cottage in the woods? We will never know. So many true stories and scared men wiped from history, just because they were afraid to be remembered as he who knelt in front of a woman. 

It should sound alien, as a man I am expected to defend and partake of the camaraderie of war parties or what the greek system now calls frat boys. There is no end to the Rahuls and Chads and Brads and Agastyas everywhere, and will never end. 

Witches will always have their idyllic islands or damp caves; wherever they choose to call home. The gleam in their eyes will never change. Descendants of goddesses who despised their divinity so much they would bring the heavens crashing down if only it meant to see the look of terror on a god, to have a god feel fear and imagine what death feels like. 

Would there be an afterlife for something that was never meant to die? For something that carries no scars or the aches and pains of age, the secrets and shame that would stain a soul unless you were powerful enough to never feel the guilt. Never know right from wrong, or worse still, set laws on righteousness and break them anyway. 

I could never worship a god. I would always think of them as teenagers throwing tantrums, locking themselves into their rooms when things wouldn’t go their way. I reduced them to myself, because that is the only thing I know how to do. To compare, and see how I would look through the eyes of the world and all its masses, my mother always taught me that I shouldn’t look shoddy or disgraceful. 

What would the gods look like without their gaudy royalties and powers? Would they be tyrants mortalised or something worse. We already have enough tyrants. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these modern dictators are gods stripped of their untouchability, who chose to make earth a hellish place instead of the heavens. 

Divinity is so easily mistaken for morality. We look to God and other gods to cleanse us of our sins, to save us from terrors and they make us forget who the original sinners were. How would god have named all things bad and good if they had not tasted and relished them first? Relish them still, perhaps? We ask for forgiveness from those who should be seeking forgiveness, need I go on?

It is at times tiring to see idols, pictures, and temples decorating my childhood home. To know that those we immortalise are no better than us, and still we offer them our sacredness as if they are deserving of it. They’re like parents that way, always seeing disrespect where there is none, smiting, destroying, plaguing as their hearts desire. 

I can almost imagine the disappointed looks my own elders would give me. If only they had taken the time to understand my art. Then they might have stood a chance. At least they know humanity has its flaws. Divinities however are nothing but pride and ego stitched with threads of imagined infallibility. They are welcome prey for my silver tongue, the same my mother, and her mother before her, carry in their blood.