
Priestess & Hierophant
Purveyor
of Fine
Publications
"There is a lot to discover in Darkly Told. It doesn’t offer immediate answers, nor is it meant to do so, but it will repay careful listening. Hopefully, this chapbook will be successful enough to prompt Alicia Cole to make a few more. Fans are better off for its appearance." - Dead Reckonings No. 18
Beyond Your Control
By Kimberly Casey
How many times did it take
‘I’m never drinking again’
To stick?
How many nights spent
Wandering down dark city street
That swallowed your name
And spit you out, another ghost
Kept in the late-night sidewalk cracks
Finding home in the hearts
Of front-stoop-sinners
And off-rhythm-wanderers
To make you want to rethink
The way you got there?
I am trying to make it stick
But the more reasons unwind
From the web of blurred vision
And slurred speech, the more
I need a crutch to keep myself upright.
These demons are knocking my knees
And I can’t cloud them away for another day
They are here and loud
Screaming of the moments
I’ve misstepped
Again and again
The fists I flew into the faces of my friends
For the sake of stirring up stardust
The lovers tongues bitten bleeding
To silence the secrets I shouldn’t have spilled
The powders piled over a city of heartbeats
Trying so hard to quiet the noise
The cars driven too fast
Found in daylight driveways
With no recollection of their journey
The broken bodies
Wanting so badly to sever
Something new
Within someone other than themselves
The way a knife moved slow motion
Through the butter of a body
How it was so easy to hate
Myself for how it happened
Blaming the poison
That propelled events into play
How it was so easy to black out
Into a world without nightmares
And wake rested enough
To keep on trying
I am here in the daylight
Drinking up the clear coast
Trying to stop blaming myself
For the hurt that was done
When I was trying to distance
Mind from body
Now I swear this body
Is out to get my mind
Shaking and speechless
Steeped in self doubt
Is it possible to claim my damage
Without claiming to be a victim?
Why does owning what happened
Mean giving up a part of myself
That helped me survive until now
I know I am here, better, stronger, softer
Separate from self-destruction
Yet some nights I press
Knife to nostalgia
Crack open this survival shell
Test pressure and patience
Only ushered away gently
By the dawning of new daylight
But how long can it stick
Before a new kind of damage
Comes knocking, to take
Away a survivor song
I never asked to sing.