Forget Your People

All your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia;
from palaces adorned with ivory
the music of the strings makes you glad.
Daughters of kings are among your honored women;
at your right hand is the royal bride in gold of Ophir.

Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear:
Forget your people and your father's house.
The king is enthralled by your beauty;
honor him, for he is your lord.
The Daughter of Tyre will come with a gift,
men of wealth will seek your favor.

All glorious is the princess within her chamber;
her gown is interwoven with gold.
In embroidered garments she is led to the king;
her virgin companions follow her and are brought to you.
They are led in with joy and gladness;
they enter the palace of the king.

Your sons will take the place of your fathers;
you will make them princes throughout the land.
I will perpetuate your memory through all generations;
therefore the nations will praise you for ever and ever.
Psalm 45.8-17

Depression Soup

Start with a pot that has a hole in the bottom
Throw it on an erratic flame
Controlled by the fickle fates.
Build your base with ample tears
Add salt to taste.
If you spill the salt,
Better to rub it into your wounds
Than to throw it over your shoulder;
Luck is no lady tonight.
Chop up your hopes and dreams
Toss them in the air and pray
They find their way.
Open the door to your heart
And take a long, cruel stare at what remains:
The selfish savor of old pain,
Sweet kisses gone dry on your cheek,
Bone-in memory with dulled fatty forgetfulness,
Dumplings of broken promises your mother made for you
Abandoned peels of overripe resentment your father left.
In a depressions soup, it all goes in the pot.
The flavor is of your own making, no matter who you blame.
It will never sustain you
Or feed those you love.
But still, you must drink it.
If it starts to get dry, just cry.

Becoming

I finger your soul
Until you come to your self.
Sex is always better with a mirror.

why not

fuck it
fuck the cock tease
fuck good intentions
fuck a well meaning stab in the back
fuck expectation and dissappointment
fuck looking and not seeing
fuck hurting the ones closest to you
fuck using a day
fuck wasting a day
fuck the game
fuck waiting for others to change
fuck waiting for my life to change
like some two minute montage
where the fat girl gets skinny
the sad girl gets a job
and the angry girl finds her heart
fuck repression
fuck self-pity
fuck you pain
fuck death
fuck fear of the dark
fuck inspiration

Burn

Flames never fail to entrance me
erratic unpredictable dangerous
I find my head lilting and swerving
in a hypnotic dance with an elemental form,
it beckons you and me:
I dare you to touch it.
I can hold my hand over the lighter longer.
A whispering chilly breath
pulls swiftly through my teeth
cooling the heat in my throat
as my jaw tightens in ecstatic pain.
But we shouldn't.
And so we hover as close as our flesh will allow
sad hidden repressed longing
in a beautiful neglected emerging frame.
I wipe my hands along my hips to dry them again.

We offer reassurances:
I won't let you hurt yourself
well, nothing permanent anyway.
We all have our burns,
the minor ones never scar
and though the major ones do
they come with magnificent stories,
stories around the fire
epic tellings of those who choose to prove life
by risking its very soul
to feel alive amidst all this death.

To say: you cannot yet burn me
in your two dollar coffin until only mingled ashes remain
and bone remnants yet to be pulverized.
You do not ask me if I carry batteries
heart monitors beneath my sunken flesh for fear
that the grey waste will not return to the surviving
inside its plastic bag with a twist tie
inside its minimal black plastic box
inside the allotted five to ten business days.

Death is not like it is in the movies, they say.
Nor love.
That doesn't keep us from craving a ritual:
a physical representation of what the fuck we're supposed to do
when we lose what we love
and can't taste what we crave.

Where is my resurrection?
Fill my well with living water
for I have dug and dug deep,
let me feel that cool sweet wine
flowing down, down in through the aqueducts of my imagining.
I want to burn and be quenched.

Lucidity

Lucid dreams high on goodbye
And what comes next.
What comes next?
More grey hazy mornings alone
In the possibility of the day,
Evergreens refolding their inception
Until the looming inevitable at last
Collapses into a crushing shelter
Wounding the begrudging sparrow?

Feed me with ravens and keep the lions
From the mouth of the cave of forgetting.
Pour your seed into my mouth
Belittle me with your grandeur
And call me your own;
Else each new pleasure tempting me away
From each expanding sorrow
Will find its way into my morning dreams
As I watch him silently open and close the door.

Finishing

When time and will and inspiration align
Work becomes play,
But such a union rarely arises
And so work becomes fear,
Overwhelming and imperfect;
I am left waiting.
With idle hands and toxic adrenaline.
If, however, as I wait I fill the work
That has fallen out of time
Beyond my reach
With all the hopes of my inspiration,
Perhaps hope will beckon my will
And I will play in the sun once more.

Shamanic Journey

I began in the water. The Salish Sea. The prize presented to me by my knights. The still, salty water bathed me in its cooling embrace. Baptized in the abyss of darkness, yet safe. Safe as I had not known it in so long. So long since I sat cradled in my mother's womb. So long since the black veil meant peace.

And so I journeyed from the water to the path that invited me into its mystery. I walked, wanting to run as the unknown turn of its curves beckoned: Trust us. And I did. More, I cried to them. Take me further into your hiding. That night I had seen her. A face of light consuming the trail. Her eyes let in the darkness, her mouth opening. I remembered her light and then I was home.

I was standing at the base of the stairs, looking out at the lawn and the cacti and the aloe. I turned to my left to see the rose garden. The Sterling Tea rose I bought her was in full bloom. Full of the fragrance of the day. It was day. But what day? I mark my time now, by her presence and her absence. Which day was this?

I shifted my posture and so my gaze to look up the steps toward the door. That place where she stood. Always, that place where she waited for me. Whether in hello or goodbye, I could turn and see her there. The way she opened her arms to me as I looked up, I knew, this was hello.

I knew that place my face would find her neck. I knew those hands that rubbed up my back coaxing that one exhale from me that means, I'm home. I'm safe. I'm in her arms for as long as I want to be. We've been waiting for you for so long, she said smiling that wait-till-you-see-what-I-have-for-you smile.

And so, she guided me through the front door, her hand gently urging at the small of my back. I recognized the living room, but the walls faded. I was outside before I left the house. And there, in a large circle where these women. So many women. And a drum. I began to hear the drum. Kestrel, I thought: Help me to flit about this scene, above and below. Make me small and tall and quick of wing.

The center of the circle let fly a Kestrel who flew due north away from me. I looked again at the center. It wasn't fire. It wasn't water. I couldn't quite make it out... It's okay, came floating toward me. The wind carried whispers and falcon cries and the drum. Women began to touch me and shed my clothing. They wiped at me with muddy hands and colored fingers. They painted me, face and body. The laughed and held me. I want to see her again.

The drum. I look. She's playing the drum. Naked and swollen, swaying and pounding. I have never seen her play a drum. Look at what she can do. Dance took the floor. Women stomped in a circle over circles and creating circles. They sprinkled ash in front of their swiveling feet and pressed it down to mark a grey hoop. A circle made perfect by their connection, by their dance and with me at its center. By the ash of their mortal remains.

She left early, knowing you would follow her here. It will get easier, whispers. You will see us more clearly the more you return. As you return, as you learn the dance, you will become even more present on Earth. It is time to grow. It is time to journey and learn and move about in your life. It was just enough medicine. Just enough for a neophyte. It was a dance in the Oak Grove that watched my mother die as they watch me even now, come back to life.

The Brave Fool

You're my memory

My past

Failure pulls at me

Sharply, and with absolute force:

It is the goad at my heel

The bit in my mouth

I clench and gnash

My jaw, aching, swollen and mangled

I'm held in place, paralyzed

Whilst a tidal wave advances at my back.

Judgement holds my tongue.

I remember all the times before

The passion of the new, quickly met

By the heartache of

Defeat

I cannot summon a contradiction

To testify in my defense

The sins of my fathers, for which

I am held to account.

We have always dreamed and failed

Seen far and held in squalor

Envisioned the thrones of kings

Only to be left alone,

Facing our regret.

Having despised the life we were given

Uncompromising, distant and without hope,

Or too much of it.

At the first spark of intention

Your flame envelops my becoming.;

I am, as I always was.

I will, for we always do.

You would comfort me with wise words

Of precaution:

Did I not keep you from the inevitable angst of loss?

You cajole.

Did I not keep you from forgetting your true self?

You kept me.

And so I am held.

Victim to myself

I cannot lose what i do not risk

Nor can I gain.

Ah, Sophia

Turn your head from my capricious imaginings

Cover your eyes, if you must

As I wander, unarmed into the

Unknowable

But do not stray far from my side

I will need you before the night is over.

I must be foolish now,

Leap into the absurd

I will most assuredly fail

I will lie humiliated before all

I will beg the hands of a hundred starving children

To raise me from my sinking bower.

If death is sure

Why not partake from the rush of youth

Glittering and sparkling in the new sun.