Monday, August 30, 2010

Art's Fool - or - Angry Artists Unite!

Art's Fool - or - Angry Artists Unite!

Art is the most demanding of lovers
Cruel and abusive.
She'll use you, and once you have served her purpose,
toss you aside.
Then, if she pleases,
she may call you at the most inopportune of moments,
demand your full attention to her every whim,
and you'll love her and beg for more.
You feel so empty when she's gone.
You will do whatever it takes,
suffer pain, poverty, indignities,
destroy your health,
destroy your mind,
and do it over and over again
just to have her,
fleeting, ecstatic moment to
fleeting, ecstatic moment

You

You

"You" is ambiguous.
Do I mean You -- over there, second from the left, with the gold scarab pendant
Or You -- every blessed one of you out there who is not me?
Or some grouping inbetween?
A failure of the English language? I think not.
Because ultimately
There are but two worlds: The one in here of me
And the one out there.

We Are Our Verbs

We Are Our Verbs

Somewhere along my surfing today some article told me that we are not what we do. But we are what we do; we are our verbs. I am thinking, waking, deciding, dancing, constantly doing, even sleeping. I am growing or decaying, living and dying, communicating silently or speaking, yelling, crying, demanding. Even in pure spiritual beatitude, I am transcendently trancing, breathing, flowing, submitting. We all are, every living being. The nouns with their adjectives merely describe. The verbs are our ever changing essence.

Is this a poem? It is a statement of truth. Or Truth. It is very real; but it is only words, marks on a virtual slate. Where is reality? Is it something we can cage and observe? Why are some stories we tell ourselves "real" and others fantasy or even lies? Is magick real, is it a valid, authentic, varifiable way of life? Can we live as on a parallel road, seeing the deadening horror of a whole stream of lived experience as a passing train on a parallel track? Can we devise alternate and wondrous transportation that takes us along a shining, winding, path of beauty and serene sanity that we know is real? How tell the mad from the merely awakening? Which is stress relieving dream; which is real?

Philosophy is the love of truth. But is it only truth because we love it into being? Can we create our own ideal truths, our own ideal lifestreams, the reality that we find most ecstatically resonant with our truest selves, by simply (or not so simply) loving it into being? What are we to make of that other reality, the one that sucks? Has it been loved into being as well? Can we safely leave it to those who love it, and wonder off their path onto our own?

Welcome to the Twilight Zone

Welcome to the Twilight Zone

Welcome to the twilight zone
for twilight presages the night
the beautiful, magickal night
where anything can happen
any dream can be revealed.

I ride a marvelous nightmare over evanescent swamplands,
mysterious passageways into undiscovered treasure hoards.
There is so much, mirroring its way into the future,
recombining images, sounds, visions, eery macabre skeletal touch.
Endlessly morphing images, whirling through me,
each fleetingly touching its sweet taste onto my tongue,
eternally cherished in a magnificent instant.
There is no future in the night, no past, no present,
only dreams and surreal landscapes, seascapes, skyscapes.
There is an anticipatory quality that moves and dances,
ever out of reach, never coalescing into form.
This is the essence of magick.
This is the promise, the curse, the incantation, the lion's roar.
This is the homeland of vampires, lycanthropes, sorcerors from beyond.
This is the holy see, the mist shrouded mountainpeak, the smokey lake,
the boundaryless mystery.

Welcome to the twilight zone,
the band of pale purple light
that draws us home.

Welcome to Summer

Welcome to Summer

Dream-laced lunar light
Infuse our summer days
With magic and romance
Free in joyous play
Enraptured in the dance
Where fantasy takes flight
Above the rule-bound maze
To wild impassioned life



Wild and windy flowers blooming

Sending scent to enliven, rejoyce

Warm, warm breeze and rivers flowing

Endless days of dreams of running free

Let your summer magick abound

Lost in youth, those days refound

A season of playful reformation

So play on ...

We Are Interconnected

We Are Interconnected

We are interconnected:
A widening web of information
Taking in knowledge of all sizes
(for though one size can not fit all
All can find the size they relate to).
We are diversity writ so large,
Encompassing all into one,
So that each thread upon the web,
That spreading neural network,
Is a conduit to and from
An expanding universe
Of interconnected ideas.

Swimming in an amniotic ocean.
Breathing the essence of eternity.
Finding our way, day by day, week by week,
Era by era.
Entranced in entrainment to a hypnotic beat,
Now and then to break into awakening,
To find that time and place and language
Have morphed again,
Into another image of the dream.

Water Ballet

Water Ballet

Swimming in the dream, occasional moments of lucidity
Yet, still, it is the dream, dark matter of my mind
sillily spinning.
There again those iconic structures, melting into mist,
into another round on the kaleidoscope to a calliope drone.
I swim, eerily quiet, through gem-encrusted caverns.
There are hieroglyphs, familiar yet unreadable,
etched onto the walls and crustacea.
Limpid oyster eyes, yes there's a crust of sleep dust
someday to fester into a luminescent pearl --
treasures beyond compare, beyond price,
way out beyond the market universe.
Swimming, a water ballet, so intimately aware of
each measured movement
it doesn't matter how the background keeps shifting.

Waking Beauty

Waking Beauty

You saw me, a playing child, laughing amongst the roses.
My shining eyes reflected worlds;
singsong choruses to which I danced proclaimed their glory.
I, a cherub princess, all the doting subjects at my command,
all I asked was their love and beneficence.
Fairys clapped for me, flittered in with luminescent kisses,
fed me on honey, cakes and sweet lilac tea,
whispered me their blessings, giggling and tittering,
watched over me with warm caresses of enchanted nurturing.
I loved easily, laughed whole-heartedly, sang from my soul
happy dance tunes and whimsical madrigals.
There shone radiant magic throughout the land
in the morning of the world.

It was not so easy as I grew.
Word got out, worried whisperings,
that there was a curse upon me.
Those who had seemed so open and friendly
grew distant, masked their faces so I would not call to them,
or became furtively hostile so I would stay away.
I thought it was the power, soon to be mine by succession.
Surely they feared to be too familiar with the potential Queen.
I tried to reassure them, to be warm and familiar, to look for
little ways to please them.
The fairies still played with me, but sometimes turned mean.
They whispered ugly rumours, pinched me and flew away.
They called me fat and ugly and would feed me only thistle and briar.
Then, sometimes, without notice, all would be forgiven, all would be
a madcap party, a whirling swirl of luscious scents and colours,
a warm embrace of magical happiness,
warm and safe and cherished.

I learned to be needy without showing need;
peering sideways into partially opened doors
to see if I could find one safe to enter.
I took to finding little chores that would take me into
unused corners,
bending over so none would look into my face with malice.
I took to wearing common clothing, layered into camouflage.
I took to telling myself that I must indeed be awfully horrid and
worthless to have lost so much and be so reviled.
I took to taking on any sorry chore that would have me
that I might say to the courtiers:
"Look, I am a humble laborer, not worth your attention."

So I was spinning and pricked my finger, as the curse foretold.
My blood called forth the evil energy to swoop into my open wound.
Unconscious.
Life moving along beyond my senseless form, without my knowledge or input.
Who can tell what may have been done with my unprotesting body.
I was not dead, not appropriate for burial;
still helplessly breathing, metabolizing/catabolizing, inexorably,
yet so slowly, so quietly, so manifestly without power, so easily forgotten.
The wicked ones who would benefit from my demise became old and dust
while I slept.
Those who were false to me acquired many more sins and salvations,
traveling their own rocky roads.
The curse took no notice of time or circumstance.
I existed in a liminal state of vague dream images,
static discharge of random sensory neurons.
I did not expect; I did not wait; I was not aware of being.
Sometimes excruciating nightmares might overtake me;
no matter.
I could neither hear nor utter, but just breathe on
as images vaguely formed and dissipated.

They say there was a malaise over the kingdom.
Work became hard to find and
wandering adventurers moved about the land
hoping to find their fortune.
There was a far off war diminishing the resources
and often intense skirmishes along the borders
increasing fear and bravado.
The once wise and strong ruling family, disrupted in
succession squabbles, had been deposed.
There were no strong rulers, but only petty tyrants,
and not so petty.
The gardens had gone to weeds and brambles.
The fields suffered; sometimes from drought,
sometimes from mildew,
sometimes from marauding scavangers.
Perhaps these were my nightmares come to life.

There was a young prince from a noble but impoverished
family.
He had grown strong and brave, taking in stories of better times.
He had heard the fable of the cursed princess,
sleeping, hidden, once a source of glory and happiness
in a merry and prosperous land.
He had nothing but a dream, to find me.

They say he set out down a road that others had followed.
But where others had met with sorry fates, or become lost,
or defeated by the inpenetrability of the twisted trees and brambles,
he found no incumbrance.
There I was, within his reach, so pale and still.
It is said that he wept for joy, took me up into his arms,
whirled me about and kissed me reverently,
infused his bouyant dream into my sleeping form.

I felt the warmth of living moving through me.
I felt safe, exultant, cherished.
My senses slowly revealed themselves,
though true consciousness had not yet returned.

He held me close and danced me into movement,
laughing freely and whispering words of encouragement.
He did not rush me, nor let me feel anything but loving support.
He told me how he had grown up dreaming of finding me,
returning me to my rightful place,
removing the curse upon the land.
"And what, my lady," he asked, "have you been dreaming all these silent years?"

Virgo homage

Virgo is a blessed and beautiful Sun sign. There is something very pure about a Virgo, no matter what muck s/he may fall into. You guys can be hypercritical, but it's not out of meanness, but a desire to bring out the best. You are hard workers, because you don't think of it as hard work, but as what needs to be done to make the real as close as possible to the ideal. You are practical, yet magical. You have a vision and no doubt that that vision can be realized. Virgo is the sign of the Vestal Virgin, consecrated to the gods, and bringing that spiritual consciousness into the everyday. Virgo is the sign of the farmer, working in the fields to bring forth the harvest to feed the community. Virgo takes care of the devil in the details, counts the angels dancing on the pin, and serves both commoner and king all in a day's work.

Twinkling snowflakes in cold dark night

Twinkling snowflakes in cold dark night

Wishing, dreaming, taking fancy's flight

What are the dreams your snowflakes bring?

What are the songs your carolers sing?

Where is that land -- secret in your mind --

where the seas are strong, the winds are kind

and everything turns up right in the end?

Where is that place, and who is the friend

counting snowflakes across that cold blind sky?

Who is the playfriend;
who is the I?

Twinkling snowflakes, I wish I may

Send warm, healing visions by dream-drawn sleigh.

Timothy McVeigh Is Still Dead

Timothy McVeigh Is Still Dead

It's morning in America
The morning of June 11, 2001
A warm and beautiful Spring day
And in Terre Haute, Indiana -- a little after 7:00 am
--Timothy McVeigh is dead.
What more is there to say?
We all know the score:
Death: 169, Mercy: 0
The hero "bloody, but unbowed"
Silenced, but still proud
Ashes to scattered ashes
Death to death.

thot games

thot games

I have been thinking alot about the fragility of life, the brutality of war, the emanations of hatred, despair, futility, anti-life beliefs, subjugation of the natural world and our natural ways of being, the yin and yang of human power.

They chose Hiroshima as a target because it had not been bombed, was not already disfigured, so there would be stark contrast between before and after.
I've been wondering how to possibly have faith in a world where so many suffer so regularly. Do we create such realities? Do we really learn and grow from horror and death and ugly bleeding wounds?
Collective mythology points to a pantheon, whether extraterrestrial, divine, or some other origin. Somehow the group which instituted Judeo-Christian-Islam was able to wield power so that they gained sway over this segment of human history which we call Western Civilization.
I don't know what this means, but it seems significant. The Jewish god was jealous, arrogant, warlike. These people valued patriarchic hierarchies, perhaps as being easier to control. They instituted strict rules; devaluated bodily gratification, pleasure, fun, intra or inter-species cooperation. In many ways they devalued the Earth, the eco-sphere, the kinds of interdependence that lead to valuing each and all. They favored harsh competition, violent confrontation, us-gainst-them/winner-take-all. They favored the wealthy and powerful whose ends justified any nasty means. Their moral code was about restrictions, not solutions. And Christ-be-damned, this is the god-council the Christian authorities worship. Yet, there are other gods with other values. How did this group gain so much control over man?
What is needed is to go over to the win/win concept where we each benefit when we all benefit, as opposed to survival of the fittest. Then we could do what actually makes sense rather than being preoccupied with a mythical bottom line. We could all be much calmer, easier, more usefully productive and playful. Is this the way it was before the evil gods? Was this the Eden we were booted out of because the gods had other plans? Why didn't we fight harder to keep a way of life that was good for us? The imbalance is killing us and our home.
Man is within nature. Man's habitats, no matter how grand and complex we may think, are natural in the sense of being created of by and for that which nature provides.

I have thot of this a bit, in terms of beauty. There is the often grand and breathtaking, often soft and ethereal, beauty of the natural world. There is such beauty as well in the art and architecture of man. Each has its story, its music, its water colour. Each has the power to move the rhythm of my heart and bring tears streaming down my face. Each has the power to make me feel hopelessly inadequate, or to inspire me to reach to the stars.
Mind can be more lonely than body would imagine. Mind can search for answers, for questions, for quests, for endless conundrums, and so enjoy the game. Yet mind wants other minds to play with, to bring in ideas that surprise and excite. It is spirit that knows to blend and meld into all that is. Yet spirit too can identify with loneliness, as an essence, as a way to die a little while caught in the ecstasy of exquisite pain. There must be a very important reason for loneliness. There must be a wholeness of interconnection that we truly need to attain.
I've been working the random universe/intelligent design/mystical maya one quite a bit lately. My conclusions are sometimes random, highly emotive, itchy and veiled. However, I had a revelation about the dweller on the threshhold (a revelation to me at least). It's not about going over the threshhold. It's about living it that eternal magic between the worlds and enjoying the view from each side. There may be a time when going onward is appropriate; I don't know. First I have to build my home on the threshhold, learn about living there, learn who I am that I may have myself as a trusted friend on the continuing journey.

Streaming in and out of consciousness, I don't know what I know. I feel,
but fleetingly. I feel exhiliration and fear. I feel so abysmally sad, so
ecstatically unbound, so small and insignificant, so rebellious and angry,
so tired, so endlessly used up, so guilty, so abused, so resigned, so itchy
to be free, so overwhelmed, so stagnant, so magickal, so impossible, so
dangerously close to the edge yet happy to be here dancing on the head of a
pin too small to do other than fly.
There is magic. There is the ability to send out energy and have it return
as your heart's desire. There is a magical path that will take us there
once we have the courage and grace to find it. Like the end of the rainbow
with its pot of gold, it's tied up in koans and hidden between the
dimensions. The only thing I know to do is dance.

We are social beings because we are born unable to care for our own basic needs. In our very earliest experience we learn it is vitally important to behave in ways which will enhance our value to those around us so they will keep us alive. Before we have the language to encapsulate our memories, and therefore subject them to reason, we learn to manifest certain strict behaviors that mark us as members of the group into which we were born. Primal conditioning.

However, our species is not just a few tribes in a small geographic area. There are billions of us, all over the planet. We have a vast variety of primal tribes, each with its own strict behaviors and belief systems. Yet, to each of us, encoded with our primal conditioning, only those behaviors/beliefs that belong to our tribe are vital to survival. Yet, here you are, from another tribe, with other behaviors and beliefs. This is very, very scary. You have no right to exist with such anti-survival ways. You may be a demon, or a test that I might fail.

I was dancing to Steely Dan's "Katie Lied," which brings me close to tears as I sing along because of its tale of love and betrayal. I've been reading Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas' "Luminaries" about the Sun and Moon in the horoscope, including mostly stories about family constellations and curses. Thus, I have been traveling through early lessons, about ..................................
love and betrayal.

Life lessons say trust no one. Anyone I love, anyone who professes to love me, will betray me. So, perhaps I need only learn to forgive human frailty. Perhaps my true love belongs to the gods. Yet, they as well betray me. So, perhaps the lesson is not to love. To be only for myself.

Yet, there is this need for/to love, to connect and share and be more than myself. I also want to feel real communication, that the world is more than me and what I see and feel. Like having a hand to shake the kaleidoscope and find more possibilities in the patterns.

Perhaps the lesson then, is not to have expectations of trust, of permanence, of relationship beyond the here and now. Perhaps love must be free of temporality, ephemeral, rare and precious and of the fleeting moment, exquisite beauty without further responsibility.

Yet again, "be here now" ever changing landscape; ever changing dance of me to you.
I am leaning into the whole illusion theory. Too many coincidences/synchronicities, object lessons, deja vus. There's too much that makes too much sense in a totally fantastic way. I feel like I'm slipping down the rabbit hole, through the mirror, into the Twilight Zone.
I feel like stuff keeps coming to the surface so I can embrace it, build up my resources of inner allies. It's moving suddenly, quickly, like there's not much time left before I need to be secure and strong and ready for the onslaught. "Claiming my life as my own, I turn my demons into stone" I wrote that a year ago. I have greater glimpses, here and there, of quite sensible cosmic truths. My revelations are about magick and those moments, those inebriated feelings of pure will to being that are all that life need or indeed need aspire to be. I feel like I am slowly mutating, part worm/part moth. Sometimes people, just people as they pass before my eyes, seem like some kind of mechanistic cyborgs, biological, but barely. Like beings of flesh emerging from some factory vat. I feel a chronically acute ache within my inner eye. From some chronically fatigued neural net images flash in and out, sometimes clear enough to form impressions.
I feel humble; I feel weak; I feel times are turning, I know not where.

People's lives can be so sad and frustrating. It's like we move around with cumbersome weights that just get in our way, sometimes tragically so. I find that so many incredibly wonderful bright shining stars just can't see their own beauty and crumble into hideous holes trying to hide nonexistent ugliness. And that bipolar thing, it's like a hungry beast in wait to devour any lucent progress. Very exhausting. But they say some of the greatest have had to work their way through that weight; like wearing weights to increase strength, if they don't overwhelm you first. Perhaps compassion is more effective when it is dispassionate: chop wood, carry water, dress wounds, listen lovingly to the screaming, understand it as ritual music, keep to the grace and balance of the dance. Yes, we are survivors when we survive. Sad survivors, perhaps wondering what we must do to deserve such fortune. But, yes, crisis shows us our true strength, compromised as it may have become by that very crisis.

So, maybe that is what suffering is about -- that we intimately understand the fellow suffering of our kind, that we may ultimately learn to transform the pain into creative healing. I don't know, but it is a lovely story.

Do you know about Chiron, the wounded Centaur? But he was wounded, accidentally, by a friend. He bore his wound, and made his way becoming a beloved teacher and healer. Eventually he became a hero, giving his life to end another's pain.
I look for lessons in the myths, archetypes, fairy tales. I don't know if what I find bears truth, but they can be lovely stories. They can lead me into deep, complicated emotions, into dancing and poetry, into a need to share. Perhaps I am consecrated to beauty, in all it's terrible majesty. The pain of exquisite beauty is everywhere to be discovered, held closely, and set free. I am dancing closer to the fire. Giant shadows dance with me.
Curiouser and curiouser. Alone on the precipice, while the winds blow, hot, cold, eerily.
I used to feel ancient, slogging through with barely any lifeforce. Lifeforce is still flickering, but the core seems to be warmer, maybe getting ready to ignite.

I got all in a tizzy about trying to make some metaphoric hay, shoot out arrows into opportune targets, or otherwise take advantage to advance. Same old hang-up -- don't know where I'm headed, so advance to where? So then I thot, maybe that's the point. Maybe it's all about really learning to open up and let the road unroll itself. Maybe if I let go of all the trying and frustration, the space will expand through me in feelings and thots and unbound possibilities. Let go and let Gaia? Then there's that whole trust thing, or lack thereof. And the whole what does it really matter ...

Let the games continue; let it be

This Is the Way I Communicate

This Is the Way I Communicate
Like light flickering over a piano in a sultry cabaret, like a round blue balloon fitfully drifting out into the storm-laden sky, like anyone you know or I know trying yet again to remember just what it was we were doing with our lives: that's what its all been like. The cat cries, and I respond filled with the illusion of concern. The world cries, and my besotten brain bleeds into tears of angry, chain-rattling despair. It's all about language. It's all about the symbols we choose. A new day dawns cloudy and forbidding.
We are entering San Francisco in the morning fog, early, early, the world still dreaming. Or maybe it was Cambridge, Mass., lost in the fog, unsure of time or space. Sometimes there is singing: something about a "Yellow Submarine" or "Strawberry Fields" or sometimes haunting melodies without words. But it's all about the words, even those implied by the music.
Wine can help. By the gods, wine is sometimes all that can help (tho sometimes even wine betrays me).
The stinking debris of mornings after the night before, or just morning by the coast with the stink of rotting fish, the cries of gulls or sirens, the emptiness without tears, the cold of morning -- I remember that too. That no more mornings could touch me, that I could hide contented in the night dreaming flying dreams so none could touch me. Fragments. Taking life in fragments. Folding each shiny fragment into tender velvet pockets sequined to reflect the light, let them be all right, feel cared for. Let the nights protect us from the days. Like a wandering hermit with a self-igniting lantern . . . .

Sun in Pisces/Moon in Aquarius

Sun in Pisces/Moon in Aquarius

Letting spirit out of body
dancing purified energy
merging into music
outside of law or obligation.
Reinstate the time of bright lights in darkness,
of good cheer and boisterous laughter,
of twirling into ecstasy without reason or rationing.
Reinstate the time of quiet sunrise
smelling of pine and wild roses,
of unending sky and majestic formations of earth,
of unbridled adventure encompassing silent reflection,
all orchestrated in bold tones of exquisite complexity
and simple truth.
Take me there. Let me fly
forever undisturbed by a need to touch down.

Study War No More

Study War No More

What lesson can be applied?
When imperialist troops crash down upon a people's pride?
When might as right meets the instinct to survive?
When Midas greed lashes out to destroy?
We've been here before, o my brethren, o my children --
repeating the fouled lessons poured into our thirsty minds,
pushing back the horror before our eyes with blinding rage
forged into weapons by mortal foes
who hide in plain sight.
The only thing I know --
The lesson repeating agony in all our souls,
Haunted by the pleading eyes and bloody hearts
Of the slaughtered sacrifices to malignant gods --
There is something vital here to learn.

SOMDAY

SOMDAY

I am designating a new lifestyle syndrome:
Self-involved manic-depressive artists - yeah!
based on my own nature, and as a tribute
to all of us who
ride high on the wings of a muse,
out beyond ecstasy
dancing to our own intricately sculptured tune
alive and awake and enraptured
to ultimate degrees, without reservation.
We who revel in our own juices,
marvel at our own electric chasm-jumping inspiration
who marvel at our own marvelousness,
with never a doubt until
we fall with bruising force
into our own banal, excruciating, screaming purple
anger reddened blues, self-denunciation,
self-flagellation, total ineffable despair.
Exhausting. Exilirating. Overwhelming and omnipotent.
How could we ever expect to fit all that
into a regularly coded lifestyle?

Samhainic Verse

Samhainic Verse

Caught up in my Demeter role
I brought winter to my grieving soul.
Numbing ice, concealing snow,
No nurturing soil for seed to sow.
Longing to sleep in dreamless haze,
Aching for peace from ravaging rage,
I ask to serve, to give to others' lives
what I am bereft of.
But the gods in their wisdom,
send me to fools,
wicked, nasty fools who mock me
knowing not my sorrow, knowing not what I disguise.
Hiding behind hysterically blinded eyes,
I prepare for my journey deep below.

Others have travelled this path before me
and lived to tell the tale,
strengthened by their devotion
to their stolen loves.
In a bubble of my own clouded atmosphere,
I shall fear no evil.
Blood coagulates around my heart
allowing no feeling
but deadening pain.
My lips are bound.
My tearducts desiccated by vacuum.
Thus am I prepared.
I am not prepared at all
for what I may find.
But neither do I care.
This is all about desperation.
This is all about emotion so intense
that I am beyond response;
there is nothing left to feel.
Step by step
I descend.

Something about a veil.
But more like
a brick wall --
there may be explosives
hidden behind that solid image.
It seems unyielding.
There are glimmers,
minor crumblings.
At times the bricks seem to shift.
Unexplained.
If I let myself,
if I am very quiet,
molecules move silently,
disarming resistence,
there will appear a stair
to my senses of solid granite,
wet with the drip of
melting ice.

Treacherous.
A misstep could kill me,
falling all the way,
breaking stair by stair.
I must take care.
Make careful measure:
What is the true worth
of what I might find?

My weight is unsteady.
Gaping below --
a colorless vortex,
a lake of emptiness
sucking in all sensation.
It is enormous, all-consuming.
My salvation.
I leap.
Overwhelmed,
I am sucked in and through,
breathlessly,
silently,
alone in the Universe
of silent, inexorable,
intensity.
Pulled into an event horizon
a singularity
another, nether realm.

Every act
Every thought
Every dream
Every wish
Everyone I'd lost
at every stage of
our shared experience.
Every sin.
Here they live,
each acting out it's own story
in a cavernous space,
of encapsulated diaramas.
I don't sense my body
-- only a vague weight
of uncertain dimensions.
It is time released --
all happening at once eternally.
No choice but to let it wash over me,
wave after chaotic, metaphoric wave.
Sound/light/fragrance/taste/touch/emotion
craftily embodied in exquisite, endless pain.

Is there a voice here?
Is there a way to make it talk
in reasonable tones?
Is there a way to unravel the senses,
to frame neat packets of sense
and talk with them reasonably?
Is there a rationale within which
to deal with the feelings,
to put them in place,
rational and calm and dignified?
Is it too much to ask?
And of whom?
There is no guide, no authority,
none but me, infinitely mirrored.
What will become of all these "I"s
staring at me, demanding
retribution, stark, cold justice
Just Ice and Cold and bitter, stinging snow
to wrap my frozen soul in hope of sleep
while Nazgul track my dreams.

The innocent must bear the sacrifice.
Power too dangerous to the wise
and power-enabled,
that would overtake their skills,
turn them to evil purpose,
may be safely given to innocent hands, destroying
only the sacrificial lamb.
The wise, in their compassion,
may suffer unhealing wounds
of painful knowledge;
but the innocent are destroyed,
pitted inside out by corrosion,
unable to fight,
unable to understand.
I am not wise, nor innocent.
I look into the battalion of
mirrored images
and am left just short of
destruction,
picking at scabs,
unwilling to heal
my agony of remorse
and betrayal.
I didn't know,
couldn't know,
no one told me.
They said:
"Do what you are told.
It will all be alright in the end."
But whose end, right for whom?

What is the treasure I have come here seeking?
That sweet, sparkling child,
who played upon the hillside,
picking flowers
to weave into our hair --
I didn't mean to leave her unprotected.
I left her in the care of trusted friends
while I went off to earn our daily bread.
The screaming
in my heart
as she was taken,
the shattering reverberations,
I'd never known such pain.
It stopped me in my tracks,
overcame my senses,
never leaves me, never lessens,
though in time, like anything, I guess
recedes into background noise
that I may hear my orders,
do as duty demands.

But, duty to what demands?
The gods,
my very brethren,
I realize, have betrayed me.
Cut to my womanly core
to drink my blood in bacchanalia.
The mirror images smile grotesquely.
I am sickened,
brought to my humbled knees,
not in obeisance.
I have not the strength nor will
to stand.
Perhaps I shall dwell here in hell,
unmoving,
unresponsive,
bleeding out,
pale and ashen.
Serving them no more.
No bread upon the table.
Just Ice and snow.

II.

"Mommy," she cried, dead eyes open,
awash in tears,
"I didn't mean to leave you.
I didn't know I would be gone so long."

My desiccated heart bathes gladly
in those soothing tears.
I am brought back to my journey.
The mirror images have softened.
Every face, every form, every failure,
every sin
I can't quite grasp why it would matter,
how these essences
combine with mine.
Perhaps I am hallucinating.
Perhaps none of us
exist at all.

Baby girl, I have always loved you.
Hated you for dying.
Hated life and death for dividing us.
Hated, blamed,
damned to hell,
all those mirror images,
all those wraiths and wretched
wayward souls who pass me by.
I have loved and lost and
lonely wandered.
And wondered why.
I hold you close as
I look into the mirror, deeply,
drink of the magick of lethe.
Falling, gently, easily, even leisurely,
letting go and drinking in,
all that Hell allows
now that we create the rules.

Caught up in my Hecate role,
I feel the power of my soul.
Rain and wind and ice and snow
I feel you all from here below,
and revel in elemental energy.
I am the wind, the seas, the fire
I am all will and all desire.
It is me you love, and me you hate --
I am the master of your fate.
Yet I am hidden from all sight,
beyond the reach or need of light.
I have found my peace,
my place, my voice.
Take heed, O' mortal,
create your choice.
Create it every day.

Ritual

Ritual

Ritual gives form to meaning

(every wiseman's son doth know).

Every act from which we're gleaning,

Every sack that we must sow

Gives rise to tides that make us wise;

Gives humor chance for binding wounds.

Does good these ancient weary eyes

To dance abandoned round the moon.

Intergalactic Circus

Intergalactic Circus

Ride the seasons of the moon
Let the moment call the tune
Ramble through the tongues of Rune
Into my empty city room
Where the circus plays at daybreak
And no one seems to care.
The court jester shrieks, the raven she seeks
and the idiot speaks of the secrets of night.
The Solomon sage who owns pretense of age
sits alone on the stage beyond the spotlight
and sings softly the song that says we belong
to one who knows wrong is the shadow of right.
But can anyone know
just what is the show
and what keeps us going back
night after night . . .

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends
it wiggles and it bends,
it follows all the trends,
and the energy it sends,
the welcome it extends,
the curtains that it rends,
the sounds and sights it blends,
all serve to make amends
for what in daily life offends.

We have always been in the circus.
We act the clowns, the brave acrobats, the freaks
Life is tragedy, comedy, banal pratfalls, heroic stunts
as we gamely act it out upon the stage.
Come one, come all who hear my call:
Enjoy the show!

reality

reality

We speak of science as a source of knowledge, as a reality. We have created that reality, as a collective agreement (though not all agree). We have created our own reality in the laws and theories we create to describe and understand the segment of the infinite realities which we have found accessible to our senses and reason.
It is not so much about creating our own reality as it is about attending to that part of reality from which we create our lives.
Like that old saying (or something like it): Some look at a problem and say, "why?" Others look at an opportunity and say, "why not?" And still others look at a mess and say, "I'm not cleaning that up!"
But maybe it's not a mess to be cleaned, but a game to be caught up in, luxuriating in the soapy water, intrigued by working out a system to turn the chaos into valuable resources. Are we having fun yet? Because if we're not, we're probably missing the point.
I miss that point alot. It's not as if I have the answers. What I have are open-ended questions into which theories and possibilities can be dropped. If reality is about perception and perspective, and the reality you are looking at blows, walk around, look at it from other perspectives, find the interesting shapes and contours.
As far as I can tell, life is not about getting an easy ride, or hoarding toys, or holding on to a place or situation, or even building a nest egg upon which to set. Life is a constantly evolving self-creation, one to be proud of, to rejoyce in, sometimes to find collaborators with whom to expand one's perspective, sometimes to dance free in a self-designed sacred meadow while all the possibilities whirl about in free-form ecstatic play.
Not to say there isn't darkness, and drama, and tragedies, and despair. That's why there are tears, and anger, and drugs to dull the pain, and heroism, hope, and dreams to mend the weary. But it's about opening up to find the better ways, to create satisfying, inspiring realities to live.
The only viable option is to go outside the box/forget about the box and wing it with as yet unknown options, to throw out the Piscean paradigm and open up to unbound creativity. The only way out is through, but we need to believe in our ability to cut our own path with the tools we create from whatever is at hand.
The old forms, the old rules, the new rules evolved from the old, are about restriction, poverty, pain and fear. They are about wanting a powerful ally in the sky to smite our enemies, as we smite those who make us uncomfortable. The old rules say that the way to make up for our lack of vision is to denigrate those who can see. Even more, they say that destruction is the just response to destruction; hate for hate; pain for pain; buy low, sell high and keep labor as cheap and downtrodden as possible.
There is energy in chaos; there is the possibility of order, a new order, an order made to order. If our godly creative core is allowed to fly free, who knows where it may take us. Do we fear too greatly the possibilities to allow ourselves to soar? The dizzying heights? The new worlds, not to conquer, to find mutually beneficial arrangements, partnerships, inspiration, creative enterprise, is this what we fear? Because the unknown is fearful; but, then, so is the known.
I don't know where I'm going. I'm trying to allow the magic to find me.
I've been feeling a transition into a more magickal realm that I have been aware of always in some unconscious understanding, but it is becoming more evident, more relevant, more insistent.
Getting in touch with the personally meaningful because that whole "real world" (yeah, like the tv show) American values of self and everyone else destruction just turned into a cartoon feature not amusing enough to pay for.
I am finding hope in such manifestations as Live8 and anti-neocon revelations, as well as people here and there who actually make sense to me. It could all come crashing down as the latest cosmic joke, but then, what have I got to lose?
Where is reality? Is it something we can cage and observe? Why are some stories we tell ourselves "real" and others fantasy or even lies? Is magick real, is it a valid, authentic, varifiable way of life? Can we live as on a parallel road, seeing the deadening horror of a whole stream of lived experience as a passing train on a parallel track? Can we devise alternate and wondrous transportation that takes us along a shining, winding, path of beauty and serene sanity that we know is real? How tell the mad from the merely awakening? Which is stress relieving dream; which is real?
Can we be in a world of pain, yet not of it? Can we transcend, or at least manifest our fantasies through visualizing with a potent will of love? Will that vision protect us from the world of destruction and despair? Or will it heal us?
Perhaps compassion is more effective when it is dispassionate: chop wood, carry water, dress wounds, listen lovingly to the screaming, understand it as ritual music, keep to the grace and balance of the dance.
I visualize beings made beautiful by loving grace in a grand ecstatic dance out in open country, breathing free the clean aromatic atmosphere of healthy life; giving and healing and sharing as we are learning. It seems so easy, here in my dream.
But then I have that dream, you know (or maybe you don't) where I'm late for class and unprepared and the teacher is sternly disapproving. It's all a jumble and I can't find a way to make it right. Somehow I'm lost in a dark and spooky superhighway, with cars whooshing by way too close, and my feet are stuck in tar, and breathing gets real hard, and there's no way out -- nowhere to go but painful dark and bleeding slums of crumbling fantasies.

Philosophy is the love of truth. But is it only truth because we love it into being? Can we create our own ideal truths, our own ideal lifestreams, the reality that we find most ecstatically resonant with our truest selves, by simply (or not so simply) loving it into being? What are we to make of that other reality, the one that sucks? Has it been loved into being as well? Can we safely leave it to those who love it, and wonder off their path onto our own?

Pop Quiz

Pop Quiz

What is more useless than a poet, and why?

Encloistered in my artist's garrett, threadbare garments more holes than whole
Paint spattered, unruly and unkempt
Barely aware of the need for sustenance or even air
Entranced by the necessity of exploring, exposing my vision
I am the essence of romance.

Writing words on paper, I am merely effete,
Despite my black attire and permanent scowl.
Even if they are good words, finely wrought, expressing deeply true emotion
They are almost literally a dime a dozen.
To expose my wound is inelegance, to explore my essence a narcissistic malaise.

I am the real deal -- the poet-philosopher, the idealist dreamer, the journey's fool.
Surely I should be surrounded by accolytes at my feet, honored to breathe the sacred
Incense of my magesty.

Yet here I stand with bills unpaid in the squalor of a rented room,
Unadorned by idolatry.

politics

politics


infinite regression of change and resistance

multi-rhythmed rhyme

singing into the winds of change

to move their vector more in line

with where we wish to arrive

Pluto Transit

Pluto Transit

like a hurricane

like a natural disaster

wind and rain laying waste to my life.

tossed, torn, left astray and a stranger

in the way, or at least not the norm.

a sad wastrel left adrift in the storm.

sing my wanderers' song tonight.

let the wind carry my fading melody

off onto wind-whipped ports of call.

my breath's been carried out to sea

nothing left to become of me

once the hurricane has passed into the day

the foggy, rainy day . . .

I gaze upon the ragged sea.

philosophy

philosophy

What are the words that I'm saying to say
when they're made simply words in a row?
The world is revolving, and people today
are revolving with nowhere to go.
Revolving, revolting, evolving and floating
And never quite sure where we are
I search for definity in the midst of infinity --
a sign in the midst of a star
And wonder if I am a meaning, or why
the whole thing simply exists
It's not that I care, but I'd like to know where
I will be when we've gone thru these twists
and turns
and eternity years
for a meaning beyond being THERE
but where?

The Perfect Tree

The Perfect Tree

It was a perfect tree, in a perfect forest.

Standing majestic, it's roots planted deep into the earth,

Easily drinking of underground streams.

Basking in the magical sunlight,

Wordlessly enjoying the chemical process of life.

Enjoying the company of other lives:

Nesting birds, transforming insects,

Perhaps even playing host to the occasional human child

Climbing amongst its strong, cheerful limbs in happy union.

A perfect tree.
A perfect forest.

Until the urgent need for a shopping mall destroys it all.

peaceful moment

peaceful moment 

Like a warm day on the beach, all woozy from the sunshine 
Feeling the tingle of sea breeze and that ocean scent of the wild 
As the sun diminishes, cooling, refreshing, yet still a lazy summer eve 
Oh that luscious feeling, that overflow of quiet emotion 
Seeping out of a sleepy reverie, washing so gently through pores and follicles 
Like a sweet warm breath caressing 

We give what we can; we take what we need 
Marching, in orderly fashion 
Or beatifically walking to a sacred beat. 
The horizon shifts through daily duties and nightly prayers. 
We take what we can. We give. 
Without notice, without rational equation 
We give each outward breath, and take in what is given.

Like a happy, inspiring song springing from memory to lip 
Moving the fortunate mind into momentary ecstasy of dance 
Moments meant to linger, to haunt as a loving ghostly guardian 
Wrapped in that ethereal glow of grace's perfection 
Summoning iridescent spirits to play joyful ubiquitous harmonies 
Like the words we tell ourselves to bring us peace.

Paean to Pain

Paean to Pain

Is there an incantation
that could free me

From my chthonic wall of pain?

I cry the words of solace that I've never heard,

The words that echo from the wall of pain.

There are none to answer, out beyond the wall;

There are none here with me to hear my cries.

So, yes, I am free:

Free to cry as loudly and as long

As the pain will bear it.

Not in Our Name

Not in Our Name



Nobody wins in a war

(well, maybe a few financiers of war industries, but)

Not us, not them, not humanity

Not the dead, not the living

Not the yet to be born

Not the land, water, air, our natural resources

Not the roads, buildings, pipes, utility lines, the infrastructure

Not love or peace or morality

Not human nature

Not Right

Not Justice

Not God

Not the battlegrounds or the cemeteries, or the unhealable wounds in our souls
Whatever we may hope to accomplish with war,

There are better ways.

Mythopoesis

Mythopoesis

Reality enrobed in symbols
Where would we be outside our trance?
Ecstatic in the sunrise
Open to the rainbow rays
Moving, life within the dance
Each cell, each system, synchronized
Vibrating to celestial tones
Each jagged lonely fragment
Joyfully bonded, created anew
Sent on to chance.

My Firefly Heart

My Firefly Heart

My firefly heart burns cold
flickers of remorse, of holy terror, brutal pain.
My firefly heart bleeds for you, but you don't listen
don't see or hear, disdain to know how I need
your mirror of my flickering light, my
howling darkness of remorse, holy terror.
Beating unheard at your doors and windows.
My firefly heart yearns to fly away, always onward
never resting, beating, beating, ever further
never resting but open alive to the passing
wonders flickering light and dark and
arrayed in colors so bright so
breathtakingly heartbreakingly.
My firefly heart beats into a thousand rays
striking out into the stratosphere playing
with the sunlight, prism bright rainbows
beating, flickering, cold and hot and
How can I make you see?

Movie Themes

Movie Themes

Late one recent night I watched "You Can't Take It with You" and "Harvey" on Turner Classic Movies' Jimmy Stewart mini-fest.
Both films had an underlying theme of the guardian spirit taking care of those who dare to create their own way despite social convention. Then, of course, there was the antagonist of the social institutions in place to maintain conformity. Jail or the nuthouse loom for those who step off of the sidewalk, so to speak. Always those equally opposing forces. The angel on one shoulder, the demon on the other. (But Lucifer was an angel, and as we know from the Buffyverse, demons can be like any other ethnic group, so the choice of advisers is not unambiguous.)
I seem to keep running into the concept of living in two worlds (or perhaps many, but that's another story). They can be given many designations, but right now I am looking at a world of my self and one of others, the rulemakers. This is colored by my astrology: Capricorn Sun in the 1st house, Uranus in Cancer in the Seventh -- wouldn't that tend to have me identifying with the rulemakers and seeing the scary other as the iconoclast? Not unambiguous.
I have memories from throughout my life, starting as a very young child, of breathless invigorating ecstatic inspiration standing as my self basking in the universe, too excited to keep from dancing with joy internally if not in actual motion, and yet in a profound stillness of awe and peaceful understanding. And I have memories of profound guilt, depression, boundless anger with no outlet except against myself.
I am feeling lately like I am trying to break through a semi-porous membrane into some kind of wholeness, to a sublime adventure, a living myth of profound beauty. The energy is not quite there -- it surges and fades without regularity like stars peeking through the clouds.
I was awake very late at night, watching old movies and letting them take the place of my dreams. Magic is everywhere, a parallel consciousness to both sunlight and shadow.

Moon Child

Moon Child

Created from the Milky Way shining into Mother Moon,
Reflections from that ancient light emerging from her womb.
A sad guitar, a raging sax, emoting through the sea
Of stories sung through ages all, what was through what will be --
Were you the Lady of that lake, were you the piper's reed?
Were you the luscious, sacred fruit fulfilling every need?
Yes, you the child dancing in the fullness of the night
To ring the rune and cast the spell to make the darkness bright.
Of goddess born to keep us safe and sing our lullabies
Till we emerge as sparkling stars to light the dreaming skies.

metaphysicians

metaphysicians

Boldly we go where so many have gone before
Each informed by our unique set and setting.
Some perform alchemy, mixing metaphors
Upon a marble altar.
Telling sooth, or constantly mapping the stars,
We tell ourselves ancient fantasies,
sometimes reclothed to fit the current fashion.
There are werecreatures, energy vampires,
Lions and Tigers and Bears,
Insects infected with rare, lethal archetypes
-- angry demons mating with our own cells
To destroy us.
There are lethal conspiracies of demon-men,
Bent on self-destruction of their/our whole half-species.
There are warships and projectiles of evil
Invading our consciousnesses, destroying our dreams.
There are armies of the night, marching,
Conscripting our young, our heartland, our hierophants.
We watch, and scribble notes, often indecipherable.
We chant like banshees, chattering primates,
Impressed with our own noise.
Sometimes we forget for a bit, slip out of the script;
We awaken to find ourselves singing;
Creating heavenly music.

Lullaby of Light

Lullaby of Light

Ride a stallion of snow to the heart of your dreams
Imbibe the sweet nectar of endless romance
Twirl into the world of magic and melody and dance.
Send out twinkling moonbeams as smiles of delight
Gift us all with love's vision of bountiful peace
Pour out joy that every beauty filled impulse increase.
Find a song that fills your heart
Feel a beat that sets you free
Embrace the dance of who you're meant to be.

Life

Life


They locked it up in tinker toys,
covered it with colored silk

They made me think it was my choice,
all glittery with shame

Where once I found a lion's den,
a heart of gold, a rainbow's end

Now is dust and long-smoked ash,
a thousand tears that died unnamed.

knife's edge

knife's edge

My heart is on the edge of a knife--
not licensed surgery
just self-medication for pain.
What else is true?
Betrayal by the gods can result in confusion.
Sometimes it all seems clear and clean and real --
When sensation makes sense.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen,
'cause they're all busy looking at their own.
Knife's edge -- the end of the rainbow
See the shining beatitude, the joyous reunion.
When all the lonely, separated strands and coloured bands
finally find their proper placement in celestial harmony.
Oh, the trumpets will sound calling all to glory.
But what else is true?
Are there cries for war throughout the land?
Are there crises crying for attendance while our leaders are otherwise involved?
Are there cowering souls, beyond earthly torment, crying for release
while hiding in cubicles or corner offices or ivory towers
playing at mind games, convoluted strategies, never quite sure
who they are?
Are there banners flying, urging all to attend the great banquet?
Is this the feast for which we've come?
The knife cuts both ways.
Does it matter why we bleed?

It Is Written

It Is Written

I stand, open and defenseless,
Waiting for Pluto to overpower me,
Take me where he will,
Suit me to his purpose.
Or, is that my sister Hecate
Coming to meet me,
Coming to embrace me,
To set me free?

Wondrous are the ways
of the shifty, glamour-ridden mind.
We peek out through rainbow slits
Onto a sinuous landscape.
Slippery bits of meaning slither along
Hissing out of forked tongue
Oracular riddles.
"Oh, yes, my love awaits me.
In the tall grasses we will twain.
Great fortune is to befall us.
It is written."
And rewritten, and rewritten
On and on through the fever.
Burning molecules, organic fuel,
Dancing, wildly, within a fiery pentagram,
Within channeled schematics,
Ignited by a living passion.

I am beyond words.
Tumbling through shiny bubbles
And iron-wrought hieroglyphs.
There is nothing to depend on
But pure will
And the ability
To suspend belief.

Human Nature

Human Nature

Raging winds and rain.

Cataclysmic interconnections.

A wild ride through ever disintegrating times.

Can we assimilate where we've been?

Ancient footfalls inexorably emerging into

battering rams, explosions, firey projectiles,

grief, despair, immolation, utter destruction.

Can we feel the pull into the maelstrom,

powers ripping our being into basic components,

the essence of nature?
Perhaps there was/is/will be

a time of peaceful reflection,
hoped for abundance,

shared joy and laughter,
ecstatic entertainment

moving us higher through an upward spiral

of feeling so good, feeling so free, feeling so loved.

Perhaps it is here, around an unseen corner,

ever available, to those who can perceive,

who can let go of misperception and it's

hate-filled companions.
Perhaps the only solace is in stolen moments,

the sweet taste of summer wine,

the innocent joy of uncomplicated affection,

the pure sensuality of passionate dance.
Perhaps these will tell us,

if and when we stop to listen,

will lead us to the promised land.

Fire in the Mountain

Fire in the Mountain

Moving into the darkest night
Alert to each crinkle in the texture of time
Alert to minute sounds and startled motion
There is a flame in the darkness
Warm, bright, alively intense in color
sparks flying, singing singing
soft and low, then more urgent, louder
singing, entrancing, bringing ever closer
attention away from the night from the cold.
Worship that flame.
Give it your deepest oath of fealty.
Be it's bosom ally, it's shadow, it's child.
Bring it into your deepest, strongest part
and grow with it, together,
each protected,
dark earth intertwined with flame.

Fairy Tale

Fairy Tale

A memory of haunting nostalgia
I cannot not touch it, taste it, hold it, know it, breathe it
Still it picques me at the corner of my eye, below the level of perception.
The words escape me.
One must be very careful of words.
They hold great power, mystic and legal and personal.
Words can weave a whole world, a whirl of worlds, a wild wind of words
They can create reality for those who get caught up in them.
The right word at the right time can catalyze miracles.
The right word at the wrong time can destroy the eternal.
How might I find the words to capture my dream, my destiny?
Enter the Fool upon the Precipice, prattling ditties of the daily airwaves.
She is whirling blithely, eyes upon a distant rainbow, breathing in clouds
Breathing out daisies and daffodils and a brilliance of pansies.
She is dancing to her own symphony, entranced in her deepest essence.
Without thought, without prayer, without a government authorized identity
There are no guarantees, no happy ending.
There is a tale I try to tell.
Its point escapes me, withering into fairydust.
I breathe in the poisoned air, drink the poisoned water, eat the poisoned food
Like a desperately swimming fish in a polluted bowl, like a creature of the streets eating garbage,
Like a child.
The pattern is corrupted, but I follow it as best I can.
I have been told that if I can properly put the pieces in place
All will be revealed; all will be peace and beauty and love.
The pieces of my shattered heart.

Evening Prayer

Evening Prayer

So sensitive, fragile, rare flower beyond price
A boon to pure salvation, love and grace.
May you blister in pure agony beyond a thousand hells
May life kick you to the curb and curse your name.
We demons, devils' minions, mites, mosquitos, vampire shells
We thrive on hate and sorrow, grief and pain.
We call to you for pity; prey on your earnest care.
Your innate fairness gives us footholds into actions most unfair.
We strangle you with hope and use you as a stair.
You'd best believe in crisis lies your fate.
Believe in your imagination.
Believe you are as imaged in your unseen inner eye.
The place where we can't touch you; where you heal.
Find the rhythm, find the mantra, find the song that sets you free.
Replace the toxic myth with a sweet reality.
Envision potent symbols to take you where you long to be.
Create pure music from your tortured cry.
Let that peaceful, joyful dream become the real.
Let it be.

Enchanting

Enchanting
(for Kala Snowflower)

Magical child, the world awaits you

Not just this place,
any world you care to grace,

relate to, turn your lovely face to.

"We love you"
sing the winds, the seas,
the creatures large and small

"We love you always"


Singing and dancing long into the night,

you turn it into day.

Play that haunting melody.

It moves you into dance,

into a chance to name your trance,

to name us all

as we dance before your eyes.

The skies will dance for you,

will open wide their hearts of stars.

Sparkling through the night,

Shining into day.

You play.

All of creation dances to your song.

We dance with you,

creating worlds of joy.

A Dream of Water

A Dream of Water

Water means secrets
Something deeply buried
Moving, unconsciously, through
Chthonic thought-rivers,
Emotional waterfalls,
Pools of sacred transformation.
Or sex. Or money.
That which flows,
Yet never without consequence.
Deeply felt; deeply brought in
To those secret liquid pathways
Etching out existence as
We know it.

A dream of water is a prophecy
Written into the DNA,
Waiting for the day to manifest.
It is a dream about secret dreams,
Sacred ceremony,
That which cannot be named.
That which is always present.
Somehow the source is speaking
Perhaps in rhyme and metaphor,
Yet speaking still, insistently.
Listen.
Let it insinuate into all the senses,
Let it speak.

Times are tentative.
I cannot always know what
Is safe to say. Or whisper.
The dream tells me that
There are secreted beaches
In the cacophony and stench
Of the callous city.
Places meant for refuge, re-creation.
They are hidden from the hostile streets,
But hardly peacefully obscure.
The hordes are slipping through the
Tear in the chain-linked fence,
Pushing, uncaring, blindly moving
Toward the sand.
They push and tumble into the ocean,
Far too overwhelmed by their numbers,
Their size.
No room! No room!
"But there's plenty of room,"
Roar the jolly clowns
Like over-inflated plastic beach toys.

I must escape the suffocation.
The tunnel out is too small, stifling.
I must crawl, on my knees,
Pulling myself forward
With each wisp of breath.
There is no end,
I am certain.
Just agonizing suffocation,
Superhuman effort again and again.
Until the city reappears.

It is different; it is quiet.
Everyone is at the beach,
Reveling in the sunlight.
Here it is dark. Practically empty.
The store windows are lighted
For the night display, muted,
Like starlight.
It is a long comforting walk
In the night air.

But this is a dream of water.
There, that endless, inky lake,
Reaching out past north and south
Horizons.
Deep, solid, dense, darkly opaque,
Welcoming.
I look out over the iron edge of the bridge
Upon which I gently walk along the pavement.
There are two children on the bridge,
Quietly playing,
Shining softly in the way
That happy children do,
At peace,
In the water's protective embrace.

Dark Magick

Dark Magick

In the still of the dark of the moon
after the revelrie has passed on
deep, deep into the frozen fields of dreamless sleep
we, walking, silently, along the riverbed
breathing in ancient ash of woodsmoke
breathing out long-growing tears
to weave ghostly tentacles
along our path
take each others' hand up to our heart
to pray, to kiss, to whisper
thus casting an eternal spell.