I know that I'm my own problem
but the problem with me
is that I was born
with these eyes
fixed pointing outward
and the problem with those
on the outside
who can see
is they see the problem
with me
and the problem with that
is it's nobody's problem
but mine

stuck on repeat
like a one act play
playing itself over
and over again
where the actors may change
but rarely the roles
cast as the fifth business
in my own life
unable to protagonise
a new plot
with half blinded eyes
that never see
the full picture
in what I am playing out
so that what is off centre
remains as beyond perception
as the details of the audience
sitting distant in the shadows
while I'm so hungry for the light
all I know to do
is stand and say the lines
so memorized I have forgotten how
to improvise anything other than
what this character
was written to be
when the actor can only remember
the role it was directed to play
and not the actor itself
and destiny gets confined
to descending denouement

the difference between

dream and fantasy

comes down to courage

if your heart never 

threatened to kill you

with its own electrical pulse

as you stood on the cliff

wondering how your wings 

would ever hold

and then jumped anyway

it never was a dream

but only a little opiation

to get you through your day

because if it isn't fantasy

it makes you pay 

in the currency of adrenalin

so that you must match

a fear to overcome

for every ounce 

it means to you

we see so little
of what is really real
so that we run around
filling in the blanks
with our own fears
and fantasies
and then we falsely
proclaim those to be
intelligence and intuition
because somehow that is easier
than working on the connection
of deeper communication
and opening our imaginations
beyond the limits of the walls
we've constructed for ourselves
and learning to live
within the world of truths
our constraints
have blinded us
to see

18 May (middle of the night)

I can see us
building sandcastles on the shore
not as girls who can only cry
over the crumbling inevitability
or rejoice at the spectacle of destruction
but as women wild with life
who hunger to be drawn beneath
the mystery of the waves
to see how far our depth can go

or as dancers under boardwalk lights
drunk and giddy
with the ebb and flow of moon
and swooning with the sound
of wolf howls emerging from the caverns
of our subterranean throats
fiercely threatening without intended threat
to the civil civility of the civilized
for the untamed in our eyes
and the unapologetic nature of our cries
that we don't give a damn

throwing our voices out carelessly
so they might reach
the sailers lost at sea
as witches or as sirens
or whatever they might dream

when we'll be only weavers
of baskets out of reeds
to catch the tired and failing
of every woman lush as fruit
ripe and falling from the trees
and with the resilience of our leaves
that don't just shed when they are tired
but have learned to bud again
let us be as makers
of ancient sacred salves
to soothe the bruising of our sisters
that are only seen by women's eyes
and nurse the hunger of their infants
born into this world
with knowing in the DNA
that there is danger if you cry
more than if you stand to starve

and let our backs be sturdy
with willows grown up through our spines
to carry our grandmothers
from imposing prisons
of the cartographic cage
of the patriot patriarchy known as wars
to the places where the waves make safe
and erode each line of border
that sailors sailed the seas
to draw there in the sand

when we're the singers
who do not sing temptation
but swim within creation
of the languages of truth
that open hearts to hear
knowing that each of us

has not one lonely and senseless tune
but rather her own synergetic part
of the harmony of the song
Creation sings
and let those songs join us all as women
moulded as a million grains of sand
held together in one single shell

and then when we forget
that there is mystery yet
calling for us to come to build
our castles of bitter/sweet impermanence
to erase the boundaries
of how defiance is defined
and dare do what we can
we can hold the shell up to our ears
and remember that the journey
was never about the lasting height
our imaginations can achieve
but how far what we have crafted
can be absorbed into the deep

my mother said my birth
was easy
that I came into this world
in only a few hours

but I have been emerging
into this unearthing
slowly through all these years
of pain and exhilaration
of ecstasy and fear

learning to surrender
to the journey
pushed by the contractions
of adversity
and swimming toward
the light

greeting the voices
in the beyond
coming into focus

searching out the balance
in the ebb and flow
of ancestral whispers
come as electricity
through the cord
that cannot be cut

and I will be birthing
as the moon unwraps itself
until I birth again
back into celestial womb
beyond the curtain
of stardust
from which we're made

an ocean with a thirsty mouth
straining toward the shore
to be drawn back and gathered
once again
coming alive
with every breath and heartbeat
and the journey
of each earthly step

everyone keeps talking
about the broken

who are these broken people

when people are either wounded
or scarred or healing or healed
evolving or devolving or revolving
the way the animate do

and in truth even the inanimate
objects of this world
are never really broken
only in a change of state

unless by broken you mean
cease to perform
their desired function

in which case people still
cannot be broken
except by capitalistic definitions
of what purpose is
as laid out by external perceptions

because the only true purpose
of the state of being human
is to navigate the change

maybe only the truth questions itself
like weeding its own garden
thinning what doesn't produce
and uprooting what's only been
hanging around to deprive the rest
of space and soil
and water and light

but lies are like GMO
prepackaged processed crap
cheap and on sale
and never enough
so that they need to constantly
tinker and manipulate
the DNA of themselves
with more sugar
so they can claim less fat

and if it has to have a label
to tell you it's healthy
it's probably not

I spend these days now
in forests and in barns
and anywhere I can hear
the music of Creation
without the voice of man
because that is where
I hear your voice
coming through as love
from far across the veil
and where I can finally feel
the tickle of the germination
of all the seeds
you left imbedded in my heart
the intimate whispers
between butterflies and milkweed
the miracle of innocence
being born
and the spectre of ancient spirits
who come out to dance
while the birds remain
undaunted and resilient
with their songs
because you were all
these things to me
and if I stay too long
amongst the chattering of men
I am scared that I will lose you
and the darkness of disappointment
left in the vacuum's wake
will turn me cold with anger
and blind to all the beauty
you once painted for me in songs
until my eyes could open far enough
that I could see it too

Missing you today my Starshine Blue. 

29 April 2016

sometimes the tangles
aren't in my head after all
sometimes the tangles are external
and a part of the sickness

infecting the universe
so sorting out what the hell is going on
just winds up making me sick

sometimes I have to trust my own clarity
because the sickness
wants me to think it is me
so I tangle my own head
and become bound
by its external false perceptions
and infected with my own self-confusion