Dark star
in a deep crevasse,
squirms in raw light
where she's been buried
under sheets of ice
in winter seasons
of my heart.

It would be easier to welcome
the cool breath of conditioning
to refreeze those red shudders
in a still beauty:
cold, lace-like, eternal.

But Life has me by the throat,
by the ache in my ovaries,
by the deep gurgle in my belly,
and the good hunger.

I only ask
that the flame of Her tongue
be gentle
as She bleeds me
into softening streams
that move out
over the thirsty world.

Gentle
but thorough.

My heart yawns
beneath my ribs.
The harvest
of an untapped wellspring wakes
to soften tender ground
and slake a thirst
that is simple, primal.
 
Wild mare settles
in a grove of trees.
 
It’s raining.
 
You take my hand and I’m amazed
at how natural this is.
Like a bird tucking its head into its feathers:
the warm slide and nestling
of human skin on human skin.
 

Once upon a time
I locked myself into a room
in my body
and refused to drink.
 
I remember how it felt to be like soap
in the arms of lovers
afraid to moor
lest the dock would break.
 
Give me the stormy waves,
I’d say.
 Bind me
to the isolated wilds.
 
This Season of my life is different.
My cells, like mycelium,
have opened their thousands of tiny mouths,
and in the frothy grove, my Spirit,
like this mare,
drinks and stretches,
rolls lavishly about in her wet skin,
as vaporous sighs escape her nostrils.
 
She doesn’t need to chase fire.
She is fire,
and she gathers around the hearth of herself
long enough for the herd to find her.
 
(Or perhaps, like the sailboat,
she has drifted backwards from her striving,
until she has found herself, bobbing and rubbing
against the bellies of the docks
whose loyal mouths await the tongue
of her wind-lashed rope).
 
They greet each other with moist eyes
and rub sensitive whiskers
across each others’ faces,
 
like you and I do,
in the dark nest of your bed,
as just beyond the walls of your house,
junipers guzzle midnight rain,
and a nearby family of coyotes
calls back and forth
over and over
in the thrill of finding each other
still there,
still here.
 

Kindness takes my hands into her lap and looks me in the eyes.

She says: Honey, I am here.

I say: But-

She touches my mouth.

I close my eyes.  It is tight inside. 

Slowly, I look again.

She is there still. 

I blink.

Suddenly I realize she never left,

that it was I who ran off on a train of ghosts.

But I’ve come home now.

to the living room

in my heart,

and though it took a lot of courage,

it was actually quite simple.

Relieved, I weep,

as Kindness gathers me

into her warm, steady arms.

​Opening the mouth is an act of power.
With one word, worlds are born, while others die.

The soil of the heart
is a good bed
for this power
to be seeded.

The soil of the belly
makes it real,
and draws deep waters
up to feed it.

The sun of the eye
focuses the stroke

and the spaciousness
all around
invites the sprouting

as relaxed excitement

the natural way of growth
and flow.

The mouth 
is a sword
and the mouth
is a megaphone
and the mouth
is a carpet
laid out
for Great Feet
and the mouth
is a shaper
a moulder
a maker
and the mouth is a
note
in a chorus
of notes.

The mouth is a mouth,
fleshy gummy and warm.

​The mouth is a tool
used for good
or for harm.

And how can we know?
What is best
in each breath?

Trust the mouth
when it's tied
to the heart
and the death
of the grasping
at having
and the piercing
to get.

Let the mouth
stand its ground
and cast its 
honeycomb nets
for the sake
of the One
for the sake
of the All
for the sake of the I
that holds me
in its Home.

May this mouth be unhindered
may this mouth be free
from that which would make it believe
it is me,
and may this mouth serve
in each moment
the Love
of this heart
and the Great Heart
in the same
cosmic
flow.

​May this mouth
be a prayer
whether awkward and raw
or graceful, refined
whether loud, fast
or slow,
let the rhythm
come forth,
from the uncertain depths
to find its niche
in the Rhythm
of the Hive's Living Breath.

Today my spirit spoke to me through the stone beings.
As they gazed over my life,
the question they asked was not “What did you do?”
but “Were you fully present?”
When each moment, small or large, was born and died,
were you there, breathing,
heart-beating, eyes open,
listening, and receiving
the fullness of what existed to be experienced?
 
Because if you were present, you cannot not have participated.
you cannot not have influenced,
as a stone who knows who she is
creates a space around her that the plants and creatures nestle up against,
and slide and move around.
 
Worms build whole kingdoms beneath the weight of stones.
Lizards and snakes cool themselves in the sweet shade of stones.
Fish find refuge beneath the thirsty lips of boulders,
and a young girl skinny dipping in the rocky canyon
while her father fishes upriver
suns herself on the faces of stones.
The ones huddled in the wet willow womb of the sweat lodge
make their prayers in the heat of stones.
Whole mountains are composed of stones,
and the mineral kingdom stretches out like a deep cup
to hold the energy of all places on this earth in its multi-layered matrix ,
even as forests are cut and animals flee the cities…
 
The stones are the oldest ones.
The stones are the bones of this planet.
The bones make it possible for all to rest, and to shift, to move and gurgle and churn
within their solid embrace.
 
While I am here, I want to be like the stones.
I want to stand firmly in place, in this moment, in each moment in which I find myself.
May I stand upon the platform of Infinite Presence
and may all my actions arise from here,
from the steadiness and sturdiness of stone.
Even as I am cooked in the cosmic, evolutionary oven, and am purified by Light,
may this up-shift be anchored, as clear, sharp, crystalline, diamond,
the Diamond of Ancient, Ageless, Essential Nature,
which is the Home in which all selves of myself dwell...

...And, resting, here, now, in this moment,
in the Home of this Diamond that I am,
steadily wiping clean my foggy lenses and peering out with Eyes beyond Time,
may I touch the world from this place, with this gaze,
knowing the power of my very Be-ing, my very See-ing,
like the quantum physicists who altered reality
simply by providing their undivided attention
to the tiny beings—particles—who, feeling the Eye of God upon their backs,
jumped gleefully into a state of graceful organization.
 
May my Presence on this Earth
be a force of Harmony, Healing, and Grace.
May the knowing of who I am
and where I stand
permeate this body of flesh and blood and nerve.
 
May the salt of my body glow like tiny diamonds of stars.
tuned to the resonance of the  Queen of Diamonds,
who lives
in my Heart of hearts.

​Opening to embodied love is like allowing a warm smooth dagger to pierce us in our most hidden places, freeing what has been wedged in the deep recesses of the history of our bodies, emotions, and spirits...Loss of embodied love is like allowing the winds to blow into the raw and unfettered places newly carved by the Beloved's hand...To lean into Embodied Love is to lean into the cycle of death and life fully, to say YES fully to both, to call on the steadfast courage of being unmade and remade, and to offer oneself FULLY to the fire of the initiation that is DUALITY. This is the pain and the pleasure of laying our souls down upon the ground of the body. This is the arrival upon the shore, strong with the muscles of our long swim, and soft with the tenderness of being salted down to our pure core. The memory of Stillness holds us steadfast to the course. The desire to experience, taste, and touch unity in our cells drives us with intensity to break the ground and become a Force of Form. These two~ the Eternal Calm and the Lightning of Passion~ are not at war with one another. They are in DEEP, REVERENTIAL LOVE with each other. They are bowing back and forth to each other in each, and every moment. ~

​The Eternal Present is not a rejection of the past, nor a denial of the future, but rather a portal to all Time, one in which we can heal our relationship with Time, simply by resting in renewed wonder.
The Eternal Present gains its power from beyond Time, and its simplicity can be enjoyed through the senses, when they are unencumbered by outgrown stories.
The Eternal Present holds each moment in spacious curiosity, creating new pathways of meaning and experience through each fresh encounter with the sensory world.
The Eternal Present is aware that the entire Multi-verse is contained in each particular thing, and that each particular encounter is a unique expression of the Multi-verse conversing with Itself.
What a gift that we can touch, taste, smell, and play within this abundant Rainbow Garden!
Drinking in the world around us, we ask:
​What part of God's body is this?
...And this?
What part of God's body am I....now?
...And now?

Beneath the terror: shame.
Beneath the shame: forgiveness,
and love the color of warm rose,
swaddling my original innocence,
which is radiant gold like the Christ.
 
We are being born now.
Looking out from gold, through rose,
through soft forgiveness, melting shame,
soothing fear.
 
The world’s meanings soften
and loosen, gazing back in innocence
at what gazes out, in innocence.
 
Sensation is simply
sensation.
 
And what is this place?
 
Forgetting, I experience
the raw, nude world,
as a fresh  bridegroom
against whose soft mouth
I open this little mouth,
or a tree full of apples
who seem to wrap my teeth and tongue,
and lavish my throat with frothy juice,
or as the sway of a mother’s arms,
rocking me one way and then the other
as I go through life.
 
In this cradle,
life’s encounters
are the muffled sounds
in the room
as the baby
blinks her eyes
in simple wonder.
 
 

I am peeling away the matrix
with my hands, my heart, my teeth.
Beneath the floor: green moss and cool water.
Behind the walls: a breeze,
smelling of sage and desert flowers,
through which feathers tumble
and land on our keyboards, our desks,
our faces, get caught in our hair.


I pull out all of the plugs where we have been hooked
to the machine whose time is dying.


At first we are like corpses; without the drugs
being pumped through our bodies, we recognize
how withered we have become.
Our souls quiver like frightened animals
whose eyes had to close to bear the weight
of slavery.


We blink and blink in the new light.


Up through the cracks come the waters of creation.
We open our parched mouths
and drink.
And drink.


When we are strong enough to crawl,
we move towards each other,
and towards the trees whose ready arms
have been waiting for us.
It seems they never stopped waiting for us.


Rifling through remnants of the past era of destruction,
we discover they are made of stones, bones and electric rivers,
rivers which can be turned back to feed the mouths of our children,
instead of destroying the children of our enemies.


…How can She ever be lost?
Even in a drama set on covering Her over and tying Her in knots?
She is the fabric of which we are made.

So long as one tiny pebble remains in the middle of the city,
It can be the one spark that, placed in the whirring motor,
stops the works, and, with the power of Kali, breaks
the neck of the demon that would devour its own mother,
our own mother.


The demon who, when he remembers the wellspring
which has made all of his creations possible,
transforms into a cowering animal licking his wounds.


Mama says: “Come rest in my waters, and heal yourself, dear demon.”


For it is only by remembering our Oneness
that we can keep up this dance of difference
With any kind of decency.


Beneath the floorboards: a mossy river.
Behind the light sockets: nests of birds.
The towering poles and buildings bearing wires that zigzag
through streets and over highways…
Look again: a mighty forest of trees.


One half of my heart singing in the remembering
that nothing true is ever, EVER lost,
the other half breaking again and again,
as it witnesses the story of forgetfulness reaching its extreme.


I break and I hold strong,
I fly and I crawl on my bleeding belly with mud in my mouth.
Can these two creatures both be me?


I am amazed at this place we call Duality.


I seem to remember us parting, in the Garden,
so that we could behold ourselves, saying, “Beloved.”
So that we could touch ourselves and be surprised
by Love’s animation of fingers, toes, eyes, mouths.


How did we get here?
How have we come to reject the very Beloved
We pulled from our own ribs?


I am humming with the memory of the Garden.


May I be a bridge.