Good Days, Bad Days

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On the good days

I rise up, triumphant

Purposeful, sure there must be some reason

Hopeful I will find a way

On good days you might hear me chanting:

I am the Spellbreaker!

And this is the Order of the Zig Zag Path

Weary, broken, resigned

If you see me, you are here

I hold you

And rip the webs from your

Forgotten

Longing

Heart

Will find a Way!

On bad days

Those days where I see

From my horizontal position

The sun shining against the waffling leaves

Where sweet birdsong caresses my ear

And apparent peace surrounds me

Where I have everything

I really need, most than 75% of humanity

And yet, I cannot stand, walk, or sit

Without daggers of lightning

Casting me down

On bad days

I lay there

Trying to understand

Trying to find meaning

Trying to be grateful

Navigating the paradox of external beauty

And the world inside of searing flame

On bad days

I feel the bombs dropping

All along my thighs

Deep in my sacrum

As I let the illusion of American peace

Wash over and around me

I feel the starving, screaming

Terrorized children

Trapped in the crumbling building of my body

Next to the dismembered parent

Panicked and weeping for something to make sense

When any semblance of safety

Has been crushed and torn away and

Killed

On bad days

I try to imagine

What it might be like to see through one of their eyes

And if this pain is a metaphor for the wars

Waged daily, the grief and rage

With all control lost

And nowhere for her to call home

On bad days

It seems so selfish in light of her horror

But I find myself asking

What will I do today?

Trying to bring joy

In the midst of such unbearable torture

How do I quell her?

She’s screaming so loudly

Her sobbing, heaving rips me

From attention to anything

On these days

When I wake up already in pain

Lying and standing, all of it hurts

I cannot plan

Nothing beyond

Presence is possible

Knowing, like her

That the day

Will be taken breath by breath

Possibly with crying, weeping

Probably with anger

Hopefully with self-compassion

And care

What will I do today

What will I do tomorrow

What will I do with my whole life

Trying to

Not terrify myself

Trying to

Not terrify her

Our question, looking out into the distance

Of a life lived breath by breath

No guarantees

Were there ever really any?

What will I do with my whole life

I can’t help but go there

When I wake up already in pain

Seeing through her eyes

Where war is all around

Permeating everything she knows

But on the good days?

You’ll find me chanting:

I am the Spellbreaker!

And this is the Order of the Zig Zag Path

Weary, broken, resigned

If you see me, you are here

I hold you

And rip the webs from your

Forgotten

Longing

Heart

Come little one

We will find a way

Let me hold you

In the space where everything is nothing

And there is no certainty

And where you cannot understand

Why there’s so much killing

And pain never ending

Neverending

Never ending

Let me hold you

Right here, now

Without promises

Except my arms, around you

That spell

That you are all alone

Let me

Hold you

As the bombs rip it all apart

On the good days

I rise up, triumphant

Purposeful, sure there must be some reason

Hopeful

We will find a way

True Horror

Photo by Yessi Trexud83dudcf8ud83eudd96u2728ufe0f on Pexels.com

“This is a story about a person who is walking in the world with chronic pain…

This is a story about a person who gets unexpectedly struck down by intense pain flares and is incapacitated over and over again with no visible reason…

This is a story about a person who doesn’t know if they believe in goddesses or gods or anything for that manner, if there is meaning to anything at all anymore…but who is at their rope’s end and decides to appeal to Hekate for her assistance…

This is a story about a person who keeps getting strange symbols/encounters in their everyday life, dreams, etc wondering if any of it is Hekate responding, if she is real, if anything can help…

This is a story about real horror–living with chronic pain, feeling trapped in this body, with no answers, not knowing if it will ever get better, if there is any meaning to it all, grasping at straws, knowing not what may come…”

The above is a description of the storyline for a music video myself and my guitarist are just about to submit for a Halloween contest (original music and amateur filming by the both of us) and I will post it here when it is ready. Wish us luck!

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Featured

A Letter to The Doc

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*This one’s real, folks. I’m a pretty hardy bird, but this back pain is terrifying me. It was all I could do today to cut and paste this little bit of my world here. Thanks for reading and sending some good juju if it feels right!

Hiya Doc

I am wondering

if you can guide me

in how to receive emotional support

for this back/nerve pain issue.

The intense pain is happening again,

and I am finding it difficult to walk

and do my daily activities…

including going to my job.

I am taking Advil and it helps a little,

but I am so afraid.

Especially because these symptoms

have “no visible cause,”

and I don’t seem to be doing anything

to aggravate the issue…

it just comes on unpredictably.

I am waking up more often than not

dreading the day

and dealing with a lot of fear

about how I am going to support myself

if I can’t work,

not to mention

do the things I love.

Any suggestions are welcome,

thank you.

P.S. Could you also try to talk to Hekate?

Tell her it’s a bit much

Memorial Day

“The Scalp Ceremony laid to rest the Japanese souls in the green humid jungles,

and it satisfied the female giant who fed on the dreams of warriors.

But there was something else now, as Betonie said:

it was everything they had seen–

the cities, the tall buildings, the noise and the lights, the power of their weapons and machines.

They were never the same after that: they had seen what the white people had made from the stolen land…

Every day they had to look at the land, from horizon to horizon, and every day the loss was with them;

it was the dead unburied, and the mourning of the lost going on forever.

So they tried to sink the loss in booze, and silence their grief with war stories about their courage, defending the land they had already lost.”

Thanksgiving, Gratitude and Whatever

Thanksgiving, gratitude

Whatever

This week

I sit and remember

The litany of what I have and hold

That so many will never see

The warmth

The shelter

The creamy bittersweet reishi-infused liquids cascading over tongue

The lack of pain

Or extreme imprisonment

The solitude

The health

The vehicle to transport me into varied realities of my choosing

The consciousness

To transform pain to blessing

Almost instantaneously

The wise, deep, cackling crone

Deep within, everpresent

The guides

The teachers

The plentiful food on my plate

The laughter

The sunrise

The immediate access to webbings of knowledge

The freedom to say

“I want a relationship

Where we’re aware and committed to

Working on our shit together”

And the self-love to not care

If the listener runs screaming haha

The voice

The sound

The art that now can come through unobstructed

Through this vessel

The witnesses, holding deeply

The love, the carved out

Empty full compassion pulsing

But

Whatever

What lies beneath

On this day of great trespassing

Aware of that too

Not gratefully bypassing

The millions of original beings

Paved over, passed over

Starved, forgotten, shackled

Extinguished, tricked, lied to

Forced to psychically submit

Gutted and soul starved

Healing the Soul Wound

Do we now see it?

Can this day be of gratitude

That we might just be seeing it

Grateful that the festering wounds

Repressed rage, bigotry

Unspoken for centuries

Are being released

Sometimes uncouth, often offensive

But released

Like Wednesday Addams, smiling

Match in hand

Thankful we can burn that old shit to the ground?

Thankful

We may be seeing the People

The human and non-human People

These beings, given Voice

Rising up

Transforming?

But

Whatever

Giblet laden gravies

Shimmering, reverberating

From distant relative argument

Over recent propositions

And how Sally should have never bought that car

And did you hear the price of gas

And how hard it is to build anything anymore

Without those codes gauging you

Lalala dancing words on aching surfaces

While Sally vomits in the bathroom

While Uncle Jim hides in the car

Taking another hit

To make it through

Whatever

Both eyes open

To my extreme Wealth

In contrast to many

As well as the bowed down

Hoping, praying, singing

To our seeing

To our healing

To our waking

Grateful

Thankful

Whatever

The Soul Wound

The Dance

There is a part

That wants to lay it all out before him

In fresh bloomings

Blow by blow

Intensity of the path she’s led

Situation after situation

Violation after violation

Allowance after allowance

Twisted shreds and fallouts

Visceral evidence of the place she stands

There is a wild, unbridled force

That wants to see his eyes

To feel his heart

To know his Truth

In the face of the litany

In the face of the pain

To see if he turns

To see if he shudders

To see if he

Stays

Hanging by slippery threads

On this fire escape ladder

It’s a long way down

If she surrenders to the fall

Scrambling

Anxious

Terror

Old, tattered parts come forward

Protect or die!

Get it all over with, now

Show the portal he’ll enter

See his choice

With no delay

See if he’ll stay

Hoping he’ll go

To calm these demons

This, of course, is such a metal way

Teeth dripping saliva

And balls to the wall

Go hard or go home

This part wants to live it

Speak it

Shove it

These rumblings have been waiting

These rumblings designed

To push away

And yet

Hidden, ephemeral

There is this other, more gentle force

Gentle, but not weakened

Gentle, but not naive

Gentle, and Knowing

Who appreciates

The Dance

She wants to unpeel, slowly

Revealing layer by layer

Watching his eyes

Feeling his breath

Tuning into the particles

As the skins gradually fall away

Microcosmic realities

Dancing, dreaming

Mysteries touching

At eonic speed

She is an old part

She is a deep part

The one who wants to witness his music

Deep bass resonance on golden crisscross strings

Who wants to hold the gentle fierce line

Of looking for hours into

Trailing light tendrils

Along shivering surface

Stepping back from this Mystery

Allowing space

A roaring, intimate silence

To hold the shimmering portals

Of beauty

And pain

Yet to become

She is an old part

She is a wise part

She is a deep part

This smiling-eyed Dakini

Will She have voice in the great trembling?

Will She stand, in her Love, gleaming?

Will She cradle the demons

While making room for the Other?

This time

The wildness

The fierceness

Channeled not to push away

But to slowly

Gently

Fiercely

Pull them into

The Dance

Pain Body

There was one thing you said

(It actually pissed me off at the time)

That I now see is true

“There’s such an intense pain-body around you”

I dismissed it

As your rationalization, jab

For why I didn’t want to be involved

A unicorn dancing once more

In a loveless matrimonial tie

While perhaps that’s correct

While perhaps a wise woman sensing

The statement you hoisted

That statement is true:

Like so many

Have an enormous, unexplainable field

An invisible armor, always at the ready

To attack

Anything that comes in too close

And reminds of unconscious catastrophy

Its hairs bristle, teeth expose

Protecting, protecting

Unable to manage, primal

Mind goes murky, tongue ties

Frustration sets in

As I feel the rage of eons

Simmering, thrashing in my field

She roars, silent

Recounting unintelligible

Trauma chants

Pushing like the crown

Too large to exit the canal

Nowhere to go

Wailing

(External trained and unrevealing)

Against her ancestral cage

To hold and dismantle these plates

Requires more

And to this point

I’ve found nothing

I don’t want to be your mistress

Your fill-in, rebound lay

This same repeating pattern

Pulling me into its spiral

To learn over and over again

I bump against it, attempting

And am taken down repeatedly

I back away

I slither

Away from this gigantic roaring hoarde

Ignoring, avoiding

In my temple

Of ritual and aloneness

Pretty good

At controlling

This pain body activation

Only marginally triggered by passersby

But when You come in close

When you completely step over Her line

(Most just avoid Her quills)

Here I am

Aware of Her pulsing, raging, fiery breath

Dominating and confusing reality

Taking over

Emanating miasmic sludge

My power lost, understanding decimated

Head hung low

Cup clanking on prison steel

Each time

She’s here waiting for me

For You

This pain body, hovering, enmeshed

Ironically

I’ve attended others’ for so long

But Her? Rarely do I hold Her, fully

Explore Her, listen to Her

How could I?

Like the Void, She’s massive and yet elusive

Nothing’s prepared me for this task

I stay safe, in patterns and routines

Of nun-monkhood

While She waits, simmering

Simmering

This Pain Body

When You come in close

When You completely step over Her line

(Most just avoid Her quills)

Here I am

Aware of Her pulsing, raging, fiery breath

Dominating and confusing reality

Taking over

It’s true

A Ritual Of Death

Oh Great Ones

Well and healed lineages from Beyond

Help me, help me

To bring Death

Death to the old way

Death to the outworn patterns

Carving catabolic caverns in my heart

To the demons, circling

Ripping quivering potential

To shreds

O Great Ones

Well and healed lineages from Beyond

Help me craft, by candle

A ritual of their Death

A ritual of honor

Of the many ways they’ve served

Of the protection, shielding

I’ve needed for so long

The Old Ones, shrouding

I require you no more

It is time

Help me

Craft ritual of their sacred slaying

Psychopomps, I call you

To guide them Home

Beyond this body

Standing now, in safety

Oh Great Ones

Well and healed lineages from Beyond

Help me line the altar with silver blessings

To spread the path with dark kisses and heart

Sword gleaming, turning

Sending, parting

Across and through the veils

Help me

Help me let them

Help me let them die

Help me, release, return, unemcumber

These loyal soldiers

Give them honorable Death

So that I

May Live

Oh Great Ones

Well and healed lineages from Beyond

I am ready

I am willing

Like a great tree,

Sad to see its cloaking

Release

Sail

Fall

Die

Transform

Sad to see

This turning

Of such loyal, long time protectors

But knowing

Knowing

The time has come

Death Lodge

How shall we begin?

We begin

At the end

The end of all which needs to die

The end

Of the beginning

She doesn’t stare straight at me

But I know, I know

She’s calling

Pay attention, She says

It is time

To die

Now I’ve heard this before

She’s no stranger in these parts

But as always, when She speaks

I listen

Such an odd concept

To have to die

To live

To have to let go of it all

In order to truly embody

Listening, I’m listening

But I

Am confused

So many layers already shed

What more do I have to release?

The traditional path

Identity, belongings, desires

Already decomposing miles back

On this Wanderer’s road

So I ask Her, humbly

As I accept my place in the Death Lodge

What else is there to lose?

And of course

I know, I know

There is always another layer

Hiding

What then, is this layer

I cannot drum it up from my mind

I look around me blankly

And the only thing I can do

Is ask

The only thing I can do

Is listen

The only thing I can do

Here in this Death Lodge

Is open to the Way

The Way hiding

The tendrils grasping

The deep and precious rootlets

That don’t want to be seen.

Way beneath, in this colonized earth

Lurks these questions

Lurks these answers

Lurks these ancestral memories

Traumas

Waiting

Here in the Death Lodge

Cailleach laughing

She tells me not to worry

She tells me, simply

To ask

To listen

And to begin

~Image https://www.elitarotstrickingly.com/blog/the-tarot-of-eli-the-druid-craft-tarot-key-13-death-and-the-thoth-tarot-atu depicting “Death” from The Druid Craft Tarot by Philip Carr-Gomm.

~Questing~

Vision

Vision, Quest

Vision Questing for a Vision

Crying

Crying, Quest

Crying Questing for a Vision

Fasting

Fasting, Quest

Fasting Questing for a Vision

Fasting

Fasting?

Does this shadow hold the keys?

Full participation

In village witness

Ceremonial holding

Mythological re-weaving

Does this shadow hold the keys?

Far off in dusty deserts

This rite beckons

But not now, not yet

For now, it is receiving

Receiving

Receiving, Quest

Receiving as Questing for a Vision

Fullness

Fullness, Quest

Fullness Questing for a Vision

Sitting with waves of terror

Receiving, not fasting, cracking open

Feeding, ceremony

On wild lands, hawk and vulture witness

Sitting out, sitting in

Circle, Utiseta

Utiseta, faring forth

Journeying, singing ancient emblems

Into Winds

With fullness, receiving

With pleasure, receiving

With sacred witness, receiving

Midnight forests holding me

Sitting out

Taking in

Singing out

Receiving

Fullness

Receiving

Whispers

Receiving

Lightning

Vision

Questing