Initiation: A Spoken Word Podcast

Greetings! Just wanting to share that I have begun to pay attention to the part of me that really wants to share my poetry verbally and with music accompanying it. There are only a few poems recorded on the Anchor podcast site, but I aim to add more each week. I also aim to use my own music versus the canned, but for now its pretty groovy to have such an easy option. If you are interested in tuning in, the site is below and I will also be linking at the end of my written posts if there is an associated recording. Enjoy if it aligns!

https://anchor.fm/raven417

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It starts with an idea

A giggle

A smile

She thinks of ways to capture, describe

She thinks of the simple joy

Of sharing

Or perhaps

She thinks

Her ideas, profound

Healing, helping

Needed

Yet underneath

A shadow, nervously paces

Does this not grow at the root of things?

Acceptance by tribe?

Will she be run out

Shamed

Ostracized to empty, dry deserts

Hung from barren branches

Left to rot

Picked apart by beak and claw?

Or will she be welcomed, celebrated

Will she

In this big bad world

Have the networks

To survive

Shallow

Yearning for your hearts

But ultimately, it’s reason

Just another version

She’s a puppet

To ancient, gossamer feelings

Mycelial

Connect me

The desires are primal

The desires are real

She’s posted, laughing

But

After a moment

One moment

A breath

The Silence…

Now

The pacing

Her racing

Heart

Begins

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**If you’d like to check out my first endeavors with creating a podcast with my poetry find it here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/BiLo7d1s5sb

Imaginary

What the hell am I doing here

With these see-thru hands

She asked herself this question

Over and over again

Imagining some day

She’d actually feel real enough

To know the answer

Class after class after class

Accolade after accolade

And rarely, another’s skin to confirm

Always

She came back to this feeling

This question

This ephemeral evanescent vapor

Her mind and body seemed to be

What am I doing here

With these see-thru hands

She asked herself this question

Over and over and over again

Imagining some day

She’d actually feel real enough

To know the answer

Magical Child

She came into this world

Full of dreams

Fairies in the concrete

Spirits in the bog

Images on the screen encouraged her

Everything around her was alive

Except, that is

For her mother

Now that was a strange blip in the equation

She

Her mother

Was dead

Well, not really

She walked and talked and stuff

But the light

The light

Was gone

There was a hollow

Inside of her

Something even the most powerful wizard

Could not reach

But even this

Became part of the fairy tale

The sleeping dragon, the Dark Witch

For awhile

She made it all

Make sense

At decade’s crossing

Theta slowly fading

Suddenly the whole world became grey

The fairies retreated

The spirits, unable to compete

All grew quiet in that magical land

As if a veil was lifted…

Or perhaps, applied…

And she was left

With the cold reality

Of heaving

Bearing the grief, the suffering, the hopelessness

Of everything around her

Instead

Now it didn’t take long

For the child to grow sleepless

And searching

Yearning

She found a portal

To make it all go away

A portal of daring

A portal of transcendence

A portal of rebellion

A portal of

Maybe if I just do this

I will see them

I will feel them again

Searching

Yearning

Numbing

Tripping

Starving

Wrathchild

Probing for a portal

Maybe I will see them again

This magical child

Born with dreams in her eyes

Searching

Probing

Doing whatever it took

To feel them, again

To be on that edge, again

To pierce into that world, again

To not have to carry, anymore

That magical child

She, with a fervor

Aimed

Even

If they said

It would kill her

Class

The time is now

The place is here

There are teachers all around you

Lessons unfolding in the flat tire

The nightmare

The deep love

The lost job

The constant nagging pain in the root of things

You

Are already in the class

No need to sign up for fancy trainings

You live in a training of how to unlearn old trainings

Just by waking up

Breathing

Stepping out into your day

You are already in the class

If you wish, you can continue

Spending spending to get somewhere you’re not

Entertaining, and for some, necessity

But remember

You

Are already in the class

The time is now

The place is here

There are teachers all around

(And inside)

Of you

Listen

Take notes

Don’t go back to sleep

Everything

Is speaking

For you

Sounds of the Abyss

Droning, rhythmic

Stretching out the empty in my mind

Turning, molding, wailing

These unspeakable chasms that linger within

Rooting prone-to-wither tendrils

Magnetic, pulling under

Into deep soil, reminding

Remembering

And sly smiles

They creep onto my mask

Familiar only to my intersecting horror

The Darkness, arises such strange joy

These days, taken medicinally

And often, alone

Sometimes through these fingers

I’m grateful

And always reminded

Of the sonic elixirs

That freed me, held me

Throughout the heartbreaking, terrifying

Stripping, unbecoming

The solve et coagula

Time and time again

These sounds

These sounds of the Abyss

My Abyss

Plucking

Reminding

Laughing

Bones

~image of National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration property in Pacific Grove, CA

The bones of my grandmother

The bones of my grandfather

The bones of the Esselen

The bones of the Ohlone Costanoan

The bones of the Rumsen

Land

This land tilled, taken

Our ancestors still lie, together

Coastal, beauty

Country club laughter

Ignorance

Of what lies beneath

Hundreds of years ago

Spanish grants

Relocating the rooted

Tortured and “cultured”

In sandy walls deemed holy

Still I remember the echoing bells

And fascination of child eyes

Strolling

Through the mission

On Sunday afternoons

Now

Called back here

By tribe, ally

To these same sandy dunes

Hundreds of years later

The bones are in danger

Standing on

Contested land

Broken treaties, how does this still go on?

I lean in

Across lichen laced barriers

Spirits of Hummingbird, Yarrow

Speaking

Don’t act

Just listen

Don’t act

Just listen

Don’t act

Just listen

Whose voice?

My grandmother

My grandfather

Ancient peoples?

My Self?

Who calls me?

Who speaks to me?

Can I ever really know?

Ancestors

Well and healed ancestors

Why am I called back to this land

Where I look to the right

Under manicured lawn

European privileged kin

And to the left

Through chainlinks

The untouched dunes in danger

With your bones

With their bones

With our bones

How do my bones

Holding me tall

Tend

The waves crash

And I pray

And silence is all there is

As I stand here

On top of bones

Original bones

Beneath Cypress-studded vastness

Ancient grounds

That may not last

Much longer

Do I really

Just

Listen?

This poem was inspired by the recent contested sale of the NOAA building in Pacific Grove, CA. For more information on this issue you can go here: https://www.change.org/p/jimmy-panetta-rededicate-the-noaa-building-in-pacific-grove-for-the-public-benefit/u/30678313

Witch

Four hundred years later

The General appears

At first taken by her, giddy

He leaves gifts and poetry at her door

Not especially interested, but clarified

She nods kindly, shows him the gate

Her boundary

And sees him on his way

Yet she senses something coming

Murky tendrils weaving, invisible

As he looks back, a subtle leering

Rippling the quantum, rippling

She’s wondering

Whether to prepare or forget

Defense has long worn out its usefulness

She puts

Her sword down

Over time

The notes keep appearing

The gifts somehow making their way

Across the gate, the line

Subtle,

Cloaked in saccharine

She realizes the need

She stands at her doorstep

She waits for him

And when he appears

She looks into his dream-filled eyes

And draws out

Her blade

She clarifies

She slices through

The thick projective miasma

She points its tip at each stake

Of her picket

She calls him

To look

Woozy, smirking

His gaze wafts playfully

Down

He sees it, eyes widening

This gate

As if for the first time

And realizes his slumber

Embarrassed, he steps back

And away

She remains

Watching

As his body pivots and strides

Fake confidence towards his city

This time the leer

Has turned cold

Something’s coming

She knows

Next morning sunshine

Greets her

A soft fur winding against her leg

And she walks to the gate, curious

Of the note tacked upon it

She pulls off the memo

And feels its searing

She drops it

Watching it fall to the cool earth

Crouching, wary

She reads the now dampening parchment

Not too surprised to see

WITCH

Emblazoned upon it

And lengthy explanations

Of her wily ways

Of deceiving and be-spelling

Saddened, she knows him

This General’s story

Of tending his own Anima

Cruel and illusory

Suicidal and death dealing

His own loving

Entwined with the torture he served

This story, it keeps repeating

It is his, it is hers

She pierces the memo

The tip of her sword saves her

She brings the burning accusal

Walking, sword outstretched down the roadway

To a small clearing in the wood

Here a brook babbles

And hawks sing

And she sets a space

And she calls to the wise ones

And she gathers the waters

And she hums

Here, she immerses

The age-old fires

Of trauma, projection and cruel self-story

Into rock’s crevice, holding

Waters trickling from her hands, heart

Waters holding, cleansing for a better way

Washing her past, his

Tending the blood wounds seeking

Mouths hungry to be healed

She offers, she offers

Iron Goddess of Mercy

She sits

And waits

Letting the sunlight peeking sparkle

Upon the cleansing pooltide

With the pain

And sorrow dissolving within

Knowing her hands, her mind

Indeed offer healing

To re-member

To re-story

To let the old die

To create space

For the new

Hawks circling

Cries piercing the air

Holding her

Sonic, salving the lineages

With their love

She knows not

What may come

Of the General

But dirt beneath her toes

And wind against her skin

She holds clearly

What she knows

She is

Cold Case

~Cold Case~
By raVen lakins

Thirty years ago
A gun flew through the
Night air
Wiped clean
The grip
Still warm
From frenzied
Discharge

Its body
Landing amongst
Innocent carousel brambles
Hidden, hidden

Like a ghost
He’s gone
Although surely
Something pierced through
Surely something
Ripped open his aorta
And led to a mother
Kneeling
Keening
Roaring
In a cold hospital atrium
As the koi flipped and swished
In its chlorinated pool

Like a ghost
He’s gone
Both perpetrator
And perpetrated
Poof

Is
It
Just
A
Dream?

Thirty years later
Still, no one’s found him
And I wonder if he’s living
A stunted, child possessed
I wonder if he holds this
Hidden, hidden
Or if he’s died
By his own hand
Never being
Truly found

Hidden, hidden
Like my deepest rage
Like my
Orphaned
Hollow
Resistant
Aorta

Like this
Heavy
Heaving
Grief

Thirty years later
It remains cold
Still no one’s found him
And the Wolfman’s
Ashes
Have gone
To the wind

~Written for “Justice: Sisters of The Holy Pen” edited by Pamela Eakins

Spoken Word version available at: https://anchor.fm/raven417/episodes/Cold-Case-e1nlm2s

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.