Old Pain

Tingling

Pin pricks wake

Ankle

Then shoulder

A flurry across breast

The ache, deep and ancient

Starts throbbing

Gluteal

Hovering

Circling

Around root

Root of old

Old patterns

Root of old

Flayed heartskin

Root of old intrusions

Violations

Grievances long thought

Gone

Tingling

Pin prickling

Awake

Searching for those tendrils

Tugging here, there

Responses of pain

Responses of the old

Right where its always been

Sometimes

The spelunking gets so deep

The pain keeps awake, a fasting dreamtime

Tossing and turning

Trying to find a way…away

This body

This dear and sacred body

Lets up eventually

Scabbing over

But dutifully it returns

To encourage again

One more time

Maybe she’ll listen

Maybe we’ll express

Maybe

This time

Our message will get delivered

Heard by elder, tribe

Tingling

Pins and prickling

Emerging from space

Once silent

Once big enough

Now imprisoned

Seeking expression

Nervous tendrils

Waking

Hoping

Can nerves hope?

Can chakras desire?

Can exponentially ancient wounds

Ever really heal?

I feel the tingling

Pinprickling

Waking

Reminding

Re-membering

And hope that this time

Turning towards them

Will finally allow

Hoping this time

Instead of crumbling into

Terrors of porous mistakes

Hoping this time

The container will hold

The screams will release

Hoping this time

The old, weary pain

Accompanied

Psychopomp guiding

Into a new place

Into the distance

Into the great halls, honoring

Beyond

Death

Death

Death comes

Balancing between spheres

The path is solid

Forevermore

Death

Death Doula

Walking her through

Walking you through

Embodied

She lays the linens

The gossamer shroud

And you breathe

Tended by her

By your side

She sings

Takes you deep into earth

Showing brethren

Don’t you see?

Death

Death Doula

Whether writhing malignant mass

Or hovering, grief-laden blade

She meets you

At the crossroads

Where what you were can no longer be

She meets you

With the ritual

She meets you

Where culture failed

She sees your suffering

She holds your suffering

And

She honors the great transition

The great transformation

This very suffering

Begs you to take

The ritual

Where culture failed you

Physical or psyche dismembering

Screaming

Yearning

To be honored

Yearning to be held

Yearning for rites

All the great rites

Dragging us down

Tearing our lives apart

To see

Death

Death Doula

In body

Or in earth

Let her hold you

Through the long journey

Across Abyss

From Beauty

Across the treacherous path

To Victory

Let her hold you

Move forward into utter Darkness

Putrefy

Fall apart

Into her

Humbled

And imaginal soupy

Intelligence

Death

Death comes

Fullness

The face is in the flower

Bee-like, nestled

He says he takes his medicine this way too

Dangling, the seeds are descending

His hand

Lowers them

Towards the lips

Open, waiting

He says to eat them

A different way than past greed

Sensual

The light is warm and tender

He is lowering

The mouth

The face is breathing

Panting

Fear of losing all control

These seeds ambrosia

The height they’ll offer

Warns of the fall

All these protectors

All these fighters

All these soldiers

Cry out

No!

Do not eat the seeds

Oh precious mouth

Oh precious face

You cannot go there

We have been with you

Protecting

For so long

And here you are, safe

The seeds are dangling

The head is swarming

The chaos is echoing

The terror is building

The skin is sweating

The boundaries, shaking

The light is warm and tender

The man

His Earth Pan beingness

Smiles, kindly

And waits

Holding the one

With the mouth

With the face

With the skin

With the chaos

That says no

But wants

So badly

To eat

Seeds

Fullness

Feeling

Seeds

Fullness

Feeling

Fullness

Alive

Deep Below

Thought I’d switch it up this week and share a video poetry readsong. Hope you enjoy :}

Come

From deep

Below

Been

Here

Long

Time

Come from deep below

Go to get the magick

Down

Come from deep below

Been

Here

Long

Time

Come from deep below

She’s wandering, heady

Think she’s got it all

But lo, she kisses not the whole

I am grieving and

Hold

Her

Key

Come from deep below

Been

Here

Long

Time

Come from deep below

Soul, Soul, Soul

My cries will call her home

Go to get the magick

Down, Down, Down

Come from deep below

Been

Here

Long

Time

Come from deep below

Haggard, dripping

Starving,twisting

Beaten, shackled

Refused, judged

Fixed…Or attempted

Turn

Rage

Soul, Soul, Soul

My grief will call her home

Go to get the magick

Down, down, down

Come from deep below

Been

Here

Long

Time

Over

And over

I come from deep below

Been here

I’ve been here

A long

Long

Time”

Finding Her

I am looking for Her

Everywhere

I am searching the cracks

Scouring the dew-dotted webs

Setting out altars

Hoping

She is listening

I am writing Her letters

Soaked in basil and blackberry

Infused with frustration’s tears and spit

Despite great cavernous terrors

That She does not exist

Am looking for Her

Witchy

She’s been down

Deep Below

And has no time to debate

Extremity

Hers is a vast ocean

Enveloping me in broader possibilities

Ones that sparkle with darkness

And light

Together

We stir cauldrons

Track down demons

And listen

Carve unimaginable spaces

For transformation

For transmutation

For scars so ancient, so withered their connections

To be seen

To listen

I am looking for Her

Outside

Inside

Hoping

Wondering if I’m just a crazy bird

For hoping

But all I can do

Is look for Her

Everywhere

Especially in this darkness

Icaros guiding, soothing

Unseen tightrope buckling

Under each terror filled advancement

All I can do

Is look for Her

Wandering

Scraping myself off floors

To Presence

Over and over and over again

All I can do

Is look for Her

Open

And listening

Core

Swirling galaxies

Tendrils snaking lifetimes

Whipping across unfathomable

Wormholes connecting

Astral hands reaching

Twisting, turning

Helix merging

Align

Slipping through cellular cracks

Sluicing red waterways

Embedding

Releasing

In primal screams

This

Terror?

All of them

Wrinkled

Fragile

Body

Eons

Lifetimes

Wisdom paths

Devastation

Murderer

Saint

Pedophile

Beggar

Insanity

All these times

All these directions

All these passions

Leading down greasy dark alleys

Into temples

Sparkle

Guiding sensual

Unlocking

A wizened old woman

Sits in her hut

Snowy tundra blusters

And she knows

That they know

She knows

Creator Nature

Mystery

Orchestrates

Community invites

True power

And so she waits

She knows

In her

Core

This is the way it is

Shaking her head

Grieving

As the stellar tendril tugs

Opening portals mind eye

She sells

Flaying before masses

For witness

For approval

For identity

For…service?

Tears and heavy beating weightedness

Draw her breath

Into

Into this Core

Of galactic swirling

Potentialities

Of that which she knows

With all of this trapped and terror

With all of this

Thin humanoid skin

Stretching

Screaming

Billions of fractals dismembering

Clawing

This

An unshakeable knowing

An unshakeable listening

An unshakeable stillness

An art

Of falling apart

And letting it come

She knows

She floats in the portals

Of illusion and Nadir

This core

It is nothing

It is something

It is

Everything

And so

One gleaming eye

On callow fretting threads

She waits

Mayapple/American Mandrake

image from–https://mbgna.umich.edu/native-plant-of-the-week-mayapple/

I give of my fruit, willingly

You may partake this, of me, without harm

Beware my deep roots

Those that connect to primal realms

My underworld brethren, loamy elven sprites

Like they

I shall strike you down

For the wariness I harbor in my core

Of human hands

Tend me

And extract gently, with ritual

My seeds

A violent contraction

Will succumb you

Your innards seizing

I, such a “pretty” plant

So tender, so fragile

Will

Strike

You

Down

Eat of my fruit,

But sparingly oh greedy human

As even this gift

Holds potential for

Your suffering

Respect me

And all of the hidden

Seemingly

Inert

Ones

You pass by in the forests

Remember,

We are only cultivating you with our outbreath

So that one day

You may feed

Our great, connected body

They

Hidden immigrant terrified tracking

Sweat laced panic attack medical trauma heaving

Dreams pummeling minds ancestors warning

Chemo receiving drips poisonous cure too fragile

Pregnant mothers fearing, special needs screaming

Orange survivors guaranteed

Some with flies crawling on mind walls

Tender bodies

Guided hearts

Wait and seers

Those, perhaps, with grandparents, now gone mad

Speaking of A 1966 Study

Of the Vulnerability

Of Subway Passengers in New York City

To Covert Attack with Biological Agents

Fearing, wanting to trust

Wanting to be a “good American”

But haunted

Straddling medians

Betwixt extremists chanting what cannot be known

Absolutely

Tender layers between only parts exaggerated

These are the They

Who should be denied healthcare

Who should be denied hospital beds

Who should be denied insurance

Who should be forced and mandated to ignore

Pro or Anti

Perhaps to

See these people

Perhaps to

Listen to these They

The complexity

Perhaps to realize exclusion

Co-ersion

Resentment

And dismissal

Will never move the needle

Rain Memories

Ironically

I don’t remember rain

All throughout my childhood years

The first drop

The first torrential storm

The element that might have given me solace

In such turbulent cesspools of emotion

Not a trace.

However

The first memory that does occur

Peeking up through layers of dutiful barrier

Is that night I cared for him

The soon to be dead man

In a garage

Soothing, comforting

Evanescent beast

Drip dropping

Water flowing, framing

This glowing palace.

Comes the one

My frail hand

I’ve frozen it, bony, in time

Against window

It is waiting in cold fall

Drip dropping

Outside this glowing psychiatric facility

Cold silence and desperation

Between me and her

Waiting

Drip dropping

Hoping

I’m sick enough.

Muninn the Memory

Delivers another

Of harried, frustrated

Obsessive sweaty efforts

Running through collegial redwoods

Drip dropping

Towering canopies

Too crazed to notice

Running from

And towards

My secret undoing.

Funny that

The next one he delivers

Drip drops

Into mind

Are sequential flashes:

Swollen cabin gulleys

Hawaiian A-frame mesh

Walls piercing winds wet chilled skin

Crashing violence on black razor edges

Tool howling.

All of soggy Portland

Is just a blur

Why?

Why is that, mystery of Memory?

Years later

Another arrives

Ironically enough

A garage

Only this time I’m the one tended

Teetering on the edge

Wooed back by wizard

Chaos on floors

Sawdust on frames

Creating.

A drizzle

Outside ye olde bohemian cart

The turkish coffee served

He sits under the umbrella

Anubis and soft glow framing

Wind whistling

Fairy lights sparkling

Drip

Dropping.

Downed power lines

Rivers wild

Refusing to stay off imaginary cement borders

Fear rising as wheels skid

Submerged

Drip

Dropping

Wipers sloshing

Blurred anxiety

Breath and prayers.

And then

They are gone

I rack my brain

The bird does not deliver much more

So I sit back in wonder

At why these ones

And only these ones

Remain

Oh liquid droplets

Condensed from atmospheric vapor

Why is it only these I remember of you

Such power and beauty

So many days of my life

Rain

Why does the bird deliver

Such sparse notes

Of our relation

Of our

Rain memories

Sister Fire

From Tarot of The Spirit, by Pamela Eakins

On this dark day

With no seeming causation

The young priestess

Heads out to the cliff

Cloudforms surround her

Threatening to stop her

But still

Staff in hand

She sets out on the path

Barefoot

With ceremonial gown

And cape

Hair billowing in the wild wind

She continues

She feels the fine particles

Pressing against her soles

Sandy bits rough between toes

Cool air caressing lashes

She feels Her

She hears Her, too

In the distance, the shrill cry of Hawk

Pierces the air

Vibrating

She is moved forth

She does not yet know all that can destroy her

All that can decimate her

All that can

Bring

Her

Knees

Fresh and dewy

Her excitement for life

Flames within

On this dark day

I remember

Her