~Grimoire~

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

Like the smooth skin

Of the blind finger

Feeling it’s way to the message

So it is with The Grimoire

All she can do

Is imagine its thick leather surface

Rippled with gold foil

Balancing its heft

Upon palms of outstretched arm

In center of mind’s eye

All she can do is pull it in close

And take in the spectral aroma

Of woodsmoke and incense

Visioning what

Struggles and twists to become

Such a troubled birthing this has been

Starts and fits and ends

Over and over, trying to complete

Over and over, attempting to download

Conceive

The message

Too large, whipping with tendrils

Of eons and voices and symbol

She can’t even comprehend

Messages

From long ago

This pen and paper attempting

As lightning rod

For a thousand hungry-ghost cloud

Looming, circling, beating

Yearning

To enter,

Yearning

To tell

Wishes

Of hoping

Pleading

Final release

Many lifetimes

Many medicines

Many…evils?

They clamber

Vying for one electric stream

Attempting in such capacity

To fit into one tiny arm

It shakes, it aches

And mind trembles

Finally collapsing

Into blankness

Again

Squeezing her Will

Under quivering hand

She feels, faintly

A loose form

Starting to rise

Again

Perhaps, today

Again

Somehow it will embody

Those gilded edges

That smoke-blessed page

Perhaps, today

Again

It will make it through

But, she shudders

What be its cost, madness?

The price of birth, death?

Will body frame crumble

Leaving only book behind

Switching place of essence

Book to form, scribe to wind?

Only these types of questions

Soothe her while she stares at blank page

That such a channeling

Is really of grand importance

That only gods and demons and

Threats of death and annihilation

That only the battles of all lifetimes

And the resistance to Sacrifice

Again

Can explain

Memory

Memory

Oh mysterious memory

Why do I re-member you?

Why do I only re-member

Some of you

Hidden, fogotten boxes

Once unwrapped

Revealing a universe before?

That one taste…

That one specific sound…

That touch…

Forevermore, inscribed

Why?

Why do you stay?

Why do you linger?

Do you wait, embedded

For us to return?

To re-live

To heal

To release?

Memory

Oh mysterious memory

Do you wait for us

To collectively review

To see the old story

Perhaps ones laden in bone

To reflect

And to re-write?

Or are you simply

A leftover echo

Of primal survival mechanics

What to avoid

What to draw near

How to keep safe

How to

Attack

Memory

Oh mysterious memory

Why do we re-member you?

Why do we only re-member some of

You

Hidden, fogotten boxes

Once unwrapped

Revealing a universe before?

Teach me

Oh mysterious memory

Of why

You stay

Meaning

Meaning

Do we give it all meaning?

Or is there a force, a face, that’s given us trials to grow?

To open, connect

Is it all random

These children born into war and poverty

Others delivered into wise and safe arms of love

Is it all random

Those faced with chronic pain and illness

While others rock and dance and laugh the night away

Is there reason?

To abuse

To murder

To suicide

To heart’s betrayal

To a body’s failure to thrive

To rape

To violence

To natural disasters, homelessness

To the soul’s

Vanishing?

Do I turn left or right

Into bitterness or compassion

Into despair or hope?

Do I ignore

The rage, resentment, the fear

Chanting myself numb

“It’s all good…there’s a reason…there’s a reason…”

Over and over again

As the ache, dull and deep

Throbs

As the room spins

Another day waking

To no further healing?

Do I trust

Or do I wail, sob, scream

Fist to floor, slobbering?

Do I spend my mysteriously appointed immobilizations

Dreaming of better days, pain free nights

Joy…someday?

Or do I collapse into the waves of terror

Fearing, fearing

There is no God

No meaning

That life, like Nature

Does not care who I am or what I’m here to do

Like the impala, ripped apart on the plains

Like the frozen carcass of blizzard’s wake

Like a coyote’s bleeding leg in trap

Never to walk again

Meaning?

Howling, whimpering, straining to reach

But unable

Hoping one from the pack will come

As the skies darken

As the snow begins to fall

Hoping for teeth to chew him out

Care for his irreversible limping

A lifetime ahead

Meaning?

Does the trickster ask

As his lifeforce leaks onto crystalline

Howling into the long, dark, cold and coming night

Is there Meaning?

Is there reason?

Is there a face

A force?

Is there

Meaning?

~writings from dark times

Testing, Testing…1,2,3

Crumpled and tiremarked

A disposable mask flutters across the road

Opened tubes, drop laden cartridges

Overflow receptacles

Another swab, another swirling of saliva

Another

15 minutes

Another, grateful, sigh of relief

Grateful for this privilege, time, communication

Grateful for science

And for possibly true proof

That restrictions will not descend

That health is clear

Possible, only possible

Attempts

To understand

Mysterious illusory possible truths

Ones worth fighting for

Ones worth suspecting for

Ones worth judging for

In three drops

In 15 minutes

All these etiquettes

All these plastic remains

All these flattened, discarded shields

Blowing across highways

Another illness, another industry

Possible, only possible

Sighs of (naive?) relief

Hope

Gratitude

And rumbling paradoxical questions

Of control

Of illusion

Of industry

Of privilege

Of truth.

Questions in

15 minutes,

Waiting.

Grateful,

And questioning.

And testing…

Testing…

1,2,3

Serving From The Abyss

How is it

That this deep, deep yearning

To serve

Can come from such a place

Of Emptiness

How is it

That I am to guide others

If the center that leads

Is of Nothingness–

No form

No vision

No solid

Identity?

How is it

That I am to reach others

For You

If the marketing plan

Requires somethingness to advertise?

How is it

That what seems to be the yearning

To serve in some particular way

Is annihilated by the very source

Of this yearning?

Sometimes I wonder

Whether I’m toeing a tight line

Between dissociation

Of forgetting myself

Why I am here

What I am here to do

What I want to do

As compared

To a state of Emptiness

That so many teachers

Have taught is the Way

Toeing the line

Between diagnosis

And channeling

Or some other

Sacred

Strange

Thing

A Thing

That keeps me forgetting

That keeps me from re-membering

Why I am here

What I am doing here

What I want to do here

What do I want to do here?

Why do I keep

Forgetting?

Tell me

Please

If I am to serve, this yearning

How do I post

How do I gram

How do I module

Something that is…

Nothing?

Something I keep grasping

Just for one moment

And then watch it slipping

Slithering

Evanescent

Away?

Is it a call to presence

To hold space for another

Without any plan?

Carved

And carved

Until presence

Is all I can offer?

Tell me

How does one serve

From the Emptiness

From the Void

From

The Abyss?

Spirits Of Illness

Spirits of Illness

Do you come in service

Or do we ready

For battle

Is it both

Spirits of illness

Do you come to destroy us

Or wake in initiation

Is there a message you carry

Or do you just aim

To lay waste

Spirits of Illness

What is the message

Stay home with the children?

Honor the elders?

Take care of our bodies?

Respect our boundaries?

Go inside and Slow it down?

No wall can separate us?

Or is it

Clear the planet

Lighten the load

Let the trees breathe

The grasses grow

And the Coyotes run wild in the streets

Initiation, Wounded Healers

Tragedy, Victimization

Initiation, Transforming Alchemy

Devastation, Fear Apocalypse

Initiation…Initiation?

Spirits of Illness

Do we find relation

Or do we destroy

Spirits of Illnesss

Plagues, Measles, HIV, Ebola, SARS, Addiction

Spirits of illness

9/11

Spirits of illness

Mass wildfires, lava eruption, flood

Spirits of Illness

Blackouts Blackouts Blackouts

Spirits of illness

Inflammation in our

Breathing

Grieving

Center

Are you another form teaching, preparing

As in the Dream

Do we face you as ally

And learn

How do I stay balanced

In this momentous occasion

Honoring the reflection

The great power of the Death Mother

Yet not willingly succumbing to Her annihilation

May the well ones guide me

May I be guided

Steered

Shown

I put my life in your hands

Spirits of illness

Do you come in service

Or come to destroy me

Is it both

Please show me

I’ve been asking this question

My whole damn life

*Previously published in Pandemic Corona: Poems of Shock, Fear, Realization and Metamorphosis, ed. Pamela Eakins