emergence

dancing through darkness.
stomping oppression.
slicing through repression.
i am homecoming.
wolves, go away.
little red riding hood is here to stay.
she's got a wolf mask for wilding the body home.
she's got a basket of treasures from the deep dark places.
she's wholing.
she's healing.
she's transforming.
she's powerful.
and
emerging from the depths.

it's been a long journey.
it feels good to come home.
to the self again.

no more dying.
no more trying.
do or do not...there is no try.
thank you yoda.
thank you brook.
thank you eleanor.
thank you grandfather.
thank you teachers.
thank you friends.
thank you stacey
for going the distance
and remaining true
to the path of authenticity
to the path of the warrior
to the path of the feminine
to the path of the heart.
welcome home, baby. welcome home.

leaving the bellly. returning to the underworld.

it has been one month plus since writing. i've been inside the belly of a wolf that i love. he may have been inside my belly too. we digested each other, plain and simple. i felt him intimately and he felt me intimately. in two months, straight to the core. straight to the heart. and straight to the broken fissures and cracks. spelunking is like that...one, two, three, jump!

i know the story. alice falls down the rabbit's hole. persephone gets yanked and sleeping beauty goes to sleep. reading between the lines, it's the part in the story where transformation needs space. it's the part in the story where psyche and eros part. their parting seems to be the most tragic adventure yet to be heralded. but it's an old, ancient story, and it will continue to play itself out in new forms. whether i like it or not. psyche goes underground to persephone. for the sake of aphrodite and love. she must journey alone. eros fled. his form was glimpsed when it was supposed to remain secret. the hot wax dripped on his arm. it was psyche's fault. her curiosity led to their separation. his restrictions were kind of strange. love's curiosity compelled their story to shift...so that eros could take a time out, and so that psyche could take a time out. we do not know if she will survive the difficult tasks given to her by the goddess of love and beauty. it's time for her to do some deep work. that's the way the story goes. and grows. do it alone she must.

and eros...it doesn't really say. he'll maybe reveal his voice in song. or art. that would be nice.

so. psyche went to the underworld a couple nights ago. it was the task that was given to her by aphrodite. she discovered a new version of herself was waiting for her below...the moon and the sun...

you will notice that the little fox appears in between psyche's moon image. he's the invisible glue that keeps psyche together with the spirit of an eaglevulture. theh spirit of the eagle vulture brings new life and takes away that which is no longer needed. it is taking a part of her brain out that has had a repeating tape.

her sun is a strong kachina. a bulldeerbird kachina. truth is the medicine. it is in the exposed bones. it is raw. it is piercing like his eyes. it is true.

the heart of a cave

it is 600 million years old. it hangs in the belly of a cave. it takes 100,000 years to grow one inch.

caves are subterranean places. there is a crack on the outside. an explorer went spelunking with a candle and an 80 foot rope. he discovered this. curiosity discovered this.

i think of miners and the deep places on the earth where people dig for precious resources. the resources in this womb are well contained. we are not allowed to touch or take. only to see and wonder.

crystal formations take the shape of coral, sea anemones and seaweed. once this too was an ocean. an ocean dried up in the center of america. 600 million years of giving birth to a heart.

i go spelunking without consciously being aware of why. there are dark places inside my psyche that i am curious about. i know that the shadows on the wall are just that: shadows. i know that the heart is waiting for me here too.

legends are made because of this. myths are grown because of this. i am made because of this.

the canyon project

Sometimes we get to the black canyon. It takes time to get there. I went the long way around, circumambulating the circumference.

I arrive at night. It is blackness and a bowl of stars. I don't yet see the edges but I can feel them. They make sleep feel new as if I will fall into dreams I've not yet experienced. I'm in the universe watching meteors fall from sky. I learn the language of the constellations. I witness Jupiter's ribbons across his belly. I lose my language for awhile. And then I sleep. I dream black dreams. They are not permanent and they do indeed breathe.

I wake up to sunrise, two baby does and a mother deer. They quietly lead me to the grove of oak trees. I go further and further beyond what is familiar. I come to an edge I've not yet experienced. I come to the most extreme canyon abyss in America. It drops and so does my heart. It's aptly named 'black canyon'. It is appropriately dangerous. I know that one wrong step and it will be the last step ever. I also know that the right steps will lead me further to knowing that edges --despite their danger, are exquisitely sexy. They are natural. And true. they speak honestly about time carving stone carving story carving sky carving gaps carving rivers carving mountains carving me. If sky could speak I imagine he would tell me to simply breathe.

I don't want to fall. Nobody does. I'd rather fly. Either way, sky catches me and lets me go again. I'm different with each breath. I feel both bound and free most of the time. just like how i feel at the edges. at the center i find my stillness. i always return to what i know best. stillness. quiet. It just is. The edges lead me to my center. Always. At the center of this one is a river. It rushes and teaches flow. It teaches that regardless of the distance, flow is always in sight and keeps on.


The wind blows now. It blows the blackness to blue. A veil appears. It is mystery. It is more than cloud speaking a soft hello to the morning. It is cloud attempting to penetrate the solidity of stone and me. It melts into black. It melts into me. It turns each of us blue and then we breathe into each other. Stones really do breathe. It's an illusion to think that our walls are permanent and inanimate.

The canyon is split apart. That's what makes it a canyon. I guess that's what takes away the split. Canyon is what canyon is. I'm split too. Maybe it's my own beautiful dangerous canyon. Maybe it is the accumulation of all of our canyons turned blue, washed out and covered with wise lichen and moss singing about rhythms we knew long ago.

Tolkein said it is dangerous business going out your front door. I accept it more now. The canyon reminds me by yanking my spirit from me. Momentarily my spirit reveals her own gap. It is me inside of it yelling at the intelligence that made it so. But why? Why not? The soul of a stone has many stories to tell on the edge of the fall.

It's natural. Alice in Wonderland fell a thousand and some feet and landed simply on her own two feet. It was and it wasn't. It appeared backwards and it seemed confusing and there were mad hatters and potions and drunken singing mice. She met the caterpillar who spoke of metamorphosis and she said that it was uncomfortable. He said that it isn't. It is quite normal and natural. Why think so much about it? Afterall, the queen of hearts screamed, 'off with her head' for a damn good reason.

Sometimes our wings mirror the call of the bat at night. And sometimes we lay stars in the shape of eggs. My story egg is sometimes fragile. And sometimes it breaks open for a reason. There is some interesting material in the cracks --just like what I saw in the cracks of the black canyon. New life. Sprouts and trees that grow in the least suspecting places. How do they grow sideways towards the moon through a ledge on the edge of the great big nothing?

I'm reminded to trust the stability of sheer cliffs penetrating sky. I'm reminded that if I fall from too high a height I might die. Or I might discover my wings. "Come to the edge." "No, we will fall." "Come to the edge." "No, we will fall." "Come to the edge." They came. I pushed them. And they flew.

I don't know who you are sometimes. Some days you are a black canyon. You are mysterious and your walls are jagged and seem split and obnoxious to me. I don't want to go near your jagged edges and I'm curious all the same. I don't recognize this nature that would welcome rams and mountain goats but not me. Other days you are night and dream and believe. I give birth to light inside of you. And then there are days when you become the sun and dance among evening stars and I am the night, the story quilt, and the blackness of mystery. We know each other and we do not. We know ourselves and we do not.

Black Canyons sometimes make it difficult to speak. They feel confusing too. One minute you are hanging on for dear life, and the next you are soaring with the eagles.

I know the constellation we are making. And sometimes I don't. Some days you penetrate me so deeply that I fall beyond knowing into not knowing. It catches my breath as do you. I know this much to be true: birds trust when they are thrown from their nests. Sometimes it is safe and sometimes it isn't. Nature makes it what it is --natural. I was born for this. I was made for this. I was made for black canyons turning blue amidst rivers running through. I was made for the split and I was made to believe in caterpillars becoming butterflies.

It doesn't always make sense. And then small simple orange and black wings flutter across a black canyon. Opening and closing. That is their rhyme. They want the heart to discover the truth of this piece of nature. Edges are dangerous and beautiful. Trust the Open and the close. Trust this rhythm: Egg. Caterpillar. Cocoon. Butterfly. Egg. Trust this one too: Grow. Eat. Make a cocoon. Dissolve. Eat your own substance. Break through. Hang temporarily to dry. Emerge. And fly.

It IS this simple and 'it' doesn't end. The road I got lost on goes all the way around. I stop but I'm not at the beginning, the middle or the end. It just is part of the journey. It keeps on keepin' on. Just like me. Just like you. Dangerous and beautiful all the same in the same fucking orgasmic breath.

spiderweb mess

i'm not tangled anymore.
it's courageous to dive into the story of transformation.
i wear it now. this new skin. a tattered cloak. with wings.
i'm researching transformation in all of its forms:
how it works 'in love'
how it works 'in creative process'
how it works 'in conflict'
how it breathes.
how it weaves.
it's mystery.
accepting what i cannot know
accepting what is difficult to see.

my favorite part:
no matter what --i will probably always have a voice that wants to sabatoge me, criticize me, judge me and abuse me. this is going to be a part of me for the rest of my life. so i accept it and it doesn't have power over me anymore. if it's here, fine. but i'm not going to buy into it this time. i'm on a different rhyme. spirit rhyme. spirit time. soul time. soul is fine. this soul is fine. sometimes i step back a few steps to gather some things from the past. and then i accept what is uncomfortable and then it moves swiftly. red earth is the best teacher. and the other thing i know is this: transformation is essential. and it is visible and invisible.

ode to passion

dedicated to k.c.

brutal sea. brutal moon. brutal waves. and brutal foam birthing a multitude of bubbles dissolving on stones.
brutality is misunderstood.

you swell. so does the sea. the moon rises, falls
and eats itself in less than 30 days.
every night eats an entire day without feeling guilt.

we flow in the blue-wash of dusk
and dive straight towards the unedited surge of tides.

fingers trace and tease stories
and breathe a new cosmology,
where words and body language collide into conspiracy.

passion!
you teach yes and no
and the graceful rough edges of pumice stones
grinding, pulverizing and
annihilating
seeds
into nourishment
for the belly
eating the belly

passion!
bringer of inconvenient truths from deep waters
and the innocent taste of salt upon tongue.
as if sweat could be that simple.

passion!
you who are terrify and strip
vulnerability and willing
expose and explosion
and
the convulsions of creatures denied at birth,
thrown unconsciously
and unselfconsciously
upon the gritty sand
while foam and wave wash over them.

there is no duality within the sea.
admit it:
you are horny for the ocean's violent birth, death and rebirth
reenacted through your tears.
you have an addiction for Aphrodite's violent thighs born from testicle foam
born from ancient stories
of men and civilizations and sacrificial gods rising and falling
again and again
and again.

oh pilgrim of passion!
remember this when you feel afraid:
regeneration will never kill what is eternal.
you cannot hold onto what is essential.
water is going to slip through your fingers.
and the waves naturally lead you where you are meant to be.
you are never lost --even among the edges where lighthouses do not shine.

passion does not wear spectacles.
nor does she
send out a formal invitation with perfectly engraved letters.
because of this
i trust her.

passion inhales
breasts and thighs
cunts and clitoris'
dicks
balls
asses
tits
pinkies
toes and nipples

i like her unpredictable navigation
and the way she penetrates secret realms
between hurling waves and resting sand
where debris and starfish try to hide.

she fucks seven days into a week
through the end and the beginning
she ask for nothing in return
except recognition of this:

every single night eats an entire day without feeling guilt.
day and stars are born because of this.

navigating

don't try to figure it out.
stop making sense.

circles navigate towards the center.
opposites attract.

what the rabbit said.

sometimes fear tries to crawl up the side of a house.
it gets caught in the gutter.
it twitches. nowhere to go. it tries. it fails. makes noise. can't go up or down.
no use going down the rabbit hole.
no use climbing a gutter.

alice in wonderland already lived down under.
the queen already went 'off with her head.'
now she's in her heart. she integrated the non-sense place
so that it makes sense.
someone pulls the rabbit from the gutter.
that same someone laughs, crawls on all fours and eats dirt.
fear is a weed.
love is a sprout.
seasoned hands pull out the weeds.
the calm innocence of rain helps the essential sprouts to grow.

wheels

the wheel brings me here:

blue sky green earth hues.
i think of 'spirituality'
there isn't separation anymore.
this word has become extinct
through all that has died and been reborn in me
i mean that in the simplest of ways.
i don't mean it in a buddhist or christian or shamanic way
i mean in it the way that
the tall summer grass speaks
with a grasshopper symphony
amidst the poem of chocolate brown mullein stalks.

it is the last year's yucca fruits opened and dried like stars.
while this year's yucca fruits ripen.
it's the memory of the sharp prick
that holds a yellowing cactus flower.
it lurks in the cautioning poison ivy
i hear her speak long before i see her
it's a simple red stone
a prairie meets high desert song
and a mountain i'd like to climb.
but it is more than this and less:
it's the street and the hot steaming asphalt.
and me driving down the wrong side of a road.
it's that guy i once judged
and the kids i forget to fully see.

it's a pain in my belly
rising to the occasion.
sharp and full, pregnant and forgotten, birthing and beginning.

two.

the fox has a friend.
they travel in twos.

she filled out.
he isn't as scrappy.

sometimes one of them is mischief
while the other is simply
red.
and bushy.
and wild.

don't ever forget the greatest gift of the fox.
you could tame it
but why would you want to
though if you do,
and let it go
it might want to come back to you.


here's my secret for today. it isn't so difficult to remember.
it's more difficult to re-member it in the body parts
be what you love.
trust 'createlove'
from a place of being.

and trust the simplicity
of two foxes playing free.

that's it really.

soft

digging deep for words lately.
many decomposing thoughts.
body wants to sleep.

discovered a new way to say love.
i walk towards it.
he walks towards me.
and it unfolds essentially

i love this.
i love the skin upon skin belly upon belly story we are speaking.
i love that i know myself as well as i do.
i like it that he knows himself too.

did you know that if you spend time alone in nature --lots of time
to know yourself
you will discover things you never knew
and universes inside of you
stars and pond scum too.
it's different in body than in theory.
and by lots of time i mean isolation/solitude one year maybe two.

it's all there.
when you've listened to all that the story has to say --at least for now
you might meet someone who knows how to explore his inner universe too. it's unusual to contract and expand with another butterfly who is willing.

space can make or break ya. may as well let it do both.

language is the source of misunderstanding

language is the source of misunderstandings.
know who you are.
voice is only a process.
sometimes it processes in order to define.
bodies define too.

the body mediates disembodied misunderstandings.
voice is transformative.
so is the body.
language is pressure too.
it has the potential to define
the making of a diamond.

coal speaks differently than
multifaceted jewels.
dig deep into the dark.
move through pressure.
become the pressure.
contract and expand without judgment.

coal and diamond cannot be compared.
one is neither better than the other.
black isn't better than white.
jewel isn't better than heat.
consciousness isn't better than embodiment.
language is the source of misunderstanding.
hold a jewel to the light.
understanding is a new orientation to perspective.

body part I

eye.

i see you.
i see tree.
i see lightening.
i see me.

i see sky.
i see cloud.
i itch
tear
blink
close.

i close you off
i shut down
i open.
i fear seeing into you seeing into me
i welcome seeing into you seeing into me
blink.

where have i been all this while?

where have i been all my life?
where have i been?
i'm swimming in the violent foam
i'm tiptoeing across the precarious ledge
i'm walking through a mirror
i'm climbing an old growth birch
and peeling bark from my body
revealing the lightness of flesh and the density of bone.

where have i been all my life?
i've been floating on a raft
i've been submerged purposefully
navigating relations on strange anchored ships
tripping through karma
soaring on the sky
but where have i been?

this body has been here but what about me?
i've been exploring skin myths
crevices of memories
and the rooms with views
i've been digging through
fumbling
falling
carving my way
scavenging
slicing, dicing
threading
amputating
hooking.
and surviving

this body is here; but where was i
all the time it took to unhook
unzip
and come undone?
did i go away
or was i always here?

my feet are different now then they were when i was away;
my callouses know where i have been.
my face tells me too;
the wrinkles i've been cultivating since birth
come from smiling, frowning, laughing and crying

my belly is sometimes round
it has never experienced the gift of a woman's potential fullness
am i still a woman regardless?
what am i becoming a mother to?
my pelvis is still tipped, slightly tight.
i'm a virgin at 35
my womb a hidden doorway
for a birthing of a mystery

i love it. i love this body. i love this story. i love this day this night: this.
i love the pink and the white and the red and the brown
and the color of my body
i love the golden specks. i'm a different kind of bambi
i love mysterious moans late at night that come from me
finding myself
and the unusual bumps that occur when i'm lost

i love this heart hiding beneath these breasts
i like the landscape of the skin i sometimes neglect
the outline of my body is how i find my place
the flesh of my story is how i fill out
the meat on the bones of what was
and what is calcified is my song
i'm in love with a foreign temple.
i'm no longer afraid to enter.

i love the story of my body.
and the intimacy
between where i am
and where i have been all this while.

our lady of chamisa

our lady of chamisa
pray for us
for the immigrants and slaves
the conquistidoras
the conquered
the oppressed
the travelers
and foreigners
the gringos and the apache
the Navaho and the anasazi
the Moorish lineage and the blood of Columbus
the indigenista
and the native people of this soil
those with different colored skins and voices
who dig the acequias
pull the weeds
and cultivate these field with their dry bare hands

land of chamisa
and sky
of arroyo and ditch
and broken pottery
with fragmented and forgotten meaning
land of abandoned moradas
and tall whitewashed crosses
and discarded syringes
scattered upon the las chivas trade route
witness this prayer

rural land and drought, swelling river and tree
hear the silent song
carried in the wind
of the sons who sweat
and pray and carry beads
for the people on good friday
las hermanos de los penitentes
who’s bone memory links to grandfathers with swollen and bleeding backs
and bowed heads who sang for the liberation of the people
help us to understand
the places where religion fails to provide understanding

belly full of enchilada, frijoles and atole
may you nourish the strength
of grandmother and daughter, aunt and mother, brother and sister, father and uncle
sustain the procession that carries the ancestral maria with hope
along miles and miles of busy highway and quiet winding dirt roads
from Albuquerque to the santuario chimayo
fill them with grace, they who believe
that prayer and faith can conquer a massive drug trade

our lady of chamisa
pray for us
for the sons who beat their wives
and the fathers who sleep with their daughters
and pray for your forgiveness among their brothers
and are forgiven and accepted into the community
while the silenced voices of the women are expected to remain silent

our lady of chamisa
painted among bright golden fields
of rabbit brush
sunflower
and lemon-colored leaves
pray for us –the young daughters and sisters with mixed bloodline of slave and survivor
who were beaten
in fields near groves of innocent trees
for bleeding the power of the first menstrual stories.
pray for those who beat them, who fearfully assumed
that blood implies promiscuity and shame

lovely maria, virgin de Guadalupe, our lady of roses
our lady of chamisa
coatlicue
butterfly maiden, corn mother, grandmother spider
and ancient mesopotamian goddess of corn
lady with a cloak of many colors
we walk barefoot on your land
carrying stories in our cracked desert hearts
as we tiptoe through juniper berries, pinon shells and prickly pear
lead us with courage to this once familiar land
now blooming gold with liberated voices

cracks

i met someone recently. he's been alone a long, long time. tonight, he shared the story of the lump in his throat --the one the doctors say is connected to his lymph node. it could be cancer, say they.
i ask him, 'what do you think of that?'
what do you mean, answers he. look at the colors on the mailboxes across the street in a row: red, yellow, green, blue and black. isn't that something? it's like that. it just is what it is. and it makes me see those colors more beautifully. and that sign that says 'do not enter.'

i asked, 'but what do you think of cancer, i mean, it's this thing that attacks what wants to live and create.'

well, says he, asphalt is like that to me. it keeps me from remembering my connection to everything. asphalt attacks me, says he. and then there is a crack, with some dirt in it. it's like a crack, you know? it just is this thing that i notice but stuff grows inside of it, you know?

yeah. i say. i know what you mean.

without the cracks, we wouldn't have imperfections. and without the cracks, we wouldn't know just how perfect the imperfections are.

yeah. and without the cracks, we wouldn't know what is separate from what is together.

something like that, anyway.

we're wounded in all the right places, says kd lang. feel it.

that fox

i see that fox every single morning and every single evening. this morning, she caught a mouse. she keeps asking, 'what's essential? what's essential'?

sometimes a word emerges. 'honesty.'

sometimes it's simply a feeling of redness.

sometimes it's tiny as a mouse.

sometimes it's as bright as a full moon.

i giggle. she screams. it scampers across a long dirt ascending road. it disappears into tall grass. it leaves it's mark. it's a song. the notes suspend. can you hear it? 'what's essential?'

she's persistent.

love

love. all i know is this.
i know someone. he put his hand on my heart. we were outside. i doubt he remembers. i do.

it is the kind of love that is living. meaning it dies sometimes. i think something is dying again. i trust it. to sort would be to say this: i believe in him. i see him. sometimes he thinks i don't. usually during those times, it is he who cannot see me. he doesn't know what i see. and that i love despite and because of what i see. i know he sees this way too. we don't talk too much about it. i love him because i appreciate how he walks in this world. i have appreciated it from the moment i met him. he's not as godlike as i thought originally. i loved him as though i were psyche and he was eros. 'don't look at me or i'll disappear.' i wanted to see. i put the firelight to his form. it burned a drop on him. he disappeared. and i went down beneath the ground. persephone, psyche --those gals who descend under the ground --on the surface --they're not all that 'together'.

it's like that. she's a mess on the surface. beneath --you'd never imagine all that she's experienced and seen. way that far below the ground she can't say what she knows. but then she emerges. and she sees the sky. he's probably been flying high too. and maybe they'll meet somewhere in the middle and share a thing or two. maybe he'll talk about what it's like to be burned by the fire light. and she'll share what it feels like to walk with the dead, to facilitate transformation beneath the depths and emerge more whole, not less.

i'd like that. it's one of those essential things. i don't think they know how to see each other together in the same space and trust the invisibility that the eye can't see. that wd be an interesting experience. to share space with the essence that is essential. russian 'dusha'. breathing living transforming dying life. not a lot of people like this. they say they do. but they don't. it is difficult to understand it in this country.

the scrappy fox

she is red and brown and scrappy. i have seen her now seven times. she had a mouse in her mouth this morning. yesterday, it was a bunny. she was scrappy a couple weeks ago. now she is filling out.

she teaches how to hunt for treasures. and how to reorient to the landscape, to language, to memory & body and imagination. she doesn't like when my imagination is scrappy. she says it is like that sometimes. you hunt for treasures and you miss. sometimes you are hungry and you must work in order to survive. sometimes scrappy is important. scrappy fox is surviving and thriving into fullness. she could choose not to. but she showed me twice now. when she leaps she is adorable and swift. shows me that it is important to be cunning. she is trusting. yet she is sly. she is scrappy but she is filling out. she is sensual. sometimes it is invisible to the eye. that is what makes her essential.