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.