Don’t you want to feel the ocean’s hard wind push against your whole body?
I could stand at the edge with you and let the tide teach us
That we’re not as big as we think
And our problems are a dream no one ever remembers
Don’t you want to feel the ocean’s hard wind push against your whole body?
I could stand at the edge with you and let the tide teach us
That we’re not as big as we think
And our problems are a dream no one ever remembers
I reached out from the fertile crest and spread my legs.
I gyrated and heaved, spilling man upon man onto the shore.
They climbed my limbs to sleep and whittled at my branches.
They grew restless.
My sisters took to the wind like mischief wanting to play.
My sisters with their fragrant blooms.
My sisters and their love dreams, weaving Time’s tapestry.
My sisters and their burning sex.
They enticed my children into the tall grasses where they could not feel my gaze.
Multiplied again and again, spreading across my flesh
Feasting on my fruits
Forging war instruments from my bowels
Musical instruments from my hair
Song from my breath.
A golden thread connects my heart to yours
Inside our secret skins, where
Magic stitched us together, and
I travel back in time, to
Follow strands of memory, where we
Get stuck in tangles that loop throughout eternity, but I
Cut the bindings, and
Loose myself, but they
Come alive and fuse again, and
This time – stronger, so I
Run away, and weave a new life, but there’s not
Enough mystical metaphor to convince me twice, and without
Connection, I cannot find enough fabric for a self at all…
So, either I’m
Cut, or
Bound
Knees hit the sand with a thud and a crunch
Nimble fingers and palms gathering and crushing seashells
Making a pile of perfect, coarse white dust
And we haven’t considered an end
We are girls at the busy work of play
I grew up pressed into the damp firmament of our sod house
With roots wrapped ’round my toes at night
In sleep, the soil pulling
Inhale and exhale earth
Dank and bone-cold embrace
Grassy bed, leafy bed
Eternally in the dirt of my origins
You still show up in my dreams
I saw the paper with your name on it and the day’s date
Evidence, you’ve been sneaking back into my house
And you nearly got away again
But I ran outside and caught you
Holding your jacket, pulling you close
Head on your shoulder, tears on your shoulder
Your hand on my head, whispering
“Don’t cry, don’t cry. I’m fine.”
Strange how the dream comforts
I wake feeling gentle, relieved
Signs of your visit linger on my cheeks
And in the corners of my eyes
I avoid writing poems anymore.
Poems – a way to remember you.
I live.
Not in those past places.
Though at times I find myself baffled
at the people around me
for I cannot count you among them.
Caught a wild fish
Flayed her on a stick
Dug out slippery red pearl eggs
Ate her insides
Devoured her children
Threw her back and head into the fire
Picked her meat from my teeth with a rib bone
Do we miss the sun’s brightness stinging our shoulders?
Do we find ourselves? Awake? Or more like dreaming?
In a place or beyond all?
We living ask so many questions, receive no answers
And fear beyond hoping that in truth – death never says a word
journey into words
and rhythm
dancing and singing
and then learn to drop away
and go
where words disintegrate
into texture, color, emotion
there, where prophets and mystics
perceive God