Writer without words

Dancer

unable to dance,

Writer

without words,

Climber

minus a mountain,

What now?

Not grasping for known

while Unknown is your becoming

means finding,

and learning

a whole new way to move.

Wiggle a little,

court the formless

in this precious release

of who you believe yourself

to be.

Work of the chrysalis

The transformed steals the love-light,

not for greed

but for our preference.

What’s left behind in grit and dust,

even discarded in rank alleyways,

is the work of the chrysalis.

The

cramped

confused

identity-erasing

dark

of wrestling for the next life form,

of flight,

of nectar,

of tumbling in gravity’s wave

among flowers, bees and blue.

Remember what beauty lies in ugliness

before walking away from the misunderstood.

A fire, a wave, a mountain

The basements, bathrooms, shrouded corners,

narrow, black to seem endless, alleys,

the Do-Not-Enters,

these are the intended places.

Go to them.

What courage lies docile and low

will rise up, a fire, a wave, a mountain

to have your back even as growing fear

dissolves

what you think holds you together.

The turning of the world

It’s the twist of a good story

to say it begins where it begins.

Because who is to say what happened first?

The lines we lead, roads we walk, families we form,

always

always something came before..

and during.

Land of birth, food of soil, light of sun,

books read, laughter lived, sex, music,

slumber.

Infinite details of the turning of the world,

and equally many perspectives,

makes knowing

a sweet impossibility.

Twenty-five years on

Not until the attentive itch

do they exchange glances to mean

It’s Time.

And off we pile into the car, heading deep

into night and whatever flight waiting

with breath, rolling, in the wings.

Winding round and up and up and round

through dark and sensation

into rolled down window sweetness of valley grass and oak,

Stumbling, graceful, grit of dirt road scuffing,

spinning under 2 a.m. sky and flopping across hillsides,

the stars, sharp and grabbable,

become a spiral

spiral

spiral

as alive to be tucked in a pocket,

as hover, massive and in reach, directly overhead,

as rest in mind twenty-five years on.

At the door

A kitten knocks at the door.

In truth, a word behaving like a kitten,

soft, sweet, riled

from chasing a baby squirrel along the avenue.

Baby tore across the asphalt, tail barking,

no visible sign of what gave chase.

Course, words are like that,

and now one has followed me home.

A fur-lined nook between the armrest and my hip

awaits her.

Curious what mischief we can achieve today.

But first,

a short nap.

Stumbling

Stumbling,

having missed a pebble for the story in your head,

breaks the monotone

in favor of dripping notes tangled, soft,

attentive.

Dipping into that honey, the stream beneath the firehose flow,

entices a hidden music into the aching

and sharp places, wounded from too much narrow focus.

Broadening,

that song- touched by your welcome-

changes things.

Ancient and known

What name can be given

to soul hunger for nature,

for bodily starvation of slow rhythms ancient

and known?

Waking, sleeping, sunrise, moonset,

yes

even in the most stricken times we can find ourselves there

part of the ever-larger cosmos,

not pinned tight to trivia and misbehaviors.

But

skin suffers thirst for soil-

this hard concrete place rebounding with noise

can’t feed what does not eat the civilized.

Sit down with me, here,

let’s break sidewalk together,

chip away until earth smiles again at sky-

silent seeds await their patient growth into trees.

The rest

An initiation ritual,

in the dusk-scape of dream,

of shared finery, costume, camaraderie,

and non-blood family

emerging from here, over there,

here, here, there

unexpectedly,

for the me before me,

with a gathering of eager others,

to mark time with life.

Saying no, no but I am not she

not anymore

no–

But as beads pass over head, and colors add up,

layers of feather, bone, cloth

none mine

each display on this body

currently

a light in mind shifts-

not for me

but she

who may pass through, closing

beginning years, finally,

in step with those knowing when it is meant to happen.

Dressed, prepared, without doubts,

I walk the procession.

To celebrate.

To say goodbye.

To welcome all the rest.

Something has to be old

Something has to be old,

not this eternal new, no scuffed corners or

stories to tell.

Without scratches and scars of history

what are we

but endless remakings missing the one ingredient

making us us.

That old floor, concrete, painted red

once

holds, simply, the scent and memory of red

the countless footfalls and dropped coffees

words, silent songs, and resting weight

of decades of loved use.

Old meets time

where novelty hasn’t the guts

to leave its natural mark.