Manifesting

 I am moving

the heavens into alignment

but trying to prevent collisions

considering all the futures

created by my decisions,

trying to dream responsibly

about impossible things,

and generally, still

up in the air

about the changes

my dreams bring.

Kintsugi

 I may have mended my cracks

with gold,

but the point was not to shine,

but to mend

the cracks

so that I could be 

refilled.

The shine

is a bonus.

High Priestess

 She raises from her bed

leaving her lover to sleep.

She greets the dawn,

the night behind her.

She is two lions,

one looking behind,

one looking ahead.

She is yesterday, today and tomorrow.

She has the power to be reborn.

She is....

thinking.

Then not thinking, just knowing.

He will awaken when he does

and follow when he will.

Or not.

She is the beginning

and the end of time,

and present

in the Ever Now.

Showing Up

 How are you showing up in the world today?

Intermittently, like misting rain?

Softly retreating, sun in the clouds?

Do you show up with anger,

and is it even the time?

Do you show up at all?

Do you show up when 

you hear the call?

For others?

For yourself?

Come through,

clear and consistent,

be seen.

Be where you are.

It beats being

nowhere at all.

Requiem

 I don't know when she thrashed her last

or gasped in recognition

the end had come,

or even if she did,

but she is gone.

I know the dirt thrown over

her is 

fertile,

because I am here

and I grow.

I will try to

remember her with gentleness,

for she was also

me.

Changes

How do I know

what I cannot change

until I try?

How do I know

what I cannot change

until I try?

How do I know

what I cannot change

until I try? 

I want truth,

not serenity.

I want growth,

not security.

I want challenge,

not stagnancy. 

How do I know

what I cannot change

until I try? 

I want purpose,

not comfort.

I want more,

not less.

I can no longer accept

or expect less for or from myself.

How do I know

what I cannot change

until I try? 

I will not take "no" until I

think about "how" or "why."

There will be changes and

they will be mine.

What if?

 Anxiety starts with "what ifs"--

but dreams start with "what if," too.

and how you end that sentence

is entirely up to you. 

What if things were better? 

What if they already were good--

what if you started off grateful,

and the universe understood?

What if your prayer was preparation

and your mind could do the rest?

What if you woke up each day

knowing you were blessed?

What if you were fully present

and finally awake?

Maybe that's all you need

and all that it would take.

Unheroic Interlude 2

 (First see Unheroic Interlude 1)

Did I introduce myself? No, I started

my saga in media res--

so, here's how I got myself 

in my current mess, I guess.

If I could, I would give you my name

but I left it in another life

in my other pants, to my shame,

in a moment of strife.

I was raised in the shadow of Olympus

a cast-off twig of the family tree--

no titan, no goddess, just a mutt,

if you need any description of me.

She Arises

 In her new skin

flows the underground waters--

the same that flows

in the veins of her father,

an ancestral flood

of history

and also renewal;

the back-and-forth mystery of time,

like the winding of serpents

in her blood.

It all comes back: 

the cloak of invulnerability

made of her weaknesses;

the shining armor

of her raw, sparkling nerve;

the girdle of confidence

made of scars;

the jewels that have 

a thousand glittering flaws;

the sword of discernment

forged in the fire of mistakes;

the words of power

that are uncomfortable truths--

all and always contained

under her skin.

The wasteland is no longer

a land of the dead--

it is a teeming womb of the living,

and she is reborn.

Her love is with her

wherever she goes.

Shedding Again

 With bittersweet acid

in the marrow and

the tightness of expansion

I prepare to shed my skin

again, I am

raw underneath and

dreading

and

anticipating

something more beautiful

and light

when the cool breezes find

new scales,

flexible to the touch.

But right now,

sometimes,

I feel it too much.

The only way out

is through.

I will leave a part of me

behind.

Hope

 Hope is the unlived future

pulled by the part of your soul

that believes that something

must work right.

Work right with it

and let it come to you.

Work in hope.

The Jewel

 Formed under heat and pressure

in the heart of a star--

the elements humanity is made of

and what you are,

under heat and pressure

is something rare,

improbable and dynamic.

That we share

this intersection oof space

and time is

miraculous--the chaotic

processes from the 

elemental to consciousness

give me gratitude

to whatever star

placed me in the same world

where you are

and I never doubt the celestial 

in you--I know,

because I have seen the conditions

under which you glow.

A Brief Thought

 As the flowers share the sun

under which they've grown,

the brightest light inside your life

is nothing you can own. 

Vision: Deep Water

 Your eyes, the portals to your soul,

were left open, and I slipped right in.

In I fell, lost in deep water,

full immersion baptism in

the sacred river. The surface still--

but the undertow! Running 

to some place guarded like

the holy of holies.

Escorted out, flaming sword at my throat,

I crept away in my soggy clown shoes,

a jester smile of astonishment

plastered on my face,

psychically thrown by unexpected grace,

wondering if I might return.

And I became aware

of something pooling deep inside of me--

the forgotten eternal spring--

the abandoned depths of my own.

The Wound

 I had been on fire

and still smoke in places

a haze drifting around me

and that unmistakable scent.

Parts of me are ashes

and I don't care

where they went.

Not traumatized--

cauterized.

The bleeding stopped.

The past is a scar,

tough but fading.

We are 

not wrecks,

but what escaped them.

Unheroic Interlude

 The nine sisters won't play with me

so I'm counting on you, gray-eyed 

and far-seeing, to remember me.

Where I left my heroine, she was

cooling her heels in the Land of the Dead.

She'll live (you knew that) 

because Immortals do.

It's what they were fated to.

And as for me, I guess I'll live, too,

if I can figure out my way.

We are skipping from the Middle East to

the Mediterranean, (I've been--have you?

I've seen the rock and the hard place where my 

epic crimson forbear found himself adrift.)

And here's where you find me.

Crafty one, send an owl. Whisper in my ear.

Get my stupid ass out of here. 

Here I am: not in the dark of the Underworld,

but in the bright light of day, 

chained to a mountain of bullshit,

vultures gnawing at my ever-renewing 

last living fuck.  

The mountain is my own bullshit,

the vultures exist in my mind,

and the chains are those I forged in life,

whatever the Dickens that means. 

And I am not sure how to stop torturing me.

She Maintains

 She hangs by her ankles,

iron hook run in.

She hangs by the bones of her ankles,

feet above head.

The dry heat of the land

where the sun doesn't shine

and the rain doesn't fall

bakes her skull

and her soul is thirsting.

And here she is, bereft:

no cloak of invulnerability,

no shining armor,

no girdle of confidence,

gone are her jewels,

her sword of discerning,

her words of power--

even her skin is gone.

The shadow of her tongue longs

for wine.

The shadow of her tongue yearns

for water.

But she can taste:

blood of a soldier

tears of a lover

sweat of a laborer.

And new skin forms over

 the dry chalk of her form.

She Descends

 Where love was gone

the dry world sighed for what was lost

and the maiden left her couch to see:

Nothing bloomed in the garden

and no tree bore fruit. 

The air had no birdsong and

rain would not fall.

She would find love and return.

What she can't take with her 

will drop onto the path:

the cloak of invulnerability,

her shining armor,

her girdle of confidence,

her many jewels,

her sword of discerning,

the words of power--

gone.

The skin unwound from her flesh,

the fat rendered in the heat,

the nerves exposed and made

into a garland for a holy tree.

Her bones walked into

the land of the dead

to find her love.

how I hold you

 Bello, you call me "beautiful" every day

and ask me did I know:

Did I know you love me?

Did I know I am cute?

Did I know?

Did I know?

Twenty something years roll by

of tenacious love

and constant affection

towards the thing in me

that isn't easy to see. 

Who loves me in my darkness,

who supports me in my rage,

who reminds me he loves me

when I'm out of pocket

and need to turn the page? 

I hold you, though

you are tough-skinned enough

to love me,

so carefully in my hand,

like an irreplaceable rarity

because that is you. 

I treat you as fragile because

nothing

loving me

should be treated any other way. 

And I fear I will hurt

what I love.