Writings
FORMS FROM THE MIDNIGHT INK*
*This is a tiny corner of the internet where I can let my fingers dance across the keyboard in eager, wild abandon. I call this spacious no-space “Forms From The Midnight Ink.” It is an extended invitation to not-know, to fail masterfully, and to get lost in playful attempts of homeward wayfinding. In effect: a space to become educated. To learn. To mature. To play. To create a home for all that is lost and found, on the ground of an endless river of movement, in service to being a thing-ing Kin(d) dreamt from a no-thing-ing Kin(d). It doesn’t have to make sense.
Pre-praying for the Winter Solstice
Thank you, no-thing-ing, for all you have given me. Thank you for this breath. For the nanoscopic eyes that cover my body as a coat of skin. For the wind’s breath that feeds the soles of my hands. The palms’ mouth, re-cycling the invisible waves back into the cosmic breath. The shared universal breath that contains bits of matter from my ancestors. Those that matter, coming forward and before, both human and non-human.
Thank you for my humanity, which is a symphony of all non-human things.
The droplets of rain, my tears.
The river currents, my blood.
The mountains, my breasts.
The tree stumps, my fingertips.
The clouds, vapors from the cauldron of my womb, ascending towards the Great Disappearance.
The grasses, my eyebrows.
The serpent, my spine.
The stars, my thoughts.
The birdsong, my laughter, my poetry.
Thank you for the opportunity to participate with the cosmos, for the cosmos, as the cosmos. To be thankful, to praise, is to love. Help me not to forget that I am being praised everywhere, in all directions at once. And help me not to forget to live my life as a continuous, timeless prayer to your nameless-ness in return for this one precious life.
Heart-y Roots
Recently, there was a branch within me that was growing, reaching, soaring high up into the emphatically-empathetically-empty sky. The branch, grown out of heart shaped roots, wanted to feel its own beauty. She wanted to touch the sun–to feel its warmth–to feel its radiant gaze on her bark-laced, battle-scarred body. To notice the ordered chaos in her branching ballet–the merciful recklessness of all the twists and turns and burns and swirls and spirals of her blooming limbs reaching for eternity. This branch longed to feel the sun’s tearful rays stroke her hair and murmur cooing love songs into her leaves. She wanted to kiss the stars and feel loved by the cradling deep, dark, night sky. She wanted to dance in the midnight ink; to feel protected; to feel known; to feel beautiful. The cosmic breath rolled in, and the branch was blown away by the grieving song of the moon’s tidal rhythm. The song of rhythm, of timelessness itself. Gravity, an ancient engine humming on humility, pushed the soaring downwards, returning the branch to the humus–to the earthly ground soil of worms and compost. As I rest in the leaves, lamenting the dance towards the Great Sky, I realize that the groundedness is in fact touching the sky. I am learning to rest, to decompose, to feel the motherly embrace of my fellow fallen (soaring?) leaves, who have also arrived in this cradle of solid sky. I am welcomed here, in the fullness of my lament and disappointment (mercy?), although I do not yet know what these heart-y roots want to re-grow. To whom is the fallen branch, and solitary worm, and undeterred ants, and crumbling dust a thing of beauty?
i c ant
The pain
That women carry
In the weight of their womb
Of all those who have forgotten
where they came from
Is hard to bear
People say that I am dark
And intense
And worry that I don’t have my feet on the ground
They don’t see,
really,
that my face is flush to the earth
Prayerful palms on barren soil
Struggling to keep the souls of my feet
Flush against the sun’s face
When I feel lost
By aching feet
Of a wounded womb
I look to the ants
And press my face against the brittle earth
Growing antennas
To feel
Mountainous pebbles
Lush grass forests
Deep lakes of dew
Instead of worry
Or judgment
Or anxious advice
Maybe what i need instead
Is for someone to press their face against the earth with me
To share the burden of carrying the pain
Of what has been forgotten
On the backs of ants
who have never forgotten
How to Be in This World 
How to be in this world? How to let the full animal nature of my heart and body spill and spell in praise-giving ways? My body feels like a harmonica composed of portals through which the Source breathes its humming hymn, making spiritual music to dance itself into existence. The body of the Void is a wave that caresses and strokes the expanding and contracting densities of the many bodies within my body that constellate to create this lumbering swan called Holly. My eyes hum in small circular motions. My stomach swirls in vowel-y oohhs and aaahs, encircling and collapsing on each other like an inspiraled cosmic conch. Guttural, extended barks cascade from the roots of my earth-bound feet. There are no limitations for the way the wind bumps up against these sinewy strings. Writing is music. Each letter a note that dances with the next letter, with deliberate and exquisite pauses between. The pauses between hold the music, so that the song can be sung back into the Source–the inhale turns towards the exhale, which turns again towards life.
Inspired by Fire
Do you know who you are?
Do you remember where you came from?
What it once was like to climb and soar
in embarked sweet sap filled swirls
towards dendritic dreams,
leafing in an ever leaving and arriving sky?
Do you remember the day your barked belly ached
with side splitting laughter,
in rapturous joy of falling
turning into soaring,
turning in the direction of soiled, solid sky,
as your tinder-limbed tendrils
fell into gravity’s non-negotiable Love?
The way the sap stopped
in glorious, grace-given, grief-filled yields
to the rot?
Do you remember how the moisture gave way to the grave
and how,
in the humbling, humus filled hours,
the hoarse breath of life howled,
riving teary star-filled rivers
through your birched, broken body?
and how,
the breached bark beseeched
the unveiling of your careful cracking,
crashing waves of dry cries
into reified, deified decay.
And that moment…
do you remember…
the Illuminati
whose benevolent blink touched your brittle bark,
as you were slowly being s)wept and s)wallowed
by the Great Mother’s Feasting Mouth,
filling the wombed warrior’s wound,
a holy debt paid in birth’s reverse
of spinning p(our)ous boned bodies of thinging into ethe(real bodies of no-thinging?
And how Zeus,
in a thunderously trumpeted, triumphant act of
misunderstood mercy,
recharged the memory of the lost ancient warrior’s inner dance;
and how
in a fleeting flash,
your body became remembering flame?
The drying dying
returning to liquid light.
The seductive dance of the veil
unfurling into s)oak-filled light.
Form informed
in-flamed wicked warmth,
reflecting what was always
so difficult to bear so brazenly blazingly bare.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down
in a cascade of liquid, fiery gold.
In the direction of tremorous tiredness,
we glide into gray, soft slumber
and dream of upside down branches
swirling, soaring, skying,
in the sweet sap of
the Mother’s Mycelial Matrix,
whose humming hymns whisper:
you MUST remember
I made you
with Love
into magical matches
that must match,
and evolve,
This Love
that makes the Whirld
g(l)o(wow.
A prayer for protection.
Yesterday, I took my trembling to the forest, with a pair of pruning clippers and an unheroic hand saw. I took my throat–swollen with gravity–and my heart–bitten by dull teeth into doubting decay–to the crown of vining thorns choking the weeping tree tops. For 3 hours, I rocked my body to the rhythm of destruction. The saw cutting its baby teeth on the elder’s barked body. Give us the movement of your self-doubt and fears, they said. Tether to your umbilical cord; tighten the commitment of your grip; breath, grunt, groan, and *gasp* your billowy shadows of fear into the wooded fir(e)s of Life. Deplete yourself so that your heart may be filled and satiated with the nectar of tremulous, untrammeled Trust.
About to tell them I’d be back to make good on my contract tomorrow (even though I knew they wouldn’t accept my terms), they collapsed my body against the tree and told me to dance it to its death. Swaying in full embrace…crack, crack…limp arms being held by limp limbs…crack, crack…feeling dead and held up by that which I was sent to kill….crreeeekkk…the incredible aroma, the last heroic expression of reckless giving in pure service to unapologetic deliciousness…shhmobrosihishisshssss*&$#&#_! They fell like an exquisite ballerina, arching their golden insides towards decay, with eager urgency, as if rotting were its long lost lover. Too tired to even weep, collapsed in shocked humanness, I looked up, and They said: “Do not be afraid of the work you are doing.”
an accidental remembering
the world loves you as much as you love it.
Speaking of Ancestors in Non(Meta)phorical Notes of Sonic Resonance
The universe spoke to me yesterday and said: You must remember what I look like.
When I speak of ancestors, I’m not merely pointing to our bloodlines. It runs much, much deeper… Like stars : our ancestors. Like fish : our ancestors. Like dragons : our ancestors. Like bacteria : our ancestors. A forewarning : this. is. not metaphorical. It lives within us as much as it lives without us. And then, of course, there are future ancestors, guiding us towards our future faces. They know the endless landscape’s story : backwards and forwards. They are calling our names. Voices : revealing a track in a dark wood, with the glowing light of sound. Songs of the forest faces : beckoning us left, then right, then over, then under. Listen close > the song gets better. The song of our ancestors : our very own faces. A forewarning : This. Is. Not metaphorical.
Up and to the left, soaring. Down and to the right, gravity calling. Liquid lips of honey. Musical notes falling from my eyelashes, like tears. A waterfall of lyricality. Soaring in the fall. The moon conducts and orchestrates these rhythms. I am her tidal remembrance. Crashing against the roots of reality. She dances in my gut filled air. Swooning to her own erotic body. She makes the music so that she can dance to it. So that she can feel the tidal pull of her own miracle magic sonic breath.
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