When the horror hit, the lightning fell
And everything was changed
I thought the thing engraven
would ever be made sacred
And here we are, a mere
two dozen years later
and dimension is lost by two
as everything’s been flattened
and the sacred? Fled
into the gaping gulf
and once again invisible
against the garish light of self
you also, fled presentpresentpresent gaping
invisible
in the light
in the light of the world
This poem is a few years old and has aged well, in my opinion. Please do search for the rhythm and meter…and let the words resonate in a timeless sense of Ash Wednesday and the immediate sense of the day after a national spewing of effluvia all over the face of Truth (last night’s “State of the Union Address”).
It’s interesting…I find I have nothing new to say, as these words from ten short years ago still sit there on the shelf like a vacuum sealed Powerbar never touched or opened.
The blood and mild acid blue poison is flowing
The silences shriek and seek to fill the void
The gangs dressed in colors have gathered to gibber
And I bear it in my bosom…
The Missing are hung in the limbo of absence
The tasteless confession mocks regretting nothing
as distances shrink in the lack of perspective
And I bear it in my bosom…
The demons of darkness outweigh the alone
While Solitude haunts the bleak minds of the poor
Whose songs always end with “I love you in spite of”
And I bear it in my bosom…
The Harpent Moon’s madness is honeyed, is bitter,
is slung at the giants at the forefront of boredom
Asleep in their spokes as the hourglass empties
And I bear it in my bosom…
I wait in the risk of your muffled lines swallowed
In the shroud of forgetfulness hugged like a secret
A secret, a shadow on your lips your signal
And I bear it in my bosom…
Where are the Faithful Guardians of Day
Who open doors, extending mystery uncertain?
Who know in their bones death is destined to perish?
And I bear it in my bosom…
When nothing grows down to the second swift minute,
to die for the liar has become the anthem
of many deceived by that monster of madness
And I bear it in my bosom…
My every word spirals and echoes in darkness
like calcined bronze vectors that age in the rain
They shine like mirages in the palm of sheer beauty
And I bear it in my bosom…
It is suns set ablaze, so beautiful, bright
That the body believes in eternity’s promise
That it can contain and can hold all the sorrow
And I bear it in my bosom…
And it’s there on the cheeks of hope midst the high winds
that the tears of the outcast shall never say die
They’re collected and kept in the pure vials of anguish
And I bear it in my bosom…
For the desert is fertile, a woman rejoices
For flowers that puncture the world’s useless armor
And rain radiates from the deepest soul present
In the jubilant psalms that spring from the ashes
And I bear it in my bosom.
Though it doesn’t seem possible, there’s been an even greater reduction from when this was written.
But like in cooking, life-reduction is concentrating…clarifying…purifying.
It’s good to know which way the wind blows, what is blown away in that wind, and what is instead merely sculpted, shaped, and beautified.
I am a childe of dark, a childe of light…still.
“in the ruined keep
around its empty fireplace
a shiver of ghosts” …
wailed in smoky puffs
phantom flames just out of sight
and yet heard clearly
contrapuntal shrieks
waltzed macabre with tilted dark
crawling thru the cracks
(the haiku in quotes was another person’s who made the prompt, and the other 2 verses are my reply…
the author is Jenny Gaitskill @jennygaitskell.bsky.social )
Night still fogged my mind
As the morning softly wept
Rain would fill my day
See the endless angles tambled, garbled, jangled grim entangled
Crammed into the endless moral arc that’s curving there
Bending towards straight justice yet those angles bite, inveigle
Wicked teeth finagle, playing angles while the angels weep
An arc made up of angles is mere endless dead injustice shambling
Running from the truth and branding innocence with lies
Fogs waver, quiver-quaver shrouding justice there in shadows
While the monsters play the endless angles in the falling dark.
when death squads are operating
on the regular, in singles,
a liturgy of resignation and words of comfort
at a difficult funeral will not undo
what has been done, my God
what has been done!
the “disappeared” belong to a group
that doesn’t stop growing, never stops
being buried, displaced
(see the water underground,
same as it ever was)
can death and violence extinguish human value
and anguish make survivors expendable,
upendable? injustice and apathy
perpetuate this imagination
vehemently convicted to
dully persist in shameless silence.
forgetting tongues struck thick and dumb,
deaf, complicit, disinterested in
the disappearance of others
(see them burying hallelujahs
before death has even blossomed)
can we even mourn? will we ever hunger
for the pain of transformation
from eyeless golems into humans?
can we ever silence injustice and stop violence
remember all the ones that we forget
and call expendable?
It’s in this crawling darkness, in this
deep and grieving darkness, in insensate dirty silence
far beyond the limen’s limit
(“letting the days go by…”
“same as it ever was…”
“my God what have I done!”
“my God what have we done“)
Shoot me, shoot me if you can
for only then will I be still
be still among the long green ferns
and canted crooked in the grass
try to swallow, swallow then
and find it will be just like rocks
swallowing rocks so hard and brown
that rain can’t wash away, wash down
though I bleed, I bleed in grief
and mourn red, silver-grey, mourn black
I still am, still, in every breath
of wind and every star kissed cloud
because I love you love you love
because I conjure memory
because I choose my long blue path
I am ever always free
So shoot me, shoot me if you can
for only
then will I be
still
and so it was
in the end,
bleeding blossoms
on the wind, well
bleeding of the wind was blossoms
running from an artery
reaching thru eternity.
blossoms… just born days ago
fragile beauty, pinkish white
tongues of praise
and then, torn, taken
by the wind as its own song
of bleeding blossoms,
the blood of wind.
Softly blows the westling wind,
blows lovely in this blessing night.
And thus to love, and thus to mend,
to love softly just like the wind
loves everything it breathes upon.
Just like the dew upon the apple
branch that stretches to the stars
My heart’s desire does thus arise
to reach across the chasms far
that gape between us, Love.
So you must listen, close, my Dear
to Love’s Lost Song sung in the creaking
gate that dances in the wind
and hurries thru the rustling wheat
to tarry at your blessed feet…
For though I lay beneath a stone
and mortal coil lost its grip
and flesh be stripped to chalk-white bone
I shall escape death’s razor whip
and live there…in the wind…softly.
my neck is neon
neon black and blue
my neck is crayon
color unknown hue
your knee is on me
my neck is between you
and your cold smug insistence
my neck be colored always
neon, neon
black under blue
I am at an end of some kind, an end
of expecting pink when the sun arrives
and departs, an end of thinking
anyone gets it,
anyone actually understands
the shooting stars streaking thru the night
and my words piercing thru dull dark.
I, who am healed in words
healed in ripping away
the opaque screens of untruth,
I have been broken
and I cannot say if
I shall ever be clean again
ever be whole again
or fit for any service.
The light thru the window
only sharpens the separation,
the scraggly thin beams wait
to claw my heart to ribbons
and lick the talons clean
in the moments in between
sunrise and sunset
in the cruelty
of the ordinary
I am a broken girl and I am
not so easy to love like
carefree normal confident girls
next door in cotton and flannel and lace.
I live inside a fortress and I hide
inside shields and my soul
lives centuries in seconds
I am a survivor of wars
that break the strongest
men so flimsy.
Can you love me so strong that mountains
collapse into the dust of quiet surrender?
Can you melt my doubts and burn my soul
hotter than cold death and abandonment?
Can you endure my very worst days and stand
me not knowing that I am beautiful,
can you erase the thousand tormenting words
the sibilant whispers from hell’s pits of isolation and horror? 
Can you stand that I am thinking even now “Why would you?”
Why would anyone?
I run from you,
but do you see that I run
far slower than I could?
Do you even know
what that means?
Why won’t you chase me?
Could you provide me anything
that I can rely on, any routine
that will be as sunrise and sunset
again and again?
Could you give me a pet name?
Could you kiss me, touch me?
Then do it again, and again.
I am a broken girl and I am
thirst itself so strong that Sahara is oasis.
I am a broken promise but I love
with loyalty that is the stars’
commitment to shine in the night.
I am a broken girl and I am
The Footprints of Ghosts
(commemorating my first Father’s Day as myself)
June 15th 2014
The fire crackles and pops
its diphthongs and phonemes
in that hot and feisty
rapid-snap delivery.
“Dad! Dad! Daddy! Father!”
It says this in living
letters of merry blazing
iterations of what,
repetitions of who,
and smoky, hazy eye-burning
questions of…
how?
I shiver and draw close,
grateful for warmth
this late spring day.
It is still early, and summer
slumbers in the dawn,
as I sit shiva with spring …
and the fire sings, keens,
quests, warms and shows us
the way of all things,
fading natural-like, and
giving up its ghost.
Ashes drift lazily,
footprints of wandering ghosts
free at last from their entombment,
in limbs of wood and sap,
and finally I see ashes
are ghostly release,
are seeds, promises of Phoenix,
gathering, bunching,
heaving and inevitable.
Smoke gets in my eyes,
clears my eyes, blurry and stinging
and stirs my memory pools
as I think back on 31 spectral years,
as a ghost encased in a word,
in a role, entombed
in limbs of alien thick
coarse wooly flesh.
Those long years of walking on water and anxious,
with no idea
what was a daddy
and inherent universal
knowing of love so deep it makes
the shores of the galaxy seem shallow.
Love was my fire,
my ghost, my ash-seeds,
and I my own Phoenix
sleeping, waiting,
looming, wanting.
I gave myself, my blood and sweat,
my upturned nose to fear and downturned face to them…
I threw me on the fire
and I screamed silent,
solitary inside no-one-else-here land.
I popped and hissed
and seethed and whistled
and snapped as I
gave up the ghost each day,
turned to ash each day,
diminished, but growing…
disappearing and becoming
until I walked
free and disembodied
and covered with ashy afterbirth
and filled with knowing
I could do nothing more
than give the love of one called father
even if I could not bear the
name of man.
Summer stirs, and my reverie is snapped
by the sharp chirp of robins
wanting to scritch thru the fire remnants for sowbugs.
Spring has closed her eyes,
her breath has slowed
even as mine has quickened
and I stand to face
my first father’s day of
fully knowing me.
Love calls 4 times.
And I know that somewhere,
somehow, someway
that feisty fire-voice
was naming and liberating
and I have been reborn
from all ash,
a ghost no more
but bodied, present,
and turning in my joy.
**********
The Blossom of Memories of You (Father’s Day 2015)
June 21st 2015
There’s a stone in your body
where heart used to be
there’s a hurt in my heart
where your smile ran so free
there’s an echo of you
deep within, here in me
but your voice trails off
and disappears.
You have wandered so far afield
into the satin night
while I am touching
the circle of golden light
shed by the memories
of what we shared,
what we might share again,
if you’d stayed within sight
and let love be our shield,
let love be our shield…
But I wear your flowers in my tresses, braided
in my hair the scent of your laughter, it lingers
longing for you to return and to claim
those words that you uttered then, sitting so empty,
forlorn, blurred and muttered without clarity
and without true commitment
to something beyond the grave,
waiting to rise again,
new…rise again, new…
I wear
the blossom
of memories
of you…
**********
Beside This Ring Of Ashes One Year Later
June 21st 2015
One year later,
in this year of grace
I sit in stillness
ringside once again
but only with dead ashes,
no flame.
Instead, I warm myself within
with thoughts of fires long ago,
long gone out but flickering
strongly in this quiet night
of lonely memories.
I know it has to happen, yes
this death of me, this death
of who I was, no…
what I was, or rather
what you thought I was
and what I wasn’t too.
You thought me as a god,
and just a little lower than a god.
Your “glorious glorious father”
shining strong and tall,
quick and certain, no one knew
that was but wooly curtains drawn
over a stage making the ready
for a play to become real-life…
finally…at last…
But…what’s a child to do when god betrays?
When god is thus unfaithful and capricious…
that god must become monster,
and vicious harsh taskmaster,
when god must be recast as sick pretender
(your words, love, not mine, those are your words)
as just the “other”, empty, just a mask?
Well, Nietzsche showed the way, now dint he?
He sussed the death of God and birth of crisis…
He understood the very underpinnings
of everything are quivering like liquid,
all foundations kicked asunder
and this hollow edifice
left floating in the shell-pink air.
Nietzsche called for total transformation,
he demanded blood, the death of God,
and also everything He stood for.
I get it…I do…the death of god
No really, I know it’s me, not you…
Problematic in my breathing
and offensive in my joy, well
this aggression will not stand, man!
And so it is that I must die…well,
he must die and be defamed
for every single gripe,
complaint or wound or sling
he must be destroyed
because he wasn’t He
and now it’s clear
that he would never be…
but I will be…me.
Go ahead, beloveds,
it’s true that I must die
so you can be set free
and God at last can finally BE
that God of Wonder
far beyond the Galaxy,
high above and right beside us
bringing life again to you and me.
Use what silver knives you have
(I placed them in your hands so long ago,
carefully planned, bequeathed to you your
weapons of words, of music and of comprehension).
Use the ropes you find inside your packs,
laid lovingly from Lorien in wonder
and in sober long anticipation yes,
that someday your blood be required
of me and on my head as well
(but it’s in my heart forever).
No crucifix for me, how gauche,
how gothic and old fashioned!
No…a shiny scaffold glittery
erected stainless steel there, gleaming
austere, so implacable
and one thin razor wire noose
with my neck’s name writ there
*Charissa Grace*
(except it’s not so plain as all that)
no…the old name that speaks of
blood and
the price and all things made
white as snow again.
I have confidence in you
(this is not stupid or myopic,
this is love, Lovelies).
I see this execution
is but you living out
what I have taught you
that there is no god but God
(not even glorious father)
and all things that you love
descend from His Great Goodness
and Mama’s bag of riches
*beauty of the Leaves of Grass
haunting grace of purity ring
simple joy in eyes of beloved boys
furious flow of men and balls and love*
I wish you all good always
and hope that someday your mouth won’t be cursed
with this burnt aftertaste of death,
and me just acrid curse to you…
if my death expiate your soul
and bring release and freedom to you all
then quick, oh Hangman, let the black bell toll
and pull your lever that I may hard fall
and snap…snuff…poof
and on you live, free
building brave new worlds
but I will still be like those flickering fires
that linger in my mind while I sit here
beside this ring of ashes never warm
and those seats empty in this quiet storm
of memory, of love, of sorrow held so dear
God knows I gladly die and wish you near
and trust that I will rise and know no fear
forever, just Love’s Fires always here.
“The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God,’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I! All of us are his murderers…Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?…Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
she will be lauded
for persistence
and bearing up
in difficult circumstances…
and I?
Less than a memory
of a brief rainstorm
in the midst of a long
hot summer heat wave.
But I am more…
i AM MORE.
I am a maelstrom,
not a cute summer storm.
It takes more inner destruction and power
to restrain myself so ONLY sweet summer showers
come forth to water fragile egos
ERRR plants…
I am a whirlwind in harness,
an earthquake in red ballet slippers
I am a fire unleashed
and in a tiny hearth
crackling merrily
on the side of the audience
while I HOWL to the night and cold
I am a river deep and swift
that delicately plies at the banks
where the fearful creep to drink,
and I playfully splash their cheeks
while I rage in rapids at rocks
in the center until they are sent
in sandy squishes to the sides
swirling beneath the flick
of the silver salmon tail…
swishing away
less than
a memory
Darling, are you awake? Yes?
Good…do you remember our beginning?
A little hut by the sea
wearing grey cedar shingles like feathers
ruffled in rainy winds and shot thru
with browns and blacks…
the red round rock stacked
shambling into walls that just spelled home,
nestled midst woven thatches of
marram shot thru with sedges and dandelions,
clinging to shifty sands like picnic blankets
strewn round that heart…that little hut,
our beginning kissed by windy sands
scritching out beach music
on violin decks and cello chairs of cypress.
You were a wordless humming song
and tidal in my veins you moved
in rhythm, rhyme, in time to that
strumming music tidal
joyous humming in the dancing of the waves
and sand and wind and sky.
We walked each day steady
across those shores ever reaching
to the sea and the sea ever running
back to sands and sunset ever blessing
everyday each moment with its many colored kiss
in hues of pinks and purples, oranges, yellows, hues of bliss
in reds and blues, and greys… you…
always grey lining blue of mine with you,
in silver shot straight thru
with grey shot thru my blue.
We knew each sunset,
whiled away another day
closer to that sunset last
and that final mystic gateway
at the end thru which we enter
Lone and sundered, hoping that we yet may
walk together on a new shore
where there are no sunsets because
there is only sunrise
sunrise
sunrise
yet again
and yet again…
We walk still each day,
and every sunset bows to us,
and then bows to the night,
to the next day yet born,
to the next sun yet risen,
to the next sunset kiss…
and the stars always
over head and constant,
glitter chips of always-light
against the thick and sable night,
the stars nod in return, return…
ahh…the beach at night.
Air refreshing, breezy, flexible,
runs its loving hungry fingers
thru your hair pliable
as we walk, the sand
packed and wet and clean
and time at last is friable
in the smell of salty air
its kiss brushes against you,
trailing fingers across your cheek,
over your skin, and I too brush against you
(rush within you kissing,
trailing fingers)
We are Quietness
nestled deep in certain stillness,
and snuggled yet deeper
in the steady static roar
of the ever crashing waves
and the gurgling swishy swirling
of waves playing tag
with sand and seaweed
and seagulls refereeing
crying foul foul foul
so the waves run
and retreat in laughing ripples
back to the waiting deep safety
of the vast receptive sea,
and us safely snuggled
in our you and me.
The sand is crisp and cold and damp
as we walk, you and me, our steps
singing skritch skritch skritch,
singing in time
to the cry of those legalistic gulls
and our feet slide as we move from wet to dry
and we skim across the surface
walking like penguins
so we can move thru time
and yet leave nary a trace
and you feel so safe, like you are home
and you feel so safe in my feeling that…
find safety in my adoration
and you are home…
We can see
a vast array of stars overhead,
a broad expansive sea swelling before,
and stretching there a beach, the shore
beneath our sliding skimming feet,
comprised of endless grains of sand
uncountable but having number,
speaking of the days of time
since time began…
everywhere
are unique things uncountable,
innumerable…and you:
a one off, one and done
and rendered even just that much more special
on this stage of infinence
in the midst of audience
of blank uncountable conclave.
and there upon that stage
you are all the more substantial,
present, solid, singular,
just the endless treasure of your beauty
and the vast stretch of my love
(echoing stars and sand and sea)
singing harmoniously
in the presence of this eternal array,
this echo of infinity
we’re in.
And we walk, away from our little hut,
towards our little hut, and away again,
and time is scrolling out before us,
we two, we poised to write
with heart quills dipped in love’s well,
and then time rolls back into itself
(ah, it sees its the sea,
rolling out to kiss the sand
and rolling back to dump those kisses
into waiting heart so deep)…
time rolls out day by day by day, and back again
neath the stars,
in the night,
with the wind.
I wonder in the midst
of this sandy sacred setting
which thing it is my heart echoes
as it aches and hurts so fierce,
so good as it longs, yearns
so empty and so full,
so hungry, satisfied,
so intricate, complete…
my fiery core of passion and of promise
what…
Rolls in and out in waves?
Glitters fierce like diamond stars?
Never ends like grains of sand
everywhere there’s earth?
It aches too fierce, too good,
it thrills, thrums too ferocious
to identify and focus on,
and then it gets dim and blurry
when I look at you and see the quiet
gentle fierce glad brightness
of your countenance at night that
dims the stars, and
blurs the sands, and
makes the waves stand still
breathless and in awe, and
I know then my core
is ever always you you you
we married,
long ago beside this same vast ever sea,
on the same shore of sand golden, tan
and singing to the music
laughing in the running waves
beneath the glitter gaze of stars
overhead and hanging on angel visions,
we married…
and the moon officiated,
she gloamed before us
as we walked into her temple,
her the Officiant,
the Congregant of Always and gentle love,
we walked her moonlight aisle together…
some marry on mountainsides midst craggy peaks
to the wedding songs of brooks and creeks
and others still mingle in the firelight
beneath the tall stentorian witness of deep forests
redwood and sequoia who roll out meadows
soft and green, and arrayed more beautiful and
richer than the wealth of Solomon in their dress of flowers
and stalks and stems as the birds serenade
and sing their praise to them.
we visited there, you and me,
we heard that brooky song,
we saw that craggy might,
we lay in meadow soft
resplendent in love and
we have in our many walks found that
we were foundered, mired
in swampy lowlands funky, smelly,
decomposing rotten and releasing
the last gasp of life in its methane relief
but still stinking of that unbecoming…
we have thought us lost but then discovered
that it is here that wombs become impregnate,
become renewed as elements of used-to-be-alive
stick to our skin in longing desperate clingy clutchings.
But it is back,
always to the sea,
we are drawn, we,
to that intersection
of time and truth and bright eternity
that we see tangible
and with us in the sand,
and stars and sea.
and inside us,
you and me, burns a flame we share,
yes the same one, the same blade
of those fires that we see before us
in the night and yet to rise anew
in the day yet to be born,
the echo of stars and suns,
of the moon’s desires and passions
for lovers everywhere
and the twin of driftwood fires
that we kindle every night
as our offering to beauty,
to love, to us, to light midst
the crackling shouts of wood at last
consumed and released popping up up and away
in sparky eager pieces at last
free to become the stars overhead
that driftwood prophecies of old proclaimed their fate,
and the incense of their longing
drifting around us in thick vapours
that smell of longing
at last to be fulfilled,
smelling of worship,
smelling of Mama’s breath
and the courts of the Risen Lamb,
and smelling of Us,
you and me,
and our little hut.
like a river running…
dipped in for a drink
a pipeful, a turbine twist
and then running on
alone and so much more
ever questing to the sea
and no one knowing
what passed by
in the night unknowing
and unknown
I had it all together
rows and blocks
neat and trimmed
even if they sat
ragged round the edges
like clouds, like shadows
and then artesian wells
of soul, of spirit
invaded, armies
of color riotous
rejoicing round
those edges ragged
like clouds, like shadows
welled up out of
nowhere
and I am
now here
That’s close enough.
Do not cross my boundaries.
You are not welcome any closer.
“…or if they masquerade as friends to draw close,
sidling up so near to shove those pills dry
down our throats in rough and rooting
thrusting fingers ripping without a
drink to help them go down and
we, our own spoonful of sugar…
until we lie in thrall to
those fell jailers…”
smoke drifts on the wind
vanishes to who knows where
my soul, wind and smoke
I sat out one summer morn
I saw the wind gather her horn
and blow the fleecy clouds around
just because she could
I saw the redwing blackbird chase
those cotton clouds of wind and lace
until she caught them in her snoot
just because she could
And tufts collected in her beak
away to nest she dove, did streak
her home composed of earth and clouds
just because she could
It’s here, upon the threshold…
—hallowed (hollowed) spaces—
Thresholds are lurking in between
where veils are thin indeed
It’s here that we discover
the Shine of unseen presences
wait for us on the way.
We’ve chosen to attend the call
of our elysian journey
whether it long desired
or if it struck unbidden
like lightning from the hidden
We court holy disruption
just asking to be broken
and laboring to break
ourselves forever open wide
arriving in transition
We do confess this molten truth:
old structures have imploded
the old ways, habits, patterns
no longer serve to fill us
no matter how we gorge…
for the old has listless fallen off
And the new? Not yet emerged.
We put the Powers on notice
we’ve come to risk and open
ourselves, we’ve stopped our grasping
our frantic desperate scrabbling
for how things used to be,
We invoke every mystery chance
to change course, change perspective
And drain the unexpected cup
communion bread and wine
of earth, and of Sublime
We say yes! Take these moments
the journey takes us on
we become pilgrims, we resist
the siren call seductive
of mundane muddy matters
We feel it! things are changing
we hear the invitation
to open up ourselves and reach
Beyond, to mystery waiting
We walk into unknowing,
allow ourselves to shatter,
to be broken wide open
to receive gifts far bigger
than our tiny flat perspective
could even start to ponder…
Back home again we shall arrive
(perhaps before we’ve started
perhaps when we’ve departed)
we, salmon selves, return to us
in dawning spawned awareness
of the rooting inner journey
And what is left, remaining?
a deep,
abiding presence
…Oh, there are reasons to go into here…
creating life from every death, for soil is alive, you see
that living soil feeds on death, it feasts on death
and brings forth life…
It is the Resurrection writ, inscribed
into the smallest detail of
existence…life giving soil…
“Feed the soil, not the plant!”
The ancient wisdom speaks to us, feed the soil for it’s alive,
cares not a whit for ethics held except the ethic of its pangs,
it hungers for the blood and bones it wants to eat, especially us…
Bone meal, blood, and ash remain, the finer points, the amuse-gueule
betwixt the teeth, all of them sharp
and hungry…
We learn the ancestral grammar and feed the trees with blood and bones
of every creature near and far, take solace in this sacrament
that spices every meal to come…
And comfort rises in this practise.
Four apple trees dance on edges of the grave and burial lands
Amidst the grasses and the hedges, above ground they flower, blossom,
Bare their ruddy fruit so sweet…
While down beneath, and out of sight
Below our hearing or our knowing
Those roots draw near the static graves…
So supple in the dirty night that closes, kisses, holds and grips
just like the roots that tender lick the bones and sigh in sweet relief
And breathe from bones in ever life
Transforming dust to living flesh
To feed our flesh and live again
And then to feed itself on us…
<snip>
And if you listen you can hear the long slow sigh of skeletal roots saying
“you are here and I am hungry
for you, for your shape,
you are the apple of my eye”
And dirt clogged chuckle trickles up and filters thru the flowering grass…
Teach simple truths, learn to accept that death draws near to everyone.
Inevitable is that step upon the grasses growing in
the fields, flowering, fading, falling…
to the faithful hands of roots so hungry, sharp of tooth and eye
to eat your bones and drink your blood, inhale your ashes and your dust
and then at last to resurrect us…
when…then
become
The Apple of Their Eye.
The water singing, sending
fingers in the air, as mist
caressing, beckoning
to the regions
waiting there
across the bridge
and thru the gate
and home to the Singer
In the water on the mist
“Less is more” she scolded
clucking, fluttering
hither and yon
like her Dutch ancestor
needing to plug up the dike.
I sat there feeling banks caving in
choking out cloudy and clotty
as I backed up bulged up gasping
for my way round the mulberry bush
slid brackish into my brooky streams.
Then I looked out
and saw that sky
so impossibly starry
screaming in
gloryglory
barely even begun the Story
I heard those waves
surging
foreverforeverforever
breaking
and even one handful
of that beach so soft
and exponential and more
than anyone could count
and I knew it was not true…
less is more.
Less is less and more is more
less and less, more and more.
This is from 2016, and I think it is very relevant to right now, because there is so much here you have missed.
I really do not know how to interpret your “gifts”, quotations used because you have often used money to obligate, to create hierarchies, to…gawd, who can ever really know?
The heck of it is that I have zero trust to ever really find out, because I don’t think deep down that you are really prepared to understand that this is an existential path instead of a moral one.
Regardless…this day from 2016 is a really good day to take a look at, in that it records several really fine poems and a couple essays that are palpable…this one being the most salient.
…you say that I think I can do what I want and pronounce it all forgiven by my belief in my “make-believe god”? You say that I think I can justify whatever I want and call it a “Road to Damascus” experience?
You think wrong.
You will never know the depth of the pain and sorrow for each and every time that I have fallen short…
…and you also will never know the hurt and pain you caused me with your false accusations of abuse and physical harm, your violent anger and threats of murder…your false memories and placing words in my mouth that I never said or even thought…
You will not have a way of knowing that even in your falseness I see that as my own fault because I did not do a good enough job to birth you into wholeness and understanding of truth…and instead, you go on forever about things that are so insane as to be befuddling to me.
No. I am blood guilty of sins of commission, and sins of omission as well.
But I place my faith and my trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and in His Cross…and I ask Him to see me thru.
I trust Mama to Defend me, Advocate for me, Sustain me, Console me, and Comfort me.
I will do so all of my days, no matter how good or bad I was each day, no matter how deeply I fail or how high I fly.
This will never change, though I hope and pray that I will, continually becoming more like Jesus’ Lovely Heart by the Grace of God poured out liberally.
And there are others too…who read here like Nicodemus…you from the past, who used to come out into my working environment so you could criticise me, call me unsubmitted, tell me how I had no rule over my soul, and basically oppose every thing I attempted…I know you read here and think me tragically deceived, fallen away, or (one dude, you think this) in the clutches of “sexual sin”…
you think that being transgender is an act of sexual fulfillment, which absolutely cracks me up…like, I guffaw when I consider your ignorance and assumption.
You all have missed me in the midst of your judgement.
Here is me: this song forever, along with the other ones I have posted this morning.
If you want to understand me and be in my heart, you must understand and accept these songs. Whether or not you adhere to the songs is not my concern…that is up to you and your own convictions and choices. I seek to love and accept you regardless, from you who say you dreamed of murdering me for years to you who shake your head and waggle your beard because you have judged me outcast and shunned.
Sometimes I need to make these declarations.
Today is one of those days…and I am still here…like Papillon…I am still here…clinging to the precious Bleeding Side of Jesus.
I’ve been fingering the tears
again, the rents and runs and ruins,
where earth convulsed and absence ruled,
raw abandonment carved away
all solid ground for good and gone.
I have no earthly idea why
the silence swung its hammer blow
and shattered what I thought solid
showing me that it was shells
surrounding nothing but a hollow
lurk that waited mocking there
and empty.
Three months (a trimester) time,
and edges that were razor sharp,
that sliced my gentle fingertips
(the same ones that speak spirit braille
and dole healing for blackest ail…)
to bloody shreds and ribbons red
has birthed…just rain, the steady drizzle
constant, velvet soft it falls
eroding bleak bewildered grief
answering frantic questions asked
(but never spoken) just rainfall
that whispers just because…
Smoothing cliffside, washing clean
rinsing scouring the mean
and low and petty dissipated,
rivulets until my fingers
felt, felt, just moss, fresh grass
and fog mingled in sassafras
and orchids peeking from the ruin
The fearsome Wreck of the New Charissa
(on a reef she never saw
and doesn’t understand) has even
still again become redeemed
in absence. In abandonment.
Once again,
the Majesty of Absence
is Present
and Beauty
walks again
I am all crazy foothills
tumbling and topsy
milling round the mountain
that juts up so sudden
in bittersweet russet
and chromium slate
and silver so still
and so dancingly daring
to reach above treeline
and shout to lost rivers
I am little to love and yet
do have a draw
that compels a return
to be squeezed in the chaos
and lost in the hidden
the hidden, the hidden, get
lost in the hidden.
it’s a
foggy caul
a skein,
night’s skin
here under
galloping moon.
She rides, Her horse
grey and shadow
She bleeds silver
mercury drops
quicksilver seeds
i melt into Her
wet rivers, dripping
slick with desire
swollen with devotion
aching with longing
until i am breathing
underwater, under
galloping moon.
Night has gnawed grey brittle bones
clean, bare and thin as grave clothes, shriv’n
of warmth, sheer worm-worn sheets like stones
as cold as mercy never given
and weary…in the fires and flame
of time’s compressing screeching keen
as red heart slows, constricts in shame,
wings tangled in the chancel screen
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
Feel Her presence there in echoes
of bones nigh breaking, at least kneeling
to the moment’s cadence, throes,
within the Delphic Sanctum reeling
For a breath without drinking smoke
and thirsting throat, a coal black caul,
a scarf of soot round necks to choke
a masquerade, a pallor, pall
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
The loss of life and stone stilled tongues
and this is real, is bitter tart
It’s in a face, laces the lungs
It’s breaking in and on the heart
that continues rustling rough beneath
those sheets, and fearful to the touch
that long slow wet grief’s glistening sheath
and trembly tears the only crutch
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
Whoever dares to come, show up
with tears impudent, bold, absurd
and brave enough to take her cup,
enough to quench flames shaken, stirred
and break her crumbly mouldy bread
and eat and drink the Overwhelm
in numb mute witness, slow soft dread,
in courage, waiting in this realm
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
Yet…beneath the brown and chuckly dark
a river runs, it’s clear and deep
like liquid stars, a crystal spark
flowing, a fount in this stark keep
Yet…all who partake of her sup
can find their certain path to drink
of living waters springing up
and resonating in the ink
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
A tide lived backwards in the crush
A tide rolled forward far and wide
A resonance of life-blood gush
Love’s unstoppable great glad tide
The crisis of this time is met
in intimate authentic breath
that fears no evil, dreads no debt
and singing rises from short death
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
Ahhh, how I love this poem!!
So, new readers and potential “Constances” (Constance is the name I give to those who become “Constant Readers” and is my deep thank you of gratitude and wonder):
The best way to interact with my blog right now if you want to access all the living work and art that lives in the marrow is via the calendar in the Right Hand Column.
You can use that to jump around to various days.
Here is the important information though: it displays the current year…SO, to access a previous year and month, please scroll down to the BOTTOM of the blog and see the footer calendar (located at the very bottom left).
There, you can select a drop down menu that shows month to month from year to year.
What I find fun is to go to today’s month in other years…and then pull that down from the menu and load that page. Once it is loaded, use the calendar on the Right and click on the date…if I posted on that day, it is hyperlinked to that day’s postings…
And in this manner you can not only access my poetry, but the context it was birthed in and thru…and I think that it begins to show the depth and breadth of my heart’s reach.
I am not posting current writings because I am mostly keeping notes and drafts, filling my artistic ditty-bag. This is because I am doing other projects that involve visual arts and creating thru that means, as well as new spiritual practices and involvements.
Besides, I find that I must cry out against the thing with human skin that shits from its heart every time it utters something…that thing ttaf which is the mere familiar of the multitude of monsters that have become the living dead without even knowing it.
This poem though…what a treasure and delight to me it is. I think I captured it just right.
and it is in night…
like a babe in fresh blankets
snuggled and seeing,
quiet and jumping
in jammies with footies
singing of safety,
hot chocolate and nibbles,
then raindrops on rooftops
tingtingtingthrumthrumthrum…
I am posting my own poem again…because I have new readers and I want to introduce you to my true core rather than the prophetic broadsides I am compelled to post in the times of ttaf and monsters.
This poem speaks about what it is like to be “Othered”.
as i sit in tall grass
silky-lashing back and forth
quiet like tiger-tails talking
in air with movement
i think about the earth
spinning in space
circling the sun
amidst the stars
(but none of them close…
nine and
a half
minutes
too long…
that’s what
30 seconds
is
…and in the cool
of the quiet evening
it was women walking
silky, as yet unseen
in the garden.
Silver shears caught
slivers of sunlight,
captured them gently
like butterflies netted
with meshed moonlight
and given to a special
catch and release program
to each bush they bowed
in authority and grace
snipping deadheads
from verdant relieved stems
smiling and murmuring
in the gloam
and answering
alarmy squirrels
with sighs
of contentment
and moving on
men strode
by with eyes
so full of mirrors
they saw nothing
else and everything else
as reflections of reflections,
having used their silver
30 times in their
own name
and the
garden sang
and sang
because of
the women
It’s on this painful threshold here
we suck the bitter sop of grief
and cling to dust, cry for relief,
we seeds that die so You come near.
Our teardrops carve so deep and mark
with crystal joy and sacred sigh
our burnished face, our emerald eye
our hull that breaks…in rain, in spark
and make us, each one so unique,
each one our own and also owned
by every hurting heart of stone,
by breaking soul and grieving cheek
an offering of healing strong
an unguent for this wounded earth
restoring life and giving birth
again to Your Unending Song
Oh Mama come and make of me
a heart cut red, a spirit shorn
and bleeding Grace for all who mourn
along this path back to The Sea
It was a golden time,
a stretched out place back then,
twisting up and over there,
and underneath the sun and more…
a yawn opened in heaven’s floor
and down to earth came Joy and more…
he was and is our so much more…
When John had horrid accident
(Lafayette screamed outloud to Moraga)
and whistles blew so shrill, so quick,
while McElhenny dodged Nomellini oh so neatly
(but poor scared children could not know the drill)
and thus their roar for glory yet to come…yet to come
left them there bereft and frozen
while Joyful John slept, waiting…
and there in Heaven, bleachers full
gasped and held their breath…
one and then year two
until the smile that broke a thousand
cold cold hearts wide open once
again cracked the cold and silent night
and Heaven’s Bleachers roared in joy!
Quicksilver baton twirling,
sigil of the coming glory
and the battered Captain Tittle
smiling humble, signing Y.A.
and the whole beloved story
for a faithful fan of Joyful John
and his undying confidence
in Red and Gold forever held
in jubilance and wriggly ecstasy…
And as that silver wheel spun high
and slicing thru the pale blue sky
the years twirled out as quick as lightening
and slowly Heaven’s Bleachers swelled
with lookers on who cheered and held
the living in their love…
Until the Niners strong and true
(St Clair, RC Owens, Perry, all there)
emerged to follow greatness on
and on into forever…
and even Easter Bunnies stopped
with making eggs to cheer for Rice
and call out loud to old John Brodie…
These many years since then, it’s come
The Wicked Witch of Martinez, thrum
and screech and fear it brings to try
and make our Joyful brother cry
but we stand firm with him and sing
and Heaven’s Bleachers full do bring
their tidings here to us this day
that Joyful John is needed here…
STAY.
For earthly throng still cheers our team
Beloved Niners, see it gleam, as glory gathers
there beneath the coming dawn so gold, so red
I laid down on a rock
to have myself a sleep
the lichen whispered in my ear
of mystery-wonder deep
and even though the clock
spun round, toward death did creep
the rock just waited, patient, near
for me to make the leap.
this is about
silence
under the clouds.
silence defined
by noises here
and there too
and that
in between
glowing and
present
in the 
Come down to the old brown barn with me.
It waits under the milky moon dripping, travelling,
the pearly moon freshly dunked
in far and sighing opalescent seas
and then come flying, fat and flitting swallow here,
to these far mountains and awaiting our arrival,
peaceful you and shivering me.
Come dressed in silks and sighs
and nothing else remaining.
Come adorned with slings and arrows
to lay down long at last in love
unfeigning, unfainting here,
in the end of battle.
The barn sings low and swinging
all our wonder up and ever outward
while the silver moon is clinging
wringing high and deeply dipping down
into the gulf dividing us asunder
from the gods and from ourselves…
and the mountains…
ahh…the mountains there
so tall, so stark
and unrelenting in the dark
the mountains dare to root down and reach up
and hold everything together
as it twirls, spinning.
beneath the stars so bright
the mountains hold us tight
and all together in
this moon-drenched
love-slick night.
I wrote this 4 years ago…a lifetime ago…when I first began to see I really really REALLY had a shell over me…and that it was possible to live free.
I want to challenge you today, especially if you are cis-gender and not transgender: what shell are you living in? What transition must you make as a soul, one that is not a transition of gender, but your own answer to the call to “cross-over”?
Are you called to cross over into creativity and leave behind the world of grubbing for money?
Are you called to cross over into true relationship with God, leaving behind the shell of conservative evangelicalism that is nothing more than a gateway to the gas chambers, with a sign over it saying “Welcome to Hell?”
We all are called to trans…from death to Life…from works to Grace…I pray you find your courage and begin!! Cus the water is fine.
“It caged me in its cold confining bars.
Long have I been its lost and longing thrall,
its tenant-serf of weary plodding on.
It’s clung, tentacled round my throat, my eyes,
and darkness was its cruel confederate
who caged my strong uprising Ne’er-Say-Die…”
wave ever rising
hanging there eternally
wave ever falling
Source: Wave | Charissa’s Grace Notes
This, another poem from last year, comments on life like a vapor, yet must be captured within you, there in your body…
the fog gathers, nesting
over the deep quiet glen
dialing down sunlight
damping every sound
in this gloam my supple soul
nestles in, gives up control
and ceases struggle to be good,
or important, or subtle…
From last year…I really love this lil beauty!
Do you know the place where the light passes in?
That’s where you’ll find me when darkness is seeping
from crevice and cranny while Spring trudges weeping
I sit in the place where the light passes in.
You’ll find me there singing of beautiful life
and of faith like pure gold burnished shiny with hope
as my tears fall like diamonds so soft in the wind
In that place where the light, where the light passes in…
(continued at Source: Where The Light Passes In | Charissa’s Grace Notes )
look for the off kilter doorway
find where the street has no name
enter between the curb and the gutter
to stand in the light just the same
as the saints and the mystics before you
had to stoop and to crawl and to cry
for the straight way that looks oh so crooked
to the jaundiced and natural eye
mostly
behind
your back
it usually
looks
different
This is talking about my own life, my own family…and yours, too…because all of us have this brokenness. The evidence is irrefutable.
This poem is all about forgiveness…trying to give it and trying to receive it…and the incredible revelation that it is impossible.
There is no trying…there is only becoming.
“…And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit,
no escape from agony,
pitstop from pain…
all we can do is
exchange suffering’s form
and it’s face, from our own
for the pain of another…”
Just after dawn…
but before sunrise
I wait
ajar
a jar
of costly
perfume
I hear the sound
of music stilled
and waters hushed
hushed beneath
frost crystals clasping
roses’ leaves…
I rise and
wait, hushed and
clutching me
my
alabaster
jar
this
empty
situla
still reeking
of sorrow and nard
of fragrance and tears
and deep joy too.
I guess the guests
are still around
the table, I think
the gusty crowd
is still sitting in
the dark and staring
(eyes shut)
at the inside
of the veil…
as I travail
in silence,
as I writhe
in ecstasy
and groan
for separation
to give way
to liberation
and this coming
fragrant day.
The frost
gives way
as light and heat
sing gently ’round
the edges,
as the roses
are anointed
and
the alabaster jar
breaks open
yet again
and I
pour
out my
soul
Her
situla
Situla means “a bucket for Holy Water” by the way…
Just after dawn…
but before sunrise
I wait
ajar
a jar
of costly
perfume
I hear the sound
of music stilled
and waters hushed
hushed beneath
frost crystals clasping
roses’ leaves…
I rise and wait,
hushed and clutching
me
my
alabaster
jar
this
empty
situla
still reeking
of sorrow and nard
of fragrance and tears
and deep joy too.
I guess the guests
are still around
the table, I think
the gusty crowd
is still sitting in
the dark and staring
(eyes shut)
at the inside
of the veil…
as I travail
in silence,
as I writhe
in ecstasy
and groan
for separation
to give way
to liberation
and this coming
fragrant day.
The frost
surrenders
as light and heat
sing gently ’round
the edges,
as the roses
are anointed
and
the alabaster jar
breaks open
yet again
and I
pour
out my
soul
Her
situla
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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