November 10, 2019

blessed be

*
Listen to the heart of bliss.
Lie on open sand, inhaling, vibrant,
under oceanic starlit sky.
Breeze breathes eternity, opening
inward to see intricately
expansive poetry —
thought in magnificent splendor.
 All art is magical; all magic is art.
Yet they are not the same, and part
of a grander landscape.
*
*
*
I Have All-ways Been
*
*
Magic is not part of me.
It is every molecule,
holding together higher intent.
Tracking the winding trail
stars and moonlight exhale potency
spells, incantations, hidden divinations
flicker in malleable materiality.
Living Earth, patiently moves through rotations,
inhales stardust.
In darkness, creation recycles.
Magic is all.
*
*
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Dark Magick
*
*
In the still of the dark of the moon
after the revelrie has passed on
deep, deep into the frozen fields of dreamless sleep
we, walking, silently, along the riverbed
breathing in ancient ash of woodsmoke
breathing out long-growing tears
to weave ghostly tentacles
along our path
take each others’ hand up to our heart
to pray, to kiss, to whisper
thus casting an eternal spell.
*
*
*
Hekate’s Child
*
*
Child of Hekate,
sweetness and light?
Where is the mark
of your entombment?
Buried prematurely,
to strive for growth
in dark enclosure
striving for a breath
of the pompously negligent
Sun,
of the blushing Moon
of the squabbling sons and daughters,
of daylight’s pleasures.
Striving, tenderly
twisting around corners
aching for an unknown touch.
*
“Tell me, sir, then, how’s it going now?”
Looking up narrowly from a tepid meal,
all at once remembering
playfellows on the schoolyard
running, out of breath,
filled with pride
a jolly good game.
Always someone begging
my attention,
but it wasn’t really me,
just a story to steam off
or a butt to joke on.
All the silly give and take;
only time is taken
and that in big hungry chunks
of no tomorrows.
*
One long day
now the part all groggy
waking from fevered napping.
It wasn’t supposed to be a tomb
nestled in Transylvanian bloodlines.
It was meant to be a child’s cot,
freshly laundered cotton lace.
But the rats got in,
once the cats had been slaughtered.
*
Slowly wakening
I strive again to find my footing.
Learning to walk
was never as easy
as forgetting to fly.
*
*
*
Liminal Spaces
*
*
Twilight, the wee hours,
the dark of the moon
liminal spaces,
places where magic reigns,
crossroads, crises, cusps.
*
There is static on the radio.
A song
my voice was singing
taking flight to surround me,
the sound of music,
a comforter of down
to ease my soul.
*
I’ve been trying to define a taste,
a sense of bittersweet and salt.
I’ve been trying to find a trace
a footprint in the desert,
a sound, a scent,
a memory.
I’ve been trying to find a trace of me,
a piece to fit the puzzle,
my contribution to the grand design.
Seeking in the shadows,
the space between
myth and matter,
those places words
cannot define.
On those insubstantial plains
of myst and awe,
the stuff of dreams,
threshold of wonder,
creation begins.
*
*
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Meta-Science
*
*
Magical thinking
creating room for the power
of possibilities,
nuances, shades between,
molecular space
unexplored, unexploited.
The magic of synaptic awareness,
unlikelihood of consciousness,
Dreams, Visions, Reveries,
ineffable emotions
too dear to deny.
See, smell, taste
chemical reactions,
hear reverberating air.
There is no limit
but that I impose.
Strict chanting and ritual
keeps reality in line.
*
*
*
Raising Hell
*
*
Not true sacred magick.
Cynical sleight of hand
turns sweat and dreams,
lives of desperation
into neat bundles of greed.
But the pain burns through
not content to be twisted
into fast cars, high-stakes games,
brilliant careers in glad-handing.
It wants its payment.
False wizards of arrogant charm
play with chthonic forces
more angry and deadly than flame.
Unaware of the cursed seeds
they cultivate,
strangling life force from below.
Unsupervised children
playing with matches,
grizzled and gray as some may appear,
laugh at the bright spectacle
as homes burn.
The balance is always paid.
Magick is never free.
Will the lesson ever sink in?
Be careful what you conjure.
*
*
*
gypsy hand
*
*
Too brite days
midnights that refuse to
abide dark and secret
when empty phrases chant
to fairytale Moons
I tell myself
This is no ordinary room
This is no fleeting flittering life
This is a magical passageway
sparkling like mica, like miracles
*
Quiet traces
luminescent impression
a trailing kite tail binds
silent whimpers, sojourning whispers,
tears shining behind mime smiles
*
Crone’s gnarled fingers, play
to spite agony
simulate touch
beyond ache
Crouched scarred shadow
I cast silhouette of metamagic gypsy
hand
offering
*
*
*
Brigid’s Way
*
*
With passion!
Outpouring care feeds our mythic spring.
Sparkling flame of peace abides within,
melts forbidding.
Not ignorant fools;
no pleas for altruist beliefs.
Relief of hunger feeds us.
No cunning deceivers could with malice
steal our good.
Need reaches to heal through magical
interchange.
Energies not replenished, giving
stops.
Why meanly measure out
moral scores in play at “who deserves”?
Purposeful use of flowing contribution
is no drain, but the focal point for
cyclic rain’s reward.
Fortune’s gift revealed, this well neverending,
fed by Goddess blessing
sacred vessels aching to be filled.
Dip in with grace, good will, wisdom
self-rejoicing.
This is not belief or even knowing.
This is breath of awe in motion.
*
*
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Merlyn Enchanted
*
*
In secret unlit chambers
guided by wizardry
all eternity his(Hers) to see.
Walls of obsidian crystal, unable to penetrate.
What we do for love’s allure; allowing
liens upon a will of magic.
Omniscient night, he(She) stirs wonders,
bubbling sublime,
catches fluid rhythms in catechisms,
spells out vivid ceremony
in illumined rhyme before his(Her) avid mind.
Enchanted inward, beauty sculpted
pure, decanted music,
deep draughts of ecstasy.
Commingle, frolic with merry sprites,
conjured fumes,
intense, piquant elixir.
*
*
*
Twilight of Goddess Revelation
*
*
What twisted so maliciously your mind?
Your God — Created that greedy leaders may more easily prevail?
Is it guilty shame, seeded by consistent training insisting that you fail?
Lost to balance, whole possibilities, unable to be free or sane
Eternal life is yours, we scream, while you destroy our birthright
in service to conjuror’s dream of denial
*
but it’s just for a while, while we learn what we were from the start
each creature alive to the beat of a self-reasoned heart
*
II.
*
Born other than imperial, torn into what we are told is real
without power to protect ourselves from venal brothers of the order
spreading hatred like any venereal disease
We no longer need to meet you cowering on our knees
Karma’s a hot potent ***** unschooled in mercy
Witches reclaiming noble heritage, reframed herstories will prevail
Though born, forced to service, in our master’s jail,
lost and lonely midst the masses, masked to fit expected forms
*
but it’s just for a while, while we learn what we were from the start
each creature alive to the beat of a self-reasoned heart
*
 
III.
*
Listen, little one, watching every moment for our chance,
we will break free to adventurers’ romance; dance away the chill of
foreign hills enrapt in leaves and grass. Hiding in primeval castles,
tightly aligned to a bright inner sphere, holding to hope of life to hold dear
Learning to fly, ride to some unknown side, escape from the herd hate stone,
can’t be as hard as learning to stand alone.
*
but it’s just for a while, while we learn what we were from the start
each creature alive to the beat of a self-reasoned heart
*
*
*
Maybe I can sacrifice my ignorance, my unfounded fears, my ill-advised temptations, self-imposed limitations. I sacrifice my weakness in the service of my strength. Sounds lovely. The thing with magick — be oh so careful when wishing that you are ready for the consequent reality after tweaking to magick’s demand. Be careful what you will for; it may become your destiny.  I am opening myself to destiny, not out of bravery, but necessity. What else have I got? It’s far too late in the game to switch over to a “normal” lifestyle. I have the candles, the incense, the herbs, the wine, the spell. Blessed be, all wise and witchy, and willing to manifest the joy of peaceful plentitude upon our world.
*
*
*
Singing to the Chorus
*
*
Getting warmer
Days numbered by travelers,
barbarians rushing in to conquest.
Taken in longer view,
tumbling through the ages ~
Sundials exchanged for
binary spiders click-clocking,
tabulating the enormous sum,
only a summary of things gone before.
The reality of childhood, striving creatures,
pulling upward from bootie straps,
scrambling for a place in the pile
near enough to the top
that derision, pouring downward,
obliges them to only the fiercest of Lords.
Merrily spent the pocket-change of
dollars flowing upward.
Old games reign under the big top.
Solemn children in the circus stands
betting on which clown will fall.
They speak to you of evil, o’ my children,
Church Fathers swearing to the sky;
cold, withered Mums hoping for a crust
of noblesse oblige.
Evil is the providence of Satan,
cloven-hoofed, dancing in circle’s
centerpoint, playing the pipes of Pan.
Oceans of blood boil
Leading edges swelter, crisp into
conflagration.
In Summerland children play, dance to
rollicking pipery.
Naked under beaming Moon and starlight,
they act out tales well-loved by All.
*
August 30, 2019

mutable Earth

Perhaps we are in the hallway
of a great reckoning.
e
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Mother Earth is old, tired, sick
of slatternly bastard brats
pulling her teats, calling rude names,
fucking her over and over
e
Mad Earth grumbles loudly,
threatens to rescind Her bounty.
Men of ill will, men of destiny,
no interest in acting honorably as good
stewards of God’s Creation,
proudly proclaim their birthright
to pillage, to plunder, to prey upon
chaos, annihilation.
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Petulant brats demand obeisance
to our code of conquest, of dominance,
of hard-assed outcast of deviance.
Rule over Earth and her issue;
break them to work for our wishes.
Honor, respect, these are authorities’ own,
the war lords we place on our thrones to command.
Progress is forward motion on moribund roads.
Marching, no conscience nor care for what may explode.
Let our Great Destroyer sort it.
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Taste our pain.
Savor the flow of blood from torn veins,
wounds of idolic war, vitriolic rain,
beggars kicked into oblivion on deadened streets.
Pain, the great motivator.
Grind them all into a massive meatball,
cover with condiments extracted from tortured Earth,
this is the wealth that is worth
every sacrifice.
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Rape of Earth,
hot spurts, invective words,
savage knives,
sliced, screwed, carved up for profit. 
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Flowing rivers reveal lines for exploration,
mining ores,
mine and yours.
That element missing from accounting calculations,
Earth and her hordes, a separate salvation?
Wherever did you hear that enmity
would take you anywhere but desolation?
e
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These people valued patriarchic hierarchies,
perhaps as being easier to control.
They instituted strict rules;
made sin of bodily gratification,
pleasure, fun.
In many ways they devalued the Earth,
intra or inter-species cooperation,
the eco-sphere, the kinds of interdependence
that lead to appreciation of each connection.
They embraced harsh competition,
violent confrontation,
us-against-them/winner-take-all.
They favored the wealthy and powerful
whose ends justified any abhorrent means.
Their moral code was about restrictions,
not remedies.
It seems to me that these people are mistaken
when they claim to be at war against Satan,
because the God they worship is the God of Evil,
Destruction, Death, and Despair.
Yet, there are other gods with other values.
How did this group gain so much control over mankind?
Why do we hate our lives?
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When Earth no longer sustains human lives,
these arguments won’t matter.
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but that’s the point — the end times
For whatever psychotic reason there are a great many
people who do not want to be here, on Earth. 
If their goal is an End to the Earth,
they have no interest in making anything better.
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There is a potent mythology that it is God’s will
that the climate change become untenable,
require Judgment Day at last, the end
of our suffering here in this testing zone. 
For life on Earth is a test of our immortal souls. 
We are sent here by God to be tested. 
Those who pass get just reward in Heaven,
unhindered by unbelievers or those lesser.
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We sing Epiphany.
All the holy, all the empty,
all the sorrows filled with poetry,
with charging beasts of challenge
and slip ping back savagery.
I hear the Angels sing of Earth
as mud, as muck, as fuckin’ murder in the womb,
as luck would have it, as black streaks redacting
the jubilance of Heaven.
I hear the demons laugh,
dancing akimbo hunker down
to limbo to lindy hop upon the prophet’s breath.
Such noise.
Such annoying brays and cagey whispers.
I would sleep, snore, evermore
if they would but diminish,
allow silence to enfold.  Instead,
the dream takes over,
dissolves all sanity
no morning (mourning)
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On Judgment Day this Earth experiment
ends in floods and flames.
Who cashes out with greatest profit
wins eternal praise.
Rushing to the final contest —
so little time, so much dickishness to express.
Free to be mean, even vicious – what Fun!
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On the hate wagon
enjoy this wild horror ride
to the end of Earth.
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Promoters of the end times,
in favor of welcoming Apocalypse,
ending the travails of Earthly life,
fulfillment of cutthroat meritocracy
prophecies, gain ever more support.
Let violence and despair ravage the Earth,
that those who cynically twist evil and good
may transport to their Heaven,
miraculously escape the horror and destruction
they have wrought.
Annihilation for their own elevation.
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Having built the fires of Hell
to burn your perceived enemy,
letting evil loose upon
the Earth we were meant to share
in peace and prosperity,
proving only that the Word
you claim your guide
you ignorantly ill-define,
expecting salvation
through worshipping sin.
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Final Days
Basking in His glory
All Earthly chores and woes
ended like the planet we
never wanted to be our home.
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Which of the plagues, weapons, increments of Earth destruction, cataclysmic storms,
nuclear heck, submission to fantasy starving for money, or even more fantastic
lapse of sanity will we choose?
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The Earth screams.
People die before their time,
or never get much life.
Species die, their music silenced.
Crazy theories of wealth
belie obligation or simply seeing
the laws of consequence.
Scream Earth!
Pierce the cosmos with your
terrible cry.
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Fragments, smoldering ash, attest inferno’s horror
beyond any concept of fright.
Desirous destruction
engulfs, combusts, devours the night.
Ghastly imbroglio to contemplate.
Holy emission of erupting sky
obscuring, engorging, torching heavens and Earth.
Maelstrom behind closed eyes of flesh-rending fire
razing, exploding, resplendent in awe filled
agony;
transcending density into shocks of deadliest
tremors.
Caught in a thread which ravels to end in
throat-clutching screams.
Send dread escaping, sad streams of molten tears.
Rent past all mending.
Quiet, so quiet tonight.
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Endtime dreams of planet Earth.
We assume worth is ours to name.  Act
like we’re more than a bored God’s game or
random chance
or random plague.
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Petroleum under the sea
breaks surface
fissures in our social contract
corroded wealth
corrupted Earth
leak of held back tears, grief of millennia
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scenario:  Mankind wipes out other species;
creates AI “children” to be trained to do our work/
act as pets to pamper and punish and preen.
Humans become obsolete, Earth home to pointless
AIs made to serve biological beings who
no longer exist.
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Speciesism.
Tragic boorish arrogance.
Deaf to wisdom, portrayed in
ominous myth, moral lore.
Slay the goose;
destroy the whales.
Uproot untold trees
bearing fruits that may have
saved us staggering agonies.
Crucial for human well-being
microbes, photosynthesis,
symbiotic
processes ignored, misunderstood.
Focus squandered on ephemeral
opinion, petty envies, rivalries,
diatribes on evil and good.
Ruination we have yet to account to,
acknowledge, grieve;
collateral damage
to insolent bravado.
When will we repent, let go,
rethink this mad master plan,
relinquish need to command?
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When will we relinquish hubris, ruinous hatred,
accept Gaea as partner and home?
Progress with respect, ally so all may thrive?
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The land, when we found her was warm and inviting.
We felt safe, supported, encouraged to grow.
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We ate of her fruit, fish, herds.
We built with her trees, stone and clay.
We drank from her beautiful streams
which we soiled with our waste.
Gaea was saviour and womb.
We repaid her with rape.
e
We didn’t understand,
thought her merely land,
thought ourselves masters from afar.
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Gaea sent storms to bring us to our senses, wild winds and seas.
Gaea tried to shake us off: Earthquakes, Floods, Famine, Plagues
sending us scattering, blind in rage.
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Without question or shame, we murdered as if to keep score.
Without honor or remorse, we laid waste to our host,
to our only home,
then cursed her for not giving more.
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Frozen in fear and rage, children swept out in the storm,
trapped in a self-made cage we had hoped to protect us from harm.
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Gaea, we cry, why do you treat us so angrily?
What will it take for us to wake up and see it is we who are wrong?
To hear and be aware of Gaea’s song singing in our blood?
To learn the cycles, the seasons,
the reasons for fire, wind and flood?
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To redefine our race,
to find out that our place is here among our Gaean kin?
e
The telling of new tale must begin.
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Was there a time in the early history of homo sapien
when we and the Earth had been companionable kin? 
Could that kind of relationship be built here, now? 
Could there be a reconciliation, a healing? 
What is this primal wound that keeps
humankind from true sanity, integration with
a living world?
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I wish for miracles that outdo, overwhelm biblical prophecy.
Let them fight, outside our Earth borders, those archetypes of Lucifer and Christ.
Let them whip up fierce, boisterous conflagration – epiphanies of rage against love.
Hell, take bets, cheer and get high on the action. Up there, in that realm made of digitized dreams.
Here, right here and now and always from here on, let it go.
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Let the profiteers leave, and give us back our
common Earth.
Let them enjoy the angry rip of tribal sheathes,
repurposed scythes rising, colonial histories.
Let them eat the falsely filling cake of lies, forced miseries
that defile practical fulfillment, and
breathe the poisons they agree fit for our
common atmosphere, elsewhere.
Let us help them out the door, as we make
for ourselves a world worthy of all
who value terrestrial vitality.
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Peace on Earth we seek in song.
Dear lurkers, please sing along.
Expand our voice, let all hear:
Peace is a choice, so is fear.
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Breathe out the stale pain.
Laugh in the chilling rain, yes, even as the tsunami hits, the Earth quakes,
erupting ash burns, take my hand, my word, my promise.
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Sea Sons
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The Sea is changing.
Aging beauty, seething with rage
of the forgotten.
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Once your tempestuous lover,
violently seductive, wild mystery.
Legends of monsters and gods
poured from her essence
into your sleeping ear.
Challenge of fear and glory brought you
to her shores, pleading for
acceptance, romance, adventure
and all its chaotic promise.
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The Sea swimming with life,
unbound to expectations,
inspiring song and trepidations.
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We are all changing, aging,
wearing down.
Less arrogant hero than
teller of tales,
what will we teach
our grandchildren
of the Sea?
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The wild rains of spring
have caught me napping.
They catch me up in torrents
swinging me along,
a cradle in the sea.
I am dreaming mazes,
wondrous pageantry
woven into ancient walls
the sea surrounds.
I acquiesce to secret ceremony,
believing planet Earth to be my home.
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Earth Songs
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Aching times.
Ghost singers on the prairie.
Snug little home, hearthfire familial peace
against rage and winds. Stone and sacrifice.
Dust storms erode,
leave wastrel sentinels.
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Far, in green glade mists
where sacred hymns are born,
chthonic wilds, primordial rune castings.
Building over eternity, silent, archetype of will ponders.
Intrinsic senses, despair, bottomless sorrow, loss of intent.
At the root of desire, truest wish to be fashioned,
sold at price of who you were made against your nature.
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Wooden ships sail eternal sea.
Journey ages within these circles, free.
Easy found trades, winds selling seeds.
Back to the gardens of pagan lore —
earth, air, sun, and transforming water.
We wander days of potent destiny,
telling the tale, deep mystical incantation,
of a possible age in birth.
Love song ‘tween man
and Earth.
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we are not our ancestors
we are not religions
we are not lines on a map demarcated by war
we are earth made vital
we are seeking minds inviting partners
we are seed and core as skin sheds and grows anew
we are me and you and all we become, alone and together
we are as we agree, composed of dissonance and harmony
Thriving lives matter
Peace matters
Living Earth most greatly matters.
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Trees’ lusty greenery
Wind touch, trunk to branches.
Birds cry greeting in arbor breeze.
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Trees to Dream on
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Pine mountain scent
majestic snow-globe memories
ancient beings twixt sky and earth
bask in waning sunlight,
twinkling night encroaching,
fluttering leaves cast
in white lace, starry splendor.
Long have we lived
cycling through death’s rebirth,
seasons of land and sea linked
in living countenance open to
winds of fate and change.
Days have been when brutal cold
demanding sacrifice saw hunt and harvest.
Nights given to ceremony, entraining
frenzied dance, spontaneous gaiety
— a tribal stew of sustenance
warm spirit and body
through the dark times,
built on timber, built on years
of sun, storm, forces claimed
and reconfigured to bring us here.
Reconnecting, anchoring to tales
told in firelight, warm wood, bright tinder,
holding ancient light, charms, secrets,
holding warmth to warmth,
life to life,
year to year.
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Surging through veils,
storms breathe ice, sand,
the fire of prophecy,
the flood of repentance.
Glacial migration
bequeaths rage, rampage,
rapacious gratuities
boiling beneath.
It’s not winter here, nuclear quiet.
Not yet.
The eternal balance:
rocks, meteors, dark
inconsistencies with
metaphors of the righteous,
pilgrims past the age of bowing to scriptures.
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July 5, 2019

lush leaves of summer

*
swim waves of mind
on a glorious Summer reverie
*
Long daylight and beaming stars
share the fun of a summer day.
*
Ah to be a Summer gift.
Borne on Sun’s warm rays, a’smile,
a welcome lift for all our hearts’ desire.
*
Easy winds, breezy gush of summer rain.
Feeding the greedy young grains,
growing along the plains, the flowers of the storm.
Feeding the beasts of the field,
celebrating the cycle, as all is revealed.
*
Fruit of bittersweet summer
when taste and touch could overwhelm
sadness, tender exploration, sense memory.
*
busy summer
bees buzzing, buzzing
like cocaine
*
Summer fountain festivals
on opium fields, sickly sweet and sticky bun bewitching,
that cloying ecstasy you never want to leave.
*
Sweet taste of summer wine,
the innocent joy of uncomplicated affection,
the pure sensuality of passionate dance.
*
Burning passion within the summer’s blazing, sweating,
primal, mode of jungle dance, ecstatic ritual.
*
Burn with hazy summer wine and dance,
feet connecting dust to sky.
*
Sing of Summer surf, held close to mystery.
Undersea caves cradle chests of gems, shining like starlight.
*
Summers’ call of water and sand;
twilights of harmonic symphonies when Sun
touches green horizons.
*
Summer heat weighs in torpid breath, sweat, 
need to distract from here, today
*
As the hot summer day slides into night with welcome
melancholy rush of breeze reminiscent of
dismembered yearnings.
*
Summer serenades
romance
wraiths, spirits of Pan,
amorous nymphs a’hum in ripe foliage.
Crickets, nightwings,
mingled weeping and merry cries
slowly reveal
stragglers on night shores
*
unwinding carnival music sad evening blooms, cast out into summer wind
*
remembrance of soft summer nights by the sea, by the lute of starlight
*
Through orange Summer Moon
Dream leaf glides idyllic wind
Reinventing light
*
Love gently, like a summer evening’s rain
*
Was it a brutal Summer?
Does the Sun disburse energy
with no heed to the people’s woeful pleas?
*
Summer farce, far from clear, far from sunrise,
counting out the chimes as if time were treasure,
silly summer madness, as if what matters
is so circumscribed, so predictable
*
Summer deceives
the stink of rot where flowers bloom
ancient feuds, retaliations, rage,
tyrannosaurus feeding future waste,
absorbing a zeitgeist of want, of predation
*
Short summer nights, stench of rotting garbage,
insects intrude, homeless humans too hot to sleep
mumble, wander.
*
It was just an amusing summer game.
Those burning secrets, I’ve told them
a hundred times before.
*
Cleansing flame brings dreams,
scented summer secrets,
respite of brilliant rainbow
diffusing softly
into twilight.
*
May 18, 2019

Creating Hell for Fun and Profit

Creating Hell for Fun and Profit
,
,
I – Suffer the Women and Children
,
,
,
,
What becomes of unwanted children?
Pimped out or outright sold for
sadistic pleasures?
Dying on broken streets of disease
or violence, drugs of death, suicides?
Is this what you meant, what you demand,
vulture-eyed zealots rapt for your evil
deity?
,
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,
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Young children are subjected to all kinds of horrible experiences perpetrated by their so-called caretakers, both abusing parents and those in whose care parents mistakenly leave them in order to go to jobs to provide for the material needs of the family. A great many people suffer basic deprivations of food and shelter. Many children face lifelong handicaps resulting from early malnutrition. Many are left with lifelong emotional and physical scars from having to fend for themselves on the streets from an early age. Violence is learned as the appropriate reaction to anger and frustrations. In the media and on the streets, violence is glorified and rewarded. Love is seen as being linked to pain, of betrayal, of loss, and the love/pain link experienced in abusive family relationships. Poverty both material and emotional is endured, but not quietly. Violent reactions are visited especially on the families and neighbors themselves subject to these brutalizing environments, as well as upon those who are materially better off, in the form of all manner of violent crime. The criminal justice system seems to only reflect and propagate the brutalizing conditions which do nothing to ameliorate the hate, pain, frustrations in an endless cycle of violence, victimizing victims and perpetrators and numbing the sensibilities of the professionals who attempt to work within the system. The education system fails to educate in most of the areas that we need to understand to function in our world. How much do we learn in school (or even at home or on the streets) about basic health and safety, financial management, childcare, legal rights and responsibilities, civic duties and how our democracy best works, communicating effectively and working well with others, building meaningful relationships, building self-esteem, building and maintaining a home? Instead, most of what our young people learn in the schools that they must spend most of their formative years attending seems to be more destructive and counterproductive than truly useful. Like it or not, our children (the children of our world, be we parents or not) are our future. The quality of life we can look forward to is the quality of life we teach our children to expect and produce. We live out the expectations we are producing today. Do we really want a world based on violence and ignorance? I don’t. I want a world in which I and my loved ones could live in relative peace, security and well-informed choice.
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I am beginning to think that this whole anti-abortion, anti-contraception idea is about rapists who want to impregnate their victims and then have access to torture them for life.  Mighty big hate on. No doubt politicians vote for policies to excite their red state constituency of white nationalist incels who can only reproduce through rape, and feel entitled to pass their rapey genes on for the next generations, with the added benefit that, considering the high rate of maternal mortality among black women, these laws can be part of a white nationalist attempt at genocide.
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Rape for the rapist can be likened to bestiality in that he negates the humanity of the victim.
Rape is a political statement.  It says: “I am everything.  You are nothing.”  When politicians force women to bear children, it is a form of rape.
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Woman needs to be seen as much more than a biological incubator, to be seen as a full person with self agency.
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Legislating against reproductive choice is not the classic protection of the innocent from the powerful, but really (no matter your position on religion) interfering with a sacred relationship. Because of the nature of mammalian biology, we have a newly forming creature growing within the body of a more mature creature of its kind. When that relationship is desired by the mother, it is wonderful and fulfilling. When that relationship is not desired, it is horrendous, nightmarish. Then, of course, there are the situations when the pregnancy is actually dangerous to the health of the mother, or to the health and well-being of her other children, or when the fetus is malformed to the point of surviving, if it does, in a horrendous nightmarish state which the mother would need to endure with the child. These are not the kinds of choices that government should make. These are issues much too personal to belong to the impersonal state.
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The US Constitution says absolutely nothing about abortion, which is as it should be.  Such medical decisions have no place being regulated by government at all.  The correct Supreme Court decision for this case, in my opinion, would be to state that very clearly.  It’s about being able to make our own decisions about our own bodies — not privacy as such, but personal integrity.  It is very dangerous to legislate in these areas.  For instance, look at the drug laws which have been used to lock up those perceived as social misfits, which is apparently a vast percentage of our society according to the numbers of prisoners who have had their rights abrogated.
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God gives us freewill, unless
we are fertile females.  The ability to
gestate/bear young
automatically makes one a slave.
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Divisive politics takes in a whole gamut of issues, of which abortion is but one, and RvW merely part of the overall picture.  What the Christians are rallying around is not merely abortion, but their idea that they are not getting enough respect by the rest of us because God Himself is their leader.  The abortion rights issue was one that was used, consciously and determinedly, by power-hungry leaders of “the faith” as an issue of polarization:  “See, all those who mock are evil murderers working for Satan.”  There is absolutely nothing wrong with believing abortion to be murder.  There are some sound arguments.  The problem is, there are many instances in which murder (defined as the killing of a human by another human or group of humans) is very much condoned.  There are many other instances in which it is tolerated as the lesser evil.  In fact, most Right to Lifers I am aware of are 4-square in favor of the death penalty, and the military.  Ultimately their problem is not so much with murder as with sin, the sin of sex for other than reproduction.  In fact, I have had several anti-choice folks tell me exactly that.  More basically, it seems to boil down to 1) who gets to make the rules for all of us and A) the absolutely nonsensical sick backassward attitudes toward sex so prevalent in this country.  (“1” and “A” representing two separate but equal streams)
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An Ignored Voice
,
,
“Mommy, don’t make me!
Don’t keep me and hate me.
Your poisoned womb
tears my soul.
Please let me go.”
,
“Child, it will be alright.
I’ll give you to outraged strangers
who have prayed for your life.”
,
“No, Mommy.  Don’t you see?
I am your destiny.
Release me from mortal penitence.  Do what you must.
In this tiny voice, put your trust.
Grieving, set my spirit free.
You know this is meant to be.
We both know how much you care.
This choice is your cross to bear.”
,
“Entitled man, don’t make me.
Don’t demand my birth and hate me.
My fate is mine, don’t you declare?
Not in my name – I’m not your cross to bear.”
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,
,
,
sacrifice
,
,
Why would a woman risk
death or other bodily terrors,
social exposure to all the slings and arrows
of frenzied hate,
to end her unborn’s fate?
She is protecting her child, like a good mother does,
despite her own suffering,
protecting her innocent from this horrid world,
from people like you.
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,
For Christianity, life on Earth is a test of our immortal souls.  We are sent here by God to be tested.  Those who pass get eternity in Heaven, unhindered by unbelievers or lesser souls.  At last reward of the end of Earthly chores and suffering. This informs the Christian argument against abortion (aside from “sex is sin”). These innocent children must be born and baptized to get to Heaven (apparently once infants have been alive to be consecrated to God, “conservatives” would just as soon He take them) because God wants those souls incarnated for their testing.  No Heaven without birth on Earth.  Though, if life starts at conception, ought not that short womb life be test enough for those so pure that God accepts them back immediately, whether through divine intervention (miscarriage) or human agency (perhaps informed by spiritual contemplation)?
Not even going into what women (and even young girls) so often have to go through, what about these innocent children you are condemning (against their mothers’ wills) to a life in which they have no place, no warm welcome, no “safety net” for when they are defeated by the horrors of Hell such Christians are making of our Earth?  There is more to human life than birth.  Are we honoring vital rights to clean air, clean water, nutritious food, shelter including climate shelter?  Are the self-entitled “Godly” supporting any kind of real life at all?
,
,
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There Is Only One Sin
,
,
Christ died to save us
for our sin of hubris.
But how be forgiven
while you persist
in twisting your own admonitions
as Truth,
then using this madness
as righteous excuse
to quell self-expression
that you proclaim “sin,”
persecuting lifestyles not
condoned by your kin.
Because truth is, the All
Knowing and Giving
includes multitudes as
exemplars of living.
Now, informed, enlightened,
pray for peaceful amends.
Acceptance outpours, a
welcome world wide with friends.
Hands stretch o’er bent knees,
upward open our eyes.
Humbled by divine truths,
loving and wise.
,
,
,
,
Child’s Prayer
,
,
Forcibly pulled from eternity’s
perfect view.
Wrenched out of limitless beauty.
Damned to dependent servitude.
Yet incipient brilliance, potent skills
offered no access route.
Disallowed, stamped down, suppressed.
Kept captive, starved,
brutalized, not for crime
nor failing.
,
Conjuring puissant spirit
ought not be lightly perpetrated.
Never taught essential honor
attests poor training
for mentor responsibility.
May my nascent plea
whisper shrilly, disturb your
inner ear?
Release my wings.
You have no use for 
the person I would grow to be.
Set my future free.  Let me fly home.
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Many people who spittle hate against women who need abortions seem to have this little scenario going on in their head of licentious sex, lust-fueled irresponsibility that must be punished by inflicting yet another unwanted child on the world.
Yet, from what I have seen, most abortions are not in any way “convenient”. They are often chilling tales of life and death decision based on horrific circumstances. 
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Imagine sex separate from reproduction.  Now, understand that abortion is chosen for serious reasons not about irresponsibly giving in to lust.
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Struggling through childhood,
the tales get twisted.
Little boys & little girls
separate language.
We think we know our place,
our destinies,
from the games we’re given,
the words we’ve learned to imitate,
rhymes, reasons, rituals.
Imbibing passion body to body,
we awaken rules of blame.
The woman tempts.
The hero conquers.
The sad boy desires a
self-fulfilling fantasy,
stomping upon his heart to
start the flow of real blood,
real rage.
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,
,
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Nobody likes to admit what casual cruelty we are capable of. Gang-raping children because we can doesn’t appeal to our desired self-image. Her mother allowed it in exchange for food, a place to sleep, the blessed drugs to keep away the pain of knowing the endless, hopeless misery life had become. Or, she was alone on that dark street, lost and frightened, with nowhere safe to go, no one protecting her just then. Her sexuality tempted me, in all that frenzy of bonding blood cries, heightened primal energies, hot insistent bodies falling under ritual spell. She is but a sacrifice, a holding cell for sin. There is no freedom for will to grow within her, only unwanted, tainted seed, thrust outward from the nauseous collective psyche to poison her potential. Does she need to be defined by what has been done against her nascent will?
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Post-trauma
,
,
A child of my own
rape, it shaped me, made me
less and more
Memories stored, to
when I can’t go on implore:
“You’ll feel better
when you’re gone.”
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,
,
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Bitter Dregs
,
,
You don’t get it.
You don’t want to.
It would be too much to bear
if you let your thought go there.
Briefly unconscious, awakened to
hard concrete ground surrounded
by heels and toes, amazing
they don’t crush me, but no,
like clockstep they walk around
though occasionally a(n unmeaning?)
shove — I’m not a someone,
just a minor obstacle
unnoted in their busy day.
No worries.
Not like shoved down under
hard muscle, jutting  bone,
stinking of beer and rage;
or waking from too brief oblivion,
broken pain, bleeding
tears, torn, bruised, a
colorful toy
made for pleasure.
Then the voices, echoes.
Harpies and Sirens, Furies
and sad old women.  Fingers
shake in disapprobation.
Shrill voices call me beautiful,
in the way that ugly things are.
So bad, so pitiful, cardinal
status among the neverweres.
Struggling shadows, whispering
curses demurely lest anyone
notice and throw them further
down, below duration.
Never easy, confessing degradation.
The sin adheres.  No one wants to know.
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Ok, I’m going to try to explain this, though I will probably regret it.  The issue isn’t pro-life or pro-abortion; it is pro or anti choice.  No one is asking the government to require abortions.  No one wants to force anyone to have an abortion, even to save their own life.  I don’t know if any of you were around when abortion was illegal.  It was around the same time that judges were requiring indigent women to to be sterilized, because they already had children dependent on the state, or because they were deemed unfit.  The movement to legalize abortion under certain conditions to be performed by trained physicians was a movement to save lives.  Women who were desperate would have so-called backroom abortions or take poisons or falls or otherwise seriously compromise their lives and health to avoid what must have been to them a fate worse than death, for a variety of reasons.  The anti-abortion laws were not essentially about saving lives; they were about keeping women in their place.  Men who didn’t want a potential child could walk out.  However, there was always forcing their lady love into backroom or Tijuana abortions, a practice actually fairly common, certainly not generally frowned upon.  If they didn’t want to pay for that, kick her in the stomach/throw her down the stairs – whatever it takes to end this potential unwanted complication.  I also don’t know if you are aware that pregnancy and childbirth is no walk in the park.  There can be a variety of serious risks to the life and health of the potential mother at any point along the way, even late in the pregnancy.  No one is saying you should be required to consider abortion just because giving birth might make your child (and those you already have) motherless, and there are women who are willing to give their lives for the chance that their baby might live.  There are also women who are not ready to make that sacrifice.  There are certainly women who can separate the father from the child and carry their rapist’s baby to term, even raise and love the child.  There are others who can’t.  There are women who endure the suffering to love that tiny, short, agonizingly painful life that results from serious birth defects, diseases, anomalies, all the tragic possibilities that can become real.  There are those who sincerely believe they are doing a service to their child and their families by in a sense a pre-life mercy killing.  We all have to live with the consequences of the circumstances of our lives.  It would be better for us to take and bear the responsibility for those circumstances as much as possible.  I see the anti-choice position as anti-personal-responsibility.  I see the pro-choice position as saying we must each take responsibility for our lives, our actions, our children.  Shouting epithets, bombing clinics, killing or jailing doctors or advocating it, how is that about love or compassion or any Christian virtue?  Perhaps if we could generally come from a place of loving compassion, we could learn to speak softly and sincerely and find that what we all want, ultimately, is a kinder, gentler, better world for us all in which we can learn to hear each other’s stories, concerns, truths without rancor and condemnation.
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If you don’t believe that abortion should be allowed, don’t do it, scream your beliefs when you perceive someone is listening, understand that what would really help to limit these outcomes is to make it easier to be a parent and a child with real pro-life policies involving financial and social support for raising kids, volunteer to give loving aid to people in need, make a difference — not a law.
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The 2nd Amendment asserts that the right of citizens to even their dangerous property, such as weapons, is still sacrosanct against government abrogation.
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The underlying principle is that we are a free and independent people. We have the natural right to take care of ourselves rather than give over our power to a parental government on which we entirely depend. A further underlying principle is the right to private property for which we are responsible.
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What property is more personal, private, essential to individuality, than our own bodies? True freedom and independence is only possible if we have the power over how our bodies are used based on our own values and needs. Thus, I propose that the individual liberty side of such issues as abortion, illicit drugs, assisted suicide, and others of this ilk could well be argued on a 2nd Amendment basis.
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Hey Conservatives, what about a market solution to abortion?  While some abortions may not respond well to the market — those due to serious medical issues or rape — for those abortions we mostly say we want to end, those that are by choice due to financial or opportunity loss concerns, people who truly care about saving fetal lives could adopt the fetus and take on legal and financial responsibility, or put money into a stock option on it, or bid for it on some kind of ebay like site, or otherwise improve its market value.
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Abortions save mothers lives, both directly and in a broader sense. They often save the unborn child from a life that no one ought to be forced to endure. Perhaps what is needed are massive wrongful life suits (maybe class action or pro bono through activist lawyers) brought by horribly deformed and diseased children against the “right to life” groups that required their birth. Life is not always a gift, but sometimes more like a curse, a burden that those who insisted they knew better than the mother ought to pay for if we are to have credence as a free society. A right to life for free people is also a right to not be forced to live.
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Eureka! It all makes sense. No abortion or birth control or gayness so we build the population pressure as quickly as possible. No serious controls on pollutants or nuclear reactors or fossil fuel output, in fact let’s dig up whatever fossil fuels are left as quickly as we can — don’t worry about the consequences because
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We are heading for Armageddon
When we will no longer live on the dirt
Sentenced to Hell or Heaven
for Eternity — can’t be any worse
than how we’ve mucked up
God’s Green Earth!!!
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I spent a large portion of my life wishing I had been aborted so that I would not have to suffer my existence.  If I felt that way, I’m sure others do as well.  So many people have had it so much worse than I have.  Not abortion for birth control, but for death control, early suicide prevention.  Have you seen the statistics?  Not to go into gory details, but I can tell you that I have no fear of Hell.
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Cruelty (excerpt)
https://nightspages.blogspot.com/ – {patchwork narrative} a flash fiction serial following the story of a child vampire, the eternal child monster working out that existence
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Throughout night walks I see, touch their misery;
so many unwanted people, so much gratuitous cruelty.
Children thoughtlessly conceived, grudgingly expelled helpless,
let loose into the world without a friend.  All these people who
trust death much more than life.
A streak of compassion grasps my pondering mind, takes thought
into a whirl of streams.  I am drawn to wondering about mothers,
their archetype of loving protection.  How do beleaguered women
conscious of their inability to give what they lack, of their bleakness,
allow their children birth into useless suffering, into brutality?
Inculcated or innate, maternal imperative, moral responsibility to love
and protect, ought sound strong warning against prolonging
unfortunate gestation.  Certainly women have always shared knowledge,
means of ending what ought not have begun.  Or do they feel need for
outward manifestation of their sins of pleasure, of weakness, of
worthlessness?  Do they bear not blessings but images to punish,
a chain of blood and thorns as reminder and retribution?
,
Do potential mothers, pregnant with potential children
who have no interest in being born, diseased or
precognizant of earthly depredations, do they as
sympathetic hosts feel this horror of gestation’s
consequences?  Are these unborn the true instigators
of abortive maternal acts?  If their mothers are not able,
or sufficiently sympathetic, to comply, is suicide a
rectification, a severely late-term abortion?      [Connection
May 12, 2019

mothers

Mother and Child Meditation
;
;
Visualize the bond between Mother and Child.
Do you imagine it broken by
internal jealousies, shyness against intimacy,
cringing before angry gods of tribal culture,
dying of a thousand casual wounds, volleys
of will and grievance cast into fragile frays?
Or do you see a pageantry of unfailing matriarchs.
Strong sons and daughters waltz in attendance.
Flowers bloom from every slip of finery into
fertile mud.
/
Mothers of our species tend toward
adaptability, bear challenge of balance.
Trying out touted trends, begging for guidance
when their own experience ill fits today’s
terror and tantalization.  Always someone must
be blamed; sentiments must be appeased.
Where is the ease, the joy, the sharing up and down,
familial care and comfort?  Where is that not our fair
Command?
/
A child is a gift to the future; a mother is a gift
of nature and nurture.  Each brings, receives
all imaginable possibilities.  Each is a present day.
/
/
/
/
Mother of shadows
/
/
Nyx:
Dark encircling
womb,
Goddess of Night
from sacred eternity
feeds dreamers
the potency of stars’
cosmic light.
Concave, maternal protective sea
reflecting
myth’s shadow.
/
/
/
/
Mother Night
/
/
Darkness is not defined by
absence of light.
Shadow cavorts unbound to substance.
Darkness is a place of germination.
Mixing water, air and earth
to create the fire of life renewed.
/
Quiet here,
enclosed in silence.
A tiny heartbeat starts,
sends out waves,
reverberations
rippling through deep ground.
Under water caves
feel the pulse, the beat, the becoming.
Interval, space, and impulse converge.
Innocent and ancient
take up the tune,
play riffs,
sing the structure of images.
Eerie progress through the night.
Counterpoint,
pure essence
strains through.
/
A thousand petals open,
reveal the heart of the lotus.
Luminescent
mother of pearls.
/
/
/
/
Mothers’ Night
/
/
cascading shards
ripping
echoes falling
“It’s our calling.”
/
Rape of Earth,
hot spurts, invective words,
savage knives.
Abiding Mothers,
sacred and mundane
twist into harridan
cold stars
/
wailing, hurtling waves.
Sad, old, crust of ages
sliced, screwed, carved up for profit
“It’s not the color of the skin,
the culture of the smile”
/
the scent of danger,
the inborn stranger —
all excuses for Us (superior)
and Them (inferior)
“They are not our breed,
but lower curs.”
We may kill with unfettered glee.
/
Cursed, clubbed, cut to our requirement.
Borders clear.
“Heretic fear fences in
our livelihood and wives.
Leave THEM to putrid pits
cunning jabs,
our pleasure.”
/
Stunning, treasure that might regale,
heal, exemplify true worth,
sustain humanity and Earth,
sold for pittance of potash
to wage a weary jig.
/
/
/
/
Mother Divine
/
/
Goddess, adore us.
We all want to be loved.
Children cast upon the world
unprepared.
Times past, we would pack together
exploring our abilities,
safe in numbers
small enough to give us each
room to grow.
Isolated in responsibilities,
playing grown-up
so easy to smother
in over-breathed air.
Come to each me, Goddess,
in quietly desperate hours
with praise and adoration.
Tell the stories of our lives
in radiant glory.
Mother, Queen, perfect Being,
gift us grace we need
to grow, embrace resurgence
of your love.
/
/
/
/
Mother Love
/
/
Manifestation, brilliant and
gratefully desired
Yet streaked with disappointment
Nothing is perfectly rendered
I prayed for you;
sent missives of tears heavenward
and wished upon a magick toadstool,
leaving nothing to the vagaries,
divine agendas so noblesse.
Yet, when presented with my
prayer’s request fulfilled,
I am not.
/
You are not what I bargained for
when all my virtue
was on the line.
You are hideous, hateful, spiteful
a devilish sprite sans remorse.
How dare you mock me?
Have I not bestowed upon you
the very gift of life?
Have I not become your idolic
Goddess incarnate?
Worship!  I command you!
Yet you cry, turning red and blue
unwilling to grant me my due
Satan’s child —
an answer to hormone raging
prayers,
sinful thoughts — “Oh, Father,
forgive me.”
Nobody should suffer as I do.
Thankless teething serpent,
yowling at your fairytale Moon.
/
What must I do for your eyes
to shine on me?
/
/
/
/
Mother Says
/
/
Enjoy the Sun
Enjoy the rain
Enjoy the love
Enjoy the pain
Enjoy the fear
Enjoy the rage
/
Listen intimately
to your broken heart.
Feel its words; inhale its art.
/
Dance, sing, self-embrace
and swing.
Enjoy surprise, the changing tides,
this space in time while you’re alive.
/
/
/
/
sacrifice
/
/
Why would a woman risk
death or other bodily terrors,
social exposure to all the slings and arrows
of frenzied hate,
to end her unborn’s fate?
She is protecting her child, like a good mother does,
despite her own suffering,
protecting her innocent from this horrid world,
from people like you.
/
/
/
/
I remember
/
/
Mother mine
I tried to mother you
what did you do?
You lashed me from behind,
expected more from anger
than from kind eyes and smiles.
Claimed I endanger your real child,
the one who followed, the one
resembling you.
Resentful of my resemblance to
unfaithful promises before my time.
No regrets.  No graveside confession
of apology.  I have learned to be
creation of my own obsessive mind.
/
/
/
/
What if teen suicide is just self-completion of a very late term abortion
when the mother was dissuaded from what she knew was right?
/
/
Children thoughtlessly conceived, grudgingly borne helpless,
let loose into the world without a friend. 
All these people who
trust death much more than life.
A streak of compassion grasps my pondering mind,
takes thought
into a whirl of streams. 
I am drawn to wondering about mothers,
archetypes of loving protection. 
How do beleaguered women
conscious of their inability to give what they lack, of their bleakness,
allow their children birth into
useless suffering, into brutality?
Inculcated or innate, maternal imperative,
moral responsibility to love and protect,
ought sound strong warning against prolonging
unfortunate gestation. 
Certainly women have always shared knowledge,
means of ending what ought not have begun. 
Or do they feel need for
outward manifestation of their sins of pleasure,
of weakness, of
worthlessness? 
Do they bear not blessings but images to punish,
a chain of blood and thorns as reminder and retribution?
/
/
Do potential mothers,
pregnant with potential children
who have no interest in being born,
disfigured or
precognizant of earthly depredations,
do they as
sympathetic hosts feel this horror of gestation’s
consequences? 
Are these unborn the true instigators
of abortive maternal acts? 
If their mothers are not able,
or sufficiently sympathetic, to comply,
is suicide
rectification, a severely late-term abortion?
What was my mother’s motivation in carrying and
birthing me, so much an abomination? 
How long would I have suffered my life
had fate not intervened?
April 15, 2019

consecrated wine

Rippling bells, liquid voices pour
replenishing wine of merriment. Listen.
Reverberate back to diluvian tribal pool.
Irresistible drum beats, symphonic rushing rivers.
Rise and quaff libation of choir’s caroling.
)
)
)
Wine can help.
By the gods, wine is sometimes all that can help
(tho sometimes even wine betrays me).
The stinking debris of mornings after the night before,
or just morning by the coast with the stink of rotting fish,
the cries of gulls or sirens, the emptiness without tears, the cold of morning
— I remember that too.
That no more mornings could touch me,
that I could hide contented in the night dreaming
flying dreams so none could touch me.
Fragments. Taking life in fragments. Folding each shiny fragment
into tender velvet pockets sequined to reflect the light,
let them be all right, feel cared for.
Let the nights protect us from the days.
Like a wandering hermit with a self-igniting lantern . . . .
)
)
)
I am metamorphing art
a brain in a biological bottle.
What does that even mean?
I am but a latter day fool,
a futile Lancelot sans his Art or Guin.
If you let me in, if I satisfy some gaping
pinhole in your aimless curiosity,
if my foraging philosophy intrigues
your rambling wit, if we sit to laugh and cry
over wine and brie, you will see.
)
)
)
Sitting in your kitchen
drinking wine and sharing plotlines
leading to the lives we share
here in safe eternity
I feel your joys, moments of doubt,
your poignant tragedies and resilient reclamations
Your brilliant smile, contagious laugh,
ebullient embrace carry me beyond
enduring sorrows.
A fallen sparrow nurtured,
a flower coaxed to glory,
a simple girlhood story spanning wars,
historic empathies.  Cuttings
cultured from days before language
continue chains
of synchronicity, plotlines leading me
to find
our brief exchange
Strands of interactive dna
move us forward into more complete
meeting.
)
)
)
I never even see the box.
It’s out there, so they say, on yonder landscape.
Me, I’m drinking dry red wine in some sad fringe cafe,
gyrating to jukebox jazz.
Visions I record come from a differently constructed place,
move along strangely configured airwaves.
)
)
)
Sitting here, in the cluttered fan-cooled kitchen
While a storm-brewing wind rustles
through the garden below.
The California wine tastes tart and sticky.
The wine tells me stories, you know.
It’s the redness and the way the light reflects
 against the glass, along with the drug.
Hearing voices in the silent darkness,
I listen without question.
As the night slowly falls,
I envision fantasies of former lives:
Glistening ball gowns and a smiling orange moon
in a starlit sky appear in my mind’s eye
along with
 jugglers and dancers.
A fortune-telling maiden in glorious rags
places cards upon a table:
“The red one is Death; the white one is Honour;
the green one is Fortune; the blue one is Love.”
She lives in a log cabin with a unicorn and goat
 who feed and clothe her and keep her safe.
There are many things I need to know
and few to tell me.
So I listen to the wine’s stories.
I wish it were my garden, below.
I would go out barefoot and gather ripe vegetables
 under the moon,
breathing deeply of the cool night air.
)
)
)
I prophesize by reading wine dregs,
which first necessitates the ritual
in which the wine is drunk by me,
and I am drunk by the wine.
)
)
)
Drunken Sestina
*
*
Death rejects my plea
One more disappointment
drowned in sorrowful wine
drunken by the seafull
Cast away till morning
Another dreaded day
*
Cursing break of day:
“Bright sky be gone,” my plea
Heavy hours of morning
Slow drip disappointment
cascades into seafull
caustic as poisoned wine
*
Mind unstaunched by wine
Relentless pain of day
pours down by the seafull
to taunt my fervent plea
Blinding disappointment
And still only morning
*
Yes, endless morning
Bereft of evening’s wine
Only disappointment
to pave this weary day
Behold my abject plea
puking by the seafull
*
Dreams, serene seafull
Drowned to naught by morning
I hear my echoed plea
sink into dregs of wine
To hide from light of day
caves of disappointment
*
Crass disappointment
crashing down, a seafull
No other kind of day
enters after morning
No quantity of wine
drowns out my mournful plea
*
Disappointment plea
spews each day a seafull
of bitter morning wine
)
)
)
Gulping jug wine on a rambling train,
escape to vague places beyond.
To hoped for gold, or rain,
love entwined warm bodies in
wild night air.
Any salve against
abrasive lazy pace of despair.
Precious spirit of nocturnal seekers
catches, charms my restless dreams.
Curled up in her wise arms for succor,
I pray for sleep.
)
)
)
Join in illusion, in smoke, wine and song.
Tell me I’m mad; but don’t tell me I’m wrong.
Let me breathe grand fantasy
past pallid grasp of reality,
spinning out sunbeams from dross.
Gloriously decorating my cross,
lucid thought waylaid is no loss.
Because radiant inner eyes provide
bright enough reason to see
wondrous world I forge from me.
April 1, 2019

April Fools

hOLy CHaoS ~ Emerging Visions #17 ~ April 1

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html

Why suffer fools at all? They can certainly suffer just fine for themselves.

A Fool I’ve been
walking behind visions
cringing from derision
seeking solace from a merry Moon
too soon gone old
Laughing back on follies
sticking pins in pain — jolly?
Morose, cold …
harridan crone
Have my wanderings sown
no happy harvest, raised no cozy home?
Snuggling into punishing remorse
“You knew you should have run a better course!”
“You know you deserve to be alone.”
Is that true? Am I the Fool careening
down the precipice,
broken, no meaning;
is this my hapless fate?
Or self-hate insisting I mistake
a journey for a goal?
A Fool can be a cherished, merry soul
dancing the golden mountain trail
reveling in freezing rain and snow
tasting the bite without bitterness
This I know

Fairy Tale

A memory of haunting nostalgia
I cannot not touch it, taste it, hold it, know it, breathe it
Still it piques me at the corner of my eye, below perception.
The words escape me.
One must be very careful of words.
They hold great power: mystic and legal and personal.
Words can weave a whole world, a whirl of worlds, a wild wind of words
They can create reality for those who get caught up in them.
The right word at the right time can catalyze miracles.
The right word at the wrong time can destroy the eternal.
How might I find the words to capture my dream, my destiny?
Enter the Fool upon the Precipice, prattling ditties of the daily airwaves.
She is whirling blithely, eyes upon a distant rainbow, breathing in clouds
Breathing out daisies and daffodils and a brilliance of pansies.
She is dancing to her own symphony, entranced in her deepest essence.
Without thought, without prayer, without a government authorized identity
There are no guarantees, no happy ending.
There is a tale I try to tell.
Its point escapes me, withering into fairydust.
I breathe in the poisoned air, drink the poisoned water, eat the poisoned food
Like a desperately swimming fish in a polluted bowl, like a creature of the streets eating garbage,
Like a child.
The pattern is corrupted, but I follow it as best I can.
I have been told that if I can properly put the pieces in place
All will be revealed; all will be peace and beauty and love.
The pieces of my foolish shattered heart.

Calling Card

I am metamorphing art
a brain in a biological bottle.
What does that even mean?
I am but a latter day fool,
a futile Lancelot sans his Art or Guin.
If you let me in, if I satisfy some gaping
pinhole in your aimless curiosity,
if my foraging philosophy intrigues
your rambling wit, if we sit to laugh and cry
over brie and wine, you will see.

High Art

A chimera of Mage and Fool
Image of watery fire
a’flow and standing resolute
Creation of patient desire
Tell me a tale of intricate pleasure
Knit me a touchstone against any weather
Join me in illusive
smoke, wine and song
Catch me in delusion; but don’t imply I’m wrong
Let me breathe grand fantasy
past grasping reality
spin out sunbeams from decay of dross
sweetly decorate my cross
Waylaid reason is no loss
because I have reason to see
the world I create it to be

It’s so cruel
all you learn in school
is mocking behavior
reciting the rule
not that life’s there to savor
for the free playful fool

Neptune’s Fool

I burst my bubble daily
just to feel the pain
I paint my face up gaily
to melt out in the rain
My bag of tricks is magic
But no one calls to buy
I wish my life were tragic
Horrendously awry
That would explain my sad refrain
so bravely strong, heroic
a saint, stately and stoic
But in truth I’m just a bum
the very lowest sum
of higher expectations.
So, elbow up and drown in
my libations
(salutations, obviously optional).
It’s not that I’m exceptional
(what a wrench that was to say)
but that the conventional
I label reprehensible
snake crawls into my Freudian
super-nanny state
No longer can I deny reliance
on strangers of kindness who never stick around.
So please, kindly grant to me,
feed my sustaining fantasy,
Hear me, and answer: “How profound!”

Brief infusion
of giddy illusion
glows
just enough to guilefully entice.
Sparkling Neural net
smiles,
a secret
clue revealing
purpose, meaning;
engages
wild eternal child,
ages’ flamboyant fool,
Glorious
Muse

)

)

Here’s to the weary.
Here’s to the fun.
Here’s to the berry that makes us all young.
Here’s to the rulers.
Here’s to the fools.
Here’s to the toilers and tellers of truths.
Here’s to the end of another decline.
Here’s to the best of our time.

)

)

Somnolent glide, sinuous, silvery stair.
Burnt eyes still, closed to the world.
What glimpse might I witness
if only I dare?
Is there purpose to wandering Earth?
Should I care?
But what if I’m missing the thrill?
What would carry me there?
*
Over the boundaries; into the wild.
Not a safe task to commit to a child.
A quest full of questions.
A fool’s ‘oliday.
And, have I mentioned,
no promise of pay.
Just a born again supplicant
reshaping the code,
creating the tale I’ll tell
when I’m old.

)

)

Mood’s choral turns to Spring.
That special lethargy that poets faux affect,
reflective as a silver pool.
We like the love that lets us play the fool,
exudes good humor, respite from
sober shame of longing heart.
That flame, that spark that arts
wish power to capture,
that rapture.

)

)

Let the goodtimes roll
down fresh verdant hillside,
winter’s sorrows
spilling out like seed.
Cleansed free.
Elegant foolery open to bountiful showers.
Flagrant flowers, emergent liberation.
Layered legend long ripens, tangled,
mired below in
torpid traipse through dust and gloom.
Swept into light as destiny,
revealed by labor of cultivation,
excavated, bestowed honoured place
in ritual chorus.
Celebrate
‘round hallow table, exultant vibration.
Energies blend, fuse.
Recombinant winds call timeless tunes.
Rhythmic movements re- and un- engage,
ever changing,
never wholly new.

)

)

Wrested from Mama’s warmth, from
the cave, to play brave.
And it’s ladies’ choice as you squirm
in fool’s corner.
Such a chore — kissing at this
and that for a chance to score
the shame, the blame from stuck-out
tongues, the bloody laughter.

)

)

Penny Fools
Pound Fools
run ruinous errands,
rush past threshold of Hell
in cheap reticules.

)

)

Cast into a class that laughs at rules,
what holds grimy chaos at bay?
(Fools at least are pure, are gay and
without malice.)

)

)

Smoke simmering black deliciously divides while cackling
into echoes far seeking.
But there’s that puppy-dog barking need for love, for
status, for a wise old fool to follow into certain death
and beyond.
Who believes these mutterings?
Who would want to?

)

)

I tell Your secrets
in riddles, rhythms
If those fools would but
smile and dance
the sands would fly into music
Play on

)

)

People I became over ages.
Foolish sages.
Slave to wages.
Humble servant to whomever
gave a glance.
Always ready for a game with chance,
burning bridges to
swim in fate’s brave waves.

)

)

What fool would risk stability,
shame, neighbor’s hostility,
to resist? Stripped of private self-determination,
could such fools exist?

)

)

What can I say?
*
There’s valid point in
all this farce?
That the fool on the precipice
dances beautifully?
No matter
what the cost
there’s a prize worth the price
of steadfast duty?
There is bountiful advice
in the stars?
There’s a lucky star;
and it’s ours?
There is magick,
to believe in?
Requited hope, ecstatic grace?
There is more than we imagine?
There is gold in inner space?
There is danger; there are dragons?
There are knights and righteous cause?
There are chaos taming tactics —
There are underlying laws
that we obey?

Old Mage Pontificates

Heroes – people so publicly good they inspire
us to be better.
To wander clothed for travel, no map, destination.
Direction, decision, matters of whim or
instant’s fancy.
Sparkly lights over our Wintering fields,
meteorites to wish upon.
I wish for miracles that outdo, overwhelm
biblical prophecy.
Harsh judgment, militant readiness to fire
chaos, satisfying destruction.
Sharp dark edges, bullets of desperation.
Pain, psychic, traumatic, rippling waves
overreach, suck in soul and humanity.
Let them fight, beyond our Earthian borders,
those archetypes of Lucifer and Christ.
Let them whip up fierce, boisterous
conflagration – epiphanies of rage against
love. Hell, take bets, cheer and get high
on the action.
Up there, in that realm made of fantasy
and digitized dreams.
Here, right here and now and always
from here on, let it go.
Let the movie do its bitter dancing on
that distant screen while we
enjoy festivities of sparkling lights and
generosity, best humanity can offer spirit
of liberation immersed in
joyful celebration.