Animal Wind God
Births Earthquakes and Snowflakes
Wolf Water God
Smells of Blood
Falls from Heights
Rises from Depths
Pain is Given
         and Taken
Without guilt
Look!
Nature has come to be the way it is
Beauties and Brutalities pile upon each other like Piglets
Absurd God Unashamed God Raw Rough Pawed God
Sky God Slug God Star God Seed God
Pure Instinct of a Beating Heart God

Humans Strange with our love and hate,
                                       Our good and evil,
                                       Our doubt and hope,
                                       Our questions,
                                       One of which being:

If there is a Creator, is it Reflected,
                                           Found,
                                           Manifested
                                                      ­         in its Creations?

Poison Arrow Frog God

Black cows
Meat ghosts in the mist
What animal contemplations
Are breathing warmly through
                         your thick shadow flesh?

I see our thumb prints on you
We guide the filling of your flanks
       Through generations.
We do not loose
Our child-drive to touch things.
I want to reach out to you now
                pat your dark domestic head.

You are cattle.
I am human.
This is pasture.

See the unevenly woven web
We have spun
And now we are dizzy.
I am unsure where the balance
                                                     should rest

Between wilds and wanders and the human hand,
Itself belonging to something wild if unrecognized
Behind the shell of our own furless skulls.

So I focus on the drops of dew
     Clinging to the web strings
     In this early morning mist
     And resist the urge
                                        to touch them.

What if an enormous naked woman of body and soul
Came bounding towards you,
Unafraid,
Unashamed,
Her full, round, soft, shaking self
Unencumbered
                       By notions of decorum, judgement, or carnal qualms?
A woman unbound and out to give and love,
Deaf to shouts and whispers, the sharp click of a critical eye
Who has it her way by giving away everything that she is to all
Because she knows and trusts that she will continue to grow
So there will always be
Enough.
Rounding on the stitches and threads that would bind her, line her, measure and
                  Sign her off as a nut case, a walrus, someone who won't stoop to believing
                  That she is worth less because she refuses to stop expanding her boarders,
                  Exploring the thunderous spaces between souls.

Approaching God
    like an animal on nine legs
    with one life.
One life to get as close as you dare
                                         as close as you dream.
Dare you dream to get close enough
                                                               to be heard?

You are heard.
You are regarded by an unseen eye with untamed love.

But you don't know it.

Skittish animal spirit
              covered with ears, soft and shaped like
                    cupped palms with furry finger tips,

You hear so much that you don't know what you hear.
                 Death rattles, birth cries, howls of abandonment, laughter.

You hear God, but is God saying love?

Not a single sound has been tamed.

The silence has not been tamed.

Her dreams are like empty snail shells:
Pink and twisted hollow homes of those who had stomachs for feet.

Care to give up the safety blanket?
The Romance that is not arriving
And the fear that things are slipping past you?

Let go.
Nothing matters.
Because it all means so much.
And you'll never be able to hold it all.
So only carry a drop at a time.
That snail shell is too big.
Ask the jumping spider instead,
To lend a leg.

Dream lightly, loosely, and with many limbs,
And do not avoid a tangled web
Because that is where the dew gathers
A myriad of drops at a time.
They will evaporate before you can touch all of them.

Never tell me to never change
Cause next thing you know
Ten or twenty years from now
You’ll look me up and I’ll be
337 pounds with a career in
Painting houses purple.
I’ll carry an umbrella with me everywhere I go.
There will be a warrant for my arrest out in a country I don’t visit anymore.
I won’t have any lovers—not a one.
I’ll have given them up for my causes:
The cause of the Open Windows and Rooted Bird Feet and Medicinal Marijuana.
And then I’ll fall in love again.
This time for keeps.
And our kids will be just crazy because we’ll live in a place without video games.
I’ll be a violent pacifist, or a passive violinist,
And all the world will have never heard of me.
Then he’ll die, or I’ll die, or we’ll get to live until we’re old and we can go to **** beaches ****-naked and revel in the joy of squeamish young people.
And if I’m not the one to die, then I’ll get angry all over again about the state the world is in.
These sort of things don’t fade with age.
Maybe I’ll try to fix things, or maybe I’ll just accept the things I can’t change.
Maybe I'll be changed by the fixed things I have so much trouble accepting.   
Maybe I’ll have enough friends (you included?) to take care of me if I hit rock bottom.
Maybe I’ll be strong enough to take care of friends (maybe you?) that have reached the end of their rope.
So be appalled with what may be, or live in denial for what there was, or choose to embrace a bigger me.

Sitting on the steps of the back porch
A piece of staling bread sour-dry in my mouth
Wondering if there is peace in this evening.

I notice above me sky whales,
Silent, moving slowly, but faster than you would think,
Bellies blue, edges tinted pink.

And suddenly I know which way is west
Because they are gliding away from the darkening pallor
Where the sun set not so long ago.

The air above me is water.
I am looking up into the sea
Where migrating orca mountains
                                        made by breath, moved by wind
Slide from dusk to darkness.

I no longer know up from down, drowning from sighs,
But by God I know which way is west.

I have found a watch
Keeping time perfectly,
Beautiful gears and cogs click, shift, wound tight,
And the Theist beside me says:
                "Such a thing could not come into being by chance!
                Surely there is an Intelligent Designer."
I could shrug or nod but instead I look closer
At the watch
And the way it grinds its gears.
I see a bigger cog pinch a smaller cog;
I see something with teeth bite something--I can hear it now--
That is screaming.
And suddenly each second reveals
Another tooth, another claw,
The weaker parts are torn to pieces or swallowed whole.
The strongest survive for a while
Until time kills them too.
Death by life by death by life by death,
Pain impressed upon them all,
The only purpose to be heard: the passage of tick tock tick tock tooth claw; of time.
Unless (until?)
The clock wears down
And time ceases to exist.

I turn to the Theist beside me and say:
                "Intelligent Design? No friend, it is Ethical Design
                That demands an investigation."

I tilt my face warmthward,
Chin slightly closer to the sun.
I don't know if I still believe in God.
Sometimes my soul rages with the question.
Sometimes it floods.
I am at a loss.
What to do with all the wind and water?
"Be still and know that I am God,"
Or don't know.
Be still and one at a time, take each impossible breath
Lean away from the wrenching paradoxes.
God or no God,
I've been allowed a moment without allegiance,
A moment free to not care I have no understanding.