If I stay a nervous bud
my full bloom will not encroach upon the grandeur of another
& I will invite no retribution
Though the artist in me knows
that a whole field in bloom
Pollinates the world.
Bloom with the artists.

If I stay silent
my words cannot be smithed into a weapon of censure,
and be used to cut me into smaller pieces.
Though the poet takes my words
& alchemises them
into an elixir for healing.
Speak with the poets.

If I smother my fire
I inspire no ire from neighbouring Suns
for whom my shine is a punishable theft of thunder.
Though a sister moon mirrors my light and illuminates the next.
Shine regardless.

If I stay in my armour
my vulnerability cannot become the missile launched at me
by the traitor who begged for my truth
Though an ally reveres my courage
and meets it with the honour of their own open heart.
Open, even though.

The wild woman, she is cyclical.
The wild woman, she is seasonal.
The wild woman, she is tidal.
The wild woman honours her seasons of being.
She rests in both body and mind when her bones and spirit command it.
The wild woman yields to the gift of her own emotional wisdom.
She is as mutable and unpredictable as a tropical storm
The wild woman is both hibernating bear and flitting hummingbird.
She is springs flush and she is volcanic eruptions.
She is the crones wisdom after the maidens mistakes
She is all the stories of all the ancestors stored in the library of her bones.
Through her they will be heard
.

Begging by a million names,
A fix for the cost of dignity

In the wearing of a thousand faces,
True north gets lost by tide

To be oneself requires discernment
Through madness and through mood

A staying of course beyond the currents
That pull us to and fro.

You carried;
my cold silver moon on your spine
To repair;
the bridge between your love and mine

She was the arms he took up
when the viper robbed his lyre of its muse

She was the devotion he carried underground to bring her home again

She was the mourning sonata that caused Hades to weep

She was the echos of longing that made him turn back

She was the immortal whisper in the dark of his guilt
That said
Orpheus
Don't forget about us

For seven months I drank my tea at the window and allowed the sun to cast its rays over my resolution.
I gazed at the space between but never directly into my neighbours house
for I knew the indifference that awaited me in her window of enmity.
During the seventh month my love swelled and pooled at my fingertips, restless with those un-penned words of indignation,
And so I gazed into her window.
Bleeding from my freshest wound,
just rage unfurled into bitter poems,
reruns of us,
of when you offered the belly of my dignity to feed your enemies, revealed a vengeance owed to me,
not of retribution
but of justice.
During the eighth month I wrestled love and grief, rage and memory,
to save you,
to save you from the recklessness my pain threatened to uncage.
I allowed the waves of your betrayal to break over me and pull me back into the sea of childlike grace within myself.
I did not emerge cleansed, pure, or resolved.
Victorious over my animal lust for vengeance,
yet unsatiated in surrendering my desire to deliver you to the same gallows where you made a pariah of me.
And conflicted with answerless questions.
Is vengeance the natural harbinger of karma and therefore my gentleness; justice interrupted?
Is my enduring love my weakness or my courage?
.

Stillness took his rain-soaked boots
off at the door
And entered my house

I made him tea
In an old coffee -stained mug
With a bag.

He holds no pretension
‘Whatever you have right now,
is enough’. He said

He can’t stay. He tells me,
There are dishes to do.
But he will be back

‘When it’s raining’ he says
‘And there is no laundry to do.’
‘We’ll have tea.’