At 28 years I have become more self-interested
than I have been for two decades.
I am exploring all the granite holds my mind can grip,
all the ways my heart can cleave,
what fits into my body, the feeling of entry and exit,
how invasion stings and where I build my walls,
what quiets my horses and what scatters them galloping.
I used to look outside all the time like a periscope,
but now my navel fascinates me.
For so long it didn’t really matter who I was.
I simply was. I did. I perceived. I acted. I reacted.
The world needed my discovery. I yearned to stomp
all over its trails recording my findings.
Now I am ecologist frantically cataloguing the behaviors,
daily rituals, feeding and mating practices
of the only one of my species. Now it feels paramount
to carve out the hollow where I shall nest,
to place a sign for others, and a pair of binoculars
and a guidebook: “The Wild Me.”

I have tossed around the white seas all night
Waiting for sleep to pull me beneath the waves
My mind struggled but my body was limp
Wu wei: action through inaction
What shall I decide to do?
I decide not to decide
In the morning, golden cucumber skies greet me
My mind lies down and my body rises

Where are you going in such a hurry,
Human bean?

We are raining for you.
Listen.

Why do you hold so steadfastly
Your form?
Let your edges dissolve.

Read the ink of rivers scrawling the changing story
On stone again, again, again, embellishing tales.

We are herded by the dogs of wind.
We rise and drift wherever they corral us.

We heard you wish to live among us.
We heard it from your jet fuel engines.

Why do you want to sail our oceans?
Yours are so vast that you’ve never visited
Their heights.

We spin wool into yarn, then spool it out again.
Wee groundlings, you ought to unstitch
More of your stitches.

My rage is small and quiet and hiding
She doesnt know how to be out loud
She is exhausted, sweated out
A child banished to the basement
She has been made to feel worth nothing

My rage doesn’t know how
to SHOUT SEETHE SMACK SOIL
and REND ROAR RIVER RISE
Become a nature force
Inevitable and true
A wind a fire a flood

I dream sometimes of the hard knives of history
pinning the politician and his henchpeople
right through the wrists
with their hands up don’t shoot
with their liquid assets and **** running down their shoes

Those thieves of childhoods
Those betrayers of hope
Brazen flim-flammers flapping their lips
Those hard-eyed liars who force us to swallow
the spoon without the medicine
They have stolen our medicine
and so unctuously tried to sell it back

I should not dream now
I should become the dream
I should fasten my boots
and walk outside together
with my sisters and brothers
I should follow the wisest children
I should make my hands and voice
the hard knives of history

I should rend roar rise like a river
Shout seethe smack and soil
Their white collars
With their own blubbering spit

I have a quiet rage
She is singeing me softly within
My dear anger ember
asking to be released though I don’t know how
so she may lash hands with her sisters and brothers
Become a nature force
Inevitable and true
A wind a fire a flood