There are ways to tread the earth that are kind
and gentle.
Find them.

Have you ever tried to carry the weight of the dead?
Have you tried to lift the weight of
The mangled heaps of smothered souls that
In life held hopes and careful joys
And in quietus are absent but yet linger still
Living we number billions,
But the dead multiply in our yesterdays
The only remnants of the complex, or simple,
Lives now lost and left
How much of our earth composed of marrow and body  
Now heavier with no soul to uplift and spring forth
Stagnant weight

How many of our ancestors lie in rigid frames
Still, still in the chamber of dark breathless space
That keeps their bones, their decayed flesh
From bringing forth life again
How many trees have sought that nutrient rich cave
But found only metal and hard polished wood
To deny their gentle ask
  
Must it be this heavy?

how to divorce shame from the body
this arranged marriage
she is tied to weights of secrecy and doubt and fear
how can one love what they have been taught to fear
fear is the crucial ingredient in the recipe of christian ethics

-a generous cup of fear
-a few tablespoons of doubt
-a dash of secrecy
bake in the oven of isolation and
let cool in resentment for 30 minutes
or until the core is stone cold
a toxic concoction of shame
appearing as a lily white wedding cake


they will tell you your body isn't yours
they will tell you not to feel pleasure
they will tell you to renounce your ****** sin


if *** is sin i am the devil and we are all in hell
shame has been an abusive partner
divorce that *******
and learn to trust your body again
let its warmth comfort you
let its pulse sustain you
let its beauty please you
let its wholeness consume you
become enraptured with yourself
so your body can be yours again

and then you can chose who to share it with
because it is yours to share
your body is yours,
it does not belong to shame anymore

there’s a sycamore in the morning light
one side is all pale yellow white
the opposite fades from slate blue
to envy green
roots to tip a perfect gradient
blue to green as the reflections shift
from sky to leaves
and the leaves
the leaves are caught up in it all

my bowl

pale earth tan

rimmed with sky

was so full

of beauty

that it had

to break


when it burst

against the

stony ground

all the kind

and simple mornings

spent cradled in

my grateful

grateful hands

vaulted forth

into the air

like a firework

of catastrophic

and necessary

beauty


and i know

that i too

must break

every day

to let

the beauty of

my kind mornings

burst against

the stony ground

of the lonely

lonely world

to release

my grateful bliss

to the tan

earth and the

ever rimmed sky

What then, is a walk?
is it many muscles pulling bone
is it neurons firing without thought
is it intention,
(or is it not)
is it simply a means to destination
is it repetition till a pattern wrought
is it important,
(or is it not)

if a walk is only menial, offering no solace or
warmth or soft flutterings of aliveness,
if a walk is purely liminal, only a meager bridge
between destinations of questionable importance,
if a walk does not hold the destination wrapped
in each step and especially between-step,
then may I never walk again.

she told me to get weirder<
! don,t know
how to
weird
weirdin abstractin
! don,t know how to weird
how do ! take a good decision and
flip it--pilf ti
how can ! make something weird and still
important
am ! important
is meye decision im port ant
or
is it all just meaning
less

theres a dangerous time of night
when productivity is essential
but the clock at the corner of my computer screen stops
meaning anything
the numbers are fascinating as they float by changing
almost beautiful
the tyme what is tyme
is it time or tyme what makes it mean anything
and so existential crisis's happen at 11:46 and then again at 2:53  
those numbers are beautiful in a cruel sort of way
they creep up on you and lie, saying
everything is fine as they slip through your still fingertips
hovering over the keyboard for so long now empty
digital pages taunt fingertips
but the numbers are pretty again
3:01
****

the legacy of a color
streaked in violet haze,
echoes through shifty hues:
the spread expanse of sky,
never placed in blue.
white, perhaps, or almost red—
flicker and fade,
and never named.

curl to rest close against him,
bask in the cold light of a haloed moon,
**** the dark for stars twice traced—
breathe in, out, sink in silence
to depths unknown.
Gaze long and deep,
**** now the silhouette for eyes to meet,
Align the breath and wonder soft.
Find self and friend in union more—
Such elastic moments forever keep.

I will stretch and bend
and even if I break
I will mend

it took me a long time
to realize
that when we locked eyes--
all those times when i looked at you
and i thought you saw my soul behind my glassy eyes,
you were looking at yourself in the reflection--
my eyes a mere looking glass for your ego

the blues and greens in my eyes reduced
to a mirror of pride

i know we are a species of validation
that we look for other's perceptions of ourselves
and we define our self concept accordingly

but you
i don't think you ever saw me in the process
i was only ever an instrument
for you to play your out-of-tune music on

We have been lulled into dis-remembrance.
We stride through the asphalt city,
unrelenting heat radiating from the simmering un-ground
insulated by our rubber soles
(illusion of invincibility)
We were born into the city and we will die in the city,
where the wild comes to us as a postcard
through the TV, the only place birds of paradise still dance.
All we know are the weeds screaming for life
through the penny cracks in our grit and grime,
All we know are the pigeons with eyes burning red
and toes wrapped and amputated from yesterdays scraps,
their earnest croaks urgent “know! know! know!”
Know the wild for what it once was and could still be!

We do not remember this ground before cement pummeled the
roots of the great trees,
We do not remember how the night sky beamed to starlit cheeks,
Nor how the streams used to run clear and
full to their crests of fish,
We do not remember how great planes shook
with the hooves of the great migrations
of the beasts that knew always their destination —
that home was written in their memories!
“know! know! know!”
Tear up the synthetic web and
find within yourself the buried path,
the trail back to the home your deep soul knows.
Let us become wild again and remember our humble role
in this great wide world,
let us come home, from this concrete dream.

This heart, the seed—
Firm encased in umber shell,
Life force, vitality concentrated—
My center, my core.
Then this flesh body the stem, the leaves,
The grand expression, the spreading plumes.
My ribs, the roots that plunge the air for life
To stir into the seed heart
And send out to this flesh body the
Good good news of ample breath!

I recognize the hues of growth in my skin—
The viridian, the sap, the ochre with marine,
This is the color of change, and of spreading,
And of seeking light and finding nourishment.
This is the color of flourishing,
And it is traced in careful moments
Woven into my skin
Like wind in the green green trees.