When dinner becomes a dance,
Standing in the kitchen as the clock strikes 12,
Tomato juice dripping to my elbows
Spices spilled over vegetables raw in my hands,
The carving knife wet with sauce
Eating fistfuls of my own hunger and joy
Until I reach the end of that deep and driving primal hole
The meat pads my bones
And fills my aching soul
.
And standing for midnight mass
In the holiest place in my home
I catch my glance in the window's gleam
And am introduced to a woman I've only met
In my deepest and sweetest of dreams

Your Name rests on my tongue
with the same weight

  As the immense anticipatory pause between each breath;

  Between filling my being and being left empty as death

I feel the change in season
Like the catch of breath in my throat
Like dancers with sweat hot on their skin,
Like the subtle softening from heat to sin

A Copse of trees stand tight
Huddled like frightened beasts against the cold of night,
Wild wolves in the wind snapping at their
bonelike limbs
The hunger of cold, biting and old
Thrum out like the very first hymns

The stars linger this morning,

Caught frozen between grass blades

Uneager to relinquish the long night,

They shimmer brilliantly in the golden morning light

The line of confused winter birds
Wash across the crisp blue sky
As the breaking line of a wave against the shore,
Pushing on, morning song
Flying as high as the day is long

The morning unfolds itself like a poem
First, a softening,
- realisation of cold -
And then,
        the promise of gold

Golden Sunlight unfolds herself from the cracks of the frozen earth
Like silk, her fingers warm and soft against my cheek

She stands herself gracefully from among the glittering frost,
Tending to the falling and calling for the lost

She softens the scrape of black trees against the thin skin of the sky
And offers forgiveness from the endless nightly cry

When we as loveless humans failed,
With hate in every word exhaled
We turned and let our gods all crash,
we turned our children into ash.
.
And from out the ashes crawled
A thousand demons, wide and tall
Roiling mud and blood and stench
Tore out from groaning wound-like trench
.
And then down from the sun there flew
(not too many nor too few)
A band of angels, a golden choir
Singing songs of purging fire
.
And at the end of battle-day
In the fields of war there lay
No liars, beggars, thiefs or knaves
But a thousand crying naked babes

Sunlight wrapped in chains of gold
The days are short, the nights are cold
Amid dark spots, dark thoughts, light rain
You use your sweetness to sour my name

A young woman hid, in a world long ago
A world full of hunger and greed
.
Asked,  "why do you hide?"
she answered, wide eyed,
"I dont want them to see how I bleed

And in the winter,
While she was still small and cold
I watched the sun rise to meet me, her smile
Softening the frost in my soul
.
And now sweet summer heat
Begins to bear down with heavy hand
I go out to meet her once more
At dawn, now twice the journey -
I rise early to watch her unfolding flower
And yet still the same tender light does shine
In that fragile hour

Maiden in the ashes
Robed in silk
Robbed of milk
No mark on your tender skin
No sign of turmoil within
The coal does not yet scorch your soul
...
You walk your delicate path
Bearing the sightly, brightly beaten cut bloom of spring
Luscious petals not yet knowing
They will drop from the stem
No seeds to plant, and not her fault
the only water here tainted with salt
And the ground here is hard, turned up in its roots
And the soft garden bed tamped down by boots
Do you know the path you tread does not want you?
Do you not yet feel the cut of the stone or burning of the coal to your sole?
Or does this black earth need your bloodstained steps as much as you need to bleed them
Is it possible for one woman's blood to nourish this dead soil back to life?
And one woman's love to seed them

The kitchen table is an altar
To the only god I've ever known
When I fail and when I falter
She makes my weariness feel like home

Bite my tongue to pieces,
I smile behind bloodred lips ,
Does the sweet scarlet curve entice you, my love?
My gold light under your cold sight eclipsed,
.
Have I made myself palatable enough
To be consumed?
Or does my bleeding flesh pollute, too pungent and sour
For the likes of your gluttonous love to devour

I don't know how to end it but I love a new start,
Devoted and lost, homelessness of the heart

'I was beautiful once,'
    she said,
                  her weathered hands mending another torn patch on an old travelling cloak;

"It was good in its own way, I suppose,
    But it no longer had use for me.
...
I wore the beauty over my shoulders like
  A second skin,
          like a gifted jacket
                                 which I one day outgrew.
...
My interests turned to other purposes,
          And she was tucked away alongside the other tokens of my youth"

She stood, shaking out the quilt on her lap
     which flared in kaleidoscopic colour -
an intricate map
                     of tiny knots and stitches which had layered over years of constant mending,


"I make my own clothes now"







.

Maybe you called my name
( in hundreds of languages I couldn't speak, )
Or maybe
You said nothing at all
.
Maybe your love was so incomprehensibly encompassing I could not tell the difference between it and the very air I breathe -

Or maybe

It was comprehensively small

It rained today,
The first rain in forever.
It smelled nice;
A great wet sigh of relief

I didn't miss it until today-
When the raw thunder rolled over my back
When the crisp grass softened
And mists poured thickly through the rippling trees
I love and I loathe
The endless rolling days of grey
That pulls over the sky like white sheets
Tucking us in to the earth; soft and small and damp and sweet

But maybe tonight, the pattering tap
Will pull me so softly
To sleep

What is life if not an excuse to love a little longer

What does it mean to remember?
And what does remembering mean
The days as they pass are fleeting
And some things grow gentler unseen

Snow melts
To soften and nourish the earth
And leave tender spaces
For the young things to bloom

And the roses that lay
Untouched on this splintered land
Still bloom, still bloom
As they bloomed before
In the day

In the darkness of becoming
I saw, I was a seed
In that dark and sacred place
Full of life and full of need.

Gasping, grasping every breath
A gift I take, I bleed
Into sweet light I dare to grow
A choice, no choice - I'm freed.

We were what we were
And we are what we are.

There is many necessary things about the past

The Mundane is sacred too
Without it you are ungrounded
The there profundity in the simplest things

.

Are you truely Serene, or do you amputate yourself of the chaos of life
(  and think yourself above it? )

All water flows
towards the sea, they say
I think what happens when I cry
Is that I would like to be washed away
.
Ice melts beneath the heat of my flesh
Life giving water drips
From my eyes to my hands
To my finger tips
And to the sea
.
Snow melts
To soften and nourish the earth
And leave tender spaces
For the young things to bloom
...
The heat of my passions cool
Like mist in the trees, it settles
On my skin
Mischievous and solemn -
spirits beckon me, they tug on my clothes
To dance, or die..

I've been washed away

In the future
When I hold love around me like a cocoon
And it unbecomes my being -
I hope I remember you
Even as my wings unfurl from under my skin,
As I take my first breaths
And fly

Each day builds upon each other
Wiping clean and making new the same
Soft leather, creased from touch
Each breath overlaps, makes no demands

Life is like a great glass marble,
changing hands

There is beauty in suffering too sweetheart,
to revel in the pains of existence
I think maybe I suffer and love
in equal measure
and, God!- what a way to be alive

In the bath,
The every rise and fall of your breath becomes the tide
Your heartbeat echoes through mutable water,
Engulfing me in womblike embrace
Small waves lap at my skin and resonate through my flesh
lapping at the shore-
I am water too

I feel your rhythms course and overlap with mine like music
And if I were to bathe in the ocean,
I'd be no less
Only fulfilled with ever more

I do not dare myself compare
Against the flame within your state
My love, you fill each breath of air
So that each word may expell hate

You soar so high, you bring me low
To roots, to nourished earth - I grow
For you, my sun
You tend to life, and love and play-
You ease my nights and brighten my day

Dissolve into the mists
Rain sprays across the grey water
Cloaking ever shrinking islands
I sail away into the white
..
She swallows the kiss of every word from my breathless lips into whisper

And pours home into my heart like relief and respite

The night sky moans your name-
She echoes across the mountains
Her tongue on the snow
Her teeth in my bones

But the quiet coverage of night takes her prize
Torn from your childlike heart are the comfortable distractions that kept you from being
Alone
The velvet cover muffles your cries to silence
Without even the satisfaction of an echo, or soothing drone
To fill your frame, instead,
your mind within your corpse lay prone

Rest my dear
Allow your body to fade into the night.
The cruel light of day demands sacrifice
And offers no respite
Until the dusk places her softest kisses
As she takes you in her arms
And allows your burden to rest
She knows you did your best
And sends you into a land where
darkness will unbecome your being
for a while,
As a gift

Free from the pain of production,
From the pain of being perceived
For the stains of your actions muddy and meld
Into the darkness's deepening kiss
.

(you also know your mind lies, how do you determine truth?
-You'll be able to feel it if you listen closely)
(you know with your heart;
You have disconnected from your body, which is why you doubt yourself)

Your mind thinks
Your heart knows
Your feelings confirm
Your mind thinks, gets anxious, ungrounded and turns on yourself
.
Your heart, bitter at being ignored, lashes out in hopes that if you could only feel the damage you are doing to yourself,
you might pay attention

And now when I scream
I no longer have the satisfaction of an echo,
Nor of any sound at all

You cannot see how much you judge others
When you direct that judgement most harshly
Into yourself

you unwittingly hold others to the same standard
you abuse yourself with
External reflections of your most internal loathings

Nor do you see that the criticism which you raze against your self
You raze against those who admire you


The daughters' mother cannot bear
Her own visage

What is a woman?
She is too much
.
Too much joy, like her heart is a bird which beats wildly against the cage of her chest,
(the cage Adam gave her, keeping her together)
Too much pain to contain alone, a tether
To the hands of those who might abuse her
.
Too unrestrained in love that it spills into the world freely, unknowing of the price
Too free in this jealous world, that seeks to condemn what it cannot consume,
Ex lovers, or demons she dare not exhume
.
Too much place in her skin, too much shine in each tress
Too much space in her limbs, so she must become less
So much beauty and life, to love and to touch
She knows what she wants, a little too much
.
Too tender to be broken, so she must become tough

And what is a man,

But not enough

His arms
Wrap around my naked corpse
Is he holding me (is he giving up?)
Or am I letting go

Blinded once again,
I succumb easily
To good men with bad intentions.
X
We all have our weaknesses.

What a blessing it would be to have eyes
That open before the wake of my own destruction
And not be widened by suprise
At my reduction

The taint of my love
Slips out to touch his pure heart
With corruption
Seeing the darkness fill him,
And shatter what we built,
I am purified in the horror
Of what I'd become.

I found it in the places
I was most afraid to look
.
I hold his name on my tongue;
The sweet taste of regret,
Of finally knowing the love I'd had

You must tend to your body
as you tend to your garden.
Your body is from the earth,
and sustains your mind

Though we now lay miles apart
With every thought you fill my heart,
With every smile you steal my breath
I will love you until  death