I stand on the precipice -
Feverish yet clear,
Shaking, consumed, saturated -
Overlooking the valley of the year ahead
Stretched out below.
I must somehow chart a course
Using only these distant glances from aloft
Which shall be revised again and again
As I forge my path.
But in this moment,
On this mountain,
All is still.
There are no words.
Only a pure tone
Ringing forth from my heart.
It is the quiet breath before.
Before questions.
Before answers.
Only this breath suffused with light.
Only truly being.
This state of awe.
This heaven.

I stand with the Shepherds of Wonder.
The leaders of spirits, hearts, and minds
To places within and without.
Those who can wrangle the wandering cries
into joyous song.
Those who can speak their minds
defending justice in word and deed.
Those wily leaders of sultry passion
who dance the pleasures of flesh.
Those whole-hearted carousers
who invite raucous laughter to exhaustion.
Those who know that truth,
however fragmented,
speaks through passion.
That reality,
however subjective,
is anchored to our place in all this.
Those who know that fear is the arrow
pointing us where we must go.
I stand among them,
Gathering the Pause,
Eyeing and toeing the cliff's edge.

Then suddenly
The swell
The stirring excitement
The revving
The sudden skip in heartbeat
in anticipation of
All future Loves, Losses, Silences, and Laughter.
The sudden idyllic nostalgia for all future cycles
Yet to pass into life
And out of time so quickly -
Future stories yet to be told
And soon to pass from all memory.
The suspense of the unknowable
In a race against mortality
Draws me nearer the edge.

I draw a breath on the outcrop.
Once again,
Like the Shepherds of Wonder before me
I find the spark to journey on
In the calm
Before the leap.

Storytime: I have long worn this body as a mask, pinning my cravings on the easily dismissible "primal urges" shared collectively. And though I revel in the smooth, lithe curves and motions of ***, it is my mind that is racing. My climactic tears have always sprung from a deeper well of sensation than the physical.

The buoyancy and depth of my spirit is directly proportional to the clarity and frequency of my Aha! Moments, and the duration and spells of radical trust and honesty shared in body and in soul. These laser beams of clarity or steady washes of electric buzzing seem the only true reason to be conscious of life at all.

I always wish to be worshipping at the altar of the stars, whatever form they manifest themselves in. A view, a meal, a lesson, a conversation, a work of art, or a companion. I feel love as less the solid, quantifiable particle, and more the ethereal wave of euphoric wonder, pulling like gravity. In a reason-less world, this is the best one to exist.

I want to share, "I Wonder You," with the humans that amplify the buzz of this wavelength. I want to go without the stretches in between where I must disguise the stirrings within where I feel the minutes of my life slipping away.

I have let my inbox fill,
Let my hair grow long,
And moved the cup that collected my life
That constantly ranneth over
Spilling drops to the ground
To the side temporarily
So a deeper vessel could be found.
But I'm not worried -
I'll be around.

Nothing fancy
Just little stuff.
Using our real voices
Not the shallow mockery
To sing in the car.
Confessing our crushes
Honestly and gleefully
Dreaming and scheming.
Shoving our cold feet
Under each others' warm butts
With ice cream and SNL.
Nobody's perfect
(Least of all us)
But we certainly have our moments.

We burn like meteors:
Hot, fast, and bright
Screaming through the atmosphere
Hearts afire, souls alight
Each trip
One small skip for heart,
One giant leap for meteorite.

But there are two inevitabilities:
Time, and with it, gravity.

We break apart
Losing light
We extinguish
Losing sight
But after it's over -
After you're gone
I'm still
Euphoric.
High.

Replays shooting through my mind -
I'm starting to suffocate on oxygen.

Then I desperately search
For a laugh, or a sound,
Hoping a new voyage
Soon will be found
Grasping at wind
All the way down
Just a stone in thin air
Plummeting to the ground.

The year gets later,
The air grows colder,
The pack gets heavier,
The trails grow longer,
The hours get earlier,
The elevation gets higher,
The minutes pass faster,
The friendships grow powerful.
My heart grows stronger
With each summit.

Click clack
Heels down long pavements
Mean business.
A bystander excuses himself
From my way.
Take a seat and
Squickety squeak
Leather up legs
Crossing on
Leather up legs.
I'm endlessly amused
Biting my lip,
Silently cajoling,
"Oh, is this your thing?"

I have a hard time with differentiation
Between getting coffee
  And let's demolish 3 bottles of wine!
Between getting inspired
  And let's spend holidays seeing the country in a van!
Between getting butterflies
  And let's kiss on the face right now!

Surely,
There must be spectrums I can bisect
  Splitting
   Platonic Love from Romantic
   Sensory from Sensual
   And Casual from Committed
But they are not immediately apparent to me.

Regardless of type
All ships must be properly cared for,
So I will patch the holes
Man the sails,
And try not to rock the boats
Too terribly hard.

Above all
I thank the stars
For the gift of wayfinding.

Above it all
I gaze higher still
Or to the sunlit valleys below
To find my way.

The gift of terrifying awe as Orion's belt peers through the trees, bringing South.
The gift of sure confidence as I point the Dippers out to others, bringing North.
The gift of guesswork as we discover behind which peak the sun will rise, bringing East.
The gift of inevitable hush that descends along with her, bringing West.

The gift of heavy elements
Composing all
And my body
And these eyes
That were also made for
Reading maps,
Reading signs,
Reading animal sigils.

Above all
I thank the stars
For teaching me
To be less blind
And to find My Self
In the world.

We want to tear in -
To taste all the juices
Knowing that now,
All too soon, we could lose this.
We want to drink
All the things in this world
And never
Stop to breathe.
For the wheel
Takes and it gives
Some things will die
While others still live
When the day
Gives way to new day
We're afraid what we love
Might all fall away.
Still, the world demands
That we must let go
And let the deep rivers
In motion all flow
Dropping our leaves
Going back to our roots
Re-evaluating
What we know to be true.
Stop to breathe.
Before the next bite,
Stop to breathe.

We don't have to walk far
Under the cover of canopy
To find exposure.
Once outside the city,
Outside the usual framework,
Outside the boundaries of polite necessity,
We can truly breathe.
On the trail
I bathe in dust
And my hands converse with trees
When asking for support.
Nursing logs remind us
Where we stand
In an ancient cycle,
And we can confess anything.
Stripped down to our bare humanity.
It's the intimacy
I used to chase in pillow-talk,
But without the dance.
The trail is always a soul's journey,
Whether solo or shared.

I have learned how not
To deal with fury -
From my mother,
My father,
And so on,
And so forth.
I have learned what inside
I don't want to be.
Left untamped
I would be fire.
Left unexamined,
I would own my rage.
Instead, I turn it over -
Laugh-crying at some,
Numbing at others,
Until I've far surpassed fury
And settled in even rockier
Despair.
I shake at injustices too great
And I heave my sobs
Into a furious ocean
Of everyone else's.
Better to quietly, privately drown
Than actually burn it all down
As would my mother,
My father,
And so on,
And so forth.

Head turns
Eyes gleam
Brows raise
Lips press
Mouth curls
Head shakes
Eyes roll
Meeting yours
With a mischievous grin
And a glance too long
That seeks to meet,
No, submerge itself in,
And possibly dive the depths of
Yours.
My perpetual smirk,
My curious simper,
My amused beaming,
Must all seem customary now,
But in truth,
the eyes I give you
Are seen by very few.

Sweltering delirium
I want to unwrap my skin
This fervor consumes me.
On the prow of this boat
I gaze into the terminator
Dividing open air and rain.
A stoked frenzy
I want to flush this flush
In numbing chill.
A temporary calm in me
As the temperature drops
But this fever has less chance of breaking
Than the clouds.

In the summer,
Hands in soil,
Bodies covered in dirt,
Running barefoot,
Camping in grass,
Rolling in mud,
Smoke in our hair,
Dust in our socks,
Tasting the Earth,
Juice dripping down chins,
Flowers in hands,
Rolling down hills,
Resting in roots.
In the fall,
Rain in our hair,
Rain in our clothes,
Rain on our skin,
Rain carries filthy rivulets
To the drain.

Simplicity is not often with me,
For I am constantly spinning myself
Into a labyrinthine web of words.
(It's a problem - the spinner in my head
Cranks out WAY too much thoughtful thread.)
But I know how pointless it is to live this short life
without openly sharing my truths,
So, full of ambition,
I endlessly aspire to keep the door open
To this messy box.
So I wade through the mess
Collecting anchoring chords,
Endeavoring to weave them
Into an elegant and refined tapestry,
Ready to be presented to you.
One that says,
"Ever see the sun as the star it is, hanging in the sky?"
"Imagine giant glaciers bowling over these plains,"
"What's stopping us from staying out all night?"
or
"Let me list all the ways you are a beacon to my spirit",
"Please tell me about everything you love,"
"I look forward to these moments with you every other moment."

But that's always, like, way too much.

Up north
The ravens are well-fed
Proud and bossy
Tail feathers two feet long.
Up north
The cougars are muscled
Prowling through yards
House cats go missing
Up north
The game grow bigger
Towering, stoic
Against beasts larger still.
Up north
The people are farther
I finally feel
That I'm plausible prey.

The first mist you meet
You'll meet the guardians of the river,
The second mist you meet
You'll meet the clouds from oceans far,
The third mist you meet
Be prepared to meet your maker
For the final mist may send you
Back to river, or to star.

You will know, you'll feel the change,
That calls on parts of you most strange,
And through the wooded halls, you'll pass,
To gather for Its ancient mass.

The fallen towers' decaying bark,
Will harbor haunts of growing dark,
The slime will sweat, the crawlers teem,
You will not wake, this is no dream.

Descending into rotting cold,
You'll hear Its voices, deep and old,
And when their song has chilled your bone,
You'll know that you are not alone.

The path will dim and fall to end,
The soil below, itself shall rend,
The wyrm within shall rise without,
With blackened fur and horned snout.

And surely as the lichens gnaw,
It opens up its snarling maw,
The void beyond the smiling tooth,
Revealing long-forgotten truth.

A string plucked:
Soft, supple, pliant, auriferous,
Full-bodied.
Vibrations traveling in determined waves
Fill the chambers
Joyfully cascading down walls,
Ringing down halls,
The symphony crescendos and falls.
A string brushed:
Gasps, sings, tender, melodious,
Wanton.
Whispers traveling in hopeful skips
Dance on air
Lasciviously over-pleased
To be teased
And so subtly eased.
The string un-plucked:
Grows cold
Anticipates
Grows rusty
Wants for just one touch
Grows restless
Sits in silence
Oppressive silence
Until it snaps.

Gotta get out
Get away
Run away
"I'm running out..."
Running out of time
Out of patience
Get me out!
Out of here
Hear the blood
Blood rushing in ears
Ears full of volume
Volume in decibels
Decibels drown out thoughts
I'm drowning in thoughts
Thoughts that chain
Changes in motion
Emotional changes
Change of pace
Change of scenery
Change of heart
Gotta get out
Take me out

Men shielded their eyes from her effulgence,
Heat rippling across the valley
Cascading into cool mists -
That was how the tempest began.
Each naive stride and stroke
Raking chain reactions through the fields,
Winds picking up speed
She began to dance.
That was when she noticed the chill.
Her arms opened wide to beckon her sisters,
The sea,
And they ran to her,
Changing her,
Lending her
Their powerful wings.
Cyclopsian, she rose above,
First drizzles, then droves, and deluge.
Shiver, shiver, shake,
Drops sprayed and furled
Across the innocent
Wreaking havoc
From moon to covered moon
Until she'd spent it all.
Heat, chill, water, light, wind,
All gone.
Spent.
To trudge up the mountain
Searching for radiance once more.

Silent, unexpected ripples
As the first flakes softly alight on the lake,
A crisp inhale with eyes closed
Followed by a joyous vaporization of cloud.
When vision flutters back into focus,
A spectacle ever-more lovely than the last.
The muffled crunching around the trail,
near-muted chattering of chipmunks,
windy flurries whistling then growing placid,
the softened screech of a hawk
subdued now to an awed whisper -
Mounting and falling like a Debussy.
Clearer and more humbly triumphant
than cathedral bells.

This suite - this bright panorama
Shows me to the brink of an elation within
And brushes my crystalline spirit.
It sings and I overflow -
Light pours drop by rapturous drop
From each eye.

Do not expect a linear path
Nor a strictly circular one
Though you meander one foot to the next
In cyclical, somewhat predictable rhythms.
Do not expect clouds to behave,
Mountains to hold,
Or branches to grow.
Do not expect bridges to stand the test
of time that even trees cannot.
Do not expect your golden shot today
to hold your interest next go round the wheel.
Do not expect a clear and simple reward.
Rather, take what you can,
Whenever you can,
Drink it in,
Make it a part of you
For the next go round.

I was louder once.
A beast with a need to feast,
but now I tamp my rampages.
One too many times I leapt
Over and through the fire
Bounding and barreling
Obnoxiously snarling as I caught
my dreams between my jaws and ripped,
To find their warmth evaporating,
my **** growing cold and sticky
as it would dribble and dry,
sweet and cracked down my breast and forearms.
I learned to pace. To release. To settle.
Not to take too many shots, coax, tease, or purr.
Not to bite, howl, or grin.
Not to get too cozy when I stargaze, tell embarrassing drinking stories, or speak my impressing words.
Not to stand on tables,
Not to shout out of car windows,
Not to dance like the drunken Maynads.
And I am quieter for it.
More intact.
Less alive.
I miss that wild beast.
I feel her gnawing at the cracks in my skin
begging me to don the wolf coat.
And some nights,
When the moon is right
I do.
And if I'm not careful,
Fastidiously luring and caging her
with promises of "next time"
until I've re-sewn my skin
I'm afraid that she'll eclipse me,
Careening through the night
And never returning.
I along with her
Never to return.

Crafting scissors
Gardening shears
A pizza roller
Instruments of humble vivisection
I wield, I rend, I create.
Needles and pins,
Nimble and thin,
I pierce, I pull, I close.
With measured patience
I choose my weapons:
Ink, passion, time, and wit.
An armory of precision and gut.
Boulders bruise but roll away,
Fire burns, but I'm already ablaze,
Arrows lodge shallow or all fall short,
But the cold?
It slices.
The draining thought:
Is this the end of my creation -
Is there no more?
I slowly bleed out.

Hear here:
https://soundcloud.com/nataliejcopeland/fine-rough-first-mix*

I'm fine
  I'm fine
    My heart's on fire
      But I'm fine
No ****
  No wine
    No need for that stuff
      Cause I'm fine

The words on the radio
Don't touch me like they used to
Not a single song out there
Sounds right or rings true

I'm chill
  I'm fine
    Growing colder
      On the vine
The leaves
  They turn in time
    And I'm turning too
      Cause I'm fine

I wish I could capture a sunbeam's warmth
Before the autumn days
But just like the summer in your smile
This too will fade away

I'm fine
  Not sure what I'll do but I'm fine
    This heart beats slower now
      But it's fine, oh it's fine
I'll try
  To coastline
    Try to glow up
      Til I grow up
        And I show up
          Truly fine.

I just want to delicately cull my favorite blossoms from your mind
Until I've traveled the neural networks so,
That you might later allow my feral traipsing.
I just want to throw our backpacks in the backseat
And take a careless adventure
Wild. Jovial. Unbridled.
I just want to take you out from this fencing
To see you in new surroundings once more
To abandon labels, structure, and facades.
I just want to admire your strengths and your work
That you have shaped with your hands,
your will,
your individual cut.
I just want to take you out
To the open road
To see what you would shout,
how reckless you would be,
what abandon you could inspire in me.
I just want to do human things with you.
I want to enjoy pure moments of our nature.
I want to feel the Earth move with you.

The birds residing in my heart
Did beat their wings with such force
There was nothing but the beating
So many beats all out of sync
Throbbing. Thumping. Racing.
Finally, I opened my mouth
And one by one they each did fly out
and soar
and my heart grew lighter.
After many hours,
one by one they returned to roost,
folded their wings, and tired,
tucked back into my heart.
A mass of gently moving feathered bodies
Whirring with a soft, electric hum.

I close my eyes
to try to make it as dark as I can
to shut out the light from the hall
from the street lamp
from my alarm.
To make it as dark as the sky
that we lay beneath.
I re-populate the darkness with the pinpricks we know so well.
Would you give me permission
to do more than imagine,
to accompany you out to the open dark
of the plains and the mountain tops,
if only to spend the hours it takes to get there,
voices alight,
learning your favorite things,
and then hours under the stars
in awestruck silence?
Excited breathing. Buzzing. Elation.
A late and innocent night
on the edge of dawn.
I open my eyes
To the headache of the hall light,
the street lamp,
my blinking alarm.

It’s 6:08 AM
and 6 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
My window sweats on the inside and
a truck motor runs on the street for ten minutes
working to defrost its inner cargo.
The frosty hills are still dark as hell.
Somewhere hours away you’re waking up
choking for coffee and running off
moved by the efficient early metro buses,
the graying slush,
and the misty chandelier of streetlamps.
Maybe next winter you’ll be here
to coax me to put down the books
before the too-long awaited dawn.

Until then,
Good morning.
Goodnight.

Let's breathe.
Let's place our feet in the mud
and count the birds' songs without numbers
but with our souls
Let's let the branches speak to us,
the moon flood our skin,
the sun flood the land,
the flood chisel the river,
the bed grow to include us
Let's see life so precious circumnavigating
pushing on differently a little changed
Soon we succumb to the same
So laugh with a grim love and peace
that you come from the sun
sister the moon
become the mud
and the branch
that the circadian chatter of birds
will serenade
as we breathe.

HEAR THE COMPLETED SONG HERE:
https://soundcloud.com/nataliejcopeland/you-said*

You said, “Why’d you fold my clothes?
I don’t want anyone
taking care of me.”
You turned back to your razor,
ignoring
the sick-stained sheets.

You said, “Let’s just watch tv.
I don’t know anyone
when I’m asleep.”
You turned back to the wall,
ignoring
the two empty feet.

But that wasn’t where
the worst
pain
was felt,
Cuz I didn’t think
that my warm
heart
could melt
All the icy hands
That her cold heart
had dealt.
But then you said,
“That’s all broken.”
And you said,
“That’s all dead.”

You said “I can’t love again.
I don’t want anyone
wrapped up in my fate.”
Well, we turned back to our peaches,
ignoring
how we knew I would wait.

They said, “Is that your pretty girlfriend?”
And you said, “She’s so pretty…”
And that was the end
Cuz we turned back into clowns,
ignoring
the message we sent.

If you wanna know
the worst
pain
I felt
It’s when I lost hope that
my warm
heart
could melt…
Cuz the final blow
that cracked my world
was dealt
When you said…
When you said..
When you said…
When you said…
…. Nothing.

You said, “I’ll still be your friend
When he comes sweepin’ you
offa your feet.”
You put out your cigarette,
ignoring
my tears on the street.

I want my name tattooed on your lips
stars tattooed across my back
my name to be a star
I want you to hold me on your tongue
to leave stars in your hair
when I run my fingers through
I want you so bad it’s driving me mad
playing on our radio
I want your lips so bad on my stars
-want stars when you taste me
your fingers to ******* tattoos
the stars to taste our fingers
when they wander through our lips
I want our fingers touching lips
by the stars that bathe our tattooed names
in the music of the madness twixt our hips
I want our ink all over our skin
A stellar map to lead us in

In anticipation of the too-few precious hours in tandem, we divulged our carnal cravings at each others’ hands, but omitted fragments, saving them for some other day, finding them too truthful.

When you hold your body to mine, as you have told me you will, I want a flurry of colored breath, peach and magentas and crimsons slipping translucently from every part of me and wafting in and out and between us like a graceful fog, and not just the force of fingers that have waited too long to touch, but the electrostatic brushes of life’s restlessness falling slowly into their own gravity as we learn to trust the moment.

Our lips are full of nerves and that is why a kiss is so much more than symbolic. I placed my lips to the skin of an orange and I was met with the sensuality of the whole terrain of this world. Intimacy then, is the slow press that reassures humanity – the invitation into a world with no walls – the rush of blood that comes from being completely receptive – that is the kiss I want with your soul.

After all the epochs of lovers, these are all the same words, but they are lanterns bouncing across the plains and sparking anew in the way that the naive are always entranced by the lighter in their hand when they first learn how to light a cigarette, elated and dizzy from the *****. Twinkling.

Sometimes all it takes is a breath and I am light and wind and red paper confetti and the moon and a golden orb that turns all it touches into a shining constancy of what’s called love – and I visit your heart knowing that you can’t tell it’s me, and then I must leave– and I know that I was not in my body, but that it must have kept existing while I was gone because I always wake up in tears, and someone had to cry them.

Conventionality dies between us and there are no titles or promises to speak of. I once found security in labels, only to find that they leave no room for the inevitable growth and weathering of time. So I ask little of you – only that you are always true with me, and that you occasionally put your hand in mine.

Infatuation.
It’s a girthy, 5-syllable word and you’re
In a fat, juicy, situation.

It’s a swollen, darkened fruit
That begs to be taken completely,
Flesh devoured entirely.

But it’s a trap.

The sweet and tangy blood of it
That dribbles down your chin
To your neck
To your *******
To your heart
To your stomach
To your hips
To your groin
To your ***
Down your thighs
To your nervous toes
Is not love.

Nobody wants to hear that.

But some day
- If you are incredibly lucky -
You will look at your maroon-stained palms
And the dry, sticky rivers of years running down your wrists
And laugh until you cry when you realize
That you could wash your whole body
Because love is not in the juice.

It is not your addiction,
Your summer picking,
Your hungry belly,
Your well of adrenaline,
Your rushing of heartbeats,
Your tangling of bodies,
Your jealousy, yearning,
Nor pride.

If you are incredibly lucky
You will suddenly know love.
As silent, simple, and strong
As the fabric of the universe itself.

The days that are most full are the days spent pretending we weren’t waiting.
Our organs churn like machines producing twice their expected amount
Of free-flowing adrenaline, which we give a task to circle, rather than the drain
Of lonely, gut-wrenching “what-if-tomorrows”.

There’s the waking struggle of swinging your feet from your bed and testing your floor
And hearing a scream bubbling forth from the lethe, tickling at the daybreak,
And knowing that you must wrestle, mash, and toast it into a tasty breakfast morsel
Lest it overwhelm the dawn with restless shadows.

We drag the lengthy hours through the mud, fatiguing their thread, living mercilessly
Until they no longer resemble time, but immeasurable intangible everythings.
There can be no counting of patchwork days, only the art of making them count
What a productive little distraction, so I can pretend that I’m not waiting.

How relative is time
That when I have an address
Of where to send my thoughts
I may march through the days
With my coveted "tasks" of penship
Fulfilled
Yet when I lack this focal point
And fumble into doorless walls
Each dizzy cell zips about
With not a patient comfort, all
Panicked

When pins and pressure plates crawl into my spent shoulders
I clutch madly to crush the offending sinews.

When I’ve grazed the side of my tongue with an accidental death-threat
I revisit the spot and repeatedly incise, until I’m ******* crimson and tears.

When the she-squito shoots me up via serrated needle turning me feastlike
My fingernails compulsively scavenge out the adenosine deaminase.

I sniff the arid bottles of perfumes I love that are no longer manufactured.
I re-trace my lost friendships through the riverside paths we made.
I chop onions and slurp hot sauce until I’m dry.

Maybe that’s why I’m stuck on you.

Freezing fog
Trees protest
They can’t shiver
It’s a test.
Wait for spring
Hold all breath
Patient trees
Denying death.

Stagnant air
Hanging white
Building daggers
In the night.
Grim to breathe
Grim to touch
Patient are trees
That suffer such.

Winter cracks and
Winter cleaves
No bitter words
Are heard from leaves.
Watch the trees
For they will show
The path of patience
And way to grow.

There’s a rumbling a-coming
And yet I build my dreams from glass;
I hope you’ll peer through to find my face
Through the fancy, frosted, crystalline patterns.
You blew sparks into me that became novas;
Now they fuel my beaming eyes in the melt.
Watch as sands of time are blown into fragile fantasies
And yesterday’s memories twist their colors
Into improbable dragons and stars of tomorrows.
Glimpse me through my new frail fortress.
Keep watch as I hang tiny galaxies in the rafters.
These walls are your windows.
Use them well,
For the rumbling’s a-coming,
And I might need a savior
Who knows my dreaming face.