am i seeded
or buried
forest floor or headstone above me?
the distant daffodils,
stoic sentries, craning for Sun
at the edge
offer no answer/s to my dark, muffled query
germination and decomposition
indistinguishable,
in the beginning
indistinguishable,
at the ending
in Spring’s cold soil
shaded,
unrelentingly,
by clouds or canopy.
sometimes i touch my own face
with my palm
to remember
that i am also soft
& Holy
Hosanna in the highest, truest Light of Self.
"The triumph of the Light before its obscuration is an expression of the divine, royal Selfhood within each one of us, that is so powerfully obscured by mundane and conventional reality. There are times when we want so badly for that light to shine out of us, for it to be recognized by the world. When the only vehicle for expression is the ego-personality our strivings to be seen are usually in vain. Personality actually comes from the Greek “persona” meaning “mask.” While in this terrestrial incarnation, we are like the Count of Monte Cristo in The Man in the Iron Mask; our behavioral gyrations and efforts to have others recognize our light only serve to convince them that we are egotists, madmen or charlatans. Often we create a false glamour that is not our true Self; we put on an entertaining song and dance act; we live a lie and shine forth a false light: or we simply forget about our light and live our lives as if it had never been.
When we are not anxiously attempting to show forth our light, we are often acting in fear of the consequences of letting our light shine. We either turn down our light or turn it off completely, so that we might pass unseen through this world. Yet, “Within a man of light, there is light, and he lighteth up the whole word. If he does not shine, he is darkness.” This is the sham, the cover up, that we are either parading a false light or hiding our light beneath a bushel. The issues are not safety or creative self-expression, the core issues are authenticity and consciousness. We must be conscious of who we really are as spiritual beings and not let either fear or love of the world pervert or hide the authenticity of our own true Self.”
- excerpted from the Homily for Palm Sunday
by Reverend Steven Marshall,
Ecclesia Gnostica, Gnosis.org
and regarding charity, saviorism, law, justice and martyrs:
Continue reading “palm sunday : hosanna in the highest”don’t raise the dead, don’t raise the Lazarus; you ain’t jesus — or mary magdalene, and you never know who or what might surface.
she taught me to not like
myself/
especially, my image
— in photographs and in the moments themselves
ingraining a self-consciousness in me
and in the candidness of my real life
in
play
laughter
effort
surprise
exertion
contemplation
fatigue
wonder
sadness
silliness
conversation
worry
unmade
pose, poise, posture, profile, perfect,
control
and because perfection
is unattainable,
in the eye of the beholder and in the eye of the beheld
she was absent from the photos of our lives, and so also was i,
becoming onlooker, background, photographer,
instead of subject
and, so i learned
to make myself invisible
to become invisible
to accept invisibility
there are so many ways to be a thief, mother
i subsist on this right now
chartreuse
red, purple, black
and gold
early, brave dandelions, low-key wonders
muscari, moss, catkins, i study in real-time-lapse — like it’s my last Spring / is it?
these black birds — red-winged, grackles, and starlings, their obsidian gloss and iridescence, who could look away
sandhill cranes, five years familiar, but i am still arrested with awe every single time
deer roam in forage for hours for tender emergent greens among last year’s corn stover/
chorus frogs and woodcocks at twilight, i heard them into the night, this had to be the first white noise for human beings
i watch for owls til there’s no more light, straining my eyes / willing them to feast on the moles that i can’t bear to kill /
no one’s here to call me in / no street lights/ and i forget to eat til i am
ravenous or ravishing/ my favorite and unforgettable malaprop
i am warmed, buoyed, sated with vernal sensuality
but the mud, my heart – and hips
remind me
that i am also
drove past the new plasma store
they’re buying, not selling
do you need to know more?
old cars fill up the vast parking lots
that pristinely fresh concrete,
marred by oil and brake fluid spots
this is a tale-of-two-river-cities,
white kids don’t sell platelets here/
this is no college town
this place was known
for Black boys, kidnapped and drowned
this fucking joint, is it never empty/
how many times can they draw blood per person, per month/
is it just two times – or twenty?
Freedom Plasma: there’s still Black blood to be drained!
24-7 audacity and
not ONE DROP of shame
if you are acquainted with nearly every star in Orion and Canis Major in the Southern Night Sky from the Northern Hemisphere;
& Castor and Pollux have glimpsed you both in and out of your blue pyjamas;
& the Moon spotlights your face like you’re the star of the show, while asleep in bed, insisting you wake up and be both worshipped and worshipper
through your bedroom windows, overlooking a wet meadow, a red dirt road and then some trees,
from a ramshackle, old green house that effortlessly called you in, to hold you, and to hold you down
on this good Earth,
for a short while/
then, dear human, woman,
you are doing fine,
you are fine,
it’s all fine
nothing gold can stay
except your own aurum treasure of a heart
you, above all, know this
so, all you need do,
is keep
keep, keep, keep.
i stupidly assume
the birds are growing
dependent
on me
when
i am the one living on their
song
nights
like these
i am not breathing /of/ this air
my body is here
while my face plunges through the veil
in a welcomed disintegration
in both worlds,
atomic and cosmic,
protoplasmic and mystic,
my Earth footing becomes tenuous
and i could
go.
either way.
i began to think,
wondering,
pondering,
more than anything, hoping
that maybe the real purpose for him wading into my waters
was to open the sluiceway to her
for me to enter her streams
for her to enter mine
man, i want it, i need it to be,
some kind of collateral divine design
pushed to the margins
hanging on by one stressed thread
to toxic or barren fringe-lands
when the once-verdant centres could, and did, hold
us, all/
“Surely some revelation is at hand;
while now, all about it
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.”
“reel shadows of the indignant [shore] birds”
harkening
one day soon, you too, will be residuum here
An ephemeral asphalt pond after heavy rains in the parking lot of an abandoned mall, long-infested with gulls, as testimony – not merely to the inorganic evolution of consumerism, but of the intersection of NAFTA and other free-trade agreements, American soft segregation and hard apartheid, and the inherent discriminatory and predatory migration of US and Western global capitalism.
“He said that a man had to escape to the country to see the world whole and that he wished he lived in a desolate place like this where he could see the sun go down every evening like god made it to do.”
~ Flannery O’Connor,
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
loving someone in secret
or
losing them in secret,
i am someone who can whisper in your ear
and tell you
which one hurts
more
bluebird, let me borrow a spot of your blue
your bright blue of song, work, flight
brighten my dark blues of winter
and make me all yellow
“See how He loved [Them].”
swish, swish, knock
swish, swish, knock
a rhythm, a metronome
once a week,
usually a Sunday
you felt very near to me today, also a Sunday,
me weeping while sweeping, or vice versa
my movement conjured you, conjured the once-me and the eternal you/
me, looking down from the landing//
you, nearing the top of the narrow, 2-flat stairs
in your white v-neck t-shirt or “dago-T”
looking up over your thick glasses at me, with your big eyes
with your snaggle-toothed smirk, a gold cap on your front tooth, and mustached/
the broom in your beautiful hands / you, pure lank, pure elegance
i wish it were a saxophone.
instead of a broom or steering wheel.
had i snapped a photo of you on them stairs
with that familiar look/
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 