in my winter cocoon enveloped in sheets and blankets my eyes closed all day
these damned windows, seams of daylight break through fiber, try and force their way through slits and lashes, i resist pink lids, i won’t study and map your capillary streams / birds, please don’t sing / i refuse to perceive anything but my own inlands
i don’t feed i don’t drink i don’t think i don’t move i don’t feel
i only let
let let let
i am not dying though i am working from the inside autonomic, appearing halcyon while transforming all memoir of you – from idealization into unbiased slurry, and, into something, new into something, else of me
to be returned to the people, to all be-ings, to them
with my bones or ash interred, one day
the Sun, Moon, Rain, Wind, Clouds, Sky and Stars kiss me at all hours
did you see me open up this Autumn?
after a Summer spent crying,
wet, yet fruitless spent Spring wading into lies instead of soft blossoms and new grass Winter approaches, maybe the frost will kill this disease,
for good
For now, I bathe
nearly naked in sunshine, cold rainstorms, wetland pools and moonlight
unapologetically
|out in the open|
unabashedly
baptising my face, hair,
and eyes, my breasts vulva
and legs, my lips, throat, spine,
and my wild heart
ceremonially, first with wine, like Magdalene, anointing and anointed, in the name of the mother, Sun and holy ghosts
|cabernet henna| then, with rainwater from the willow’s edge, like Ophelia, lying in the woodland and meadow, flooded to cleanse or drown [to be, or not to be] in the name of the Moon
|I ponder the stone cistern laden with glacial deposits and ruminant bones|
the woodland is abundant with new mushroom, new overnight growth
[puhpowee]
the hint of ancient circles supplants my judgment with instinct and overrides decorum with new delights | and old delights, revisited |
an aged grapevine is rooted deep, climbing, trailing, snaking hidden in plain sight, everywhere and I’ve intuitedItas Ol’ Scratch, I take a hatchet to quell Its influence, here
You, Your windows are not true eyes Your lamps are not enlightenment
So, bless the dark
of the night
of the country night sky
And the Moonset
of my moon
it’s been decades,
but
this place wants to birth or impregnate me,
This feels like an arrow
Made from a tree
That rose from
An acorn
That I gathered and stored
In another life
Scribed with a message continually
piercing my heart
I wasn’t only wounded though,
I was woke
into a clarity
that I was already sighting in my dreams,
writing with words
mortal and eternal
You once said, proclaimed or whispered
Every single thing
that I ever believed
My own truths embarrassed in the shadow of your confidence
My inner voice silenced in your animated persuasion
Believing you so completely – for the better of my years
Becoming like and unlike you because of it,
but not be-coming me,
Un-be-coming me every day
I ain’t even mad
You don’t know this – still,
You don’t want
to hear,
or listen;
Our time is running out
Even this admission
Is sure to haunt me one day,
and guilts me today
But I can’t call you confidant or crone
If you refuse to learn,
to evolve,
From this one archetype
The wide and long view
seems to escape you
You live in the moment in the least way, the worst way
And I don’t worship here or there, any more
The faith in your godliness is gone,
It is unfamiliar
For me to pity you
You, deaf and tone deaf
You had all the answers
In the morning shallows, perhaps
But evaporation revealed even those
Were anchor-less, yet stationary
An algae
Mucking up the colorless perfection of sunlit water
But in the deep, or dark, or quiet pools, you were always so lost
And in the ocean, at night
You drown even in its calm
You have ridden civil swells and storms,
I’ll give you that
But have you ever communed with waves
Allowing them to be part of you
Swallowing and absorbing the mystery
Becoming the colorless perfection of dark water
You seem to stay parched
Your belly’s hollow from impious fasting and pious thirst
You do know that’s where your heart sits?
But let’s agree to come around again, friend
We’ll swap places and next time
I’ll be the mother,
and the son,
and the husband,
and the elder,
and the babe,
and the foreign one,
I’ll become The Other One
because,
I want the chance to know
You
The Well at Kom Ombo AWIB-ISAW: The Well at Kom Ombo A deep well at the Ptolemaic temple at Kom Ombo, which functioned as a nilometer. The well is also thought to have been used in the ritual worship of the crocodile. by Iris Fernandez (2009) copyright: 2009 Iris Fernandez (used with permission) photographed place: Omboi (Kom Ombo) [pleiades.stoa.org/places/606346]
Get to the bottom of this.
This, means You
Get to the bottom – of Your Self
Do you have to be thrown
down the well
through loss, by the grave, or near-grave
What if
instead,
we pulled the rug out from under ourselves
to reveal the formidable trap door
What if we climbed down into the dark cellar, willingly
to enter our infinite interior
to touch the well
the ancient aquifer within
where the gods reside and respite with our Twin Selves,
our other-halves waiting for discovery
This infinite, eternal presence
be-neath our weathered houses
What if we willingly descended
Into it
Unto it
And we learned to crave the Original Dark
and its companionship
Where we delve deep into our imaginations, dreams, nightmares,
That connect us primally
to the pool of imaginations, dreams and nightmares of every one,
Of every being that ever existed
Collective Unconscious
made Self Conscious
The dark, deep well
we may all draw from
Pour out your false light
reveal the truth:
the unbearable emptiness of being
Cup your hands
Or wade into the well
Deeper and deeper
submerge, swallow
you’ve been bone dry for so long
Do you see that now?
Baptize
The only way
To rebirth yourself
Into something worth birthing
Into something worth being
is by this sacrament, anticeremonially, un-ceremonially
Knowing now the bottom is
The only place where alchemy happens
Where wine is turned into eternal water,
instead of that story first told to you, by them
And the mystery
the wet, deep, dark becomes you,
Envelops you so completely
You want to drown beautifully
But you must taste the bitters of the surface
Swallowing down your thoughts
Before you drink of the All
To finally collapse in on yourself
Into beautiful nothing
becoming nothingness
Prima materia
In coniunctio
Drenched in Mystery
quenched with Truth
imbibed with Revelation
Reborn
for an endless moment
The perpetual well
archives your eternal experience
as the deja vu
Memory though will evanesce,
even as droplets cling in the hollows of your vessel
Now that you Know
Truth and Mystery
Exist
so near, just beyond,
yet
within you,
Reascend resplendent
Reemerge humbly
the Gods send a daily postcard:
Wish you were here.
I am spirit
Though not pre-conceived;
I was conceived; and pro-created;
I contained knowledge, and
I was known
I did experience,
and I remembered; but
I was then birthed, and
I became human; so
I was mother’d;
I was mis-guided;
I was injured,
I was mis-judged; and
I was so scarred
I became ignorant;
I became blind
I forgot experience;
I became animal
I fell asleep and
I became unknown;
I too conceived; and
I pro-created
He too was spirit
He too contained knowledge;
I birthed him ignorance
He too was experienced;
He too remembered
I was the witness; but
I was still blind’d
I was still sleeping;
I then mother’d, and
he became human,
I then mis-guided,
I then injured,
I then mis-judged
I then so scarred;
I saw the death of one dear before me;
and then,
I remembered;
I was re-wakened,
I became un-blind’d;
I sought my [lost] knowing
I reclaimed my experience;
I forgave the mis-guidance
I so sought forgiveness;
I forgave the mis-understanding
I so sought forgiveness;
I forgave the injury
I so sought forgiveness;
I understood ignorance, and
I so sought re-knowing:
Those who are born are meant to be born;
Some who are born, though, choose to be born;
Most who are born though, have no choice to be born;
Most who are unborn; are not meant to be born
Not meant for this time; not meant for this World;
Those who have birthed, those who have fathered, have re-pro-created error;
Still there are Those who were sung into exIStence
Those are the Ones who chose to be born;
Now those who were birthed, not sung into existence, must will to re-member,
must choose to re-birth, to become re-known;
I re-membered mySelf, re-birthed mySelf
Now,
I am beginning to become re-Known.
Jesus said: “When you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your father.” – Gospel of Thomas (15)
Jesus said, “The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same.” – Gospel of Thomas (4)
Jesus said, “Take heed of the living one while you are alive, lest you die and seek to see him and be unable to do so.” – Gospel of Thomas (59)
A woman from the crowd said to him, “Blessed are the womb which bore you and the breasts which nourished you.”
He said to her, “Blessed are those who have heard the word of the father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed are the womb which has not conceived and the breasts which have not given milk.’ – Gospel of Thomas (79)
the limineen | poet & crone 