bound on the wheel of an endless conversation

We were bound on the wheel of an endless conversation.
Inside this shell, a tide waiting for someone to enter.
A monologue waiting for you to interrupt it.
A man wading into the surf. The dialogue of the rock with the breaker.
The wave changed instantly by the rock; the rock changed by the wave over and over.
The dialogue that lasts all night or a whole lifetime.
A conversation of sounds melting constantly into rhythms.
A shell waiting for you to listen.
A tide that ebbs and flows against a deserted continent.
A cycle whose rhythm begins to change the meaning of words.
A wheel of blinding waves of light, the spokes pulsing out from
where we hang together in a turning of an endless
conversation.
The meaning that searches for its word like a hermit crab.
A monologue that waits for one listener.
An ear filled with one sound only.
A shell penetrated by meaning.
~Adrienne Rich

seven years, written in 2008

seven years

This year will be seven years on September 11^th

Not as momentous as five was

As fresh as one

As strangely distant as two

I won’t re-fan the flames

Spark the ferocious burning memory

Or even blame the clearly incompetent military strategies of our

Leaders proved liars and thieves

When I think back, I remember the days, one by one

And I go back, thinking about seven

I found out there was life in my womb

on the seventh of April

and he was born on the seventh of December

in the year 2005, they tell me,

but in the Mexica calendar

it was year seven Toxtli, rabbit

and day seven Atl, water

and so the number seven has always been special to my son

so to me too

and when i crawl into the women’s new moon lodge,

first we bring in the seven stones, for the seven directions,

north, south, east, west, above, below, within,

and this opens the door for much more

I remember the days, step by step

my walk to work with a charcoal gray cloud

rising through the Brooklyn air

and me, without TV,

imagining a bad factory fire in my borough

I heard the news from a human being

as we all scrambled around our social service agency in Bed Stuy

then walked our ways home through the static streets

I wandered in, then out of my 3^rd floor brownstone apartment,

onto the street, seeking human contact

I walked miles, to the park in Fort Green

Where over the billboard of Foxy Brown, we

all we strangers, with dogs, babies, skateboards, journals,

sat to see the sun set through the still swirling smoke

we now knew was ash

and no one ran off to do something

like the usual city strangers

we just sat, seven years ago

Activist and author Jeremy Glick,

had his mic turned off on Bill O’Reilly’s show,

after being told repeatedly to “shut up”

When he calmly defended his anti-war stance

though his father, working for Port Authority, died in the attacks

The empath who had to leave the city

After hearing all the wailing hearts

as she walked past peoples’ homes in Manhattan

so when the seventh time around hits us

I’ll remember the monumental degradation

no longer shoved in my face by TV news

feeding numbed consumers like strip malls

the political process investigations and

secret detentions that were left behind

by the newer horrors of war

I’ll remember to vote Democrat, and pray

and do my best to remember the people and stories

behind the massive cliché.

Will the real Wonder Woman please stand up?

wonder woman

she can barely disguise herself as wonder woman with a cog job

she can rise early and stay up, wringing the midnight oil hours of their juicy flow

she can daily grind social good, multiple arts, and a burning activist spark

she can amuse and confuse with confounding tangents of inquiry

she can constantly percolate a new idiosyncrasy

she can do it all with a foxy muse’s deep wet eyes and sinuous shape

she can do it all with a zip and not a wink of mortal quiet time

zippity hooray, she-ra rises today

all this she can, all this she can, all this she can

without stop; all this she can, all this she can,

without stop; all this she can,

without stop; all this she can,

without what? STOP!

A tremulous virus made a run of her, crown to sole

Sick, a circus tent, with skin stretched pole to pole

Ambitions hanging high from trapeze swings

Altruistic contortionist rolling around in circles

Imagination in unrest, stripping down to rhinestones to

Swan dive into a tin tub, she shivered

at the smoke-and-mirrors whirlwind of pursuits which

Left no room for her stuff

A fake-out which began way back when

Sitting in a puddle of imagination

A lil girlchild looked up and saw that someone would stay cuz

she can save the poor and do laundry

she can trudge through mud still swinging sexy

she can stand spine strong and still melt to his knee

This lil girlchild woke up from a dusty dream-path

And scrambled to look for alla her stuff

Elbow corners, navel alcoves, where mosquitoes hide behind the knees

Under the tongue, behind her pride,

And down there where she knew she had new lips to speak

She gave herself a real down-up-down

And found her stuff all there

Throw it off and roll it down

she can save the day

breathing in the mundane

To wonder

And wonder

And wonder

Curious about the worlds inside a woman’s tides

Supported, held and freed

she can

just be

A wonder under her skin

Peace is every step

Thich Nhat Hanh 

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.

In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness. 

Le Petit Prince

What comes up has been so raw, so personal, so sensitive... I haven't wanted to write about it here, to protect myself from overexposure, from putting my process out there too much, and also to extend that respect to other people involved. 

Yesterday as I ran open-armed into these thoughts from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, I realized how much I continue to be inspired so deeply as I surf these incredible waves of high highs and low lows, and how this inspiration helps animate me to "take a step. Then another step." I once again give thanks for that inspiration.

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

Love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.

The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. 

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

 

day two of my 33rd revolution round the sun

 

Day one brought death and rebirth.

Day two welcomed in the truest rhythms.

Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us close to the actual existing world and its wholeness. ~ Gary Snyder

and then everything changed

boom!

music muse

The darkness of his fire

emerges from the core, out of the void

He blazes deep down the roots

detonating through the crown

engulfing stray thoughts

and ideas for feeble verse

igniting straight up, moving through

undulating rivers of blood and

airy leaps of synapses

reconnecting luminous whispers

Abundant recollections teeming

in the lustrous pools of

imagination that bend space

part open the veils of time

welcome in ancient truths

again brought in through the egress

on the edge of what’s been alleged

and freshly understood again

His bass strings pull away from their source

opening cathedrals of ample air

His drumming binds my heartbeats

in polyrhythmic harmony,

a dissonant crash then dive into the puddle

lifting out strands of swirling wine winds

golden blinding air bursts into steam

breathed up mind’s deepest pathways

down through eclipsing masses

His voice sinks down the apple’s core

bricolage of the pieces pulled apart

dust devil of sun’s desire

gathers the lingering melodies

evocative bass lines

perpetual rhythms

into a brewing center which

opens to reveal

inner knowing

not sensed

I woke up with 'Love left the room' hanging around my mind

Love left the room

We missed it

Saw his shell still sitting there

and thought he was inside

Felt his children running around

and mistook them for him

in the lightning flashes of their eyes

Love left the room

Discreetly,

Staying embedded in her devotees

but long gone from their daily temples

She submerged out of form

Love left the room

Became slowly apparent

in his absence

After dragging afternoons

saturated in ironic sunlight

cut into empty wintry nights,

one frosty back curled up against another

Love left the room

Her presence dissipated into focus

on what those hearts held

Running with the children

Profound and spacious in the mountains

Open to the river’s harmony

And that one union

slipped out the door

From an Atlas of the Difficult World ~ Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour.  I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet.  I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age.  I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Adobe

Adobe

Before Eve’s dawn of an era on Gaia

Lilith and Adam formed the roots of our walks,

together out of the mud

hardened into one love’s dream of life,

relinquishing whole power to hierarchy,

they sat out the dance of balance

The old ones dug and worked and formed it

The clay pots, heavy holding vessels ready to contain

Walking among those who feel

profound, solid, unmoving certainty down in the bones         

The container is open only where it’s open,

and moved with care it won’t crack or shatter

Respect its form or it resists all movement

The humans formed the mud back into

Goopy gods and goddesses

deep damp Venuses,

receiving branches and rocks and limbs,

anything that falls in

A softer warmer quicksand

shoving your face into the earth,

releasing it to breathe

then back in, through the roots’ bottoms

to the fiery core

Here awakened strands of

alive adobe emanate flexible from every pore,

breathing softly in your ear with the tides of earth’s waters,

dancing with creatures’ feet,

tickling an angled wing

Embracing fallen trees and

pooling in the leaves

Sliding down rock mudfalls

moving heartbeats through arroyos

opening bubbles of air in the rapids

basking in the sun to a more solid stillness

perfectly ecstatic constantly changing forms and

thriving with aliveness

Still in form,

Still moist

Pure solid and still yielding

Building an ever-moving morphing home

Refreshing form in each moment
into a whole