Drag Queen by Day, God by Night

Dylan croons from the turntable Crickets talking back and forth in rhyme. . . Meanwhile, K feeds crickets from the pet shop to his Venus Flytrap and I can only wince at the gulf.

Yet February does brings it's own kind of gifts: dawn is a hint brighter and the birds sing a few minutes earlier – as if minutes matter – as if crickets do.

A new writing emerges.

A muse changes his clothing, becomes a drag queen by day and God by night. Or is it the other way around? Does image still matter? Lately, the intersection between image and archetype takes a backseat. Something else is at the helm – gulf and all.

At the level of the heart, faced with one's true nature, one must find contentment. This and other linchpins.

After too much cannabis, two dead grandmothers visit with messages. The sacredness of plants cannot continue to be underestimated. Don't ban the books but perhaps they are a tiny bit insufficient for what the cosmos has to say. And turn off the lights, lover. We don't need them. We don't need anything.

What is true is that we are not limited and time-bound. From the infinite view, we are whole in purpose, radiating the concentric circles of divine life from this center. When we are in alignment with Love, what is true and unchanging will matter not to our concept of time or first or last.

So, while winter comes and goes, love letters, births and deaths, dogs and kisses, keep your eyes and ears aware – for the way is always open and therefore, we must keep walking.

Learning the Cost – Refusing to Pay

Going back to gaze-less nights but not you; you go back to a world lapping you up in licks.

I add a fried egg to leftover root vegetables. A pinch of shredded cheese. A side of chocolate. All of this is inadequate in love's presence. Please tell me know this.

Learning the cost.
Refusing to pay.

Sooted forearms, controlling the burn.

The Western mind formed in the Greek cosmos tells it one way, but what about the Near Eastern sophia perennis? What if there is an entirely “other” frame that allows kenosis and eros to transform in stages?

We've embraced what deceives us. Remember: not one, not two, but both one and two.

Image as the primordial template, where spirits become bodies and bodies become spiritualized.

Beloved, I have channeled the grandmothers. They sent messages which I have delivered. I am not the woman I was. Come find me and be at peace.

And do not forget to seek the integrative wisdom which flows in contrasts to opposites; to yes and no; to acceptance and rejection; to here and not here; to lover and loved.

Like Mary Magdalene, strip thyself of clothing and leave them folded neatly on the bank. Leave your accuser behind.

Cut the Net Already

We are opening the container of our own answers.

The difference between god and demon is our reaction. She rings her hand-bell and taps her drum as reminder that one can bring light to even the inner most dark. Reclaim. Heal. Be free.

We are not separate and we are not made. How the space connects. How the distance disappears. My body is a bridge as the world moves through you. You have my pulse.

I draw a heart in the condensation of the bathroom window as sun blares through the final prismatic beads of January. Days lengthen a little and I try to understand my relationship to the room. A bad mood settles into my pores like a fine silt. I can't give my body what it needs so cut the net already.

Chopin is not my lover. He is my father and that is why the world tilts in a minor key. We are innocent, my love – we are. Maybe if I could have just one more chance next to the river. Maybe if I leave the light on at night a little longer.

A Hook in My Mouth

For New Englanders it's all in the eyes, and maybe also in the tails of dragons. Give way to lineage and you'll only find recycled moonlight. Come, won't you? I'm just here pretending I'm alive. These heavy feet climb love's spiral staircase into a dishwater sky. Cannot we just say it plainly?

I think of boredom now all the time – a monster creeping behind wicker-rattan chairs and hanging loosely in the closet filled with black coats. I have more things to learn, yes? I can be there as early as Saturday. This ache in the emptying. That old Nihilism causing me to thrash about with a hook in my mouth.

Sitting cross-legged on the round braided rug. Old photographs of Kenya hook me like a half-moon. Mama Joan holding Joan, with Lexi's head leaning into her chest. The Rhodesian Ridgeback and her giant paws glaring at Colobus monkies high in the trees. Baba Tony stretching a smile for the camera, but also, that is just his smile. Tigoni's red dust. A chameleon wrapped around his wrist. Who calls me back? Who begs me to stay?

What if you begged?

Hungry but Clearer

Winter gardens asleep under a hungry but clearer Wolf moon. Pain loses its bitter quality when the body finds the bottom. Does my song reach moonlight's ears? Does my surrender glow like the blue snow in your midnight? In the night of my senses the answers are clear. Sunrise is always coming.

Sleds sleeping in snow banks and azalea leaves curled tighter than a cigarette. Arctic air sinks from the top of the world as wood-smoke tries to find a way higher. January makes a play and all I can do is kneel. I've never seen a winter lacking this many birds. This and other sorrows that have no choice but to be reconciled.

But there are still summer weddings in Vermont and rivers always running from their source. Garden plans and compost piles hedge the barefooted chill scuffling through the house. Things are so quiet now. Even my heart. Even these filmy nests which used to hold the intentions of us.

Blacker coffee and brown sugar oat meal, both steaming in a perfect dance. Has love sunk to the soul, beyond the senses, to find its mooring? I'm trying to offer peace, beloved. Show me what I want.

Wish You May, Wish You Might

I guess it is like white tailed deer drawn to cedar twigs in winter time or books that begin with a map.

Mystical love is an insanity that possesses, transforms and tortures the lover in agony. This is infinite desire. And this is the love that must be forsaken to taste Love at all. So sink lower. Further. Fall into vertigo. Empty the soul and then empty it a little more in order to unify with the divine abyss itself. Only then will the soul remember who she is.

Animal tracks become reservoirs in softening snow. Kneel to drink the sky.

There is a purification happening and it involves living without a “why.” Reason doesn't have a say, beloved, wish you may, wish you might. Such cunning attempts interfere with the ties that bind one to God's heart and mouth. Our lovesickness has a cure, though it is not for the feint of heart. Physical oneness is the call of the Trinity. Can you feel it?

What lies beyond the suffering is the salvation of the love our human heart can only begin to clamor for. A winter prayer in the voice of Mechthild: May I live with Mary Magdalene in the desert, finding all alien to me other than Beloved alone.

A silver squirrel sits atop a sawed-off stump using his tail as shield against winter wind; I, too, am cold.

Soft Red Portal to the Cosmos

January dawn lends its own kind of blue. Windows sigh with light as the world gets ready for the daily grind.

These silent moments spread like honey and a galactic exhale gives rise to the transmission living in my heart. What is within will save me and it will save you too, if you allow it.

They begged her to share the truth, but she was not believed. She wept over this vulnerability and sorrow. How long must the feminine power and wisdom be discounted despite having been touched by Love Itself? How long will our bodies be the only thing that is true? A red thread as a reminder that the message is true and worth has nothing to do with it.

Sparrows flit around shopping cart wheels and empty plastic bags wave from dirty snowbanks. We've forgotten how to be one. Human prophets are not heeded in their own lands but neither are the emissaries from outside the borders.

My godmother will not wear a mask in the car with me, so now we will no longer be able to discuss Mary Magdalene or the ways in which the Divine might have breasts and a soft, red portal to the cosmos.

Winter tea cups and icicles to stir.

Candles as spells or prayers or light-on-command.

Dad's vinyl records wait in three boxes next to the desk. The stories they tell want to be written. Are 131 chapters too many? And not one of them is Dylan.

Where Do We Live

I'm weird about my love for soup.

The love of elephants is different from the love of Chopin's mastery of the minor key which is different from the love of soup.

I let my nails grow longer, which is the same kind of anomaly as a dragon's cave or a small child's ability to compose concertos. I am surprised by the shift in attention caused by stilettos at the end of my fingers. Talking hands can say sexy things. The integration of body and mind is a tangible thing, but it is also confounding.

We talk and swim with the ease of a river but we can't live there. We must eventually climb onto the banks to dry in the heat of day or lay down full beneath a toss of stars to let night do all the talking. Turtles cling to logs and tuck themselves into soft, silty envelopes, opting for a hiatus from deep dives from time to time. Where do we live?

What is the human experience freely chosen and freely lived? I do not yet know this but the Matriarch will not let me sleep all night long until I understand both what I want and what I am missing.

I quietly read and write as he sleeps on the couch, despite January's blustery tantrum whistling just outside the wall of windows. Adrienne Rich tells me that no woman is free until all women are free. No matter how much further there is to go, it begins with me. I've not used my privilege to better understand the history of the Feminine Rising.

A silence drips and crystallizes in the sub-freezing air. Before warmer days can wrap themselves around these daggers, the hammer of interpretation will shatter these words and let them fall unto the white sea. Make this life count, for all of us.

And please pass the soup.

Bones, Bridges and Body

Who I am in another's eyes, changes. Who can gaze into such a sea and know anything anymore? The image is provided as awareness, once removed.

Not a goddess, not a witch.
Not selfish. Not distant.
Not the beginning. Not the end.

She said to me once, “the body doesn't lie.” And I thought, “have you ever been de-boned?”

Who doesn't read the words any longer knows half the story. What happens after Gretel kills the witch? Well, happily every after, of course! My tale is done, there runs a mouse, whosoever catches it, may make a big fur cap out it.

Do we not already know what lies between soul and spirit? Truth as a phoenix.

Jesus loved Mary Magdalene because she followed his example and became the love that he was. This human love made an unending bridge. Take my hands and it all become so very clear. Connecting in body is also connecting eternity.

Bound to One Direction

Her soft snores coo in spirals at my feet.

At 5 a.m. I build a fire against this winter storm and in the pulse of flames, the magic of breathing dances.

White falls on white into white with the only exception of color being the stalwart trunks of our great protectors; their green, piney lashes peaking out from long sleeves of snow.

my red pen
a mensuration
of love letters
this common blight
on the purity
of our call

Snow falls piece by piece, a little like ashes escaping an inferno, this time, bound to one direction. I can't leave and yet, I do not forget names of Vermont rivers or the undoing they require. They do call. They do ask. So then, who answers?

Glittering motes swirl, specs of diamond-light spilling from snow laden boughs. Magic would look like this if you could see it.

My father's records wait in the corner, some in a Boone's Farm cardboard box, labeled “Weather's” in red Sharpie marker. Some are in an old brown milk crate. And more are in a fancy woven basket. The cover art is my childhood and the music is some strange amalgamation of my parents' life before I existed and the early years of Jessie-the-lake-girl.

I don't need a bad guy and I don't need rescuing. I just need to know that I can end this world of glitter and guts in exchange for that which never ends.

snow/veils/glitter/falling/for good

Winter Window Pain

To chronicle a life through a 2 ft by 3 ft west-facing, window is about as far as I can go at the moment.

Individual snowflakes fall as a soft, gray melody. Three prisms hang in attempt to transpose whatever light is given, but today, only hints of the mystical messages glisten through the pane.

The white pine, stalwart and defiant, a reminder that we are not passive, not without choice. Is there a courage missing in me? All I know is that is that I don't know how to hold it all, my love. To say I have everything I need is fair. But is it true?

A slanting roof grows more white over the hours. When a rotten branch breaks off, it hits the snowy shingles and rolls onto the eaves. No birds but empty nests. No squirrels perched atop the apex snacking on acorns or corncobs.

I've never made love in the snow but the thought crosses my mind more than occasionally. I remember in middle school being at friend's house whose parents were loose with restrictions. There would be many of us hanging out without watchful eyes in the dark winterscape. We all played chase-me games in knee-deep snow and the boys who liked certain girls would tackle them and the girls would squeal in delight. They were chosen. I remember throwing snowballs and suddenly looking over to find friends making out, flat backed on the snow. I would walk away and lean up against a tree, counting stars as a way of trying to find my place both in body and cosmos.

Or maybe I was just trying not to cry.

Hints and lightening bolts suggest that there is something bigger than all of this at play.

But I'll be damned if I don't wish for the icy heat of falling into snow under the promise of a kiss.

Beyond the Status Quo

Gingerbread, bacon in the skillet, enough coffee for all.

Dinner cooks in the crock pot and a fire waves, “ come near.”

Pine, cherry, oak.

Wood from my fatherland.

Smoke tending to the heavens.

Maybe what you see as soot is really a bruise.

Skeletons are scary in real life.

If death were possible my secrets would kill.

Platonic love means more than I thought it did.

My lover's cheek is an illusion and yet, a mirage of greater Love.

Rise, fall, rest somewhere in between.

Satiate my eyes; sear my heart!

A new humility.

Before now, our shared belief in created stories allowed us to be in action.

Can we be outside the story and forgo parsing the world?

Am I a child who cannot stop questioning or am I a fully formed being who need not always being asking, “why?”

What I am is a certain permeability – an ability to see beyond the status quo.

We've been sent to do a work; are we about our Father's business?

The warmth of interconnection – the dissolution of fixed boundaries – the ending of separation – tell me you understand me at this level, beloved.

Tell me you were lying when you said you do not.

The Woman Tired of Lessons

After two days of ravenous winds, two owls call out in the dark, undisturbed by the dog let out to pee. Their laments rise and fall in perfect, starry stillness – a presence, a kind of happiness untouched by who sleeps where or with whom. This is the truth, beloved. This is what I want. How soft. How perfectly full the silence between sighs. I hear them and am afraid to exhale, like the waves of gentle pleasure mounting between mouth and skin. A moon buffered by pines hangs in the balance of now and that which is yet.

In the shop, I consider a muted blue-grey stone hewn from the Upper Peninsula for a necklace and I remember his life-long wish find blue. Like I need another reminder, another symbol lacing together what is here and not here. Walking away, I catch myself wondering how to affix a certain prism to a chord so that I may keep it a little closer. The woman tired of lessons keeps seeing lessons.

A jewelry maker, a librarian and a therapist walk into a bar. That's it – that's the whole joke.

I learned about God and Love from a closeness wrapped in insurmountable distance.
I appreciated a yawning silence dotted by owl cries after capricious winds.
I heard my name whispered in a dream once but the condition upon remembering has to do with forgetting everything else.

The goddess paradox is that the hotter she burns, the closer she is to walking barefoot on December ground, at peace with the light that she is; this and other ways to end a story.

Blood Brothers in my Collection

An unfamiliar wind yowls in long gusts, almost constant; almost calamity. It's too warm for mid-December because I can smell dirt and pines and the great lake. Branches and debris crash against windows, and unfamiliar thuds strike and roll around on the roof. The intensity triggers the remembrance of a tornado dream the night before the Kentucky devastation. The power flickers at 4 a.m. yet the suburban Christmas lights dance in the dark as if all is perfectly well.

I cut my thumb rifling through records at the second hand shop. I didn't notice it until blood began to drip onto the edges of the covers. Jeff Beck, Glen Miller and John Denver now blood brothers in my collection. I'm happy with that. I am happy?

Today's wind is stronger than the storm that sank the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Waves rise higher than 30 feet on Lake Superior and the dog just will not settle. I do not fear the wind; instead, I am haunted by what it produces. K. sleeps soundly in the basement unaware and I keep checking to see if I am really alone. The coffee maker beeps and groans like hospital equipment, reminding me that I am the healer here.

Can I exemplify the truth in me? Are you a guide to peace or pain?

Under only a few wind-swept layers of the surface of the lake do I clearly see that I have chosen pain.

You and your turtles diving and me not understanding how long I can hold my breath.

Maybe if it's not right here, then it isn't real, and that is the truth the mighty invisible wind wants me to know.

I Spit Black

The dog pokes me in the side with an eager nose as write at my desk. The weather-woman waxes poetic: windy warm wet Wednesday. With headlamps we rake leaves well past 10 p.m. It's strange, the amount of energy taken and given to hold back nature. I say as much, happily pushing and pulling leaves in the dark.

I sing songs in the car as you sit next to me in the passenger seat, delighted by my playfulness. The radio scans; I deejay. My silver ring shaped like a single feather catches the light as I move my hand from the steering wheel to the base of your chin, turning you towards me for a second. My eyes smile – I see the doorway to a thousand churches. Body as communication: I have that kind of love to give.

Puddles on the curve. A dark sky giving birth. The sienna sea of fallen leaves covers a backyard absent of snow. We brush our teeth with charcoal tablets and I simply cannot get past the idea that I can eat all your demons. I spit black.

To Mom's surprise, I consider Christmas Mass. My childhood church still stands. Will I remember or forget? Have I risen? I am not alone and I want to kneel in the gratitude for you who goes with me.

Sober Ground

Coral dawn spreads high in upper gazes. Like hinted pleasures, she ignites frosted roofs and gives breath to matted, sober ground. I sit back in my window chair and acquiesce. Daylight only knows honesty; there is no otherwise. Who gives, and why.

Record shops and libraries. Coffee with cinnamon. Advent pregnant with classism's son. A small boy casts his line over an unfrozen pond only to have it snag in the nearby tree. Mid-December without snow or ice.

Pangs for the truest homeland subside, for I am known. She who cannot hide. Or will not. The murshid has awaken in me the truest object of profound longing; I play and am played, like a reed flute separated from its maker. So the song softens in dawn, transposing minor keys into something sweeter.

There is a secret in the reed bed. Abandon supposition. Sway with the breeze. Come what may. My root and my heart in the watery gifts of our song.

Over Fingers and Lace

How daylight takes you apart.
How midnight knits you back.

Ancient Ones held in the body.
Where demons go to die.

Correct. Undo.
Break me for the Source
of Love.

What is given pulls
above angel stations and dreams.

What is rejected fills oceans
on repeat.

It's the fidelity
of fucking
that'll change your mind.

*

Polished mirrors.
And those beyond such light.

Moon-water freezing
what is left of old hymns.

A ferryman. A troll.
All riddles answered
in someone else's time.

What can never pass.
What can only lean.

Maybe one day the black bra strap
falls over fingers and lace.

But even the jester knows
there is only today
to touch.

Brought to the Mirage

A caravan of companions into the unknown.

We were riding shotgun for a while.

Are you bored with the passing landscape?

Bloody serration would feel better than to be a bullet point on someone's checklist.

I'd rather die of thirst than to be brought to a shimmering mirage over and over again. Tell me you understand.

Tell me I have more to swallow than my tears.

Every once in a while a shadow flees from my peripheral vision and upon its vapor trail I always ask, “what can I do for you?”

Can I please come in from the cold? Even a witch needs shelter from the storms.

Small round juncos pick at something unseen around the front stoop. Snow flakes fall by surprise here and there from swooping pine boughs. Everything grows incredibly quiet when one realizes this is it – there is nothing else.

I won't lie to you. Not you. Not facing the brilliantly polished mirror we have been gazing into for the last decade or more. The truth is: this is not it.

Can you see you still?

Instrumental Christmas songs are as close as I get to losing myself in holiday cheer.

In all the soppy sauce, I am still just sinking to the bottom, waiting for a mouthful of fresh air.

A Place Beyond Roads

The only sound is wind sweeping old leaves and the dog eating her evening meal. Vodka swirls with a sense of loneliness that must be welcomed home, like an elder who finally holds the dream of life in its fullness.

Earlier, thin trails left by deer and meandering oxbows in that place beyond roads. The care we feel, a current.

The 3 a.m night-ocean swallows December moonlight. Are you taking your place among the old ones?

Towardness.

Everything working together, hand-in-hand. That's what the holy books say. And so says swirling tracks in the sand. What is deep in the center, beloved?

Empty mailboxes, empty days. Just clean the ash from the fireplace. Fold the laundry. Gaze at album covers and realize the idols you have made. Even friendships. Even children and spouses.

Love wins of course. But if there is a game being played then there is a loser. I think what we really want is to become invisible.

In Shelter

It's cold here and I miss the sound of birds.

To winter well.
To be well.
To walk back from the well.

An endless path of the heart.

One accepts there are no more wishes in falling stars.

Winter bright.

From Goodwill I buy my first Christmas record – some old-timey renditions without a date anywhere to be found other than a youthful picture of Doris Day and Sammy Davis, jr., beaming from decades before I was born. The mildewed inner sleeve causes a succession of sneezes as I pull it from it's long dark den. To hold a record is one way to see we are in shelter of one another.

Variants – school shootings – the endless ways to show and learn from love. The Sufi Way offers the silence of the desert. See how it connects us all. See how to acknowledge the ground. See the ways in which awareness does more than visits.

Grey dawns arrive, one after another, and another one. Tea by the window. A winter watcher wonders how to express this tenderness to the whole world. Holy Love moves; I must let It pass if It chooses. Did we ever make it to the river delta?