Death Valley

Every once in a while I like to pop into Abbey of the Arts and participate in the monthly poetry party Christine holds. Today is Ash Wednesday and this month's poetry theme is "Entering the Desert's Fire." Please click here to participate. Below is my contribution.

Death Valley

my feet are tired now
and caked with pulverized stone.
with each exhalation
i become elemental
and lizard-like.

desert walking is harsh
and i look for the sowed luminescence
cast in salt by my ancestors.

they danced here.
cried here.

they communed with the gods
HERE
and became them.

and it was in this dry place
that i kicked into the world
cast in a papier-mache body
and formed by an unknown god.

my ancestors whisper
and tell me that the god chewed up paper
and rubbed spit with sand to create skin.

and then left me
to burn in the sun.

it's an alchemical fire
and i wait to turn to gold --
comforted only by bleached bones
of one who pushed into
the earth's cracked face
in order to become it.

Descending

Sleeping Lady, Museum of Archaeology, Valletta, Malta

It feels right to turn inward these days and to descend into myself and into realms where the goddess stalks. As mentioned in an earlier post, I've been reflecting and meditating these past few weeks on the Queen of Cups card and its message. It's palpable. And in all my wondering and musing, a dear friend of mine sent me Descent to the Goddess, which encourages the exploration of the self's caverns...encourages the descent into darkness and into the loamy soil of self where there are fragments with no voice.

The Sumerian queen Inanna, it is said, "set her heart from highest heaven on earth's deepest ground...abandoned heaven, abandoned earth--to the Netherworld she descended" (Descent, p. 9).

When I was in Malta, one of the most fascinating and spiritually rich things I did was to visit the Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni and descend into pits thousands of years old. There are many speculations as to its construction and purpose -- a sanctuary? necropolis? temple? Whatever the reasons, it was deeply moving and I think everyone in my group was stirred by the possibilities.

Later, I accompanied my friends to Valletta to tour the National Museum of Archaeology and visit the Sleeping Lady -- a prehistoric sculpture found within the Hypogeum and shown above. She is one of the most exquisite sculptures I have ever beheld and we wondered at her pose and marveled at her tiny hands and feet. I think the Lady must also be dreaming but of what? And what was it about this period of time (3300-3000 BCE) in which so many worshipped the goddess and worshiped the earth that bore her?

How did women become so removed from the earth and its cycles? How did I?

Ashes to ashes

tracy chapman on the radio,
she's crooning in that husky voice
my cabbie loves.

he tells me so --
in french.

there's a half iced moon cookie in the sky.
if it were to fall into my lap,
i think i'd laugh.

it's winter and all is wild.

my fingers tap my leg
and i sing with her
about that revolution she's talking 'bout.

we walk the razor's edge.
it's lunacy, some say.

but what does it matter
when we all fall down?

Mona Lisa Moon

they blasted the moon today
--our protector--
the he-she entity
with a scientific one-two punch.

i tuned in,
glued to the tv
keen for satellite images
of exposure
in the expected
six-mile debris field.

newscasters during the countdown
said that discovery of ice
would shave billions off the space program.

human greed in a soundbite.

disbelief. dismay. depression.
the moon doesn't behave as expected.
there is anger. some scientific embarrassment.

later,
i look up into the ink
and study the moon's revolution.
so sly, this mona lisa moon,
grinning through rotation
and safeguarding truths from men
who rocket slap her face and are bewildered
when she does not yield.

Shakesperian Toe Tale

damn.

i catch a glimpse of my right big toe
and notice chipping paint and uneven lines.
i am annoyed.
so, i bend over and let my thumb
remove hyperbole from naked nail.

i schedule a pedicure
and let mood dictate color.

today it's romeo and joliet.
i like the implied tragedy in the name.

days later,
paint flakes when life rubs.

joliet wonders where romeo has gone.

so do i.

Brand X Religion

it's laundry day
and i'm using an ultra concentrated detergent.
what a modern marvel!
cleaner clothes in 1/4 cup!

i gloat as i sort,
clapping myself on the back
on not falling for those flashy brand x versions
promising to do more with more out of my pocket.

isn't religion the same?
we distill god down to
a word or a book or a vision
and we applaud our efficiency.

hell, with all this concentrated power,
we need less!
we marvel at our creation
and wonder if this version of god
will still lather us of our sins
and keep us cleaner, longer.

THANK GOD for 2x Ultra God!

Enlightenment in a bottle
and specially formulated for
high efficiency human machines.

Charnel House

i push into loamy earth
that holds a thousand bones.

my fingers wiggle through
centuries
that pile
and hug
and caress
below the epidermis.

life and death
mingling in a great orgy
as ancestors cavort with strangers
and prim echoes of "indecency"
and talk of a savior
are muffled by soil and rock and worm.

what does it matter when we all reduce to chalk and dna?

and what stops the greedy mother
from sucking marrow
and breaking bone into food for the unborn?

Prophets and Men

there are men who sit on the desert floor
and wait for god.
but there is no god but time and its various expressions.

shadows shorten and lengthen
and the moon cackles at the unnatural displays of immobility.

and in that moment
when fear and calm marry
and man is uncertain
"god" settles nearby and whispers mystery
into his ear.

a shout.
a shock.
revelation tickles.

trembling with an unknown feeling
dust is raised
as legs raise and move from the remote.
running now.
running from the promise of ecstasy
like virginal lovers in the first blush of fever.

Birthing

I've got a couple poems forming in my mind's embryonic fluid but it's not time to birth them yet...soon. For now it's enough to feel joy as each new word flutters into existence.

In moments like this, I turn to other writers for company and inspiration.

From Proust's Swann's Way:

"When I saw any external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which prevented me from ever coming directly in contact with the material form."

From Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm:

"Esoteric Christianity, I read, posits a substance. It is a created substance, lower than metals and minerals on a "spiritual scale," and lower than salts and earths, occurring beneath salts and earths in the waxy deepness of planets, but never on the surface of planets where men could discern it; and it is in touch with the Absolute, at base. In touch with the Absolute! At base. The name of this substance is: Holy the Firm."

From Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree:

"Granma said that the spirit mind was like any other muscle. If you used it it got bigger and stronger. She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn't open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with your body mind. Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got."

From Linda Hogan's (Chickasaw Indian tribe) story "The Feathers" found in Reinventing the Enemy's Language - Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America:

"There is a still place, a gap between worlds, spoken by the tribal knowings of thousands of years. In it are silent flyings that stand aside from human struggles and the designs of our own makings. At times, when we are silent enough, still enough, we take a step into such mystery; the place of spirit, and mystery, we must remember, by its very nature does not wish to be known. There is something alive in a feather. The power of it is perhaps in its dream of sky, currents of air, and the silence of its creation. It knows the insides of clouds. It carries our needs and desires, the stories of our brokenness. It rises and falls down elemental space, one part of the elaborate world of life where fish swim against gravity, where eels turn silver as moon to bread."

Osmosis

i'm outside
taking this great biological ground of mine
for a walk.

the landscape blurs in its banality.
rush, rush, rush.
yuck.

i do not want THIS.

what i want is to get THERE
but THERE is inside -
contained neatly within my body's protoplasm.

i wake. i sleep. i step. i move.

my feet feel the jungle beat
the cosmic heartbeat
the rumble tumble pulse
of cellular reverberations

i am pushed through the transparent membrane
and PLOP
i am the outsider come in from THERE.

the ground is blanketed by winter moss
and i want to roll around on frost
that crackles and splinters beneath me.
taste the manna on the ground.

i cry.
arrival, it seems.
give us this day our daily wish.

Stagnation

click
click
click

i pound into the concrete
with three-inch jack-hammer heels
and diffuse disappointment
of another day spent on a wheel that refuses arrival.

a shitty frequent traveler program,
i decide, as the

tick
tick
ticking

of the second hand reminds me
that as time moves
so must i.

Lessons from the Small

Salamander

in santorini i notice a small salamander resting in the crevice of cooled bricks.
it is brown and green and gray and seems content in its rest.

taking advantage of its immobility, i lay on the floor,
stomach adding heat to tile,
and investigate.

i am freckled by the sun.
is this enough camouflage to disguise my presence
or do my eyes give me away?

likely the latter.

i try to slow my blinking
but it is hard to stop my body's automaton response
honed over 32 years.

the salamander is uninterested with me
and my one-sided babble of inquiry.
why do i feel the need to hear my voice?

rays of sunshine reach me and i grow tired of trying so hard.
i fall into waking dreams of
folgers coffee containers holding anxious amphibians
and of newly learned greek superstitions surrounding fire and these creatures.

i blink and my companion is gone
and i learn a simple lesson
of the wisdom of gathering heat to move
and of surrendering to stillness in the meantime.

Clarity at 32,000 feet

i stand outside doors which once
opened into honeyed heat and into places
where i understood "home" a thousand ways.

but my key no longer grants access
and i discover disappointment
amongst frosted asters
and darkened windows.

what else is there to do
but acknowledge this new reality
and begin the hard labor
of sorting memories
and discarding the unnecessary?

yet, not all is sent to an amnesic river.
some remembrances i savor
and press into wax so that they
may outlast natural forgetting.

someday i will rediscover them
tucked away in books
and in boxes
and will feel surprise and nostalgia

but for now
i shove them into dark recesses
of my carpetbag
and strike out for those glimpses of promise
which flash against my eyes
like hope in a pan.

Magpie

it was in that summer
on the picket line between childhood and adulthood
that i knew blue

and you stole it from me
like a greedy magpie
to add to your nest of memories -

something flashy here
old strands of linen there

and my blueness
hastily woven into your history
as you bed someone new.

nights reveal hushed whispers
and "sad" stories

and i,
the vehicle,
the gasoline,
which you surreptitiously light
in the inky darkness,
burn your wings
and cry "martyr".

Crow

old grave's shifted soil
reveals protruding memory bones,
o'keeffe white.

the crow sits,
patient observer --
deliberates.

inspects the buried,
looking for another
morsel of encapsulated time
to suck
and pick clean.

its beak reaches
and the earth's skin
breaks and bleeds anew.

and i watch the carrion bird at work
fascinated and angered by its
natural biological propulsion.

Krishna

"come and see," he said
and opened his mouth wide
to reveal the universe's vastness.

and she saw the simultaneous
blush and pallor of worlds --
birth and death --
contained neatly in the charioteer.

"come and see,"
he said
and beckoned her.

and she took the opportunity
and climbed into the mouth that fed her

one with the starry universe

and swam in the embryonic dust
of her unborn self.

Prism -- For Moon Woman

water shimmers and shimmies
refracting light -
internal bling on display.

illusory
but visible

moving mirages under water.

Dragonfly

whir of impatient wings
actively flirting
with the shine
from a new car.

and i sit within
and record the
unrequited mating
with a giggle
as it flashes by

one
more
time.

Fractal

little snippets of self,
replicating
upwards and outwards
like a Pythagoras tree.

living dna
in miniature
ever reducing itself
towards the infinitesimal

and shifting
to the beat of a
mathematical leitmotif.

"I get knocked down but I get up again...and again and again..."

they went skiing for a day
and she decided to try snowboarding.
"it'll be such fun!" she enthused.

***

"so, how's it going?" he asked two hours later,
taking in her disheveled appearance and snow encrusted hair.

"well, it's going okay," she said.
"i just wish i had packed some knee pads and a ton of charmin, baby,
'cuz my tush hurts!"

and he giggled in spite of himself,
trying desperately to kiss all the tender spots away.