i eat mushrooms

I eat mushrooms as often as I can because I tell you, nothing
is more glorious than diving into the starry deep of the source.
But there are days I want to run the other way.
As Rumi knew, sometimes we must drag ourselves
kicking to the garden.
It is easier to sleep,

but I want to be awake.
I have been crushed enough
to know what an honor it is
to submit to the authority of the sacred darkness,
and offer myself as food for the primordial
forces of renewal and decay.

Take this, I say, and this.
Take everything.
Let me die as many times as I must
so I may begin again,
and again,
and again.

Take my regrets and lies, grief and rage,
the knives in my hidden drawers.
I know mushrooms keep their promises.
I know everything new is fed with ashes,
tended by spirits, nourished by mystery,
and lifted by hands my eyes
are still too small to see.

I praise the bodhisattvas we call fungus,
those who swallow what does not serve
and make it useful.
More, they sing, give us everything,
Give us your stories and convictions,
give us the lies that make you feel alone.
give us the weight on your shoulders
and we will give you wings.

They are the soil that absorbs the sword,
the water that washes the wound,
they exhale us as new and perfect
as the flowers only death
can bloom.

* * *

I eat mushrooms because I know
I cannot collapse without pullling
the world down with me. I know
the earth needs us in our places,
and I need ceremony.
Initiation is the fire the work
of being human requires:
It’s how I stay whole.

You can kneel in the flame while you are alive,
or you can be carried in when you die.
I would rather meet the miracle on purpose,
while I have a body that can dance
and a voice to praise with.

* * *

I eat mushrooms and sing songs, and stars light up.
I eat mushrooms and speak poems, and trees lean close.
I eat mushrooms and listen, and they whisper:
We are a messenger but nature is the medicine.
We are a key but your body is the door.
Don’t worry about doing it wrong.
It is enough to reach.
Every clumsy ritual is a bead in a prayer

the size of the planet;
a rosary you can only perceive
when your senses expand,
until there is nothing between you
and the cosmic dance.
The earth treasures every awkward effort;
spirit answers every fumbling call.
Don’t worry about doing it wrong, darling

It is enough to kneel, enough to reach,
enough to speak no matter how broken your prayer is
until that song makes you fall
like you always wanted
into the arms of emptiness
Into the love that is all
Into now, into here
into this.


* * *

I eat mushrooms outside
in the blue and green church
that has always
been the home
of my devotion,
but wherever you are
they will guide you
to your self,
your true self,
your ancient self,
your infinite self.
The map for that journey
is drawn with the wisdom,
of the healer within.
There may be dragons on the way,
but like Rilke said,
maybe all the dragons in our lives
are really princesses in disguise,
just waiting for us to kiss them.
Maybe every part of us we learned to hate
is the part that most needs our embrace.
When I can’t find peace because
my mind is a carnival of hauntings
and my body feels every war that ever
was, I have a mantra I say over and over
until dawn comes,
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

* * *

I eat mushrooms because the hunger of fungus
is a force that crumbles ego, crushes delusion,
uncovers our gifts and shows them to us:
every miracle within, abandoned in the grind of existence,
every superpower forgotten in our struggle to fit in
to a culture that forgot how to listen.

* * *

Here they are, underfoot,
when all this time
we thought salvation
would come from the sky.

* * *

The mushrooms!
Still up to the oldest mischief,
dissolving every conviction
civilization worked so hard
to convince us of.

Before we know it,
we have kicked off our shoes,
forgotten our grudges,
gotten lost in the bush,

and been saved.
What is our impulse to eat them
if not god inside, saying
enough nonsense,

put down your whips.
Your shame got you into this mess;
the way out is bliss.

* * *

This earth has always been the church
where our ancestors dance together,
and they want nothing more
than for us to join them.

I eat mushrooms and sing and dance
beyond gender, beyond identity,
beyond everything I tell the world
and everything the world tells me.  

* * *

I eat mushrooms
and they resurrect
the prophets inside.
Each one is a faculty
of perception.

When we return to our senses,
the children within us
blow away our beliefs
like a cloud of
dandelion seeds.

Rocks dance, trees sing,
and the earth
sighs in relief.

* * *