poetry

every backyard

I am not an outlaw; none of us are,
We just remember a different way of being here,
a way that aligns us with the design of the earth;
and tunes the dust in our bones to the stars.

We’re the children of abandoned gods,
whose mycelial arms reach for us from every backyard;
we’re the heretics kissing the ground with our knees,
finding our inheritance where others only see weeds.
This is not a crime; this is devotion.

It has been like this for thousands of years,
and still men fight wars that turn the earth red,
and each of them begins in the fear
that projects the shadow onto the other.

This is why we celebrate the medicine
that softens walls in our hearts and heads;
this is why we center ourselves in reverence
for plants in whose light we see each other
and recognize that we’re sisters and brothers,

This is why we risk everything to receive
an education at the feet of vegetal teachers
in whose light all battles will end,
as they direct us to the work within.

When we go to those depths;
when we meet our own shadow,
we find there too, what was once
an enemy becomes a friend.

This is why we bow to botanical masters
whose wisdom makes us human again,
so we can graduate together
into the loving kindness
on which our mutual
flourishing depends. 

It’s been like this for thousands of years, but it’s all right;
the bodhisattva is in it for the long haul.
You’ll find us in the field after the rain falls,
you’ll find us with Krishna and the cowgirls,
running to the mother when her voice calls.

For endless centuries they’ve condemned us,
burned us as witches, locked us in prisons,
convinced the world to blame everything
on dirty hippies who wouldn’t submit
to the panic of their convictions.

For thousands of years it’s been like this,
and we are still here, singing to spirit
in our church without walls, believing in the power
each of us has, to grow like a lotus from mud,
and midwife the world emerging
through us: invisibly; crystalline.

Maybe you can’t see it yet but we can,
as it uncurls like a god in a womb
underground, and reaches
for our hands.

It’s hard to hear in the din of all that’s dying
but if you wake early and go outside,
and listen as dawn begins to shine,
the song of the world being born
will find you like the blessing
you’ve waited your whole life
to receive. And you will open
like a flower, petals upon petals
you never knew you had,
and nothing will ever
be the same again.

kintsugi

You already know the world is hard.
I won’t list the ways it breaks us apart,
but I know this: when the mystery
puts us together again, she
fills our fissures with gold.

Still there are days when hope feels impossible,
days I hear love coming and run,
There is a temple made of broken things
inside us all, and when I am most in need
of the light that glows through the cracks
in its floor, it’s the last place I want to go.

It’s the wound’s bright whip
that sends me to my heart;
it’s Coyote’s oldest trick
that elbows me to that altar
as he growls— if you were perfect,
your journey would never start.
Every scar that made you who you are
is a ribbon on a gift only you can offer—
and the gift is all that matters.



the ocean

This is not a way to leave the world;
it’s how I go a thousand times deeper into her embrace.
It’s nothing I can prove with the ornaments of words;
it’s how I dance with the sacred when she calls my name.

To dive into the void of her mouth is an honor;
to give everything inside me to the appetite
of the wisdom that’s bigger than us
is to become the wind that blows the breath,
and the flow of the water that carries
me to the ocean I long for.

To those who ask why, this is my answer:
I want ears that hear and I want eyes that see.
I want to be a thread in Life’s hand as she weaves,
and Life wants every color inside of me.



we are not individuals

What I don’t offer her, she finds;
like Inanna I am stripped and searched,
as over and over, I’m taught the same lesson:
our minds needs fire and water, air and earth;
our minds need more than self-reflection.

Our minds need us to be rooted in the carnal,
for we’re not individuals but ecologies;
our minds need us to give offerings to the guardians;
to feed the powers of East, South, West and North;
for only in the mandala of the seven directions
can the compass of the body find center again.

Context is essential to the surrender
that softens certainties and makes
the impossible effortless; held like this
we can give our egos to the axe in the hand
of the one who turns our shadows
into the radiance of sunrise.

Transformation is our birthright.
You can give every feeling, thought
and story that haunts you to the fire
in your core and be reborn,
as many times as you like.

Say yes to the miracle that ends the divide.
Rejoice as you’re crushed under the dark foot
of the goddess who makes the coal in us into diamonds,
and repeat like a mantra as you die, to be born and die
and be born and die, and be born and die again,

Thank you.


thank you

I say thank you as again and again I am devoured;
as all that decays within becomes soil for new vows.
I offer the earth my awkward,
imperfect sound.

Mother, let me be a page on which you write your poetry;
Nature, free me from the illusion of a separate identity;
Creator, let me learn from the wounds I inherited
and the ones that were cut into me;
teach me so I cause no others
to bleed; guide me.

Some days I feel like an imposter
and the mother says keep singing.
Lay your head in the lap of the goddess.
She knows the grief of the child
born in the ashes of the empire
that tore us from her;

She knows there is no cure
but to feel until feelings
become a river
that returns us
to her shore.



mountains

Keep singing, the mother says, so I sing
until my song calls a monk with a torch
who leads me up the mountain inside.
Sometimes the way is steep and hard,
and I am certain that this time is the end.
Sometimes the way is shrouded in fog,
and loud with the wails of the past
but the monk beckons, and I walk on.

There is more than one way up the mountain,
and more than one mountain. There are ranges
upon ranges. Some arrive at their peak after decades
of Zen meditation. Some meet the miracle
backpacking into canyons where no one has been.
Some ascend dancing until they dance all the way
out of their skins. Some do asanas until the serpent
climbs their spine in a flash of azure; some repeat
ancient chants and their mantras turn samsara into nirvana,
and some of us try everything, and see the thread
that connects all paths as god’s pulsing veins.
and the peak they lead to as the place where
judgements are fed to the golden wind
beyond all names.



the secret

Here’s a secret: a way you can tell
who has actually heard the bells
on the ankles of the infinite;
they are humble; they laugh a lot,
they are comfortable in paradox;
and they give with love
that’s unconditional.

Be patient. We’ll all eventually
be as generous as the mother is.
We’ll all overcome the disadvantages
of being raised to obey the hungry ghost
of a culture that gave us nothing to believe in,
and never taught us the most important things,
like how to love the earth more than ourselves,
and how to breathe until we know
we are the whole world breathing.

All around us the answers to our questions
are flowering and flying in every direction;
written in berry paint on the cheeks of children,
written with light by dawn’s pen.

Every tree is a buddha who teaches reciprocity;
every day is a chance to be born again,
until we know that death is nothing less
than limits becoming liquid,
and what sets the world free
from the veil of the dream
is the courage of the butterfly
who emerges from the chrysalis.


transformation

To those who ask why, this is my answer:
transformation is a promise I made before I got here.
Kali called me and she’s got me by the hair;
I’m a child of Shiva, that wild-haired yogi and dancer,
so I’ll run from every cage to make my vow
as many times as it takes, I will be devoured
because this is what I came for.

Like Osiris we must be taken apart
and scattered beyond all form,
until Isis finds us and reminds us—
in the midst of this mystery,
only one thing is certain:
we will all die and be reborn

until we are wise enough to learn
from autumn how to let go of every leaf we clutch;
how to cherish every change in this windy school
until it is our time to walk off stage
with our diploma of gratitude.

What other choice do we have?
Who wants to live in paradise blind?
There is no exit to the spiral,
no way to lie to the queen
who holds our deaths and births
in her green blossoming hands.


trickster

Let us be lifted by the miracle
that we are all too small to see;
Let us consider the possibility that the medicine
the perfect earth gives us is the medicine
we need. We have drifted so far from our
own humanity, and the answers will not
come from a robot or machine or anything
constructed by the industries of greed.
The answers will come from the ground
beneath our feet. When our ears and eyes
are clean, we’ll see the chaos in our world
as the mirror of our minds that it is,
as Trickster walking backwards into
the temple of you and me,
And we will thank him
for the gift inside the trick,
the wisdom of humility.
Then we will celebrate
in a festival that echoes in eternity,
arm in arm with the spirits of the land
and all the future beings
whose existence depends
on our awakening.



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