every backyard

I am not an outlaw;
none of us are.
We’re just thirsty for the nectar
of the flowers that bloom
in our inner darkness.

We miss being one with the stars.

We are the children of the banished gods,
whose open arms are in every backyard;
we’re heretics in love with the saints of weeds
and the earth is the only heaven we need.

But the world can be hard.
I don’t need to list the ways
it breaks us apart, but I can tell you this:
when the mystery puts us together again,
she threads our cracks with gold,

dips her brush in the light of bliss,
and repairs us with her softest kisses.
Still, on the days when I am afraid,
and nothing seems as impossible
as someone as shattered as me
ever again being whole,
I run the other way.

There is a temple
made of broken things
inside us all, but when
I am most in need
of that house of miracles,
it is the last place
I want to go.

It’s the wind who cracks the whip
that gets me to my heart;
it’s Coyote whose oldest trick
elbows me to that terrifying altar,
where everything ugly and every scar,
is part of my offering.

This is not a way to leave the world;
it’s how I go a thousand times deeper
into her embrace. It’s not a rebellion
or anything I can prove
with the weight 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 receive
the blessing that blows the breath, and become
the gesture that flows the water I am
to the sea I long for.

To those who ask why, this is my answer:

I want ears that hear.
I want eyes that see.
To feed myself to Life
is my ancestral duty.
Her mouth eats everything,
consumes all I judge and all I reject
and turns it into beauty.

Self-loathing and shame,
every grudge and every regret,
the deceptions with which I separate myself
from creation. Every failure, and oh my,
there have been many.

I give her the grief that becomes rage
when locked inside,
for nothing is as heavy
as the tears we do not cry,

and even though I have done this
at least a thousand times,
it’s still a sweet and unexpected surprise
to meet myself again on the other side
of the demolishing of all I condemn,
a thrill to see the universe
in my own eyes and say, oh!
Hello, old friend.

What I don’t offer she finds;
Like Inanna I am stripped and searched,
as over and over again,
I am taught the same lesson:

It is an honor to be crushed to ash
in the red teeth of the fire
from which the phoenix flies;
It is a gift to give my neck to the axe
in the hand of the god
who uses my blood
to make the sunrise;

a gift to be crushed to dust
by the mystery whose heat
makes the coal in us into diamonds,
so I repeat like a mantra as I die,
to be born and die again,

Thank you.

I say yes to this gift,
this chance to surrender every fiction,
I pledge vows to the force of decay as I am devoured.
I pray like this, giving the altar
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.
Come closer my daughter,
into 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.

No matter what damage is done behind her back,
by people who forgot what they came here for,
in this world that is ruled by the lie of lack,
whose wounded children take everything
and still want more,

the tree of life is inside us,
and its branches cannot be torn.
Its roots are in the stars
and the stars are in our bones;
each of us is part of the map
and when we reach past
the stories that separate us,
we become a path
that leads us all home.

Keep singing, the mother says, so I sing
until my song calls a monk with a torch
who leads me up the mountain inside me.
Sometimes the way is steep and hard,
and every step on the sharp rocks cuts like the end.
Sometimes the path is shrouded in fog and loud
with the wails of all that haunts us, but the monk
beckons, and I keep walking.

There is more than one way up the mountain,
and there is more than one mountain. There are ranges
upon ranges. Some arrive at their peak after decades
of Zen meditation. Some get there by dancing
until they have danced all the way out of their skins;
some do asanas until the serpent ascends their spine
in a flash of azure lightening, and some repeat ancient chants
until their mantras turn samsara into nirvana,
and some of us try everything,
and see the thread that connects all paths
as the holy one’s pulsing veins.

Here is a secret way you can tell
who has actually heard the bells
on the ankles of the goddess whose body is the cosmos;
they live without the shadow of judgement;
and they give with a compassion that is infinite.

Be patient. We will all eventually
be as generous as the mother is.
We will all overcome the disadvantages
of being raised to obey a 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 that holy wind
opens every door within.

But look—all around us the answers keep flowering and flying,
they are written in berry paint on the cheeks of children,
they are written with light in the sky every dawn.

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

To those who ask why, this is my answer:
transformation is a promise I made before I got here.
Kali called me and she has got me by the hair;
I am a child of Shiva and Shiva is a yogi and a 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 form,
until Isis finds us and reminds us—
in the midst of this mystery,
only one thing is certain:
we will die and be we will be reborn

until we are wise enough to learn
from the earth how to let go,
and cherish each moment in this school
and be fearless when we 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 blossoming hands.

Let us be lifted up by the miracle we’re all too small to see;
Let us consider the possibility that the medicine
the mother gives us is the medicine we need.
And when our eyes and ears are clean

we will recognize the chaos in our world as a Trickster
walking backwards into the church of you and me,
and we will learn at last how to dance with him
from the plants who were the first bodhisattavas,
who catch the sun in their hands so we can eat.

Let our epics of vengeance end at their mycelial feet,
for forgiveness is what our vegetative elders teach,
then let us celebrate in a festival that echoes in eternity,
barefoot on the ground with the spirits of the land
and all the future beings
whose existence depends
on our awakening.



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