walking with mermaids feet

I wake every morning

I wake every morning. I think of you.

This is a river of many currents. Some days I want to say. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I want to say. I wake every morning thinking of you. I wake up. Every morning. I think of you. Of you. Of all people. You.

Why?
Why you?
Why me?
Why now?
Why not?

Could we venture further from the truth? Oh my Goddess, could this get any more cryptic? The truth is. The truth is. There is time. Listen. There. Did you hear it? Just ticking away from us. Just tick tick ticking along. There it goes. Time. The truth is. Listen. Listen to me. I am talking to you. I am talking to you directly. Sort of.

Listen. Watch. Learn.

Look. I resolve. To tear out the hook. I tear it from my flesh. And look. There it is. Still there. The hook. The bait. It's still there. It drives me crazy. I release you. I call you. I give you up. I want you. Where are you?

I’m ok. I’m crazy. I’m divine. I’m delicious. I am an addict. I am a phoenix. I am a capricious dakini. I am a moth to the flame of intensity. I burn. I rise. I am completely in the eye of the beholder.

Do you see me? That’s what I would like to know. Among other things. Oh, among so many other things. Do you see me? What do you see?

Come and get me. I would gamble on you. I would roll the dice. I would. You know I would. I wake to you. I sleep. I dream. I think of you. You bedazzle me. You confuse me. Do you want me?

Who are you? And more precisely, more fucking pertinently, who the fuck am I? Who asks?

I think I have an echo. I want you. On one hand. On one hand. On the other. I don’t deny the contradictions. I don’t deny it. I wont. I can’t. I haven’t forgotten. I can’t deny that what you say is true. And I can’t be quiet. Listen to me. I can’t not say it. I can’t shut up.

I wake up. This tower is crumbling. It is. I know it is. Watch. Learn. Its changing all around us. Things change. Time is ticking on. Time is. Time. Look. There is so much rubble. I close the door to leave. And then. Look. The unexpected thing. There is a window. Look.

I wake every morning. I think of you.
There is a hook.
You know this. You must know this.

The lotus path

In India, the mountain Arunachala is Shiva
and Shiva is the mountain.
In India, Ramana, mystic in the mountain cave, is Shiva
and Shiva is the mountain

It was on this mystic trodden mountain path,
with lotuses bloooming under my skin
that a saddhu called to me from his mountain hut
namaste ma! namaste m!a om namaya ma! om jaya ma!

as if I were indeed mother of the universe

for namaste means I see the goddess in you
and ma is mother, great creatrix,
Om is the silence and the sound,
namaya meaning name of
and jaya meaning great,

On this day I was walking the mountain path,
with flowers blossoming under my skin,
cowbell, roll drum, horn and fighting dog below
pervading the silence as song,
intimate as any unlikely beloved.

It was on this, Ramana’s lotus path
that I was walking
when a saddhu saw me and called my name.
namaste ma! namaste ma! om namaya ma! om jaya ma!

As if I were indeed mother of the universe
as if I were the goddess
as if this woman
as if I were
as if
as if I
as if he saw right into me
as if he saw right through me
as if I were she
as if it were me, ma, She-who-is

I, the weft and the weave
I, The loom and the womb

In India, on this lotus path,
mystic trodden by the gods,
the god is a mystic
the mystic is the mountain
the mountain is the god
and the path?
spun out of nowhere,
dropping like an eagle from the sky
the path is the lotus blossoming under your skin.

rin gong

behind the wall
coal trains cart loads
across the night

my house rings
(like)
a singing bowl

portals and possibility

sometimes I stand
here
at the very edge of things
where the veil rips apart and
the passage of my story
gleams and
melts
into all other stories,
pulsing into the bigger picture and ever widening into the
wild wide amorphous great sunrise of being

sometimes I stand
here
at the precipice
of all the pathways of possibility that lead from the portal of myself
in moments where everything
appears
just and exactly
so

pilgrimage

I am but one head of a snake with two hundred legs in syncopated tramp.
This dragon’s spine is a ghost that melts away
the gruelling hills,
the stone fences,
the bark of dogs,
the horse’s watching eye,
the french farmhouses,
the rock paved forest,
the shock of blue petals in wild open surrender to the sky.

I break -
pick berries from brambles,
piss, and watch them pass.

Where is there, but here, and, why go?
This path is not your own.
The conditions of my happiness, endless.

We rise and fall,
form and collapse our dragon spine.
We come to light, melt in the dark,
shimmer in our nakedness.

Behind us, the road,
gone,
gone,
completely gone.

I, Cerridwen

If you were Taliesin
you would remember the vast depths of my black cauldron

If you were Taliesin
you would stir that ocean
where I conjured the wild seas
of our poetry

If you were Taliesin
you would lick the traces of my magic from your fingers

If you were Taliesin
we would transform to chase each other across lives :

hare and hound,
bird and hawk,
he-wolf, she-wolf,
across the wild fields of heather,
across the vast grey mountain scapes
we would chase each other
right back into our original selves

If you were Taliesin,
I, Cerridwen.

Hymn

Eat me up
When it is time

Take me back
Bite the white flesh on my inner arms
And thighs

Cradle me
Engulf me completely
Make me tiny
Tear me apart with your myriad teeth

Give me your thousand eyes and arms
Make me huge with you
Extinguish me
And let me sleep beyond a thousand years

Dreaming the restless power of the birth of countless beings
Eat me up completely
Until I remember
How I have missed you.

when we sleeping, awake

and what was i doing
while it burned?

and you,
what were you doing?

dharma gate

sometimes/
breaking/

the sorrow of the world/
rushes/

its wild flood waters/
the breadth of human hearts/
the length of time/

its refuse minutia/
gathering the greyed rushing waters/
its beauty/

the fractured ice gate/
of our heart/

Speaking with Alecia

some days the sun bays red for blood
and I hear you
“let me dance let me dance feel rhythm pulse my blood
let me stand up dance and pretend that I am free
or show me your smile”

and I see us
in those “dust print circles”
we are holding hands
dancing against the fence of your secret smile
and we are speaking.

I did not understand the words that I wrote
“I’d like you to be happy”
but you took them away with the razor of your heart
“I know why you are sad”

you said
“lets go and watch the fire orbs spin fire spin fire”
for we thought you were a flower
with the sun breaking in your smile
but your blood became a river
and the river was blood

then night
and I am left to strain at the white drift
catch those last traces of your hands ink
plant you, conjure you
speak with the brief brilliance of your smile
in the wake of your words.

Postcard from Sanginngan

before the finger of sun touches the rice fields
i wake
life smells fleetingly of thailand

if you follow the tramp of my thonged feet on this small dirt path you will not step in the puddles. skirt by the muddy edges. step to the side for passing motorbikes. children will peer out from houses. women will look up from scrubbing clothes on rocks by the stream to greet us. turning we wander past fields of greens and corn that ebb into the spreading terraces of rice, spotted with coconut, papaya. banana; rooster, hen and duck.

don't mind me if i lounge on the verandah watching butterflies dance with palms and orchids alike on the breeze that brings the rains. i am pondering the virtues of writing absent friends about the heat, the aesthetics of ubud cafe society, of bali life from three year old eyes, of lotus ponds and carp, of my quiet struggle with colonialism, of the vast and the domestic... but all of these subjects seem to melt away inconsequentially into the simple splendour of the afternoon.

love letter to laos

bumpy songthaew ride bumpy
spine bruised from metal and crammed in
but i’m grinning
like a dog
head out the window in tongue lolling joy at the wind on my face
the glorious green going by

butterflies glance off our wheels and fly through my hair
and on speeds a delicious day
of rain fed lush land
of rice paddy fields and circling mountains

thatched bamboo huts stand on stilts above the dirt and mud
babies rock in the cool under houses
where hen and rooster mate

an old woman shephards geese with a stick
as new born chicks cluck along the bamboo fences

round hairy black hogs and piglets wobble by
hansome cows langish on the road undisturbed by our approaching metal speed

a gaggle of school girls with almond skin and bright umbrellas
laugh and call to each other
waving wide eyed
at the white stranger that is me.

night driving

we are a growling black beast on the highway
travelling into darkness

windows whistling
parting the mist
that rises up into us

luminous insects
shoot by . over . past.

ghost cars
shooting stars
the sickly sweet smell of sugar cane
fields on fire
an owl
a star
a star

II

i am bereft of conversation
sunk in silence
no good at keeping
a tired driver awake

we are night driving
and i am thinking of melissa
cradling a broken wallaby
as if a baby
in all gentleness and love
blood in its ears
warm without breath

we are driving to the forest

in the light before athens

for morning
in the light before Athens
is grubby
white
closed doorways
brilliant blue
walls
drippling wine
and history
a singular church

for morning
following my sense
finds two heels
the friends of dogs
and pebbled pathways
the thin bruise
of thonged feet

i have not opened my mouth
yet wide
my skin shouts country

i have not opened my mouth
yet we’ve met before

here
they know me
as a goddess.

Feed

As I hold you in the crook of my arm, in the deadened city morning,
the low hum of electricity is this grey pre dawns greeting song,
tiny man.

I observe the translucence of your skin,
a long blue vein,
flecks of gold in your sleep thickened lash,
a sea shell ear.

My hands are old under your tiny mitts,
soft as silken pockets and deep warm
your hand holds my finger,
as your tongue presses my nipple for milk.

in the days, waiting

: late afternoon, reading

the fresh
rhythmic drone
of crickets
drops away
to the growling contractions
of thunder
fingers of rain
on tin
a prelude
to a raga

: smoking, on the step

the itch
of mosquitos
on my legs
the rumbling bass
expectant blood
in my body

: walking, to escape

thonged feet
wet
in the long grass
damp heat
seeping
from my pores

: standing, in the creek

thigh deep
in brown water
bubbles rising
underfoot
the murk of leaves

: hesitating, long moments

alone
naked white
before diving

On writing

a letter to you,
from varanasi

should i punctuate
with
"at this moment in time"
"this single eternity"

in order to excuse
any possible future
or this particular past

the word
a second on my pen
committed

is a reality complete

i am bound

to a real trust
of a moments thought

caught
in the solidity of ink

in this moment in time

Salsa

My arm against skin along arm
Moving against eyes on body hips
While wet with sweat against skin
My eyes play on feet
Not to give away into eyes
Lashed deep brown

Where I turn too fast against the distance of other arms

I come back warm to your chest

This play like that before
The relinquish of control
This play of heat
Dance where skin touches skin
You, a man
This play of bodies moving together
Against skin, sweat and beat
Feet pheromones against the step
Beat flicker and signal of eye
Moving against hips
legs arms breath clothes wet
Moving with the play of tension

I turn too fast against the distance of other arms
To come back warm against your chest

a koan

we meet
in a field.

here
drinking bancha tea
at five
each morning.
I am not happy
until lunchtime.

there is no
silence.
Bird, rustle
and breath,
laughter and stick,
the light of note
that falls
and is gone
into the sea of it.

who hears the sound is the sound.

who is wood hammer
cracking against the mountain?
bird. cracking wood.
ice. cracking heart

we meet.

Self portrait in the studio

And there you are.

troubled eyes
turned away
from the mirror in your hand
A self portrait
/unfinished/
languishing in beauty
blue
as a sea
of deep warm eyes

a model on your bed
bares thighs
so cream
they need no lips
to whisper
lick me
lick me

fractured light swims on an ocean
of breasts
and bottoms
bellies which stretch
and yawn
into the deepest blue

the blue of watching eyes