diving galaxies behind, beyond my eyelids
into crevasse of mind
deep heart of universe
collapsing, revealing
origin
of black expanse
of eternal presence
sublime of aeons
reciprocal gaze
know me
who Am i
Category Archives: Gnosis
the hours
in the days before their deaths
which could now practically and reasonably
be measured in hours,
she began liminal dreaming
even during daytime
and she saw a white horizon
containing a silhouette of golden-amber woods alit like filigree
and a golden-amber house, likewise
and she knew the house was for her
and she was not afraid
Crown
my hair holds memory,
i know this because
i cut my own hair today
her, at ten.
as i held the ends
in my hands
i said
did you touch the Merced with me and my boy?
i said,
do you remember my father?
and my other precious loss?
i said,
do you remember the first dog?
i said,
were you here when
i still loved
and was loved?
i said,
you were there when my mother was so near death’s door
i said,
and when i found and lost,
and lost and found, my Self again?
smiles
sighs
cries
laughs
rage
wail
and
song
i still have possessions from all those times
and places
but no skin,
my skin long shed, my bone resorbed
but my long hair is still me from many years ago
that is why hair is so precious,
i thought,
this is the genesis
of what i have always
mistook as phobia
but no,
i know today
that
physical memory is held particularly, and only, in my hair
more than Samsonian
or vanity
or femininity
my long hair
is
my body
my health
my energy
my sensation
my emotion
my years
my identity
my essence
thank you
for growing
for remembering
for showing
for staying
for flowing
for tangling
for blowing
for graying
for glowing
for floating
for knowing
with me
all these years
no more cuts
without ceremony
and
i promise
i will never agree to lose you
Open
I walk bare
out in the open
on borrowed land|stolen
to be returned to the people, to all be-ings, to them
with my bones or ash interred, one day
the Sun, Moon, Rain, Wind, Clouds, Sky and Stars
kiss me at all hours
did you see me open up
this Autumn?
after a Summer spent crying,
wet, yet fruitless
spent Spring wading into lies instead of soft blossoms and new grass
Winter approaches, maybe the frost will kill this disease,
for good
For now, I bathe
nearly naked in sunshine, cold rainstorms, wetland pools and moonlight
unapologetically
|out in the open|
unabashedly
baptising
my face,
hair,
and eyes,
my breasts
vulva
and legs,
my lips,
throat,
spine,
and my wild heart
ceremonially, first
with wine, like Magdalene, anointing and anointed,
in the name of the mother, Sun and holy ghosts
|cabernet henna|
then, with rainwater from the willow’s edge, like Ophelia,
lying in the woodland and meadow, flooded
to cleanse or drown [to be, or not to be]
in the name of the Moon
|I ponder the stone cistern laden with glacial deposits and ruminant bones|
the woodland is abundant with new mushroom, new overnight growth
[puhpowee]
the hint of ancient circles supplants my judgment with instinct
and overrides decorum with new delights
| and old delights, revisited |
an aged grapevine is rooted deep, climbing, trailing, snaking
hidden in plain sight, everywhere
and I’ve intuited It as Ol’ Scratch,
I take a hatchet to quell Its influence, here
You,
Your windows are not true eyes
Your lamps are not enlightenment
So, bless the dark
of the night
of the country night sky
And the Moonset
of my moon
it’s been decades,
but
this place wants to birth or impregnate me,
and I want that too
i want it to
|I come here and open up|
le claire [street]
A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night
Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
An old-timer’s disease
A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life
a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe, no one
A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree
A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called
On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t get loose in the dark, don’t get skunked in the dark
Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth
The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep
Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn
She and that dog
Always urban foragers and gleaners in June
All month long, her fingertips, heels and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, didn’t think to check his paws
A clear, melancholy recollection
This day, that day was also her son’s birthday
The first birthday he spent away from home, Nebraska, or Alaska, I think
That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy
Famêlée
This feels like an arrow
Made from a tree
That rose from
An acorn
That I gathered and stored
In another life
Scribed with a message continually
piercing my heart
I wasn’t only wounded though,
I was woke
into a clarity
that I was already sighting in my dreams,
writing with words
mortal and eternal
You once said, proclaimed or whispered
Every single thing
that I ever believed
My own truths embarrassed in the shadow of your confidence
My inner voice silenced in your animated persuasion
Believing you so completely – for the better of my years
Becoming like and unlike you because of it,
but not be-coming me,
Un-be-coming me every day
I ain’t even mad
You don’t know this – still,
You don’t want
to hear,
or listen;
Our time is running out
Even this admission
Is sure to haunt me one day,
and guilts me today
But I can’t call you confidant or crone
If you refuse to learn,
to evolve,
From this one archetype
The wide and long view
seems to escape you
You live in the moment in the least way, the worst way
And I don’t worship here or there, any more
The faith in your godliness is gone,
It is unfamiliar
For me to pity you
You, deaf and tone deaf
You had all the answers
In the morning shallows, perhaps
But evaporation revealed even those
Were anchor-less, yet stationary
An algae
Mucking up the colorless perfection of sunlit water
But in the deep, or dark, or quiet pools, you were always so lost
And in the ocean, at night
You drown even in its calm
You have ridden civil swells and storms,
I’ll give you that
But have you ever communed with waves
Allowing them to be part of you
Swallowing and absorbing the mystery
Becoming the colorless perfection of dark water
You seem to stay parched
Your belly’s hollow from impious fasting and pious thirst
You do know that’s where your heart sits?
But let’s agree to come around again, friend
We’ll swap places and next time
I’ll be the mother,
and the son,
and the husband,
and the elder,
and the babe,
and the foreign one,
I’ll become The Other One
because,
I want the chance to know
You
Her, me.
Created by Mike Lee. https://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/ Licensed for use under Creative Commons
I learn so many new things each day, that I feel like Samantha, the AI operating system OS¹ in Spike Jonze’s film, “Her”.
It’s as if I am birthing myself out of my own ignorance each and every day.
– kimtnt ⊕
Rooftop. photo by: kimtnt
The Bottom (RV)
The Well at Kom Ombo AWIB-ISAW: The Well at Kom Ombo A deep well at the Ptolemaic temple at Kom Ombo, which functioned as a nilometer. The well is also thought to have been used in the ritual worship of the crocodile. by Iris Fernandez (2009) copyright: 2009 Iris Fernandez (used with permission) photographed place: Omboi (Kom Ombo) [pleiades.stoa.org/places/606346]
Get to the bottom of this.
This, means You
Get to the bottom – of Your Self
Do you have to be thrown
down the well
through loss, by the grave, or near-grave
What if
instead,
we pulled the rug out from under ourselves
to reveal the formidable trap door
What if we climbed down into the dark cellar, willingly
to enter our infinite interior
to touch the well
the ancient aquifer within
where the gods reside and respite with our Twin Selves,
our other-halves waiting for discovery
This infinite, eternal presence
be-neath our weathered houses
What if we willingly descended
Into it
Unto it
And we learned to crave the Original Dark
and its companionship
Where we delve deep into our imaginations, dreams, nightmares,
That connect us primally
to the pool of imaginations, dreams and nightmares of every one,
Of every being that ever existed
Collective Unconscious
made Self Conscious
The dark, deep well
we may all draw from
Pour out your false light
reveal the truth:
the unbearable emptiness of being
Cup your hands
Or wade into the well
Deeper and deeper
submerge, swallow
you’ve been bone dry for so long
Do you see that now?
Baptize
The only way
To rebirth yourself
Into something worth birthing
Into something worth being
is by this sacrament, anticeremonially, un-ceremonially
Knowing now the bottom is
The only place where alchemy happens
Where wine is turned into eternal water,
instead of that story first told to you, by them
And the mystery
the wet, deep, dark becomes you,
Envelops you so completely
You want to drown beautifully
But you must taste the bitters of the surface
Swallowing down your thoughts
Before you drink of the All
To finally collapse in on yourself
Into beautiful nothing
becoming nothingness
Prima materia
In coniunctio
Drenched in Mystery
quenched with Truth
imbibed with Revelation
Reborn
for an endless moment
The perpetual well
archives your eternal experience
as the deja vu
Memory though will evanesce,
even as droplets cling in the hollows of your vessel
Now that you Know
Truth and Mystery
Exist
so near, just beyond,
yet
within you,
Reascend resplendent
Reemerge humbly
the Gods send a daily postcard:
Wish you were here.
the Sixth day
We are in the know
We are in love
We are in love with absolute strangeness
Strangers weaving desperate bits of truths with swatches of lies and patches of mystery together
into idols of flesh-like beings ready to exist in the garden of the unknown
We begin as avatars,
with our hollows filled in with wishfulness and wistfulness
Our first chore: fashion a blanket from our shared thoughts and song
and beneath it, together
We’ll conceal our new being from them, for a while
Conceal our new world from them, for a while
Our whole, true selves rarely revealed
to each other,
or to the other-others
to our-selves
Who are You?
I think,
Better to not know your You,
Not wanting to dispel the myth
of the You I’ve created: my You
Not wanting to deconstruct the perfectly vague architecture
of the You I’ve created: my You
Wanting You only as my own creation
knowing You, owning You, or owing You
or revealing to You,
can never be what I have conjured on my side of our bed,
under our cover, in our garden
Making You up whole,
completing You with my imagination
is godlike,
You, the Adam
I, the Creator and the Ethereal Eve
I give you the role you think you want
But just for this remote rendezvous
A scripted dialogue has gone awry with dangerous improvisation
A genesis of intangible intimacy, here,
Your being and words disembodied, afar,
is enough, for now.
To know You,
whole and complete and present
as [hu]man Incarnate
Near,
Potential,
Warm,
Muse
The angels hold their breath
What will she [i] [they] do?
For now, in the now, I am curiously
content in this undetermined, undefined serving of You
whether,
an apple to bite, to taste,
or an orchard for my harvest
⊕
Am Aum Om
Who am I.
What am I.
What remains, if it’s taken all away,
if I die or am killed today;
If I were never born today;
If I were reborn today;
If I were unborn today;
if I choose to strip all of it away,
if I strip It all away
I
strip
It
all
away
My birth;
My parentage;
My race;
My ethnicity;
My nationality;
My family history;
My name;
My family;
My childhood;
My background;
My home;
My neighborhood;
My city;
My country;
My back-story;
My culture;
My religion;
My friends;
My loves;
My partner;
My marriage;
My child;
My progeny;
My legacy;
My intellect;
My politics;
My beliefs;
My ethics;
My talents;
My labor;
My education;
My skills;
My occupation;
My associations;
My friendships;
My relationships;
My temperament;
My attitude;
My affection;
My cowardice;
My courage;
My humor
My hate;
My prejudice;
My justice;
My wins;
My losses;
My habits;
My flaws;
My knowledge;
My personality;
My indignation;
My judgment;
My judgments;
My action;
My inaction;
My anger;
My rage;
My compassion;
My strength;
My kindness;
My goodness;
My shame;
My joy;
My pain;
My ideas;
My words;
My speech;
My secrets;
My expression;
My face;
My body;
My womb;
My motion;
My taste;
My scent;
My touch;
My sound;
My body,
my temple
my aperture
my dwelling;
My mind;
My humanity;
My morality;
My dignity;
My presence;
My universe;
My heart;
My love;
My experience;
My gods;
My death;
Who am I
Without them?
What am I
Without them?
What remains, then,
without them?
Who remains, then,
without them?
Then What am I
Then Who am I
Who am I
What am I
Still am I?
am, I?
Am I
Am I, I
Am I Am
Am I sound
Am I essence
Am I origin
Am I alpha
Am I omega
Am I always
Am I all ways
Am I everything
Am I nothing
Am I every thing
Am I no thing
Am I light
Am I dark
Am I god
Am I energy
Am I vibration
Am I consciousness
Am I continuum
Am I infinite
Am I eternal
Am I
I Am
I am
I AM
I Am
I
Am
Am
Only, Am
Am
Am
Yes,
Am
Yes,
Am
Aum
Aum
Aum
Om
the velveteen poet 