lightning struck

it sometimes is an ocean night like this cracking the sky open with its electric unavoidability. sometimes it goes like this the yawn before the moan the creak before the groan my mind is empty of evidence my heart filled to bursting with the ditritus of a thousand unlived love affairs what else is there but this in a moment such as this or that or another i can not give anymore of myself until the crows come to pick my bones as i live and breath this feast of breath does fill and empty me eternally i drive forward through the night on a vehicle of salt and fumes the darkness cloaks my naked form and i disappear into the landscape of my own dreaming only to reappear unrecognizable.
am i such a known entity?
what is it that thrills me eternally?
novelty.
that blessed curse that keeps the world spinning on its axis and will not let me stop moving even for a moment, i catch my breath in between gasps of unfamiliar air, chasing after my own ether.
either this or that.
where does inspiration come from and to where does it return?
i walk in a daze through the days of my life catching glimpses of brilliance between cracking open and sealing the seams with dust and petals and brine.
i am nothing without a muse. unfocused, unmotivated. the desire to create desire. the desire to transcend desire. the drive to move beyond such human cycles. releasing desire in the name of true pleasure. perhaps.


how undeniable subtlety can be
and how subtle, undeniability...

how immediately the moment goes molten
and only salt remains...

The noun of the self becomes a verb
eternally in fluid flux
yet solid in its flow.

for Pema, in labor

this is the time when your breath becomes the weather pattern of a hidden world
when the strength of your back of your spine of your purest imagination
truly discovers its own power to create a life

as your own heartbeat divides in two and recreates itself to be brought fresh into this world
i am with you
my breath is yours through every dimension
my spine's own strength i give to you
in humblest gratitude for your willingness to birth our teacher
to cultivate the seedling sprouts of a new day

you are pushing now
from halfway around the world
i can feel the force of your will
and of the larger will that surrounds it
as the ocean surrounds the mermaid's fallen tears of joy
when she discovers her first pearl

we are with you
this wild family of ragamuffin lightkeepers
our candles are lit in the shrines of remembrance
in this moment all death is renewed
and fertilizes the seeds of life

using invisible antlers to hold up the burning coals
burning cedar, sweetgrass, tobacco, copal
the smoke of my prayers surrounds you in grace
you are the earth's own power
you are an instrument for the song of life to sing through

your radiance blinds each of us into a deeper seeing

half way around the world
i feel you pushing
i am with you
you are surrounded by a circle of candles tied with red string
you are embraced by the blessings of all our ancestors
and all the ancestors yet to be
i am breathing with you
pushing with you
we are with you

ashes and seeds --written 2/25 ubud, bali

I am born with the light into a world i can not remember dreaming.
I rise with the day inside an unfamiliar song.
I am inside a body, inside a family, inside a world.
I ask for nothing, yet receive so much, my palms overflowing with salt and flowers, ash and fruit.
An electric buzz of insects rises steep from the density of green that surrounds me and just as quickly fades away.

I am still here.

Shadows play upon leaf tops, beloveds intertwine beneath, the river charges towards and away, life is so undeniably real.
I would dissolve into an offering of smoke and song if it didn't seem so true that I am more of use in solid form, dissolving hard knots of human story into another sort of offering.

I am still here.
Even as Death catches me from behind and sweeps me across a grand dancefloor of cracked bones and burnt hair, even as i stare into the empty sockets of everyone's final lover, even as a red river runs in rivulets over my skin--that skin is warm, and holds a quickening within it.
I am still here.

Even as the solid forms of a known world dissolve in the flames of the funeral pyre, somehow I am still here.
And so are you, beloved opal keeper, feather finder, nectar seeker.
You are all around me even as you are gone you are not gone.
Even as I feel myself dissolving I am still here.

I hold a rose quartz skull in my right hand and a golden serpent in my left. The ochre of a homeland I do not posses spirals across my palms. The fire is being built, the songs are being sung, somewhere in the world there is a blade stained with innocent blood. Somewhere in the world are the hands that wield it.

Each pair of hands holds different work--mining the opals, sifting the bones, painting the ochre, ringing the bell, fanning the flame
but the hands that wield the knife--how is that work given?
How is that work placed sacred into a human vessel to wreak its havoc upon our world?

It is not for understanding.

Bring me those hands and I swear I will wash the blood from them.
I will offer myself to the resolution of this pain.
If such a thing can be called into the world, I will raise my voice in supple power to create a song of truth triumphant and justice compassionate.
I will drink the salty labor of forgiveness until the water runs clear.

And if those hands never come to me for washing, somehow I will remain.
Somehow each day will still rise through me into dreaming.

immortal beloved...

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.

by Mary Elizabeth Frye

alive inside these love affairs

Once again waking into a day overflowing with water, a day filled to bursting with rhythm and sound.
Something in the world must need this, something larger than the human story
something with a capability to contain vastness.

Into this vastness I place my small offerings
of words and seeds and efforts of attention
in some awkward attempt to shape that vastness into another day of breath and joy.

The space folds in around my offerings
and somehow another day emerges from its shaping
as it coalesces into rain
and dirt
and the song they sing each time they kiss.

They are the oldest lovers, the rain and the dirt.
Surpassed only by the ocean and the moon.
These ancient love affairs we live inside of
they hold secrets for our own.

When you are the ocean
when the true depth of your vastness reflects your lover's shining brilliance, an illuminated pathway is formed from the borderland of our world into the limitless potential of the horizon.

When you are the dirt
when you can absorb the incessant rhythms of your lover's true patterns of being into your own body and use the resulting fertility to feed your own, then the world is continually born anew through your love.

then your love itself is a worthy offering.
what else would you have it be?

And what if you are the moon
and all you know to do it reflect the light of one distant source onto another?
Then you allow the innate cycles of your deepest shining to pull upon your love, bringing you into a dance that spans the space between you and gives shape and elegance and pattern to the daily life of all you touch.

And what if you are the rain
forever falling, and forever rising back out of the embrace of your love, only to fall back in once again?
Then you offer yourself fully to that revolution, giving your body completely to the patterns of transformation that through your fluidity, nourish the growth of the world...

travel unravels me

world keeps turning flames keep burning my mind an inferno infernal internal combustion distrusting its own occasional urges surges of powerful yearning im learning still to unwind the intertwining improve my timing (and yet i find myself rhyming) combining rhythm and sound as i continue to ground astounding how high the sky seems how unreachable dreams seem not every kingdom needs a queen not every projection needs a screen sometimes i just want to scream silent and loud drown it all out the incessant self loathing who even cares about clothing anyways?
but
then
i
take
a
deep
breath
or
two
expand into the blue of the sky and the sea where there's no you and no me just a field of intention where we can heal any wrench in the works or the gut any patterns and ruts i could drive myself nuts but instead i crack open farther this is the hard part i talk to the trees i let bugs bite my knees offer blood offer tears offer sweat offer years of my life to whatever is worthy (trying not to catch scurvy) just me open palmed raise a glass drop the balm kiss my ass right or wrong i am here i am free i am clear i am she who eats fruit kinda wild kinda cute in my awkward human suit recruiting for the crucial crusade the renegade parade the earnest charade wouldn't trade it for anything not one breath not one step not one kept secret unveiled not one tear's salty trail...

Serpent Path Symbiosis

landing at home after the final festival of the season... what a cycle it has been!

Just wanting to take a moment to offer my profound gratitude and inspiration for the work that was done on behalf of ourselves and the collective during the Serpent Path ritual workshop (and the Equinox prayerformance) at Symbiosis this past weekend.

With the challenge and blessing of a thunderstorm right at the beginning of the workshop, hectic transition to an indoor space (thanks to La, Lynx and Maze for sharing their time and space with us!) there were over 80 shining faces so present for the entire process.

As soon as we began, I felt the palpable energy and attention of everyone present, the air was electric with intention and magic. I have rarely been privaleged to participate in such a focused and potent collective ritual.

This work is one of the most important things in my life right now, and Isis and I are continuing to cultivate and build off of what we have been working on for the last several years.

For those of you who are interested, I have started a tribe as a way to stay informed, to continue communicating about this work and to participate from wherever you might be: tribes.tribe.net/serpentpath

again, our deepest gratitude and blessings for this work, this community and this life.

Synergenesis Hiatus

greetings familia and visionary culture crafters galore...

as you may have heard through the whisperweb by now, Synergenesis is not happening this year.
its a big deal for me and for many others too.
its time to take a step back, asess the situation and see what comes through.
it feels clear that memes are shifting, that channels are morphing, and as a visionary culture crafter myself, i feel the urge to continue evolving, not sticking to the same routine, but pushing levles of interactivity, of collaboration, of what visionary can actually mean.

so we're taking a break, shifting the scope.

i would like to offer my profound gratitude to all of the amazing people who have supported and participated in the unfolding that Synergenesis has been these last 3 years, especially to Trichter, Delvin, Sijay and Isis for your above and beyond levels of interactivation. The process of producing these events has taught me so much, particularly about what is possible when a project is truly undertaken as an offering, and how abundance and inspiration flow like water into wine from open palms.

There is another event in the works for early November, an entirely unforseen experiment in collective reality crafting and realtime mythmapping. Many of you are familiar with the work I have been doing for years on liminality, and this event will be a culmination point of much of that work. Highly interactive, dissolving all boundaries between life and art, audience and performer, work and play, prayer and joke, song and map.

keep your inner ears tuned for sendings from the space between...

between here and there
we will meet in mid air
in order to learn how to fly

love like water
(fluid and undeniable)
eve LadyApples

(drawing above by jessie rose vala)

reaquainted eloquence

the confession is this:
as of last tuesday i had not written a poem in well over a year.
for reals.
some real part of me was truly afraid it might not ever happen again.
it has been more than slightly traumatic, no exaggeration.

but last week, my first morning on site at the Glade Festival (a whole other entire adventure whose story will have to wait...Nectar Temple Represent!!) awakened to the sunrise and this just poured through...i was crying, so filled with joy and relief that the words had made me their own once again. so here it is, rough and raw and real...in profound gratitude to the muse, for blessing me with her presence. i am forever her servent.

Grandmother Oven Song

I am calling to your rising hunger
to the thirst of each day

even as you are still being digested by your dreams
I am already cooking
I am already preparing your feast
gathering aromatic bundles
to flavor this body

to feed it back to itself
through your mouth

small songs escape me to deepen the broth
to temper the salt of sweat and tears
to lend subtlety to this ocean soup blood feast

eat of this body
this daily bread

I am nothing if not consumed in each moment
by your life's insatiability

the long road of seeking
leads finally to your open mouth
my child, my children's children
my walking flowering song body home

this winding open mouthed journey
towards your fullfillment
is my only song

this body of words and herb bundles and yarn
only to be cooked inside my singing
only to be a meal for your wildness
to call another day of breath
back from the edge of rampant dullness

do not think for a moment
my boiling blood is not insulted
by those meager meals of plastic phrases
do not think
i am not starving with our unfocused gluttony

eat of this body
it is your own hunger that feeds me

only in your heart's stomach
can i live forever
only in your profoundest nourishment thirst
am i eternally reborn

listen, I am clanking the pots
listen, I am warming the kitchen
i am calling to your hunger

listen, my child's child
and you are already fed by my song