and when I am held by the never ending veins of green around me, I know there is nothing to fear; and when I pedal into the twilight dawning around me like scalloped May honeysuckle, I know there is nothing to fear; and when I greet 30 with an open palm and a heart full of gratitude and wilderness, I know there is nothing to fear; and when I walk through the last day of being 20 and I remember the starlit nights ; the giggles ; the sleeping bags ; the orgasm of birth ; the graciousness of all the many miracles of my life ; the way the paths have twirled like small keys, always unlocking ; I know there is nothing to fear ;; to have this day or any day , to have this bike ride, or any small gesture of grace, is the strangest gift I will never know how to process / to have been a part of any universe, with any spinning bubble-cosmos, of black holes, of stars and wandering rocks ; galaxy upon galaxy ; and to have any thought hold the illusion of mattering at all ; to have any human experience contain the deceptive magic of believing into existence any amount of meaning at all :: what a miracle : what a strange, strange miracle // each narrative of a tiny life a huge spinning star of conscious experience that I cannot fathom or place in a line ;; the lines go no where ; it spins in a circle, makes trapezoids and triangles and shapes without name ,, each participle and part of a noun or a parenthesis or comma the strangest and most wild symbolism for a language that defies reason : for a consciousness that billows out of a spinning black space desperately far from any other star // what wild gift is this, this strange experience of being a human, this timeless and eternal gasp at a sunset (the sunset itself an illusion of time) / and me, a little song out of the blackness that has been given far more stories then I deserve, and somehow, miraculously, still has more stories to live
the brightest
i dizzy bubble try to hold on to the day ; hold your hand in mine ; your eyes gazing upwards towards the clouds, or the light, or me, filled with so much light – you pour love words on me and hugs, soft kisses ; i think on this mother’s day only of the extreme honor i have of being your mother ; of how grateful i am to be your mother, to be a mother at all, and how much it gives me and my life ; i think only of how wild it is to know this love, to be able to hold you and still fit you inside of my arms ; i think of the years of watching you walk next to me and holding my hand and i am so immensely grateful ; i think of all the sparkling moments of my life, and this surely, with the may breeze combing through your dappled splays of tiny hair, this, and everyday i get to spend with you, is truly the brightest
The particular shade
I cannot wear my sunglasses when i gaze into the sun’s rays on the water / or into the chlorophyll dappled light through the trees – because the barrier between my eyes and the world is a film of unsubstantiated sense that I am not willing to part with / the sense of all my senses sensing the world at once is a gift too precious to unload / – a hat will not do my little hair strands must feel the sky / i need the fullness of my skin stretched like an organ of perception around me to feel the firm jolly soul of this rock I am sitting on ; and the air which is filled of so many lustful flies and crushed bone particles of days gone by / wishing themselves through the air / and the light only hits right when I can see it with my own little orbs of eyes : my little daffodils of seeing : and the particular shade of green on this new day of May is a brightness of verdant too vibrant to chastise behind plastic dark filter ; the hue and unmistakable shade of the presence around me I cannot name, or speak to, but can feel through my skin ; through precious sacred cones and rods in my eyes ; that filter my brain through the highest Bliss this little body has ever known / the presence always around me –
the month wraps around me – a cloud of haphazard seeming nothing-ness, a curtain of time zipped through the sweater — i wish i could be of more help, of more use, i wish i did not feel guilt for not being able to physically help ; i try to rest inside of my little body, be at peace with myself, be at fundamental solace – i am grateful for my hands, and what they make; i am grateful for my son, and how he smiles up at me through his eyes and claps wildly at the silliest of incantations; i am grateful for the sun, the rain, the bursts of spring that sing at my sides; i am grateful for the sound of the wind blowing through the branches, for food and clean water, for joy and safety ; i am hoping for everyone, for all things, for all beginnings to begin again;; i am hoping
easter
egg bobbles on the top of the soil, you, glee-bucket and basket ready are full of light, full of april and its tender wishes towards the dandelion fields, the purple myrtles, the graciousness of grass – the firmament of birth and rebirth // capture towards the daylight, rapture towards the timelessness of searching / i hurriedly wrap your tiny gift in pastel silk and watch as the sprout blossoms of the new green world lends itself to your discovery / you laughter smile cannot be replaced, the five-year-old wonder that will always hold more weight than gold ; the diamond of your eyes flashing / your trill of golden hair flashing in the sunlight – silk flow fabric ties glancing over the grass // this rebirth sound, this resounding sound of the clouds meeting the earth, and resting, releasing, and re-starting again
the endless hyperbole
rattle sun-star – fragments of eternal light pouring down on us now, piles of endless photons smothering the grass in chlorophyll and love ; rain down, the fullness of molecules carried from some other ocean ;; radiate, some resonance of the new season peeking out of a daffodil’s eye ;; saturate me, the rest of the world turning in time, the turn of the wheel wondering back at me, the wonder of the earth twirling it’s dance — bird song and cloud thunder, the rapture of energy trilling up the trunks of trees, the curtain of dandelions pulling themselves over the green stage
your little voice i hear over the hill and through the bushes, putting sentences together and discovering spelling between your teeth, reading the world around you and slowly, seemless-ly, coming in to consciousness and the wild world that sings to him – in every splintered cell, every swollen blossom — a heiroglyph, a letter to us all ; the endless hyperbole of being alive
i wish we deserved bernie ; i wish we all treated each other better, more fairly , i wish we thought of ourselves as a we, viewed politics as a means to take care of one another, rather than a tribal and petty battle royale
this time
every day a slow tendril, curling and unfurling – every acid washed blossom fever a call towards the wild – every wildness we all inhabit, a dream towards the unending future – this spring, the strangest springboad, the utter and endless transformation of the world into a new place altogether – all together // all tenderly cupping our hands towards each other, all reaching, all sitting quietly and asking for nothing more ;; the strangest thoughts have been coming to me, because my brain has to flip this or else I will be swallowed by it — I’ve been allowing myself to think — what a gift this time is, what a true gift (for those of us not suffering and ill) — to settle down, to need nothing, to race towards nothing, to be forced simply to live, with no goals or accomplishments or the ticking of tocks towards us — simply the ending time of spring unfurling like a slow bud — her glory all around us, unabashedly hitting us over the head with nature’s magnificence – everyone forced to stop their rattle train of thoughts, their mill wheel of endless hurrying — to be with ourselves – to sort through our thoughts – to sit with the uncomfortable feeling and to be forced to sit through it – to push past it – to be able to take the time for ourselves, to gaze inwards at ourselves and outwards at the brilliant limbs of trees outside ourselves – to look towards the sky and watch the blossoms bud — what a gift this time is
You gallup-giggle, splash through the Suds, a lump of fresh soap bubbles the finest joy this side of the Delaware river ; something profane transcended in the plastic blue body of your flying dolphin, soaring through this afternoon’s ocean – our own barrier reef in the bathroom – leaping, this dolphin as he flies towards patchwork tan tile – the wildest adventure in the neighborhood — screech shout and slosh about ;; now mush muddle and flop about ; now Donnie the dolphin floats effortlessly towards the triumph of the steel spout , sugar spice and everything meaningful — now swirling, now submerging, now surfacing – the sight; the singing sounds of so much important work being done
what riveting birth
To release the wheels ; to let myself release ; to wade into the muck of an uncertainty – to feel the spring bud all around you towards the starlight – i can do most anything inside of the spring ; I can withstand most anything inside of the marsh of the madness of March – the drooping tendrils of April and the fiery blossom sun of May –– I can do most anything / I can let my tapping fingers set themselves down / I can see new pathways, break all habits, forge new patterns, look at my time not like a metronome but like a ball of wild weeds cunningly spitting up from the Earth ; I can be the crazed bud season – I can pull myself towards the rooted structures that feed the banks of the canal ; the wild lettuce growing in patches out of the mud ; the air so filled with the smells of birth – no death rattling through the air anymore – the endless, endless chime of more than enough time to possibly know what to do with ;; what riveting birth
A wave of creative hum ; the slight smile at the end of the big Dipper dipping into the old world ; the ocean of timelessness – adolescent wish me knots and time worth tasting on the tip of your tongue – days worth wasting stacked on top of one another , making a selection of fossils waiting to one day be admired , millennia in the future
If this is all I had of my life , this would have been enough – these 20 some odd years ; the piles of sweet summer days hunkered beneath my left knee ; the traces of spring afternoons laced into my tibia ; my DNA will sing of blissful captures ; moments ratcheted into my brain cells ; hunks of breath laced into my lungs ; the best tasting laughter ; the medicine of always more – the growing towards creating – the moving towards the NeverEnding coming / if this is it, this was enough / I am grateful for this / I will always be grateful for these years I have lived so blissfully / and if we walk towards despair , towards economic depression , I am not afraid of what loss I will live through – this has been enough already , and the gratitude of my limbs reaching towards the yellow road lines paved down the street – the aching twist of freedom , that I got to run at all , that I got to stand inside of crowds of people and feel the energy of oneness at all , that I got to be doused in the rain in a concert sprinting through the all of us , that I got to race down the highway laughing with friends , fumbling into party , stumbling into bar , curled up in a sleepover , warped through a meadow, a bunch of people lying in the grass strumming some guitar , wading through some soft river , adventuring with strangers – that I got to do any of these things at all – that my body got to be blessed with all of these adventures ; all of these theatre’s , all of these casts , all of these strange creations with people I didn’t know who then became family , that I got to camp , that I got to trust any stranger next to me – who could ask for any more than this ;; I hope against hope for Jamie, that he will get to experience , that he will get to grow and unfurl ; and whatever children I have yet to be a part of ;; no answers anymore , just more questions stacked on top of one another ; but I will be there and I will be fearless , and I will try and try again to remember my fearlessness no matter how many times I forget, or misplace it, or place it on top of another person, I am always this fearless, this strong, this hopeful
will it take us
How do I live in service ; how do I live in joy ; how do we all live in community and giving and thanks and gratitude and awe of the incredible planet we inhabit — I can finish my words and I can hope that they speak to someone , I can be a good mother , I can be kind to friends , selfless, without vanity, aware of what feeds jealousy, pain and self comparison , I can be honest with myself and with others , I can be vulnerable and show that as an example – how we never need to be afraid of our own hearts – our only beating everythings ; I can be myself and show that we always can feel comfortable in our own skin / what if this is the dream come true in the strangest form possible : not violent revolution or bloody upheaval or confused economic battling but finally, finally the mother Earth itself spitting up and attacking back – a purging no less violent than the cross-cutting of a forest fire – for the way all things must die in order to make room for the next – the way the Earth always cleanses itself ; knows how to cleanse itself ; what if it isn’t the death but the upheaval ;; what if we show without a doubt that we are all one – beyond border, Nation, language, religion / what if it is proven as clear as day / what if the economy has to flip on its head simply because it has to respond / what if this is the earth responding and we have to respond back / but if it is always a little bit of chaos and a little bit of divinity and a little but of everything else, what if it is the chime of a beating heart / an antibody that rejects toxicity ; what if this is transformation and inherent universal catalyst it has to happen; beyond blame and what if what it shows is that humans are better than we ever give them credit for – that creativity and living and inhabiting our bodies is absolutely vital to our health and happiness ; that getting outside and communing and being together is what our bodies crave ; that we will help each other rather than compete against one another in our nature ; and that economic redistribution is what we truly truly need in order to combat crises and in order to live in a sustainable way ; what if we learned to dig our fingers into the soil and recognize that we are all interconnected and that we must seek joy and bliss over anything else // springtime lightraya shining through any and all pains / the buds that always come back – call us out of our skin – they call us out of our boxes and the useless competition we place on the other / the useless ascent towards profit , towards progress , towards accomplishing nothing at all , but we lack the recognition of the everyday grace of inhabiting a body ; inhabiting this world and sharing community with one another / but if we remember that — if we have to remember that — what if we necessarily have to follow upheaval where it will take us — and where will it take us
