thankful i am, for the swell of the wind, the glow of the atmosphere, the billow of branches — grateful i am, for your little cupped hand, how it fits into mine, the warmth of your eyes as you look in to mine, how your mind keeps growing, how your words keep sharpening, how wonderful it is to speak to you, to hear your thoughts as they get thicker and thicker, as concepts and creations take hold in your imagination, as your consciousness touches the new horizon, and then the next, and the next — grateful for my little home, for the way the leaves framed it with yellow and red before they fell to the ground; for the earth and the wind; for good stories and warm tea; for my ability to create, for the willingness of my art to keep coming; for the space between the sky and the rain; for all the things i can remember and all the things i cannot; for heating and warmth and the energy within my body that has not dimmed; for love and hope and the hope that refuses to die
paper boat
november has slowed to a soft drumbeat — i hear the old songs twirl in the leaves, i always think about the tribes slipping through the breaks in trees at this time; the wild land, the languages lost to the forests, the wisdom lost, the courage laced in the bark, the names of places we have covered over with our brutal words, our blunt hypocrisy, our tall tales, our spinning ships, our tumbled stories that find our way onto placemats and cutouts — 2d drawings of a simple pilgrim’s hat and a feathered band around the head — the only distillation we can swallow, the small, fast print-out of a history thick with complexity, lax with truth, thin with answers — the full-bodied resonance of a bonnet fleshed out of new cotton; something that was so much more heavy than the thin sheet of pressed paper we want to cut out with our tiny scissors; chop chop, snip snip, history is a folded diorama, (you can glue it together at the end — fold over the parts you don’t want anyone to see — as long as the boat floats, as long as it holds water,,,, as long as the boat floats, who cares if it’s made of paper)
blue
Cascade of blue, we fly down the coastline, wiping the map clear of our fervor; our rage and our hope; our joy flies about the streets like a sickness we are all willing to catch;; like the fever dream of a coming future we had yet to imagine; the future splays out to me in different colors now:: different sounds I hear, echoing back now, different snippets of songs :: the future looks brighter now, bolder, older / The world is still thick with corruption, with greed, with illness of morality; the world still sinks without values and drills into the arctic and bombs without care;; there is no but :: there is no excuse ; there is no explanation ; there is only the reaching and reaching and reaching towards the beloved community of tomorrow that we must build ;; there is only the healing of divides, divisiveness and hatred that we must build towards ;; always and always reaching towards the supremacy of love only :: I don’t know what the future holds but I know that it must be guided by love //
day of the dead
Today I crack the door open to all my ghosts; to all those wandering inside the roots and cracks in the stone , the piles of dirt between the plants, and their tiny wishes ;; the veil, the rim, a blushing bride ;; the courage of us all, to keep going even inside of all this darkness and all this death; today I greet the ghosts I do not know, today I think of you, of course, my friends, my dear friends;; I think of grief and how it begins to settle in you;; how the cement begins to set, with all your fingerprints in it;; I think of the coming season — my bones have changed shape just since yesterday; everything rattles towards winter:: towards my fear of it; the long strokes of anxiety that fill my muscles;; the season of golden light replaced so quickly with the bluster and glare of November; of grey and wind whipped streets;; the coming herald of civil war and unrest //
And then I try to pull that golden light towards me once again ; you wrapped in purple and yellow fabric ;; a glow with a certain kind of smile only candy wrappers can bring // prancing your little feet in boots you’ve had for years now; running through the streets decked with all the human spirit you can imagine ;; inside of all the skeletons and corpses there is the glow of the human spirit trying not to die ;; fiercely reaching towards one another through a mask or a costume or a pipe or a rope and pulley ;; the long glaze of yellow grass, the dotted sheaves of colour sprinkling across the brick; the wide verandahs, the ornate and pastel trim on these old victorian houses, and still your feet dance faster & faster // we pick up speed as you spot this house that one and then the next and then the next;; you tireless joy warrior, proud, and spinning in your frock;; your face in a pile of fallen leaves ;; the street lantern glowing auburn as the light trickles out of this beautiful month for the last time
a small heaven
the song the leaves sing after all songs are done singing ; the words they whisper through the water ; the leaves lay gliding on top :: sunbathing ; or cascading around in the small cool rays of autumn // the lily pads flinching as they hold sweet visitors :: the soft new residents of the surface of the water ; the hues you would not believe ;; the tarnished brown; the gently burnt gold; this viridian; this sublime orange, that swings gently down off the tree; a sliding more gentle than you can imagine;; I could describe it to you –– but having never seen it yourself, it might only seem like a replica of a photo ; or a memory of a film reel ; instead of the endless opening towards a small heaven that it is
crimson, orange + lemon yellow
radiant day + lamplight afternoon, the silent wishes of a thousand leaves playing in harmony with the light — the gentle wish of autumn, to carry itself through every bending branch — to transform the formed, to resonate inside the cellular singular singing voices of the grass, the grain, the hurried rain — the fumbled moments that sit outside of your brain — the lenses that tap at the glass of your eyes, that ask to come in, that do not bring anything with them but air and gold — the streaks of summer sliding out of the spines of green — the cascading hues all across the landscape — circumnavigating the residual blues and violets and sinking in to all that crimson, orange + lemon yellow — yellow as far as the eye can see, the splendor of falling in to color over and over again, the palette of your heart just a beating thing, a fearless wing of a season turning over and over — reclaiming the word change, reclaiming the world the continues to change, whether we fall with it or not
setpiece
i am happiest when i remember the illusion of time; the way that everything still exists in some section of the cosmic microwave background, in a small parcel of poetic cells that reverberate like mirrors;; the way our small brains believe we are on a set of tracks heading forward — when i remember the illusion of time there is no space for regret, or mis-step, or mistake,, life, such an uneven dreamscape, the Dreaming, an ever present landscape we wander; the wakefulness of consciousness casting itself like a shadow over a mass of changing landforms ;; my heart, a few strings and wires tying me to everything — the fundamental strangeness of mind we can never define ;; i feel no fear, thinking about the edge of the universe where all our everythings lie, the plurality of universes laying on one another like a well-placed stack of children’s blocks – this timeline, a strange reverie trying to wake a sleeping giant, perhaps;; a tune singing some mythic gods to sleep ;; events like a never ending clap, an applause set in motion , always an audience to the illusion of what we are shown on the stage, what waits in the wings, and what the whole fucking theatre is — and the everything, all around the edges of the building, as far as the cosmic microwave background; the never-ending setpiece
a cup of stars
Hand raptured melody ; like a fragment of a memory ; sleeping on top of my roof at 16, the September I learned what the stars looked like from on top of my house ; lay on the cement, slept with pulled blanket just next to the edge, never rolling off, and we stared and talked about boys and wondered what our futures would hold ; we wondered what sex would feel like ; we discussed the song that was playing in the van when you made out with that senior during free period and the thought of him was driving you wild // Somehow now the tears singe my eyelashes because friendship feels like a cup of stars you cannot hold ; a couple little girls lying on a rooftop in September waiting for the phone to ring ; the chill bell of tomorrow waiting to ring ; your wedding bells waiting to ring ;; and I miss you sharp incision of wit, cleverness and wilderness, I distain the way we grew up and lost our flippers and fins // the boldness of reverie // I disdain time and what it has taken away
The leaves are still emerald but the cold comes whipping through soft air, the high grass, the lily pads, and the branches drifting in the water like lonely soldiers ;; the yellow dots the roadways ; the flowers pluming up in disarray ; the curled conscience of the world
the first Red leaf
As long as you feel the air around you, you are fine / as long as you feel the day around you, with its tendrils, its curling spine, the wandering light and the peak of cold dipping in between the shadows, you are fine ;; focus your perception on the senses around you ;; your wild ears that get to hear the birds call, the grass whisper, and if you are so lucky, a body of water that sings back –– if you are so lucky, sing towards a new day — collapsed words, endless day, crease towards branches that are still buried in the muck, in the marsh of summer –– carry your sadness as a totem around your neck, march towards tomorrow with abandon ;; what have I done to deserve this endless day
The communion, the way things all touch and touch back –– the way it is all of the things : the whole forest all together at the same time, and each singular piece and its own existence as well ;; each leaf each tree each root and all the same entire mountain all together
Because everything is a relationship ; a way of interacting with the world
Fall in love with the world over and over again / fall in love with the world a hundred times over / fall in love with the fresh, first breath of air in the morning ; with the first Red leaf that falls from the trees in September ; fall in love with the small rocks on the path ; with the moss covering the ground in shades of emerald ; fall in love with the bark on the trees ; the eyes that look through everything ; the conscious Forest ; the bones of the mountain pulling up out of the ground every so often ;; the whole beast of it, and that we get to enter into this world // how alien to be formed / what a gift to be formed –– I get to feel so many things, so many wild, insatiable things : but the wind and the clouds and the roots perhaps know not of the horrible pain, the exhaustion in the back of my spine, the wild and wonderful thing it is to exist in a body
the sacred is just a seeing space : a clarity of mind
the recognition of the sacredness of every single thing around you
the divine is just a set of eyes
september welcomes you with gentle, warm rain pattering on the roof and a still languid chorus of insect chatter
be gentle with yourself, the world is still a spinning web trying to find you;; the hearts of insects still beat in the night, the fluttering wings of flowers still are yet to open — curling days sit on the edge of the bathtub with you, everything sits in silent splendor at one moment or another — and yours, truly, is always here; is coming endlessly; a silent train on the endless tracks of rubber and steel that forge their way across the roots of this country; or any country; any wild moon will thump through the evening’s mist, but this one today is everlastingly yours
