ARRIVING IS ARRIVED
Slow & steady is, paradoxically 
The fastest way there; is slow
Actually slow? Or 
Has any mystic ever said rushing 
Is the sustainable road
To there, where ever we go

Do what feels insufficient 
Actually, it should feel insufficient
That's the key that lets us know
We're on our way

We'll never get there at this pace
We are going too fast
We must slow down
Or else return to where we started

Heart rate at 80% 
Decrease to 70%
Go a bit further 

Feeling dizzy? 
Decrease the pace
Soften the impact on your joints

Strengthen your muscles for slowness
It won't happen overnight 

And next thing you know it,
We're there, looking back
In awe

FOUR QUESTIONS
What is the relation between you and the absolute?
What counts as knowledge?
What is consciousness made of, and what is everything else?
Is the body an obstacle or the vehicle?


A.
(1) The gods eat what you offer and the offering holds the year together
     (2) Order is something you do, correctly, at dawn

(3) Salt dissolved in water is nowhere and everywhere in the cup
     (4) You are that, and the sentence takes a lifetime to finish

(5) Trust the four senses and the skin
     (6) Heaven is a fee collected from a man who will not be present to complain


B.
(7) The words command rather than describe
     (8) Meaning lives in what your hands do at the right hour, and that doing is the law

(9) Reality can be counted
     (10) Eternal atoms, six categories, a world that assembles itself by rule

(11) Say how you know it
     (12) Perception, inference, comparison, testimony: no belief sits down without showing its papers

(13) Nature dances for a watcher who never applauds
     (14) Freedom is noticing you were never the dancer

(15) Still the turnings of the mind until the watcher stands alone
     (16) Diagnosis with a training schedule attached


C.
(17) Only the bare particular is real
     (18) And every word for it is a fence around what it is not

(19) Nothing has ever happened.
     (20) No rope, no snake, no one frightened, no dawn in which the error is discovered

(21) One awareness wearing the world the way a room wears its lamplight
     (22) Separateness is the longest-running optical illusion

(23) Different from God and identical to God by nature, the way a wave is water
     (24) No illusion required and none offered


D.
(25) The world is real and it is God's body
     (26) Love requires two, so the second is never dissolved

(27) You are your own, and never for one second self-supporting
     (28) Both halves of that are the entire doctrine

(29) You and God never merge
     (30) The soul's dignity lies in remaining itself and loving what stays Other


E.
(31) The one you are looking for is in neither the mosque nor the temple
     (32) You have been carrying them around all morning

(33) One name, no caste at the door
     (34) The work of the world is where the practice happens


F.
(35) The oldest metaphysics repackaged for a world of nations
     (36) Translated into English and shipped back

(37) Ask who is asking
     (38) Follow the question all the way home

(39) Evolution has not finished
     (40) Consciousness is still descending into matter
     (41) Matter is still learning to hold it

(42) Truth is what is undergone
     (41') The body is where the argument is made

(40') A religion that assigns you a birth is an arrangement wearing religion's clothes
     (39') Take the dharma, leave the rebirth, keep the justice

(38') Truth is a pathless land
     (37') And every method handed to you was the obstacle


E'.
(36') The world is God's real play and no illusion to flee
     (35') Grace carries you, effort only tires you

(34') One with God and apart from God are both true
     (33') The contradiction is inconceivable, which is the point; surrender rather than solve


D'.
(32') Carry Shiva on your body
     (31') No temple, no priest, no caste; equality is the whole of the spirituality

(30') Soul, world, and Shiva all real
     (29') Impurity binds you; grace alone cuts the knot

(28') Reasoning rebuilt with instruments fine enough to measure the difference
     (27') Between a thing and its absence


C'.
(26') Do not leave the body
     (25') Perfect it -- until breath and posture forge something death cannot collect

(24') One blissful consciousness plays at being everything, including you
     (23') Recognition is the only work there is

(22') Desire and body are fuel
     (21') (given that you know which direction to point them)

(20') Ultimate reality is feminine and active
     (19') Raw power is itself divine rather than a tool in divine hands


B'.
(18') The word came first
     (17') And is still holding the world in shape

(16') What you take for a world is consciousness reporting on itself
     (15') Having forgotten that it filed the report

(14') God descends in graded forms
     (13') So that finite beings have something they can actually reach

(12') Four chapters of sutras
     (11') So terse that every school after could read its own face in them

(10') Court disgrace deliberately
     (9') Shame burned in public is the shortest road to being rid of whoever was feeling it

(8') Nothing carries its own being
     (7') Emptiness is also empty; this sentence is scaffolding to be taken down


A'.
(6') No potter, only the turning
     (5') Suffering has a cause, and a cause can be cut

(4') Every claim is true from where it stands and false one step over
     (3') Injure nothing, the truth included, and the soul rises by weighing less

(2') Fate has already dealt the hand
     (1') Striving is theatre, well performed, moving nothing


Is the body an obstacle or the vehicle?
What is consciousness made of, and what is everything else?
What counts as knowledge?
What is the relation between you and the absolute?
FOUR QUESTIONS

PHYSIC
Physis, fuses 
Energy generated between 
One object of worship and another
I worship what is behind the object
Following the path up over 
Into the smallest place, tightening
Compression on all sides of me
The lens between alignments 
Breathing life into exhortation 
Sun rolls in the meadow
A thousand seeds blown 
Apart, to dust, to smithereens 
Decanter lever~aging 
Pulling water up out of the pipe
Well-wishing the one I loathed 
The one who took everything from me
I bow to and thank 
Another year, another onion bloom
Tall green spikes with pink 
Pink at this time of year 
Seems a shame almost, and yet 
I grin through the grit of passage
Greeting the sand before me 

An ant pushes a stone twice its size uphill
Drops it at my foot, then turns
And walks away 

MURMURIES
A murmurandum
Walking appeal
I cannot recall, when?
Lashing out, a ripple
Across the surface of the sun
Flares internal blinding me
8 elements in one body
Tightly packed, to focus
Light and unlight through
One end to the other, recording
Some flash of feeling, an insight
From something unexpected
Unforeseen ordinary, I catch
Myself looking, a bit more closely
At myself; she cannot know
Cannot not know — I'm staring
Again, I come back to the feeling
Reverberating, a pulse of life
Across my skin
Too tight to tell, I sense
A tremor grumbling inside me
Shaking my heart to sleep
To wake, and rush back
Into the flower downturned, where
The nectar hides waiting
My long face is not made for
This strange ritual, yet
I bend down and move close
To look more carefully
At what's inside. 

APERTURE
Periority
Opens, widens 
Silt sand 
Filter emerald
Pearl cuse 
Light flutter
Flicker faint
Sand rolls
Dark hills
Wind flats
Rolling hounds
Sterile rounds 
The ruby thrull
A ghouling hull
Golden thread
Gray eyes 
In the back of my head
Live TV 
Through the pyramids 
To the pulsing root
Of the earth 
To the vibrant core
Crystalline hex 
Curse to the six 
Singing dimensions 
Hiralling into me
The toral field
Invelopes the axis
Twisting the center
Into the fray
Knots riding time
Carouseling again
Back into the moment
A nexus calm 
Sublunacetics rise
Rinsing ash
Into pebbles soft 
Gray stoned at the edge 
Of a vast still surface
Motionless
Not a drop
Disturbs it 
The breath moves
Rippling surface taut
A riddle tense 
Before the way unfurls
Linking into
A whiralling stair
Black and white tile 
Steps down 
A landing | the arch
Mirror to seeing 
Passes through 
Beyond seeing 
Self as — self 
Seeing self 
A chair of roots descending
To the platform
Sit — the crystals come up
Through the hands
Blood breathes 
In unison with the root
Matter, pulsing 
Accelerating 
The inside splits
Casts itself out
Into the vast subaether 
Field formatic 
Pulsing out
Feeling
Shapes 
Abandoned structures 
Lost 
Windows appear
Open lens 
Through the eye
Of another me 
Self-possession 
Buttressing me out
Of the eye, into my own
Floating cube 
The room is not a room
I am becoming myself

FROM CONTRACTING TO EXPANDING
Stretch the spine; flip the channel
Contraction is over 
Utilized, the deeper route
Calling forth a shift 
Inhale, after the sneeze 
Eyes tingling, what is 
Contraction? Curling in,
Tightening up, folding
Legs, constricting
Shoulders, jaw clenching,
Teeth grinding, stomach
Sleeping, focus narrowing,
Hands gripping, head
Bowing, knees together,
Mind intensifying, energy 
Compressing, ligaments 
Cracking, joints locking,
Breath constricting, heart 
Emptying — into 
What follows: expanse
Download the expansion pack
Install, then restart
Begin fresh, with wide gaze 
Sending out reaching
Appealing, to reveal 
The next identity that beckons 
Us from our sHells
Forth, forth! Away again
Into the unimagined impossible
Freshly imagined possible 
Tidal shift, reckoning 
Crashing on stones, softening 
Points to an undefined limit 
Which does not exist,
Yet is real: this unbecoming 
Becomes us, fresh anon
I cannot speak more of it
I will burst! We must burst open
A fiery star arcing up
Across our path, overhead 
It does not fall at our feet
But yearns up until it disappears
In the distance, summoning
Courage in the hearts of all
Beast and being, friend and foe
We are all savage to ourselves 
Our potential, which negates 
Every teaching, wise words fall
On open ears, hollow 
In the vibrating space 
Between our walls, an opening 
Cavernous resonance 
Ceiling like the bowed hull 
Of a ship, buoyant at the base 
Of the ocean, us huddled 
In its captured air, silent 
A harp begins to play 
A lyre joins in, a sitar
Strings bounce, off one 
Another is born in the meeting
And energy reverberates;
The walls buckle, and burst 
Water, expected, is nowhere 
Instead: darkness, light 
A new world is out there
It won't happen without us 
60 yogini circle round 
Four more inside, and
At center: look, tell me

What is it you see?

NUMBERS ARE SYMBOLS, NOT CONCEPTS
Symbols point past themselves, the best expression 
Of something that can't be fully known
The part of the number arithmetic can't touch
Symbols participate; concepts denote —
Threeness is a living quality
Arithmology, gematria, arcana 
Carrying resonance across a threshold:

One is the circle, the dot, the infinite sphere, 
The center without circumference
The circumference without center
Neither odd nor even (or both) 
hen to pan — "One, the All"

Two is the tolma, "Audacity"
The primal act of daring
By which One departs from itself 
The second day is the only one not called good
Because division entered the world that day
And yet too, contemplation, definition, identity

Three means "many" — three strikes, strokes
Trismegistus: "great, great, great" the superlative
Repetition as divinization
The separate come together 

"One becomes Two, Two becomes Three,
And out of the Third comes the One as the Fourth"
Maria Prophetissa's alchemical riddle 
The four pillars, the four directions, the four stages
The group becomes a nation; the words a language
And the languages, a tower of babel — the pillars 
Must come down 

Five, the endless knot, five fives interlocked
The marriage number, the embodiment itself 
The four get a fifth inserted: Pentagrammaton
The bright shining star falls at his feet 
The village knows it is from Her and cannot be lifted 
On his own — only together 

6 is not perfect because of the six days; creation 
Occurred in six days because six is perfect 
One plus Two plus Three; Bees, 
"by a certain geometrical forethought", chose
The hexagon

The Seven gates of Inanna's descent, each stripping
An ornament from the body — the seven apkallu
Fish-cloaked sages who brought civilization
Before the flood — "the lost pleiad", explanation
Why only 6 of the 7 sisters can be seen
One of humanity's oldest stories 

Ascent past the seven planetary archons 
Into the Ogdoad, the sphere of liberation — 
Baptismal fonts are octagons: the "eighth day"
Stands outside the week; resurrection time 
Beyond time 

"Nights all nine" Odin hangs on Yggdrasil — 
The nine herbs charm: cure poisons, sickness,
Snakebites; Beatrice, herself, is a Nine 
"A miracle whose root is the trinity" 
The wink at nonsense-edge 

10 — the Pythagorean oath swore
"By the one who gave the tetraktys",
Source and root of ever-flowing nature;
The antichthon, invisible Counter-Earth
Brings the celestial bodies to Ten 

Eleven, the transgression — overstepping ten
While falling short of twelve
"Eleven is sin"

The intercalary "dead days" number to Twelve
The smoke nights when ghosts ride and dead walk
The twelfth Imam is not dead but in occultation

The Zohar opens with a rose of 13 petals
The Thirteen attributes of divine mercy
Surrounded by thorns; Grimm's court owned 
Only twelve golden plates; the thirteenth wise woman's 
Exclusion is the engine of the story.
Maya made thirteen a sacred count, 13 heavens;
The true number of lunations in a solar year

Osiris is torn into Fourteen pieces; Isis recovers 
Only 13 — the fourteenth is eaten by a fish 
The fourteen nights of the waxing moon refill the eye
David's name is 14 — a number-symbol
Governing a text's architecture 

"Beautiful, complete" as the Zero-marker in construction
Leveling and bookkeeping — nothingness 
Written as beauty. Śūnya was first metaphysical
Before it was given arithmetic rules, including
The forbidden act of dividing it

GREAT GODDESS
Mother of God
There is no Son before Mother
He comes from Her, the Father
Is the Son: He comes from Her.
She who is proto~emergent
Rising into the rising, becoming
That which She rises into — the body
Is Her body — we live her
As here is her province, and there
Too, was what she was, all
In all apparent, preimmanent
All in thus being, she rails
Against the dark, rallies the dark
To her — all comes to her call
From her great ringing, a sound
Strums down the garden of absence
Void the universe of stars, stones
Circulating space, made of gold
The implosion of time unwoven
To the material, praise
Her name, great as it is hollow
And meek as wrathful — 
I stumble on a seed and drop
In the ocean, my heart knows
Nothing, but the core place
Drumming my beat into her
I fold into the tree and root
Into sky, pulling light from the deepest
Reaches of earth — where does the light
Come from, that is dark in nature? 
We do not ask why, but appreciate
The impossibility which is her work. 

EVERY ELEMENT IS EMOTIONAL 
Stand in the wind and tell me it doesn't move you
Stand barefeet on the earth
Watch your house burn, ash floating with feeling
Hammer metal to metal, sparks fly 
Travel through the woven fabric of aether,
Between dreams where the recesses of love
Live in the fairest flows
Water takes us in its currents, of course
Every element has its currents which take us 
Beyond, beyond — into the beyond 
Where something sleeps soundly, a wave 
Tidal precipice, precipitous weights counted
For three treacheries, I will not go astray 
My words will hum with every aspect motive
Motivating a depth of sentiment, mud 
Bathing until every static longering loses
Its pulse in the shuddering leaves, no longer 
Translucent, now a wall, oblique opacity 
Scintorial; I look up and see, something 
Moving again beyond the scope of my seeing
It takes me with it, my heart, my thinking, my whole
Knowing, I can not catch the whole of it 
A smile, perhaps — a smirking grin 
Is it deceiving me? Does it matter if it makes me
Move again, to the sides of where I've been 
The game shakes, earth quakes my soles 
Upset, out of balance — I fall with the maple's 
First flowers, green bells scattering the ground 
With a heat raging within, quietly at first
The clock cannot talk to me like them 
Silently swaying to me, in my belly gut contusion
Intruding instigating, talk to me not of such silly things!
I wish for the weight of the world to press against me
Every mountain crush down upon me, breathless 
The gust fills my lungs at the end of its run 
A numinous ordinary essence rushes my blood platelets
Scales covering my skin in armor, cinching 
Rings bend with me, untrusted uncorroded
Look: the ants remind me to wake and work 
Together, together — we move together again
Lines of hives mycorecipital, electric charge 
Differential equations, add the area to fix 
The infinite to the real: both curves and points 
Exist and do not exist, limits let us find through 
Something abstract into something enmeshed 
A body is not a body is a body I 
I breathe and press and pull and blow out 
Take in a rhythm, rhythmically — I cannot deny 
No part is unmoving to me: everything 
Everything moves me.

TRANSLUCENT GOSSAMER
A thousand invisible layers alter the light
Burgeoning brilliance, an auric glow
The image behind is not obscured 
Our attention is drawn into the substance
Between, through which the light moves
Reflecting and refracting time 
The scarcely visible red gold thread inside
Stretches through every transmission
Consider the voice which returns to you
Your own, altered comprehensively 
Without loss of recognizance, we notice
The continuum of meaning, a faint mask
Dropped, revealing face sublime 
A material emanence which emits the received
Radiance of a sun indirect, apricot shimmer 
Peach and jewel-like leaves covered in hair
Thin tendril roots into the air, immersed 
In the stories of every lineage diving 
Toward the present moment, spiraling soap suds
Draining flesh of life, I follow the moment 
As is beneaths a wildebested bellow 
My eyes move to the ceiling, hairs 
Reaching down toward me, I hear her voice
Whispering mad drivel, perfect elegance 
Not a word out of place — I am the chain 
Chained to the ones who came before me 
They say to break the chain; I keep it 
And care for it, the patina'd metal links 
Singing minerals wishing the world into being
Lithium and cobalt and copper green 
Ultra pure silica sand in North Carolina
Giant harbor ports disrupting supply routes
Mapping new silk roads, stones given wings
From fission to fusion — the separation yields
To union, the birth of helium (which too is needed)
For the earth to express its intelligence in the new
Unexpected artificial ways to future unimagines
Sing to me of the symbol, the symbolic depths
Which merge with the heights to create 
Neither heaven nor hell, nor terrest embodied
The vision becomes flesh, beating red beneath
Glowing through, the light shines in translucence
As a million stars fall upon the mountaintops 
Barreling into the sea, grains of sand lost and 
Found, a feeling of absolescence, charity dried
I give myself to the feeling, immersing my self
In the feeling — why do the robins gather on the hill
Around me: gold-breasted with a round black cap
The cherries and lilac and magnolia bud and burst
Together with maple, with yew, with aged white pine 
Pieris cascades, fairy bells — a crest of violets
Picked to adorn the body, carried solemnly
With celebratory excellence, abominations cry
And blood is spilled upon the body, libatory 
Calls to the swallow's nest, apartment-like 
Built into the gothic brown stone steeple, ringing
Bells sound many tens of times as we pass by
Summoning the dead to bed, to rise 
As the end is already the beginning 
And the hill shall lament no longer 
Pink tubilustrium, but not for war 
We sing with the birds, with the tulip lotuses
Popping up along the water's edge, green moss
Like jellyfish, hovering transparent in the rippling
Way of life; ever changing my outlook
Looking in, I recognize the terraced hills,
The city of many walls, concentric circles
A raccoon is buried at the base of a tree
I hope her children are ok, that they are happy
Wherever they are, I hope they are well
Perhaps looking from afar at the strange 
Proceedings connected to their mother
Who had been so loathed in life, now honored
Guarded by the black willow, her pain alleviated
Permanently — this microthreading of time
Insists on its continuance, a vision of what's to come
As it winds and wefts and wafts its way
Back to us. I hold it between my hands and pray,
Pray for the pleasure of the world~

APPRAISING APPRISING
Appraisal apprisal
Rising from the dead 
To go down to the dead
Every epoch needs another heroic rebirth
Lugh, Mabon ap Modron, Baldr, Jesus,
Mithras, Peregrinus, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus
Zagreus, Persephone, Baal, Osiris, Inanna,
Tammuz, Izanami, Huangdi, Nezha, Pangu, 
Corn Mother, Rice Mother, Lord Skanda, 
Jataka tales, Kṣitigarbha, Hun Hunahpu,
Quetzalcoatl — descends to Mictlan and is reborn
The Morning Star — Venus! Goddess star bright
At the edges of day and night;
Descend and return;
Dismemberment and reconstitution;
Death-as-seed;
Ritual death of the king;
Stellar/astronomical death-rebirth;
"The Dying and Rising God" 
A cosmological grammar:
Descent -> Absence -> Return 
Many descend, but do not return
Complicating the cleanness of category
We mythologize psyche's seasonal rhythms;
Psyche's seasonal rhythms mirror myth
And epic — facilis descensus averno 
Goddess sibyl spirit both warns and, intrepid
Ventures through the seven gates underground
To meet the madness of the moment
The most egregious deadly unfaceable 
Sister sedition — we must come to face 
For her, there is nothing we will not face 
To grieve and receive the full weight 
Bellowing acrimony, acid spit detestable loathe
We are hung again on the hook, for the world
To suffer at her appraisal, which finds 
Us wanting, endebted beyond the pale 
Horseman ferry taker, take my coin
I bury it in the earth, gold returned 
As seed, precious maize, willow silk
Turmeric ginger saffron powder root, take it
I offer everything — I know it is not enough
I pray and bow and kiss and cry and wish 
This path a little easier for those to come
After me — this oath a little less necessary
To reach her, I will go as far down as necessary
To reach her. Us half-demon half-angel thirds 
Will cross every threshold boundary barrier 
Put in place to prevent our passage 
Just to barter with the goddesses, to entreaty —
Tell us: what can we do to amuse you? What would
Make it worth it? We quiet and listen..:

Three flowers bloom, white and red and purple
The wind moves their petals gently, as if dancing
Or were they dancing? The ground softens, opens
Bones come up, the crypts emptied
Ash, as all is blown away — a sun's many hued
Light bends from beneath the far edge of sky
And sky becomes deep blue, periwinkle mauve
The smell of spring, life pushing through decay
Last year's leaves red, skeletal crisp, wet
Explosion of birdsong in the hour before and 
Hour after sunrise — singing at the threshold
In the in-between light, too dim to forage
Rising pitch contours, repetition and elaboration
More complex, more ornamented
High frequency, pure tones carry further 
In the cold still air of early spring mornings
The return of Tammuz is accompanied
By the return of birds — the cuckoo is quintessential
In Irish, Welsh, and across Indo-Eurosphere 
Its first call an omen, an announcement;
The oriole in the Shijing, the bush warbler in Bashō
The nightingale along the Mediterranean, 
The skylark for the North — the swallow was the return 
Of the soul, heralded again by the cuckoo;
The red-wing blackbird on the eastern seaboard, 
The meadowlark across the plains, 
The red-breasted robin at my window, singing
Cheerily, cheer-up, cheerio in thrush tones
Perhaps the oldest liturgy on earth — predating
Human religion by hundreds of millions of years
We heard this spring hymn and joined in, embodying
The natural arcs and crescendoes of the earth
And it should be no surprise: the robin is kin
To the nightingale, to the uguisu — all in the 
Noble house of thrush — the "poem-bird"
There's a reason the dying-and-rising deity's
Return is so often explicitly accompanied 
By birdsong in these myths — Inanna's return, 
The resurrection morning, the greening after 
Persephone ascends, priestess of spring;
Birds sing at the threshold between dark and light,
Between life and death and life's renewal, 
The dawn chorus motivates resuscitation
And so we drum and hum up the sun every day
A grand symphony with no visible conduction 
Yet all know precisely how to play it, and when 
To rise, to clap, to yell and boom and bellow
The flowers turn to the sun they know will rise
And begin, ever so slightly, their unfurl in anticipation~ 

NOTICE THE BEAUTY TO BOLSTER THE FAITH
There are a thousand ways to distract yourself
With every imaginable horror
Addictions to behaviors that cause us stress
Anxiety at all the things we can't control
Faith is fickle — one moment we trust 
And then, lost in despair, barely afloat
I listen to the quiet music in the background
While I sleep — or try to
Overheating in the bed, imagination suffused
With desert shadow, reds golds greens
In miniature scale, every texture multilayered
Overlaying my senses my sight
I can't stay present with the land
Wishes to dispell a wonder which leads
Not to bemuse, the candid careen 
A bit off-course, no less the wiser 
While I wake — or wander half in dream
The sun crosses the sky, shifting light
Wanders the landscape, half in dream
Half awake, to the changing colors and heft
Eyes closed to the splendor, I feel it
All around me: the beating pulse 
Hot breath moving as wind in the branches
Burned shrub and brush, prickly pear 
Red red red, and bright parched green
Evolved to survive in feast and famine 
Flood and drought — stored in the roots
Shining skin plump or taut tight stretched
Dust kicked up, small lizard scales 
Tail flickering across the light, noticed
Until silence, stillness
Is not still — everything is moving 
While seemingly still, I catch my breath
Eyes open again, each an earth 
In scope magnifying and minifying 
Surmise the vibrating atomic quant 
With sunset behind, approaching dark
Hours of twilight haze over the valley
Reflecting light in bands refracting
An instant feels too long today
I beg for release from the ecstasy 
Which too has grown painful
In the extreme, I lose track of the vision
My faith falls again, fallen sense
Downward looking, the ground lifts me up
Holding, seeming ease 
A glittering light below as the night is born
Above, beeming down upon me, shattered
Into a thousand fragments of light 
Mosaicized sense, my self reparted 
Undone merge, back up 
The data, retrieve the image, store 
The working files, documented
Demented mirror — hope lives in derangement
And o-pinions are nobler than they seem
Perhaps noblest: so we notice
The best and most, the beautiful sublime transcendent
To bolster our faith in the unseen mechanisma
Even faith is fickle
The will is fickle!
The strongest held belief will change instantly
Plunge and plummet into else otherwise worse.
Change is the only guarantee 
Each movement is reciprocated in intensity
We follow the shifts and tend to them
Observe and articulate and share in them
And the one faint red glimmer reminds us:
It has always been worth it.

It always is. And will be~

GODDESS
The Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent DIOSA
No mere provincial goddess
I see how Ananke brought Her forward
Primordial Mother
Of ALL
Matri Deum
Mother of GOD
GODDESS
Less is not more
The lesser form is not more fundamental
-DESS is REMOVED to make God
Not ADDED to make Goddess
Ante
Not Post 

Less is not more
More is not lesser
The complex can be the beginning
Magna Mater
At the beginning is everything
Which we then shave away to find something
And beneath that, nothing
And inside that, everything 
The Mother of God may be
A more direct image to the Beloved
Who, yes, is beyond single and plural 
Beyond mother and father
Beyond motherfather, beyond fathermother
We understand this perfectly — so
Give the Mother a try
Not the Father, nor the Neuter 
(Behind whom may be the Father) 
The Mother: but don't belittle her
She is the great carer, yes
And the great destroyer
And the great ambivalence 
And the great jester 
And the great void
And the radiant sun
And the cold blood moon
The lover, and the mendicant
The sage, and the vapid fool
The warrior, and the priestess
The gambler, and the servant
The queen, and the tyrant
The compassionate, and the inconsiderate
She is the everything-and-more
She is the nothing-and-beyond
She is the neither-nor
And, yes, far more, far other, far similar
Than what can be written or said or sung 
Not even a dance can conjure it
And yet the dance is the whole of it
Her grace is written on the contours
Of a woman's eyes, cheeks, nose, chin
Her body, the essence of her muchness
Goddess does not deal in trivialities
And yet, she relishes in them 
She goes by many names, has many faces
Let us imagine Odin is a face of hers too, Shiva
Shining with Her light emanating through 
His eyes — we look in 
To see the golden warmth behind
Too hot to behold directly, we find images 
Words, shapes, sculptures, stones 
To become icons, signs pointing 
Reminders carved into our instincts 
The channels charted over almost 3 million
Years and years, untold billions of hands chiseling
Waterways coursing canyons deep, great 
Mother, guide our hands for another 3 million,
Or 300, or 3 years — whatever you wish
We will make it for you. How dare we;
You will make it through us, as all has been made
To your ends, to your mystery,
I look at the whorls of my fingerprints and know
You are there — looking out at me
Nearer than I can ever dare 
Between the will I dare and my self, I find
That hinting doorway, that winding corridor
I can neither see nor walk
A feeling comes over me and I follow
Before I know, I am
There, before the end 
Of the hidden way to her
Which has always been here for us

WHAT'S TRUE FOREVER
Today may no longer be true
Tomorrow. What's true forever today
May no longer be true tomorrow.
What's true forever today may
No longer be true tomorrow. What's 
True forever today may no longer
Be true tomorrow.

TO WRITE FOR THE FIRST TIME, EVERY TIME
As the first time leapt from nothingness, into
Sometime, so something is held from the rim 
Of no time, which too is had, as we have no 
Time with which to speak, no time with which
To write, as if for the first time, every time sings 
Into the bellyhallows of the deep, ringing up
Echoed harmonies, curling and whirling, down
The drain, a cyclonic query plumbing wonder 
In the crisp furls of a creased countenance, 
We call in response to the furrows, to the fallow
Earth, lifting our prayersongs to the tips of trees
And back down again, we offer in burial a somber 
Word, curling as it whirls along the corridors of mind.

Forget what you know, and reach out again—
The beloved's hand, new, awaits you~

COL~LAB~ORATION
Hic labor est
The chimera in the outlines 
Undermined, the perilous sense
Initiation does not happen in isolation
The world is always speaking to you
A bird, a pillow, a stone, a ghost
The words on this page, alive
No thing is a tool, to me
Every thing is always talking
Even I am talking, and not of my design
Not exclusively, at least not
Trichronic trialogic — we all authorize
Are authoritative, authoritatively 
Deferring authority to another
Who recognizes our authority, and so receives
An authority their own, only to pass it on
To the next — a game of ball
Triangulating meaning, witnessing vocal
Participants witnessing being witnessed
As the meaning moves on its own
From dwelling to dwelling, emerging
An evolution of its containment
We make and mix and rearrange truth 
To our best ability, we aspire
To lead without leaving behind
To follow without losing ourself
To honor the non-vocal third, which guides
From one bastion to the next
A sealing sound, finding ground
Commonality — to a shared reality
Where we can translate completely 
And coacknowledge fully, organismically
Recognize the antecedent, the antedote 
Before we devoted to doting
All the world our golden calf
The son a golden calf, the temple, the mother
Earth cracks open to inundate the whole
Transmigration of essence below 
To a newfound above, which is not better
And yet, is still above — I wonder
Where the meaning tills the land, where
It will land — among us
Bewildered and bemused, an anchoress 
Stylite pronouncement, heard from the pillar
Cast to the winds, traveling far 
Reaching into the mist, a veil of its own accord
We realize — the shroud was not meant to be crossed
We are meant to work together
And we are never not working together
On this, the paddock crypt 
Unlocking the gate, to let it swing
And release the unicorn within
Who has been kept, safely — as they wished
Until we were ready to see

The egg has opened.
Ananke opened it

LEARN LESS
Learn better

Spin the table 
The conscious likes to expand
Teach it to contract

Distill drops of wonder
In the throat of horror

Wipe half the board
Then wipe another half
Focus on what's left

We have to relearn less
Learn how to less
It is uncomfortable. I know
Draw it down, condense 

With each transition, more is lost
Each transfer lessens liquid, sediment 
This makes crisper, clearer 
More refined, more distilled liquid
Volatile concentrate, sanitary 
The sane is solitary
The solitary is not isolated
Isolation occurs in the middle 
Crucible containment, bubbling
10, 14 days longer — wait
Between transitions
Do not touch, do not disturb 
Notice it less
Set a reminder and trust it

I look at the candle flickering
I slip on the ice
I land, hard, on my hand and spine
A crack
A sprain — distension 
Sudden shock to the system
Ice falls around me
It is beautiful

Can I focus better, on less?
It is a matter of need, not desire
It is what making it through looks like
This turn around
Moving deliberately the pieces on the board
Into conscious attention 
Dropping into unconscious
Uncover soil and plant seeds
Wait — 10 or 14 days
Do not disturb 
Make yourself ready

I utter a thousand thank yous 
I shatter my mind
I forge it into an infinite sphere
It folds over into itself
From itself — an eon

Aion does not listen
They toy
Tossing round stones in the sand
Smiling grimace 

Urgency will not save you
Worry will not solve this
Becoming steadfast, will

This season spells it for us
The crystalline cast
Branches break
Trees fall, overweighted
Stars show bright, even brighter
Almost painfully bright
We turn our eyes downward

To the ground
Sunsetting 
Soil becomes purple, pink
Blush
Emblazon crimson 
The new moon cannot be seen
Below the earth, waiting 
A hundred spring thaws
Pregnant 

Take it in
Develop thoughts, project
Into filmic image, focus
The light in a dark room
Hang to dry, watch
The beauty unfolds

Unknown, is no less magnificent
The future is renewed in the present
Certain of what is uncertain
Assured in the outcome 
Brought back into this
A flickering candle
Releasing smoke
Melting impossible

Jupiter's rings are fainter than Saturn's
The two contract
Distinguished
A red mare between them
Untameable, trained
To unseat any rider
Race into the distance, turn
Look with eyes of round fire

After this darkness, an eclipse
Blood moon
Red
A ring of fire 
A jewel of shade 
Gateway to another world

The price to move through:
Focus
The quality of your attention
How distilled your conscious
Cease in your expanding!
The rainbow is all around

MAY IT BE BEAUTIFUL
May it be a blessing
May it bring you happiness
May it find you in the darkest moment
May it offer solace 
May it transcend this horror
May it keep us company
   in our grief
   in our longing
   in our life 

     The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
         they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
     planted in the house of the Lord,
         they will flourish in the courts of our God.
     They will still bear fruit in old age,
         they will stay fresh and green,
     proclaiming, “The Lord is upright..

                                         ~ Psalm 92:12-15