there are no historical records
of Jesus from the time
they say he existed
which should
make one question
if he existed at all

but you know
who was crucified

the ancestors of Turtle Island
for refusing to surrender
their relationship
with the Great Mystery
and put their spirits
under the chains
of foreign and external
authority

just as the free thinkers
and women healers
and pagans
and heathens
in other places
and other times
before them

that's a lot of sacrifice
from your ancestors
and mine
which ought to be
properly weighed
against one son
of the definable God
who was so true
his servants must now
control you
for you to understand
his truth

whereas those millions

who were crucified

in one way or another
as undeniably the children
of the Earth and Sky
knew they were
Creation's truth

so if you say
you're decolonizing
but you're a Christian
you might have further to go
than you think

I think maybe
atheists who claim
to love surrealism
are either lying
about their relationship
with spirituality
or their appreciation
of the art

don't trust them
especially those hipsters
they covet obscure tastes
like groupies collect
rock star VD

there is a difference
in judgement
and in challenge
where judgement says
you are wrong
but I am right
challenge asks
how did you build
this foundation
how solid is it
do you think this beam here
might work better there
would this brick
I have to offer
perhaps improve its strength
so it can hold us both

the often alone
are never alone
but the never alone
are often alone

are we as humans so greedy
we willingly partake
in the lotteries of contrived
and stacked against us fates
eager to accept a system
that divides what was always
for everyone to share
taking the risk against
impossible odds
that leave us most often
confined to poverty
without the hope
of any emancipation
just to have our shot
at being a have all
instead of an I have not

or maybe it is arrogance
that makes us think
we're special enough
to claw our way
across that line
or that we deserve
to take more than our share
even as ours is being taken

or so insecure
we think we need a little more
to get us by
and show the world our worth

or is it the vulnerability
of being susceptible
to susceptibility
and the ways our dreams
can so easily be interchanged
with outside stimulation

when we could all
have it all
and still we risk it all
in a game that's dealt
from the bottom of the deck
for the chance to take
more than what we need
and leave the rest
with the not enough
of the dreams
our grandfathers had
that become the nightmares
of our grandchildren
yet to come

it seems to me
that some men
are of two kinds

those who cannot understand
the language of intimacy
without the presence
of sex

and those who do not trust
the ways that sex can turn intimacy
to the language of a trickster
to obscure the greater truths

so that some men must touch you
to feel love with you
and others can only truly love
what they will never touch

when sex medicine
administered on its own
is for those who have forgotten
how it is to really feel

and ethereal connection
in the absence of any more
is for men who fear the outcome
if they ever dared to touch

Inside Out

we're the outside kind
so you were disappointed
when I stepped in to dance
but I already knew it
before I laid my hands
upon that tree
and still it was where
I had to be
because sometimes
you have to step in to really see
what it is you're looking at
when you stand out
and you have to trust
that learning in the backwards way
comes more naturally
than dogma to our kind

I watched you watch me
for two days
above the coulee hills
even as I said
I was willing to let you go
if there was someplace else
you had to be
but you just stayed and danced
up there on the outside
not letting go of me

and on the third day
there you were
barefoot and dancing
by my side
and all that I could do
was laugh so hard I cried
like I had lost my mind
when we both know that crazy
is when you gain control
and learn to really see
and there you were with me
for only just one round
but so vivid I could see
with both my eyes left open wide

playing your tricks
the way you played
with the constructs of this life
you came inside to dance
beyond the ways
I carried you in
inside my heart
and we were there
in that sacred lodge
but gone
to some other ancient time
our own time
our own dimension
the way we always worked the best

and for us
no matter where we stand
inside has always been illusion
because outside is the only thing
that we can be
when our spirits decide
to loose themselves to free
and you danced me outside
to just the free
of the inside of our love
where my one inside to be
has always been
transcendent with the way
two outsiders learn to weave
their own realities
from the inside out
to outside in
in a dance of eternal love
that dances in and out
of wherever it wants to be

maybe before
we can really understand
just how good we are
we have to let go
of any ideas we have
that we have to be good
and what that all
should look like

maybe knowing your good
comes from being cool
with sometimes being bad
and losing attachment
to being either one at all
so you can just be
the way your spirit
is asking you to be

once in awhile
you'll fall in love
with someone
who is everything
that drives you crazy
and all the things
that you can't stand

but once in awhile
the truth is
you're really in love
with all those things
that drive you crazy
and the ways you are
none of those things
but subconsciously long to be
is where the origin
of the conflict lies

and what a shame
we go so hard
at the ones we love
instead of facing the fear
of what it takes
to change ourselves
and be the potential
of our authentic

beyond comfortable resistance

with the love of self it takes

to stand before our mirrors
and see what we are shown

what a shame
that once in awhile
we fall in love
with someone
when we are everything
that drives them crazy
and then so willingly
we surrender
and change
all the things
that they can't stand

look to where
your heart is drawn
then tell yourself
the honest truth
about who you are
and who you want to be

be that

and once in awhile
you'll fall in love
with someone
and they will
drive you crazy
with the ways
you are everything

that drives them crazy
and the mirror
will be a map
that charts the difference
between the destinations
and the departures

the inspirations
to make a change
or the reasons
to take a stand

I'm trying to live in the now
between whatever
alleviates the past
and whatever doesn't
fuck the future up too much

somehow I'm pretty sure
I haven't got that quite right
but it gets me by
for now

evolution
will transcend
revolution
when the actualization
of intuitionalization
triumphs over
the cognitive dissonance
of the rationalization
of institutionalization

the problem with man-u-fractured
is that it makes a factory
out of man
replacing the hu[e]
and the being--
the colour
and the spirit
of being
a hu-man-being

Wine and Blood

they say wine
is the blood of Christ
but look where the wine
has got us
and what the blood
of martyrs has done
with manufactured
and indoctrinated violence
guiding us to our graves

what if we just agree
that to suffer for the people
should come from humility
and we don't need
fermented joy
confined within a flask

but if we're going to
suffer for the people
make sure
we remember how to laugh
because there is nothing
worth suffering for
but love

and the world
has never been
a better place
because of martyrs
drunk on wine
and their own blood

I've always said that wisdom
was more important
than happiness
or love
or peace
because I've lived
so much without

but what is the point
of wisdom
if not to attain these things

when to live without
a sense of each
is to go without
a sense of wisdom too

maybe it's not about
how much time
I spend in my head
but the time I spend
revolving and devolving
as the flip side of evolving
when it's up to me to decide
if I want to dance
with the wounds that bring me
downward in descension
or court the clarity
in the perceptions
of truth and healing
that raise transcendent
in ascension

Half Life

I lived half my life
with my spirit separated
from my body

I'm living this half
with my body separated
from my spirit

in the conversion of
zombie turned to ghost
and it's all about
escaping the pain

like the more of me
there is to feel
the more it gets too crowded
so I'm running it all
on a time share
kind of scheme

but then maybe the pain
isn't really so much to take
when it gets dispersed
between the both
of the body and the spirit

I think I'll have to
try that out
in the half
that comes after
the half I'm living now

the only constant
that deserves consistency
is the desire to live
a good life

because sometimes hypocrisies
and inconsistencies
are not a lack of character
but the courage
to constantly seek
a better way

do not mistake the man
of fixed convictions
for one
who completely knows
his mind

when the fixed and unchanging
may master the simplicities
of their cognitive dissonance
constructed on foundations
of convenient lies

but the man with courage
to question himself
and let what emerges
from the mind
do battle with itself

and yet still can welcome
with the flexibility
to accommodate and host
the ever changing new
will always find himself
a little closer
to the truth

pummelled by the light of stars
when all that I know how to be
is a shadow in the dark
a secret and hiding heart
with wolve's teeth to keep it warm
shielding with the viscosity
of its own blood
like there could be any outcome
other than the exposure that comes
when you pray to be really seen
but never have a say
on the parts where the illumination
is going to shine
and what is often seen the first
are the places you have hidden
so deep and dark
your eyes cannot withstand
the light that comes to touch
what has become comfortably blind
in the absence of the stars

if I come off as untrue
maybe that's just what comes
as the residual side effect
in inauthentic's form
when authentic means
the inconsistency
of feeling whatever it is
I feel
when I don't understand
or even know
what the hell it is
I feel

Standing Eight Counts

a fighter taught me once
we don't ask for mercy here
you stand your eight counts
when you gotta
but you don't drop down
upon your knees
so that I am learning even to pray
standing on my feet
to be ready to dance toward
an answer when it comes

and the ones
who will never pull a punch
are a blessing when you meet
cause it's the ones who get you
up against the ropes
who teach you to be quicker
on those feet

when there's no telling
what life is going to bring
so all you can do
is train to always win
where the battles are only lost
against the self
and never what you're up against

and in the scheme of things
there's only one way out
of this here ring
and so you have to learn
to take the blows hard upon the chin
and transmute the wounds to scars
or spend the hours on the mats
dying of the self-infliction
of the cowards and the weak
who don't know what it is
to face and then survive
and inherit from experience
the alchemy it takes to rise

no I won't ask for mercy
just gotta catch my breath
and while I'm standing eight counts
I'm sending up the warriors' prayer
that I will honour all the blows
that I have ever taken
and the places they came from
with the wisdom and the lesson
in what they had to teach
until I'm no longer a fighter
fighting against myself
but a dancer to my heartbeat
and the choreography of what it takes
to find the resilience and the grace
in every single test

modern society
and its days with names
putting the consumerism
in the connection
and taking money
for the meaning
removing rituals
from their proper time
leaving us with disjointed
rites of loneliness
and mass market marginalization
when we don't quite fit
the status quo

billboard assaults
and TV indoctrination
misappropriation that imprints
its varying shades
of Stockholm Syndrome
tattooed on our souls
so that we plug a little further in
to the empire of New Rome
and celebrate the selling
of our own hard labour
to appease the Hallmark gods
with the thorough replication
of their plastic alters
of storefront windows
in our homes

and if that can't be done
just right
you can always buy
a magic make-it-better potion
and a special little pill
or gorge yourself
on genetically altered
poisoned processed feasts
designed to make you
Type 2 numb

but you'll be fine
if you remember the cure
is to buy buy buy
until you fit right in
or can hide the fact
you can't quite squeeze
into the one size fits all dictation
of where they've exploited
what is closest to our hearts
then found a way to market
our emotions back to us

and if the emotions
don't fit just right
for the day that they proclaim
they'll catch you
with the purported
alleviation of alienation
guaranteed as advertised
because everybody pays
for their celebration

or their pain
when it comes 

to the days with names

it isn't when we lose our minds
that we go crazy

it's when we wake up
and realize how long it's been gone
and how much of it is missing
and where it went
and get to wondering how in the hell
we're going to get it back

that's when the madness sets in

they say people don't know
when they're crazy

I know

in this perpetual motion
of insanity
where the clearer
the madness gets
the more of it I have
and the more of it I have
the clearer everything gets

maybe madness isn't about
losing your mind
but learning to use it better
because madness
is a thinking man's disease

and insanity
is just what naturally happens
when you can clearly see
the craziness of the world
and have to accept
the logical responsibility
in the knowing
that you're a part of that

maybe sometimes
dreams and aspirations
belong only to the ghost parts of us
when the toxicity of being human
can't find its way back
close enough to pure
for the manifestation of vision
and the human that reaches for the dream
can do nothing
but haunt the ghosts

in a world where people have sex
while they figure out if they want to date
where people share intimate details
while they decide if they want to talk
and then call that "friends"
when everything is moving
contrary to the natural order of things
it isn't fatalistic
but realistic
to think that while everyone is waiting
for the next step
there isn't too many places to go
but to regress
in the slow downward spiral
of the disease of digression
in the breaking apart of the fibres
of human connection

what is not living
is dying

the difference
being found
not in the distinction
between pain and joy
but in the details that emerge
deeper into our consciousness
and the choices we make
between embracing
or fading to numb

so that what is not
permitted to grow
has been encouraged
to die

why do they call the free market
free
when nothing in it is free

except that it's a free for all
for the powers that be
who are free
to market anything they want
with a price just above
what the majority can't afford

selling us out
until we buy into the notion
that to be a part of the free world
you have to declare your life
as allegiance
to the prepackaged dream
of their advertised free

so that nothing in this life is free
especially free

I'm toxic as hell
just ask anyone
who tried to love me
but couldn't

and then others say
I'm a light
and bring me their needs
to be prayed for
and loved

and I can't tell
what the heck makes
the difference

is it what I have
or don't have to give
or maybe what they're
willing to offer
or what they
can't stand to lose

sometimes I think
the difference is in
the ones who really see me
and the ones who don't
with the seers knowing enough
to be afraid
and the ones who don't
being comfortably blind
when all that's on the line
is a temporary moment of need

or maybe it's all in what people
want me to be
and how well I deliver up
the version of me
that they seek

either way
the ones who don't want me
still want to feel close
when they need to feel close
to just the right amount
of anonymity that won't ask
for anything back

and the ones who want me
don't want me too close
because close can only be close
when it ain't

there is still so much
I need to know
gasping for clarity
between the tsunami of dreams
and the earthquakes
of encrypted whispers
and echoes

I have always known the things
I can't quite remember
when I've been remembering you
in my dreams
since memory was given to me
in this consciousness here

and I am remembering still
even with you moved on
into the next place
where I will find you
to meet again
carrying more questions with me
than I had before I had
these fragmented answers

and the only things I know
for certain
are that old soldiers
remember more
than they can bear
and less than they have done
and this here is illusion
with the reality being love
that transcends questions
and answers and memories
partial and full
and remembers the only answer
it needs to know
is love

they brought the devil
on a ship named Shame
first to my ancestors
and then to yours
unpacking their portable Hells
on the banks of our shores
like bio weapons
to infect our DNA
lodged as spores
inside our minds

do not believe them
when they say
shame is the inoculation
that keeps the Devil at bay
when the power of our shame
is what gives their Satan its form
and the only hell we have to fear
is the cage we construct
with the inauthentic
and the struggle to hide
that we fall short
not of what we truly want
but what we think we have to be

Hell exists first
inside the dimension
behind the eyes
and then is recreated externally
by the nightmares we pass off
to ourselves and to others
under the disguise of dreams
when they are only
fights and flights from terrors
and not pursuits of glories
we seek to manifest
and inflict upon this Earth

Heaven is a place
where we make peace
with our truths
and shame becomes
as much illusion
as the imaginary devils
we let take space and haunt
the sacred temples
of the holiness of our being

so if possession
by the devil is evil
why let the concept of sin
poses you at all
when you are free
to possess yourself
under the sovereignty
of your truth

I know that I'm my own problem
but the problem with me
is that I was born
with these eyes
fixed pointing outward
and the problem with those
on the outside
who can see
is they see the problem
with me
and the problem with that
is it's nobody's problem
but mine

stuck on repeat
like a one act play
playing itself over
and over again
where the actors may change
but rarely the roles
cast as the fifth business
in my own life
unable to protagonise
a new plot
with half blinded eyes
that never see
the full picture
in what I am playing out
so that what is off centre
remains as beyond perception
as the details of the audience
sitting distant in the shadows
while I'm so hungry for the light
all I know to do
is stand and say the lines
so memorized I have forgotten how
to improvise anything other than
what this character
was written to be
when the actor can only remember
the role it was directed to play
and not the actor itself
and destiny gets confined
to descending denouement

the difference between

dream and fantasy

comes down to courage

if your heart never 

threatened to kill you

with its own electrical pulse

as you stood on the cliff

wondering how your wings 

would ever hold

and then jumped anyway

it never was a dream

but only a little opiation

to get you through your day

because if it isn't fantasy

it makes you pay 

in the currency of adrenalin

so that you must match

a fear to overcome

for every ounce 

it means to you

we see so little
of what is really real
so that we run around
filling in the blanks
with our own fears
and fantasies
and then we falsely
proclaim those to be
intelligence and intuition
because somehow that is easier
than working on the connection
of deeper communication
and opening our imaginations
beyond the limits of the walls
we've constructed for ourselves
and learning to live
within the world of truths
our constraints
have blinded us
to see

18 May (middle of the night)

I can see us
building sandcastles on the shore
not as girls who can only cry
over the crumbling inevitability
or rejoice at the spectacle of destruction
but as women wild with life
who hunger to be drawn beneath
the mystery of the waves
to see how far our depth can go

or as dancers under boardwalk lights
drunk and giddy
with the ebb and flow of moon
and swooning with the sound
of wolf howls emerging from the caverns
of our subterranean throats
fiercely threatening without intended threat
to the civil civility of the civilized
for the untamed in our eyes
and the unapologetic nature of our cries
that we don't give a damn

throwing our voices out carelessly
so they might reach
the sailers lost at sea
as witches or as sirens
or whatever they might dream

when we'll be only weavers
of baskets out of reeds
to catch the tired and failing
of every woman lush as fruit
ripe and falling from the trees
and with the resilience of our leaves
that don't just shed when they are tired
but have learned to bud again
let us be as makers
of ancient sacred salves
to soothe the bruising of our sisters
that are only seen by women's eyes
and nurse the hunger of their infants
born into this world
with knowing in the DNA
that there is danger if you cry
more than if you stand to starve

and let our backs be sturdy
with willows grown up through our spines
to carry our grandmothers
from imposing prisons
of the cartographic cage
of the patriot patriarchy known as wars
to the places where the waves make safe
and erode each line of border
that sailors sailed the seas
to draw there in the sand

when we're the singers
who do not sing temptation
but swim within creation
of the languages of truth
that open hearts to hear
knowing that each of us

has not one lonely and senseless tune
but rather her own synergetic part
of the harmony of the song
Creation sings
and let those songs join us all as women
moulded as a million grains of sand
held together in one single shell

and then when we forget
that there is mystery yet
calling for us to come to build
our castles of bitter/sweet impermanence
to erase the boundaries
of how defiance is defined
and dare do what we can
we can hold the shell up to our ears
and remember that the journey
was never about the lasting height
our imaginations can achieve
but how far what we have crafted
can be absorbed into the deep

my mother said my birth
was easy
that I came into this world
in only a few hours

but I have been emerging
into this unearthing
slowly through all these years
of pain and exhilaration
of ecstasy and fear

learning to surrender
to the journey
pushed by the contractions
of adversity
and swimming toward
the light

greeting the voices
in the beyond
coming into focus

searching out the balance
in the ebb and flow
of ancestral whispers
come as electricity
through the cord
that cannot be cut

and I will be birthing
as the moon unwraps itself
until I birth again
back into celestial womb
beyond the curtain
of stardust
from which we're made

an ocean with a thirsty mouth
straining toward the shore
to be drawn back and gathered
once again
coming alive
with every breath and heartbeat
and the journey
of each earthly step

everyone keeps talking
about the broken

who are these broken people

when people are either wounded
or scarred or healing or healed
evolving or devolving or revolving
the way the animate do

and in truth even the inanimate
objects of this world
are never really broken
only in a change of state

unless by broken you mean
cease to perform
their desired function

in which case people still
cannot be broken
except by capitalistic definitions
of what purpose is
as laid out by external perceptions

because the only true purpose
of the state of being human
is to navigate the change

maybe only the truth questions itself
like weeding its own garden
thinning what doesn't produce
and uprooting what's only been
hanging around to deprive the rest
of space and soil
and water and light

but lies are like GMO
prepackaged processed crap
cheap and on sale
and never enough
so that they need to constantly
tinker and manipulate
the DNA of themselves
with more sugar
so they can claim less fat

and if it has to have a label
to tell you it's healthy
it's probably not

I spend these days now
in forests and in barns
and anywhere I can hear
the music of Creation
without the voice of man
because that is where
I hear your voice
coming through as love
from far across the veil
and where I can finally feel
the tickle of the germination
of all the seeds
you left imbedded in my heart
the intimate whispers
between butterflies and milkweed
the miracle of innocence
being born
and the spectre of ancient spirits
who come out to dance
while the birds remain
undaunted and resilient
with their songs
because you were all
these things to me
and if I stay too long
amongst the chattering of men
I am scared that I will lose you
and the darkness of disappointment
left in the vacuum's wake
will turn me cold with anger
and blind to all the beauty
you once painted for me in songs
until my eyes could open far enough
that I could see it too

Missing you today my Starshine Blue. 

29 April 2016

sometimes the tangles
aren't in my head after all
sometimes the tangles are external
and a part of the sickness

infecting the universe
so sorting out what the hell is going on
just winds up making me sick

sometimes I have to trust my own clarity
because the sickness
wants me to think it is me
so I tangle my own head
and become bound
by its external false perceptions
and infected with my own self-confusion