“bless me. i’m going i don’t know where”.
(maiden asks her father as she leaves the house for ever).

welcome to her world - you’ve officially left the centre.

“her stories are great - but where are the ones where she’s not just the hinge - she’s the central character? “

no such thing. keep your eyes on the periphery, and your patience moist.

my hunter tends to be alert
but she covers her tracks
even in my thoughts,
i forget the dates,
scramble every week to comb out a story
from the dizzying tangle
that had such a different shape last time i looked

the women gazed at the flames
and realized
“right now
my job
is loving”

attend the courting dance
of this raven, frog, bear

whoever the ball of thread led me to
and day after day

see the prince in the plumage

i’m so grateful for the stories we’ve been imbibing. their lessons in humility. in helplessness.

there’s a moment when all will be lost, and all you can do is lie down and cry yourself to sleep.

best advice i’ve had for hard times. stay down.

grab the guitar and throw a towel in the backseat babe
let’s chase another sunset
round the corner,
the side of the island
where the day
stretches, still golden
to where rocks gleam green and purple,
flamingoes pad on black sand

and here’s to not settling

here’s to fighting it to the bitter end
in big and small ways
unsung routines and inner hymns
that keep us warm at night
and nimble in dark corners

i gave a quick intro to tantric massage to my household couple days ago... it was so beautiful... one small bedroom filled with attentive faces while the miracle unfolds, inevitable, majestic, simple as rain. i am ringing with quiet gratitude.

and there is
nothing but love here,
aphrodite’s dove
waves her branch
over the bed packed with eager students

my spine is in the grass,

your weight on my hipbones

pushes me deeper

into the cooling ground.

i am suddenly

in service to no one.

stripped of stone and schedule

like climbing out of

a flying tin can’s seat

ISTA called to me like a lighthouse in a storm.

as soon as i entered the room, i knew a momentous chapter of my life had opened. there was something hanging around the facilitators, that lit them up. a halo of quiet power, lightness of being, and vast heart. they exuded competence and generosity.

by the end of the week, i was surrounded by radiant, glowing faces. it’s a feeling of awe that i find at the end of every container i’ve taken part in.

i’m about to hit publish, but … i can’t.

i’m in love. i’m elated and feeling vast and calm as sunrise and i can’t think straight anymore and i’m writing poems. they’re good too.

so what to do? i’m an artist. i don’t fix broken bones, i don’t build houses. all i got is my guts splashed across the page. that’s my job. to be naked in a public way.

i have never seen the forest like this. i have never seenlayer after infinine layerof knife sharp leavesslicing up into the air like a chorus of Hallelujahs.

money, time, or tears
is my gut response.

yesterday i am sitting at a cafe table in the warm afternoon, smelling the ivy and daydreaming of elder wine. i listen to a passionate woman tell me about the school she teaches at.

she has just said : i would give over my life for this.

is this you?

i’m re-reading this automatic writing on the topic :“ who is my audience? what do they need?”

and i wonder - whose face does this evoke?

“i want the butterfly seekers and they want the embrace of the earth that seeks their marrow for her juicy maw, their helpless beauty in the face of imminent ego death

they seek whatever will remind them of what’s real….

Kitchen table notes to self

lately i’ve been studying our favourite theme of everyday magic.

how to bring things into matter. business, babe. to my surprise, it’s been fascinating.

i’m increasingly perceiving the world in terms of energy flux. i sense the worlds through these questions - does it repulse, attract, block, make sparks, cause friction, trap, redirect?…

a word of caution on the
illusory
availability of things.
of people, even.

life parades shiny options.
instantaneous catalogues of anything i could imagine.
choices beyond the scope
perhaps
of what a balanced mind can handle.

So I was once an obsessed kung-fu panda, rocking 10 hours of hardcore training a week.

This was many moons ago, but it is among the major influences that shape how I interact with the world to this day. Specifically the integrity of my master, the team spirit and the exhilarating, exponential growth of power in my body and spirit.

i watched the blabberbox
just cause my mum did
just to sit by her side
hadn’t done it in years
half an hour made me want to smash things
curl up in a ball
force-fed bleakness

so back to the real world

a propos nothing, an unsuspecting someone
sends me a picture of
jungle-proud, sun-baked
mountain.

i reciprocate with
the apple of our eye,
serenely snow-flecked.

Hey earthlings.

I bring good news : there is always more love.

I’ve just spent a year bundled in consecutive winters, weathering dwindling light days in both hemispheres.

From Southside to North I’ve moved from bone-numbing loneliness to a household of ten. To the taste of firewood and blankets, laughter snow and wine. The weeks passed in our hibernation pod, and we all reached the same conclusion.

How could we live any other way?

Some kind of sacred geometry did its mojo. Of course it matters who - I also learned, it matters how many.

Greetings from cricket songs in the Greek night. I’ve traded pounamu greenstones for the eerie emerald of rocks threaded with copper, here in the Isle of the Gods - Samothraki.

The warm sea croons to me as I take a long sip of the fading summer.

There is a lingering memory of relaxed limbs entwined in a closing circle, radiant faces, night enfolding us in its mantle.

“Make this love visible.”