Drink Of Life

Drink of life- like my mother did once.
Not alone in the bedroom, she opened and took and the pungent seeds of time spilled into the darkness of space alight with imagination and moans and shrieks and luminous suns.
Let the blackness talk and whisper the secrets of life eternal, but do not mistake the body as its only source.  The sky is full and traveling is not done only in carbon and flesh.
Drink of life like my mother did once.
Then drink again.
Water like my father did once.
Again drink.
Like my father.
Forever is not the end.
End. 
There is only eternal
Return. Again.
Eternal return.
Again.
Eternal return.
Again.

An endless loop of purple and black, we sit in this circle and live out the revolution.
Time shifts as this carpet accepts our weight. As the walls hold us in and the black curtains postpone the sunlight from our eyes. 
We go back into the dream state and journey through darkness and quiet spaces while the walls melt like jelly. We walk through them, licking the paint until our tongues taste like ocean water. 
We circle back and flow in and out of the speckled windows, hearing the squeaks and moans of cars rounding the corner and delivery trucks halting by the door. The walls hold us in, ever intent on their quiet role, their shelter against the demanding brightness of day.  
Grinding and sliding through the maze of our consciousness- like a serpent, the circle comes back once again. It is my turn to speak. 
Cycle.
The ends are woven perfectly together and for once the ends of our fingertips flow out and back in like wisteria branches. Perfectly pungent and delicate- we glow imperceptibly in the darkness behind the curtains. Eventually the walls take in our vibration and the light between you and I starts to move like heat off a desert floor. Though my eyes are closed, I dance and dance, hoping over sand and the scent of old gun smoke and greased leather.
What is this space? I hear my mind ask. Never content to let the eyes talk for us, to let time shift and strain and begin to rewind and then leap forward in a spiraling dance around the circle of our words. And back again, receding into the darkness between the black curtains.
Endless circles as our fingers and toes merge back into roots and trees.

Eternal return.
Again.
Eternal return.
Again.

Stinging Bits Of Doubt

Work through the stinging bits of doubt.
They nip at the beautiful sphere we create, puncturing it slowly until it collapses under its own weight. I stare at it, deflated and crumbled as candlelight still flickers- the glow reminding me of what we could have made. I see my reflection on its distorted shiny surface. 
Work through the stinging bit of doubt.
They come up like weeds and sometimes I confuse them for tiny flowers and I let them open. Only when their faces shine up at me do I realize my mistake and see the death skulls laughing. But by that time I am far away and lost, floating on my wooden canoe. 
Out to sea I remember shore. Far away there is a house and a garden. Far away a sage bush goes to seed. Far away is a protector, but I can no longer see him beyond the horizon.
My habits have carried me out here and water spills in over the side. Salt oozes up my leg and I begin to crack. 
But there you are, holding the door open once again. The pathways are slightly more narrow now and the flowers have lost their scent, but here we are again in the dim afternoon light. The present is open and wide and we look into it with wide glittering eyes.
Once again we had stood on the edge, once again we clawed our way back from the crashing waves. Here we are again, a circuit of energy between us tasting of love.
Try to remember to breathe you caution. Next time breathe into the stinging bits of doubt, send some air into the caves. 

Black

We are dressed in black today, matching the night.  Black holding all our purpose.  Every color and shape, each breath taken and lost.  For all that were and all that could be. 
The clouds have parted, granting my midnight wish and I stare at a dozen silver moons, a collection of aged children of rock and light.
There are a trail of silver dollars illuminating the path from bed to window, from window to door.  Each step is first memorized and then taken with care. 
There were maps and drawings and we practiced one tiny moment among moments.  Bursting, we feed it and the circle grows, a wide band of black holding each moment. We take it in, drinking, lapping up the dribbles along the edges. 
It is all here, not one thing forgotten.  We cannot list them all and yet their names are etched into the wrinkles and lines, the scars over her breasts and the wisps of hair misplaced. 
The boat sails and I remember, a thing in motion is excited, confused and ready for toppling.  Bubbling up and spinning, the lights direct my attention, moving from human to bird to car to cat. 
You cannot stop me as the colors come and STOP! You don’t witness, you mustn’t. 
The tale must be fulfilled as written and the pages are there, may I direct your attention to the dried up hands telling our story.  Look into the black eyes beside the window, nothing has been forgotten.  Transience, mortality, they are for others outside this space. With the candles lighting our chamber, we sit as the circle.  Bodies are the wires for light, light is the shape of ecstatic motion. We are still, silent but for occasional gasps.

The Change

I sit here, my mind playing, bouncing between two sides of a colored spectrum.  The question lingers, reverberating through every memory as I sift through the contents of three known decades in seconds and wonder about other lifetimes on the fringes of easily lost dreams. 
Did I make the decision to take it in, or did it chose me? I, an open vessel, lights blinking, looking for port.  Did I decide to take it in one day while peeling apples at the kitchen counter, old tiles all stacked full of fruits and old melons rescued from the bin?  Was it a choice? 
The thoughts roll though me as I stare at the moon.  A cool summer breeze full of jasmine and tangible teenage memories of long midnight walks flows past me, igniting the soft skin on my arms. I stare at the moon, awash in its pale calming glow.  The lights around blink as distant worlds do. 
Do choices begin or are they like stones tumbling in the ocean current, bumping off one red-haired mermaid and another until you find yourself in an unfamiliar house in a foggy city, surrounded by people you’ve known for years but seem like newly-acquainted strangers. 
I squint my eyes and look for the trail.  Just how did I get here and what is this?  I think back- when did the choice come?  When the doors opened with a small ding?  When I went down, skirting the equator by just a few hundred miles?
I was looking for something then.  I searched for it in the eyes of every person I saw, looked for it in unfamiliar cities and in the arms of strangers. When did the doors open?  Each choice begets the next and they lap against each other, altering the north wind so that orange butterflies can dance in the hurricane winds of time eternal. 
I think back to the night so long ago.  A night beside a house on the edge of a hill.  On the cemented patio, beside the blue sparkling pool, we looked down at the smog-covered city streets below and sucked on small pieces of tasteless paper. 
Those people with whom I attempted to travel, I thought I would always know them, carry their names and numbers with me as the years changed my skin and hair.  But that, as all things do, changed.  That night we sat in plastic lawn chairs in the summer twilight, watching as city lights turned on and started blinking, talking to us through the altered gray air. 
The house, I would later come to understand, was inspired by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, but at the time, I just observed the clean angles, the lack of tightness, the open, flowing use of space.  We sucked on little pieces of tasteless paper and as the sky turned darker and the lights started to blink, as other worlds do, the familiar faces and words lost the meaning I once understood as inherent and fixed.
I think back to a day so long ago sitting on the bright grassy lawn of my junior high school, El Roble. We picked small white clover flowers and turned them into garlands.  We sat like children, so utterly content to lay in the field.  The grass, so much more green.  The grass, so much more soft.  The sky, so much more blue.  There was nothing else to do, nowhere to be, no one else to find.  It was utterly perfect, the moment without rush and obligation.  That day, so long ago.
When did I decide to take it in?  Was it a decision or a series of accidents?  Me, or it moving through me?  Paper, door, blinking lights, other worlds.  The open door, blinking lights, eyes I can no longer remember and black shadows.   It can be different.  It takes one tiny piece of paper, a little sugar cube, and worlds dissolve in your cup of water.  Did I decide to change, or did the change find me after one tiny, tasteless piece of paper?

Cloven Foot

She looked at the painting for the first time. It rose from the wall, levitating in its massive form and monumental message, leaving its gold frame far behind on the white background. Small and open-mouthed next to its size, she gazed up at the man that was not a man, at the animal that was not quite an animal. The beast that was not on all fours, but wearing a tailored jacket and a small hat that had holes for his horns. His face was red and long and hairy beside the ears. He stood in the middle of two iron gates, held slightly ajar with the weight of his body. Behind him a city burned red and hot. His lips betrayed a small, sly smile. Half a dozen women with large round bellies were in various states of falling, some lay lifeless on the cobblestone streets. Babies lay in piles by closed wooden doors. Just behind the gate was a copulating couple on fire, streams of smoke rose from their flesh into the dark night. He stood at the gates of this mayhem. His kingdom or his punishment? His legs were long and hairy, with thin ankles and the strong thick thighs of a horse. His penis was long and engorged, sticking up like the black spikes of the metal gates. He leaned on one of the open gates, leaning just slightly on his right elbow in a gesture of satisfaction and contentment. A creature completely comfortable in the chaotic setting of smoke and dim, reddish lights and the smoking couple and fallen babies and women who would never be mothers. His left foot reached out to her, a cloven foot of gray with streaks of black. His other foot hung back in the shadows, five toes of a pale, reddish hue. The ground below him was a mixture of dirt and black ash, beyond was a barren landscape of dead trees and smoking bushes.
“This is us,” she thought. “Our lineage vilified and made shadowy and dark and full of horror. This is the full blooded fear of man. The fear of birth and death. The fear of sex and pussy and earth and the mushrooms which spawn beneath the visible surface. We have watched through centuries, as large skirts have given way to slips and then jeans. Watched as the fires burned flesh and the screams curled with the smoke. We have watched it all. The vilification. The quest turned to the dirty kiss. We watch still, knowing, just as the smile implies, that what we do will always remain in the realm of the mushroom and the roots. The fires will come and play with the land and play with our flesh and we will be of the darkened shadows and the red clouds. We are of one, of the other, of earth and air, stardust and bright light.”