My father built me a boat.

A small wooden boat
to ride on the back of the sea.

Sea roads, sea houses,
sea bridges, sea fields

breaks open like white flowers.

Break me with the rhythm of water
the tide

the tide breaks a thousand orange mornings.

The ocean records this rising, this falling.

My little boat sinks deep, deeper than
a deep sea diver.

My father’s desire for his daughter to be
a champion of the sea.

I tango with the wind in my sails.

I am devoted to sails,
catching the wind.

Foolish boat. Adorned
with a fragrant necklace of sea flowers,

here I am
waiting to hold you.

What inspires the poem to be written,
i was written into the sea:

we don’t speak of the way
the sun moves through us,
the way the sea moves through us
is silent.

Powerful shaman.

Sail to me.

I want to wear my hands the way stars do.

This, sea within the sea.

Let me enfold you.

inspired by “song to the siren” tim buckley

directions for play. press play on below link. wait only 15 seconds and press play on the second link. let both screens play for the ECHO version of song to accompany poem.

song to the siren original by jeff buckley

song to the siren original by jeff buckley

I take out my flute.

I sway in ribbons of the earth’s rotation.
You are my axis.

It’s when I fall here,
my nose nestled in the neck of the wind,
that I cannot see myself anymore
churning butter.

The story says things that are forbidden
are the most tempting of all.

They wait for me at the water’s edge,
those who are hungry for terrible fruits,
those who are hungry for the sweet meat
of this heart.

If I were to scientifically explain
this religious gesture of fingers pointed
towards a flaming heart, the one that stops me

nightly, gleaming from behind glass
in the shop window, would I be crucified
for being that passionate?

I am so inspired by spinning things. How slow we spin
in the immaculate air, how close we are falling as we fall
desperately towards earth.

Tell me your secrets.

My flute song makes the masses come mezmorized.

Leave an offering of apples and mirrors for me,
she who convinced the dark and terrible
to let you go, if only, I could hold myself
from looking back-

the earth would be eternal,
it’s springing.

I’m down on my knees.
Slow down time.

first draft.
last line, re-contexted and copied from “woods” by bon iver.

first draft
flute song

be sure to click on the poem above.

I love light in all it’s meanings and manifestations
the way it curves around each finger tip
as you cup air, and make flowers out of it.

The way it makes me levitate
when I take out the heavy things.

Unpack your bags, and stay a while.

Where there are imperfections
there are perfections in
the way the world turns upside
down, and I breathe deep,
balanced on the top of my head.

Crown of this, planted, like a bulb,
a scheduled blossoming of yellow,
my favorite flowers, I love so much
I want to eat the way the earth moves
and shakes me, unfurls me like a flag

of a country I’ve never visited,
of a place I’ve never been,
beside you, and the desire
only to breath deep,
synchronized, fits together,
the way clocks are,
in each hemisphere,

the methodology of the brain
as it moves from left to right
and what is unexplained
will remain a mystery.

I don’t need words to explain
the way the rosebud politely
lays her petals down

before a god, because he asked her to,
before the god had seen her
as human, but still, loved her more

for this imperfection. My wish
I have written on hopeful petals,
silver barks of rainy trees, leaves
as they come of age, this all
springing

as the god moves closer,
through the forest,
charmed by what the body is better at knowing,
to meet his love.

fast draft one, after 3pm asana, the discussion of radha and krishna and mark’s letter about light

water

installation

large square room with floor to ceiling screens with projected images of the ocean and sound of waves.

room filled with sand.

teacher led yoga class on the element of WATER. can’t decide if teacher will be recorded in loop, or live. probably a mixture of both.

dialog using all metaphors of water.

body cosmos as water.

the experience is the painting, still life, or event which creates art.

White as this is white, I am
in the middle of this picture,
knees folded in posture,
waiting for the serpent
snake to rise up
the spine to the forehead,
crown, and back down again.

Enchanted by music, I am
white as this is white.

There are stories to be told.
I listen for them.
Hands folded across the knees.
Quiet as this is white.

What is art but this hand
reaching out in a slow
and decadent air?

I reach for the apple.

Form is a metaphor,
a brushstroke in white space.

Falling in love is just like going to a museum
with no paintings on the walls.

Is like beginning and ending
the most intimate conversation
with a stranger on the subway 9am.

My body written in vinyasa krama,
like a belated valentine.

The breath, the very reason
art can be erased.

There is an invisible map
to the treasure.

Adam gave his rib for it.

I listen for the pearls to fall
from the necklace when I take my hand
away from the form.

When the form becomes the enactment,
the love god, of what you wish to be real.

Just like a snake charmer entrances her snake.

draft 1

this pressure of milk.

the way the earth overflows
when she is with child.

it’s the prophecy inside seeds,
the slow and eventual tree.

it’s not everything we don’t have
that makes the earth
bloom.

take note of it.

cadence of what all religions believe
god is, will keep playing whether
you recognize it as classical
or baroque, whether it is studied
as new age, or archaic.

what’s the meaning in the definition
when the sun will not cease to rise?

there is no stopping it whether we are specific or not.

with desire, so thick we could almost
touch it.

i’d wager everything for it.

i want to.

White as the shoulders of snowdrops,
the chest of a folding wave,
your mouth, white vapors of clouds-

What I swallowed, I wasn’t afraid of.

Like Icarus as he ascended, like a magnet pulled
by his love for the sun.

They say at every ending there is a beginning.

And so, when the wings, begin to melt,
I fall fast.

Would you tell me I failed?

Still when I return, there is a house
with an open door, there is bread
to be broken, there are people
who greet me, and know my name.

Had I confessed the way stars do
they keep lighting their lamps,
each night, boundless, repeating,
light blinking light, had I confessed
I loved you just like this?

Forgive me, as I fall, head first
towards certain death.

I write the myth again.

Father accepted me as perfect
just the way I am.

They remember me as a hero.

I was a woman, not a man.

Icarus burns her wings for no one.

after The Afternoon Sun by C. P. Cavafy

This room, how well I know it.

This room, my tree-house, my nest
made of the breath of books,
sweat from watercolors,
in the shadow of branches
cast across 240 sunrises

now rented, packed up,
folded and tucked
in boxes, the sunrise still
seeps out.

This house, a double memory.

It is familiar like, photographs of daffodils are,
two years ago and still, I call you my little lantern
of the sun.

The way I loved you
simple, not indifferent,
lost with difficulty,
but still reborn
as something hopeful.

Mirror: list to me all of my favorite things.

Memory: things I wish to erase but still
they are the dark spaces who lift
their angry arms with the desire to dash out,
sunny spaces.

We moved the couch beneath the window.
We lit and burned wood in the fireplace when it was cold.

You on your knees with no ring then,
and still not now, would I say yes.

We left the couch there, for the new family
to move in upon.

Sundays, apple pancakes, poems written
across the backs of what we wouldn’t save,
what I wouldn’t ask for tomorrow,
regret nothing.

These things must be left somewhere.

At some vantage point, things discarded become beautiful.
Make you what you are.

We made love so many times.

These sad things must still be somewhere.

But then, the moonrise, and I lift my head
to look at my hand, to look at the pathway
left by the apple tree upon my fingers,
and straighten the leg perpendicular to earth,
to bear witness to everything I have been
and will ever be.

Next to the window was the bed;
the afternoon sun spread across halfway.

I haven’t forgotten the naming of things
in the mellow soft bloom
of a double memory,
spring who springs out
regardless of the memory
of what isn’t to happen,
just yet.

Wish for it. Sit still beneath the boughs
of the tree you read about, in books,
mapped out and eulogized in the east.

Let it fill with rain, then snow, water talk,
rivers flow into other rivers with names like
life-blood of god, endless curls of the beloved,
sappy spring rising through branches,
just like water makes pathways through earth,
it should make the body flower with eventual bloom.

You become the tree.
40 days of no fruit.
No color: as from the world
the most incredible saffron sunlight pours
from an a sky so blue you could eat.
But do not touch this. Do not reach out for it.

The beloved tempts you, serenades you with adagios
written for saints. The primal word sets traps for you
as notes from a flute. But do not listen.

Enjoyable figs, juice from the mango,
ruby pomegranite seeds sparkle before you.

You hunger for it but remain still.

Who is she who raises her arms,
thumbs folded over two fingers in mudra,
lightning language of the body sifting through mind,
repeating the mantra at the forehead
so that the heart burst open?

So it could catch fire, and wake all those who sleep
beneath sleeping trees in a forest where
no one knows the answer to the koan
of the sound of a tree falling
where no one is listening.

Remain in posture, breathe, repeat the mantra.
Let it vibrate the point
between the eyebrows.

Earth as my witness, the world went white.

Held back a thousand arrows,
a thousand earthquakes,
a thousand tidal waves,
by the finger of the woman
sitting beneath the tree
resting on earth.

Time and time again, I try to come to you.

But the earth holds on to me here.
I remain still, floating still
in the honey bees wet ink.

draft 1