The night won’t leave me alone for my
forgetfulness, I lost my favorite red shoes
somewhere, by the river side, when we swam
to the center of it, and listened to the way
water sounds, inside.

The braids of purple flowers around my wrist
enchanted me. The decadence of spring,
before it’s ascent through earth, the thrill
of flowers before they understood
consciousness.

I dreamt a lot. Of what it would be like
if I hadn’t left. The house full of memories
we didn’t have, places we didn’t write
postcards from, and still, think of you
every day.

Mother said what happened, wasn’t meant to happen.
The earth would not bloom if I didn’t leave.
So I did what I must do, for the others.

There isn’t much left to say, didn’t we
say everything then, didn’t the night
take us in, and we huddled together,
when the candle burned out, and it
was just you and me, beneath all
of it, the heave and tumble
of earth.

There was a night bird who sang
sweetly, as if sweetness had a place
in memory, as if we would remember
the way sweetness tasted, so many
years later, I don’t know where it is
we’ve landed. Star-crossed. Vacancy
still, in the house we rented next
to the pond. Other lives we rented
out to pass time until the next.

I share the task of carrying water home
alone now.

I still don’t know what the meaning is,
what the word love means as it’s tattoo
fades across my back.

Bruised peaches sit in baskets on the kitchen table.

My altar dry of water or fire.

The dry land calls to me by night.

Come disappear into me.

The earth still blooms with flowers
that say the word: forever.

I keep counting the petals of daisies,
I know there is no going back now,
he loves me, he loves me not.

Orange syrup of sunset,
drips from branches,
birds of the night,
fold close to me.

Pressure of dialect, vocabulary of air
mixed with desire,
the black pressure of night.

This night brings, dark chords, dark birds, the bull in the alleyway
frightened me, but still, I move into the deeper night,
pulled by the thick incense of sitar, on the holy river,
by night, where souls come to shrink themselves
into the small corridor that leads to heaven.

The meaning doesn’t matter sometimes in words.

Is this the time of awakening? Peacocks sound alarm.

Deers watch through the still bodies of trees.

What the watchtower knows, when the parrots fly from the trees,
come nightfall, and the marble tower goes black from reflection,
the reason we come here is to pray.

The silent witness stands beside you.

Rings a bell in your heart. Let’s a cage of butterflies out.

Who sees how brilliant their wings are, how their faces
pinch with light, how beautiful desire, can’t be seen,
how dismembered we become in darkness.

The silent witness stands beside you.

It is in this moment, she was I and you were you.
And we were as perfect as night is perfect,
for taking away the boundaries between things.

And we stayed this way. Floating through
the magic air.

Like a holy bhajan with no words, and no music.
If you were I, and I were you.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.