Tag: PDX

Another World is Possible

On By Anemone1 Comment

(To the paradigm of patriarchy and all who uphold it.)

I reject your attempts to vilify me.

I reject your efforts to desecrate me.

I, woman of power.

I, bringer of life, mother of children.

I, keeper of soul fire.

I, owner of this earthly body, my pleasure and pain.

I am stronger, wiser, and more clever than you will ever be.

The void in you is distressing.

Your lack of willingness to share power enrages me.

Your inability to love yourself saddens me.

I hold my boundaries with the strength of the trees.

I cast away the stones that have weighed me down, into the river.

I wash my hands clean of resentment and fear.

I return the blame and the guilt that do not belong to me.

I free myself from your constructs of war.

I forgive you.

I give to myself all that you could never give.

All I have ever needed is here within.

 

I open my heart to receive healthy, whole, reciprocal love.

I open my heart to give healthy, whole, reciprocal love.

I acknowledge the hungry ghosts and do not feed them.

I accept nothing less than true love.

I call upon the four winds,

I call upon earthly and cosmic forces,

I call upon my ancestry:

 

Guide me.

Be the wind at my back.

Be the ground beneath my feet.

Help me to protect my children.

 

I maintain my belief in the sacred,

my right to ceremony, and

my faith in goodness.

I allow my heart to swell with compassion.

I flow in connection.

I dance in ecstasy.

I sing to heal.

I sprout and grow, bloom and seed, season after season.

I live a thousand lives and die a thousand deaths.

I embrace possibility.

I accept the challenge of creating another world.

I am drawn

On By AnemoneLeave a comment

(for my unsung muses, and in honor of eros)

 

I am drawn to you

as I am drawn to water,

to river and ocean.

 

Your allure,

it seeps subtle, into flesh and bone,

into thoughts and dreams,

knowing not boundaries of distance, nor time.

 

Your allure,

it electrifies my senses.

It awakens the unspoken.

 

I long to immerse my body in your waters,

to swim your strong currents,

to be held in moments of stillness.

I yearn to feel permeated,

to cleanse and be cleansed.

 

I could surrender to your waters,

so cool, deep, and dark,

so soothing

to one who burns.

I could let your waters take my life.

 

But we are not adversaries,

and I am not here to offer up my life.

We are energies capable of joining, elementally–

magma flowing to meet oceanic waves.

We together would be

a crashing, transforming,

warming, cooling,

sighing, steaming union,

creating future fertile ground for regeneration.

Parts of Her

On By AnemoneLeave a comment

Parts of her are held.

Parts of her are held together.

Parts of her are held together by stories.

Stories inhabit her cells

shape her thoughts

form her identity

radiate her heart

haunt her spirit.

 

She belongs to some,

and some belong to her.

Others have traveled from beyond.

All are interwoven,

all are calling,

all are longing,

some are begging–

to be recalled

to be told

to be heard

to be released.

 

If she tells,

who will listen?

If she tells,

who will believe?

If she tells,

who will keep her stories?

 

 

Will her telling be a mending?

An unraveling?

Or, will her telling be an unraveling and a mending?

 

She understands her questions are ancient–

that there is no knowing,

that there will be no reassurance.

The answers will come

when she begins–

and as with all beginnings,

her voice must rise from the dark silence of the unknown.

 

I Am

On By AnemoneLeave a comment

I am a child of heat and friction,

of love and lust,

of laughter and wisdom.

I am a child of golden summer sun,

of amber harvest moon,

birthed in mountain shadow,

in a land of dense coniferous forests and fertile foothills,

a land carved by snow melt and river flow,

a land where the wild meets cultivation.

 

My heart forged in molten lava,

simmering quiet and deep within Wy’east–

local legend of unrequited love–

I too burn hot and constant.

I too love long and fierce.

 

My spirit is kin to the fox.

I spend nights shape-shifting,

traveling keen and swift and silent.

 

Ancestry from the north, from the west–

a bloodline of labor through the seasons–

I call upon your guidance in my prayers.

 

I am a newborn,

I am time-worn.

I am learning–

how to tend and temper my fire,

to cleanse and free my waters,

to listen and to be of service,

how to reclaim and to be claimed,

how to love and to be loved,

how to create balance in the midst of chaos.

 

 

 

Desires

On By AnemoneLeave a comment

I want to feel the cool damp caress of night on my skin–

the density.

 

I want to feel the intimacy created in the absence of light–

the hush.

 

I want to breathe the darkness of earth–

the intoxication.

 

I want to drink the medicine of night–

the renewal.

 

I want to linger in tree-shadow with you,

then bathe our flesh in moonlight–

the fantasy.

 

I want to lay under the cosmic sea,

as you name the stars–

the communion.

 

I want to know we exist

outside of my dreams–

the fruition.

We Fall Apart to Become

On By AnemoneLeave a comment

The empty shell shimmers against the dry, rustling grass of August.

I crouch low to the earth.

I gather her brittle, translucent skin, gently.

This skin of days passed.

I admire the patterns of her scales,

the texture visible, tangible,

color now faded.

I hold her cast-away sheath in the palm of my hand.

I think how I am like her.

I am part snake.

I too have outgrown my skin.

I too have shed the old, many times–

for survival,

for cleansing,

for growth,

for truth.

The shedding is agony.

The shedding is ecstasy.

It is a death and a rebirth.

I hold her old skin–

this temporary art of moments lived,

this disintegrating map of who she was.

I watch it flutter into pieces and scatter in the wind, returning.

 

 

A Writer & Her Muse

On By AnemoneLeave a comment

A Writer & Her Muse

 

You brought me here today,

beneath the flaming autumn leaves of maple trees.

You said, “The time is now.

Tell me everything.”

 

About your first encounter with death–

dead kittens on a wooded path,

mouths agape, bodies lifeless and stiff.

 

Tell me how you doubted the stories strangers told.

How you loved to wander–

a young child in the woods with her father,

searching for signs of deer and fallen antlers.

 

How you were raised by atheists

in a town of Christian zealots, who said Jesus died for your sins–

an inherited debt you did not understand.

 

Tell me how you found god

while making love

in the backseat of a Volvo.

 

How the color blue conjures memories

of Moroccan portals,

of Aziz’s blue eyes.

 

How the sun’s warmth on the nape of your neck

reminds you of lying topless on a Basque beach–

your breasts felt natural, honored–for the first time.

 

Tell me how you have imagined dying.

How it felt like sighing,

like holding hands with your ancestors.

How it sounded like a strong wind through the fir trees.

 

Tell me this is a beginning.

Tell me more. . .