The Volcanic Muses & Other Stories

2012-01-20T17:30:00.001-08:00

O and i will lie down in the creek bed, grateful. weeping. i'll gamble my soul for more water.

cherry tree loving the blue sky above

2011-12-01T19:44:00.001-08:00

Venus conjuncts Pluto in Capricorn

2011-11-29T11:30:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamed I rode a child’s red bike up a suburban street where I came upon your

home.

The facade was faced in stone flanked by bright green walls the color of pistachio ice cream,

the entry was made of old redwood and there was a small bench with shoes nearby, a mat, a potted plant , leaded glass in the door.

I did not ride by closely as I feared I would see you there.

I would have to face you see you face your face again.

Several nights before this I dreamed we made love inside an oak tree

covered in shimmer( us ) as if we suddenly became moonlight.

Three years have passed now come and gone . I had not dreamed of you in nearly a year

then

here

you
are.

this doorway

that shimmering

your memory

now
all the healing and moving forward has fallen behind

I feel like I have to start over again

find new pujas new trails/cells/language/ seed pod/ new skin and bone.

To have to continue to be this quiet about it all grows callous and impossible in my hands

my exiled heart longs for the dreaming

my blood craves new marrow my heart, new meat&

salt.

Jack Kerouac shooting pool (1967)

2011-08-09T19:42:00.000-07:00

Venus enters Leo

2011-07-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Neptune Retrogrades. A minus Tide. Jupiter enters Taurus.

2011-06-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

2011-05-28T07:28:00.001-07:00

swimming

2011-05-27T18:19:00.000-07:00

i sing my love and prayers to thee o constant o jewel o patient wonder

2011-04-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

neptune in pisces. pluto in capricorn retrogrades

2011-04-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

Venus conjuncts Neptune

2011-03-25T17:15:00.000-07:00

You will never know how many times I called out to you baby in this deluge

I did a beat down in the watershed

among the lichen

did puja

sustenance

symbiosis

I wrote your name on a piece of wakame I foraged from the San Andreas fault just before she breaks open

I make shoes of wild nori

I drink the tide and the seafoam as if it were a fine stout

I will never stop loving no I never will foolish as that may seem.

If we make our hearts hard against those who loved us we will die a dry abandoned cardboard box empty & ungrateful

How about these tides
      ?

      how about the birds now quiet as Spring arrives drowned in despair and astonishment .

River. Swollen. Crested.

2011-03-12T18:11:00.001-08:00

uranus ingress into aries, yo Jupiter!

2011-03-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

American Prayer (Hour)

2011-03-03T07:31:00.000-08:00

this leo moon illuminating a hard frost & softened heart

2011-02-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible live in an elevator!

2011-02-16T20:40:00.000-08:00

Chiron Enters Pisces

2011-02-08T07:15:00.000-08:00

How will I ever settle down with the creek bed dry as a bone in February the

last gasp of

trickle&splash.

The river green and still as emeralds?

The winds arrive as if to ignite some ancient old bloody cut, you know, the one that never healed, you know, the one that festered for years, infected, pestered, itched.

I would soothe myself in the falling water of the creek

filling it’s crevices and tangle of rotted oak and squirrel bones with my grandmother’s jewels and the discarded feathers of Raven.

I offer this watershed my tenderness&wishful thinking

a garland of carnelian a garland of sandalwood beads

those waxy bags filled with opium poppy seeds that bloom the color of my blood and the
regal purple of my lineage.

The winds arrive cranky and determined more fierce than my heart can bear
more tenacious
than my sorrow.

True,

they will win our ongoing argument this time.

True,

I will run back to that burned out faery stand deep in the canyon.

True ,

there may be no water now.

venus in sagittarius

2011-01-14T19:48:00.000-08:00

On each one of my fingertips I hold a lyric.

You.

You.

my Tempest,
my Hell on earth,
my Pomegranate,

my Popscicle. yep. my Lollipop. You know about this.

I saw the Raven pair capture Finch eggs and fly North.

I now realize that all life , Dies.

You, my Compost. My mycelium. My Detritus. White Boy.

There now, quiet.

There will be a sparking, the water will recede. ( i promise.)

Rosie and I took 14 Alder sticks, wrapped an Old Growth Redwood Stump

In SpanishMoss and wove in the flotsam and jetson of slash.

I took my veins and filled them with creek water. yup.

he has lips like jimmy page

2010-11-14T18:20:00.000-08:00

2010-09-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

Dang it's a hot night.

Cricket.

A dog barking from way down in the canyon. Sea swell. Owl shrill.

This hilltop, redolent of ganja plant, Venus retrograding ready to back off and let the men figure it out.

Fox pups conversing with the night. Autumn in Mendocino.

Feather

2010-09-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

There was this thing that happened.

Life took off my flesh my meat my blood my nerves my filament

moss&lichen replace marrow
being awake replaces being taken.

50 ravens.

Throwing up my/wings/ arms.

Astonished.

Bats.

flippy floppy swishy swooshy I’ll never forget those things that happened

the difference between deep green and black is now

the difference between watershed&vein.

You.

Never.

Coming.

Going.

No.Yes.Maybe.

Never

hymn,

not now. not

ever.

ode to margaret goldsmith

2010-09-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

Intrinsic coolness.

The very tiny tips of maple leaf caught on fire.

Flame

Cliff dwelling dashed for mountain top

Sunset dashed for the sea the color of a pearl
you know what ?

I once thought I knew everything or at least something
anything
but now no now
life
bears
haphazard
fruit
figs
the color of persimmons

offspring disguised as birds of prey.

this.

The upanishads become oracle&salt becomes blood here this here.look.

“”When people depart from this world, it is to the moon that they all go. By means of their life breaths the moon swells up in the fortnight of waxing, and through the fortnight of waning it propels them to new birth. Now, the moon is the door to the heavenly world. It allows those who answer its question to pass. As to those who do not answer its question, after they have become rain, it rains them down here on earth, where they are born again in these various conditions — as a worm, an insect, a fish, a bird, a lion, a boar, a rhinoceros, a tiger, a man, or some other creature — each in accordance with his actions and his knowledge.” — Kausitaki Upanishad

Riverview Apogee

2010-07-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

Do you remember how the trail that switchbacked up to the quartz mine seemed to have gone on for miles didn't it ?
Then like an explosion !Kablooey! a quarry
of gilded and luminescent stone about faced us as if it were a temple.

Golden alder leaves shimmy like sequins on the dress of a Parisian chanteuse.
We danced to the songs of

Fortuny
Lao Tzu Black Elk &the Pixies

Acropolis Eames Gaudi

Stonehenge Chartres Altamira

Vortex Filament lysergic

Bride descending the Staircase fragment/broken glass

Psychokiller.

Black mica shards cut through my sandals.
I crush the quartz in my teeth as if it were ice.

I once trusted the whiteness (&the wilderness) but now know that darkness was there, wasn’t it?
Not in the mica but in the caverns of glistening rock.

My heart was tender as a mountain peak.
Your's was an alder staff gliding along the river like an otter foraging for salmon.

I have replaced my blood with the green of reflected pools and sink holes.

My hair has grown mossy and wicked.

You'll live happily ever after now
as I remain here

on this hilltop

you

once

hung

your hat on.

2010-07-22T10:16:00.003-07:00

Saturn enters Libra

2010-07-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Rolled up all tight like that at the foot of Ana Purna,

Saturn throws his outer rings like a ring toss game at a carnival up
and over the summit.

me ? a cup half full&

A sow bug armored in grey ribbed shell,

chanting a Soul Coughing tune over and over again like a mantra.

Translating the Tibetan Book of the Dead into Arabic.

Covering my eyes with a pillow of mist .

Traveling this last path as I grab handlfuls of huckleberries off tender limbs.

I set the bar to match 14 thousand feet where peak meets heaven where

the finest gasses of atmosphere shift
and change into soulfulness.

Chanting down Babylon&

rocking back &

forth

the pingy pangy sound of the tap of my foot

against the glass door that separates us
from our fate.

i am taking the miles back.

2010-07-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

The song the fogbank sang to me

2010-07-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

I drive to town today in torn brown sweatpants covered
in chicken manure&olive oil

listening to Peter Case and a fierce banjo

chewing the ganja hash from my fingernails

astonished that my creeks are still flowing water

repentant for all the sins and aberration inflicted by my flawed crappy dreams and ideals

chewing the fat from my guilt&self doubt

chewing the finally I am getting pissed finally from my fingernails but it's that plaintive&

plucky tune that made me stop by the side of a road to photograph a crumpled up paper bag lying on the broken yellow line of highway one.

last thoughts on woody guthrie

2010-07-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

the 4th of july

2010-07-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

Ella Fitzgerald - Black Coffee

2010-07-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

Gloria!

2010-07-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

Walk & Don t Look Back - Peter Tosh & Mick Jagger

2010-06-30T16:38:00.000-07:00

I have a pink gingham apron, autographed on the pocket with a sharpie marker by exene cervenka

2010-06-28T19:28:00.001-07:00

Fucking hell, there are so many disappointments in life. That bonfire that never caught on. Your mother never loved me. My torn fishenets right before you seduced me.. The John Prine eight track that melted in a heat wave traveling I5 on our acid trip in 73. The broken glass. That evening camping in Clear Lake when we laughed so hard we spilled the honey jar filled with peyote. Why I did not have your baby back then when I was in college. The time I sliced open a just line caught jack mackerel in the middle of the Bermuda triangle and had no wasabi.

The Fields of Humboldt

2010-06-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

Woke to the tallest trees bathed in different particles of light. Meadow and field benevolent among silent elvin anarchists. A trickster pulled me out into the moonlight , then you know as things go , eclipse and shatter find treasure under the heap of tears and stars. Fifteen girls in matching red stitched up leather cowboy boots ride up the riverbed gravel crackling under hoofs emolliated by rain&honey .
Are all of our meanderings in vain?
All the beauty of the world is encased in diamonds gone to waste by the hands of reckless and careless men all our passions dashed by the cloister of moss by sepulcher by chalice&two step.

Val Del Omar - Variaciones sobre una Granada

2010-06-28T06:15:00.000-07:00

Three Dances Paul Bowles 1929

2010-06-24T19:13:00.001-07:00

2010-06-24T19:12:00.001-07:00

2010-06-24T19:11:00.001-07:00

Ahoy from the Roy Fox

2010-06-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

While eating hot dogs with louie out at noyo harbor yesterday

speaking of the ebbing and flowing of tides how the moon can turn you inside out

make iconic and meaningless our meanderings our tenacity our failings louie quotes an old zen koan that goes something like this

one must stay awake while falling down the well

perhaps you’d find a handle in there to grab as you fall or land on the proverbial donkey’s back there may be a spike of jagged metal at the bottom waiting to impale

your already beatotshit heart and there may just be a pool of calm water bathed in light you just really don’t know do you but I suppose if you are awake you’ll remember what inspired you to become human the next time around.

The Sylphs arrival

2010-06-23T07:32:00.000-07:00

closing the gate

2010-06-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

How does one watch this world end

You just do

The wind will tell you stories but birds will never lie.

The sky will speak in tomes of lavender and Swahili

tired filled with remorse.

Yesterday, me and the dogs saw angels flying. I swear.

No one I know is sleeping.

The moss in the watershed is curled up and fetal……….. no birds nests

Raven killed their offspring. No one is telling.

a tale from long ago

2010-06-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

A litany of sharp words flow in a berating river of cuts. My spirit tries

to soar above the pain. I draw swords. I cut the little rabbit open. no

blood. Hack! goes the cleaver as I seperate the hind legs from the

spine...She says, "I don't fucking care what you feel!"

these words spoken by my best

friend.

Each breath or gasp is a genuflection to the diminishing sureness of all

things held permanant and dear.

The skin is pale pink with marbeling of white, Delicate. The kidneys rest

inside an envelope of fat, they're round and red like the lips of children,

I pop them out and slice them into perfectly sliced bits for the kitties,

the texture of thick silk, no emotion, they lie in a perfect pile, neatly in

a White porcelain bowl, the Black cats pounce! purrs and whistles" you make

me Sick" I can't stand being in the same room with you!" Lauren, my sous

chef cries as I sit stunned.. If I don't cook the Yellow potatoes right

away they begin to turn Brown, I layer them carefully in the Black iron pan,

staggering the shapes larger to smaller, brushing each layer with clarified

butter and a drizzle of heavy cream, the white melts into the pale Yellow ,

bits of cracked Black pepper a scattering of Bronze fennel leaves.. the hot

hot oven collides with the butter and edges Blacken, silhouettes of herb

look like the forest after a fire, stark contrasting shapes, delicate and

vulnerable.

"Honey, the shop is my new baby, I don't have time for you anymore, you're a

big girl now. " I am 11 years old.

The steak sears on the grill. The duck fat sizzles in the pan. I flip the

leeks over in the hot olive oil. They burn Black if you don't flip them

right away.

I was never attached to my name, it has always felt like an anomoly, a

spaceship, a crucifix. I have always felt the my given name had nothing to

do with me, when I hear it spoken I am astonished, my name to me is like

margerine or polyester, it has kept me from the actualization of my soul's

desire, my spirit's ease, if i changed it tho, I might remove my history, I

might remove those faded Sepia last breath images of my parents and family,

even though they now feel like a myth, as if they never happened, as if I

was born of coyotes, raised by cabbages and abandoned to the nest of a

cynical yet comedic band of feral ravens. I can't seen to find a place in

this world that feels comfortable, no matter how much I cook, no matter how

many layers of down I sleep in, no matter how many worn pairs of jeans I

own, no matter how many pairs of shoes I have this insatiable need to feed

people, even if they don't want me too. I have people who want me to feed

them, even if I don't want to. I feel like I carry alot on me and I don't

want it.

Yet I did this, this restaurant, this husband who is rarely home, this

barren womb,this tired voice, this kneeling acolyte, this resentful child,

this battered princess, this parched artist.

I ride a tightrope between acomplishment and submission (failure), though

never in the history of my women has there been submission in over 100

years. I find in my matriarchy, the deep green Tree Arm Pit, the place where

I hide all my stress under the limbs of her great strong arms, present.

Silent. Resilant. Alone, not lonely, oppressed yet not victim, clear of

karma, leeway to fuck up, Merrily..

If I put ground Sumac berries in lemon juice the color is Magenta.

If I put saffron in white wine , the color is Yellow.

If I macerate chives, just cut from the garden, with olive oil, the color is

Green.

I know the Cornucopia mushroom will turn Zinfandel Black.

Jasmine blooms in a profusion of sweet scent at my door. I carry in me the

myth of my hands washed in Cobalt, I carry in me an ability to heal.

Within the Red rose or the White calla, A Lilac's elusive sweetness,

thrashing of manzanita blossoms, scratches the skin, airborne acacia lemon

Yellow covers me in fine dust, Here, I feel I can wander about unoticed. I

feel as if I am at the other end of a funnel, life pouring in bigger than it

can come out. I feel in me the light , changing, pouring, diffusing.. I feel

the universe finally colliding with all my pain and I finally feel alright.

"You know, you are commiting a mortal sin! My father says, driving me down

Pico Blvd, to my Confirmation. What?, "Yes, your mother was married before

me and she divorced him, we were married in a civil court, and our marriage

is not recognized by the Catholic Church, so , your birth is not

acknowledged by the Catholic Church, which makes you a liar and a bastard!

"Daddy, what is a bastard?" I am 12 years old.

You look down at the cutting board and there are substances, some llike

blood... beets.

Some like shit...duck sauce with Figs and Balsamic... Some like tears. The

Ice Water Glass Spilled.

Emotions fill up and flow over , rushed by an impatient tide.

A Moon Thwarted. The phosporesence postponed by a convoluted tourist.

Mike brings me Blue and pale Turquoise eggs this morning, his Arcana hens

must be especially fertile. Each egg I crack open on the edge of a maple

board is a deep Yellow. Yolk spills from the egg, almost Orange it is round

and supple, glistening in the halo of clear fluid, often a marbeling of

Crimson blood lingers, chips of Blue shells floating. Suspended.. Amniotic.

In Paris last fall leaves brushing along the Boulevard St . Michel were the

color of these yolks, dry now they are souveniers of the street, taped to my

window, with a ocean behind them. I have an ocean behind parts of me. I

languish in Emotion, like unpredictible tides, or moons given proxy of

orbit to comets. I lanquish in emotion arriving as estranged relatives,

skeletons and,or even apparitions. Exhaustion sets in.

Wounds appear and disappear like old fruit, once ripe and perhaps even

luscious, now somehow vanished into A Perplexed Universe.

I have a tendency to dwell on things. I say" I'm sorry" first, "Oh, it's ok,

it dosen't really matter

"Are you alright?".

The water is boiling now, and steam rises infusing the scents of bay leaves

and lemon and Lampang peppercorns in to the air. I am wrestling with a 25

pound octopus alone in my kitchen and it is longer than me, the long grey

tentacles protruding from a head, a head bigger than mine and a strange bird

like beak. Wise old eyes. Shaman Eyes. I grapple, clumsy and burdened and

ackward and flop the creature into the pot, it turns the most magnificant

colors of Pink and Mauve and Purple and Blue Black and I know this octopus

must not know what an enchanting color it has become, or even seen the

metamorpohsis of shape and texture and essence, upon the aftermath of it's

earthly transition.

We don't think we can take this anymore, this service.. we women who hold

our forts between our legs.. we women who buck and buck and the horse still

rides US we women who long for the soft golden meadow......... a whisper of

wind.

The place where feet don't ache, where the lower back don't ache, where the

fort cuts into our inner thigh, a dent mark

a red line

a bruise mark

a wince in the darkness

The sum of my existance is bathed in olive oil and lemon, perhaps a small

crush of garlic added in the final toss...

The long sleepy ride home, Yellow line buzzing hard on the Black snake road

dead deer drunk rednecks that last table that sent the fish back the tears

shed in the kitchen before anyone got there, the deep breath that sent one

into the arena. Hungry lions, mean like Romans, capitalists, ungrateful.. We

manifested this, we Goddesses so we could feel what it is like to be human.

11/17/99

You can’t ride your pony through the pearly gates

2010-06-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

Core.

Emptied out humans taking out all their shit

And dumping it into to the ocean .

Deva.

“No turning back now your prayer won’t buy you

a ticket to paradise we know things about

the stars things that you will never know unless you

move Devotion from journey to the tidepool

sea cave

urchin shell “

constellation bathed in fate.

for kevin opstedal

2010-06-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

splayed out at the foot of mt tam

i mucked about in the mud of the minus tide.

i spun about
swirled and danced as if

i was free

as if

was

faery

i know things. type. letterpress. alchemy. witchcraft.

Some people say the world is coming to an end. That the vein burst and we are bleeding to death. I think we are. There is no triage for this. Stuff the leak with poems kevin

That what I say. neruda cummings sze plath di prima corso ferlinghetti

rimbaud

blake

whitman kerouac ginsberg bukowski snyder patchen mcclure

yea that’ll stop it.

6. 6.

2010-06-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

just lately, right around 2am, i can hear jets flying back and forth along the coastline
this goes on for hours so i finally rise as the dawn cracks at 5 as the ravens arrive with one big
coo as rosie's paw and wimper nudge for attention by then i am exhausted by my dreaming often
apocalyptic often quagmired in some kinda gestalt that i know i got to work this shit out by now
by ebb and flow and often that the dreamtime is more soothing especially these days that the waking time

is

and i know i know i know deep down inside that all my longings and all my hopes all things dashed and driven out by the angry and vengeful fates now make sense now have a clear voice now become
my pony to ride into the mystery.

2010-06-05T06:30:00.001-07:00

2010-06-03T06:44:00.003-07:00

Looking at the earth from the inside out

2010-06-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

Was my collapse a precedent for this one Would I Consider Myself noteworthy enough to Track Every Natural Catastrophe including my own the memo of

Personal sinkhole tornado flash flood oilspill earthquake hurricane volcanic eruption wings broken by crude oil sticking to every cell in my body were I to write down the tale the devas told me last week of something more terrible than we can imagine coming at us how they burrowed unseasonably and gathered all the dry wood they could carry built dams carted off acorn killed their offspring denied life to the new generation hunkered down for the fall of man the forest got real quite bat&owl just watching not singing how about this they cried.. how about this.

a wonderful memory long since passed but still yummy and alive

2010-06-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

Theresa Whitehill, her husband, Paulo Ferreira, and I came to Stags’ Leap in July with the

intention of extrapolating the sensory memory of this place into spoken word and cuisine.

We came to create a visceral interpretation of a place that evokes Saudades.

I arrived at the estate, after a three hour drive from my home on the Mendocino coast.

The heat of Napa Valley quickly penetrated my skin and I welcomed the warmth and dry

crackled air. We walked together all over the property, through the winemaker’s apothecary

garden, up along the slopes of the palisades, into the wine caves, and I began taking a

mental inventory of the wealth of herbs, ﬂowers, and food plants. I settled myself into

Canary cottage and watched Theresa write, as she began her process of articulating all the

images and sensations she was experiencing around her.

How does one translate earth and rock and water and vineyard into poetic form, into

ﬂavor and texture and nourishment? For me it began within a landscape that is ancient

and fertile and sacred. This landscape is where the muse resides.

What Theresa expressed in word and verbal form, I translated into culinary and sensory

form. We collaborated on the concept and structure of images, ﬂavors, sensibility, and

sensuality. Inspired by Robert’s gorgeous winemaking, we connected this landscape to

language, language to food, food to wine.

On the shelf of the cottage I found a curious book, Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs.

Having an interest in herbal medicine for many years, I was instantly intrigued, and quickly

found a shady lounge chair and immersed myself in the fascinating world of myth and lore

and magic and medicine.

There were so many wonderful and amusing concoctions and potions and many of them

included ingredients I wanted to focus on and use in my menu—plants and herbs that were

growing on the estate, fruits and ﬂowers that conjured Saudades for me. I lay on the lounge and

read these anecdotes out loud to Theresa as she mused and made notations, throwing to her

bouquets of scent and ﬂavors, mythological remedies for lovesickness, or homesickness, the

place of Saudades, potions to fall in love by, or to free zombies from the half dead...(that recipe

entails eating pistachio nuts, from the shell, preferably the red ones).

We were entranced and transported by all this incredible information. My favorite being a

recipe for Invisibility... Soak poppy seeds in wine for ﬁfteen days; then drink the infused wine

for ﬁve days while fasting... This will enable one to become invisible at will. Hence the Emulsion

of Poppy Seeds and Champagne, Cooling the Braised Endives and Leeks, which we served as the salad course

of our event…

Our presentation of Saudades at Stags’ Leap, on the manor house porch at twilight, was a

weaving together of the poetry and the food, with each poem followed by the course speciﬁcally

designed for that poem. Theresa’s performance was in the true poetic spoken word vernacular;

my expression accompanied her words with ﬂavors, texture, a connection to her language, and

the wine.

My menu was inspired by many diﬀerent things... recipes based upon ancient remedies,

potions to conjure love and protection, abundance and creative fullness… all the things we

want all beings to have. I imagined simple combinations to nourish the already rich and fertile

spark of care, conviviality, and friendship.

We will not talk of the long post lunch naps, Viognier-induced, nor the hike through

rattlesnake territory above the vineyard, nor the valley at sunset, the twilight sky, the color of

which I have only seen in Montpelier. We will not talk of the haunted croquet court or the

moon garden resplendent in jasmine, phlox, and gardenia.

I used many foods growing on the estate: eggplant, ollalieberry, cactus pear, rose geranium, all

the culinary herbs... Sitting on the manor house porch, watching the rabbits running through

the vineyard inspired the rabbit loins wrapped in pastry. I could smell the pungent herbs of

rosemary, lavender, and thyme emanating oﬀ their backs as they ran wildly past, the heat of

the sun charging the olfactory hit.

All these elements were thrown into the pot of inspiration, fusing each sensation into the

light above the promontory at dawn, the glint of water shimmering on vine leaves, the chirp

of cicada at dusk, the musty smell of old stone steps, a pulled cork, a fragrant nose of Petite

Syrah. Saudades... fate, longing, memory.

—

today's moon transits from cheesy chinese astro page

2010-05-30T06:12:00.001-07:00

Moon Transits (useful a few hours)

2010-05-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

I took my banjo down to the seaside

2010-05-27T11:20:00.001-07:00

I walk circles

in the dirt

with the taste of salt in my mouth

my lips are blistered and parched by a sun

so unkind

so hot

that I can fry an egg on the palm of my hand.

I will one day walk on water a saline lake tipped by

Stalagmites crafted by diamonds noble spire&peak.

I walked in circles

on the edge of that volcano for so long that my skin

became the color of molten lava

and hardened as if I were a new continent forming/a metate to grind corn/a sea wall/a wedding dress on fire

I walk circles around the planet Jupiter begging for some lucky star to

Befriend me /o beneficent tide pool.

o carnelian chalice.

2010-05-23T20:08:00.001-07:00

2010-05-23T19:39:00.001-07:00

Unfathomable Sadness&The Pithy Heart of an Acorn

2010-05-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

The fog rolled back and forth over

Moat Creek sixteen times

this morning undecided it seems

yes

fickle

leaving only enough moisture as if one were to feed water

into a bird’s mouth with an eyedropper just a tease.

I see things Differently now but am still tangled in that story about how we might

have been Eurydice and Orpheus in a new historical and mythos of modern love,

Not quarantined to this realm of faerie and mossy tomb

not this life with no clear

path before me warmed by sun&steam.

I can sing like an angel when I drive my car and I will charm the Lord of the Dead with my finely painted map of Hades

with my newly acquired caution

my sing songy irreverent mocking of Cause&Effect.

my refined beguilement

I will steal the heart of the Lord of the Dead, preserve it in

a silver acorn

worn around my neck hung from the fishing line

I cut from Neptune’s hook.

meditations as mercury stations direct

2010-05-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

How small black birds drink water from crevices in the asphalt at dawn

How grief sits in your belly telling stories and singing songs about sunlight

How the quiet sits on you like a terrible sister

How the redwood orchid erupts from the despair of slash and arrives as would

a smile

How patient longing can be

How survival is no longer the goal but becomes the breath

Happy Birthday Mommy!

2010-05-08T07:44:00.000-07:00

5.9.1915

2010-05-07T20:35:00.001-07:00

2010-05-07T06:12:00.000-07:00

We played that glass bead game didn’t we ?

Carelessly throwing turtle shells into bonfires

traveling roads that were cracked and dangerous.

I never in a million years thought it would come to this, where I prayed to the flurries crushed diamonds with my bare hands burned the effigy of moss and petulance.

We once believed love was silver and ancient as a hopi burial ground we once made love under a blanket of crushed rose petals we once saw music in stars and vapor.

To grow up this year was hard . My skin is no longer soft. Do you remember how the high desert looks in summer where the earth is cracked as a map of the rivers of the world might look ? the confluence of tributary the complexity of tides and currents.

Now.

Everything has changed and nothing will ever be the same as you stole the coral from my heart and gave it to cannibals

you will never remember that I smell like vanilla and roses

you will never remember how I softened your night terrors and lit your darkness.

I am tired.

The Sabian symbol meaning for twenty three degrees aries

2010-05-06T06:52:00.000-07:00

Blown Inward By The Wind, The Curtains Of An Open Window Take The Shape Of A Cornucopia

twenty three and a half degrees

2010-05-06T06:49:00.001-07:00

2010-05-05T07:13:00.001-07:00

The Faery Sutra

2010-05-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

I thought I was doing the right thing

all hunkered down and quiet here wrapped up like

an Eskimo.

I sheltered myself , wrote sonnets on the discarded skins

of lizards painted wings on the backs of sparrows .

I told myself stories about sunlight and water.

I resisted all my urges to return to the place where I had once

Caught Fire

I was forming new skin with dark blue type written as

sacred slogans tattooed on these hands that now feel so helpless.

I took refuge inside a moss covered old growth redwood stump

You know, the one I asked to be buried in.

I stayed there despite:

the wind pounding against walls around me of indescribable green

the wind makings sounds of an old woman’s creaking bones

the wind muffling a crying woman’s lament

the wind in an argument with the rigid fallen forest.

I left this place for a moment and when I was not paying attention the other shoe dropped.

The wind screamed at me from across the road as if to say “watch out!” but it was too late.


	May 4, 2010 at 6:27pm Re: love yes life is fabulous. we are moving to a new house at my dad's with his new girlfriend. my new school is good. lacrosse season is almost over. :(

i once fit the moon in my pocket

2010-05-04T20:21:00.001-07:00

2010-04-25T16:35:00.001-07:00

The Menudo Witch Lament

2010-04-25T16:10:00.000-07:00

Am thinking about the krick in my neck from arguing with nature.

I wore six inch red stillettos as I conjured a tornado in Mississippi

Damn it ,

I stood my

ground this time

I told the wind “no ! you.... you back off I have had enough”.

2010-04-24T16:03:00.001-07:00

2010-04-24T16:02:00.001-07:00

2010-04-24T14:58:00.001-07:00

2010-04-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

I live even now

in an archeological way.

Wendy Rose

It was bunk

that conversation I just had with the wind about having

just now pulled the rug out from under me and

all and blaming it on Uranus

or Pluto or Saturn.

the filaments have become tangled and

frail . susceptible.

So I get slapped with a retort by the sea after all that

grumbling

in a diatribe of white caps and sea foam terrorizing the

already

frightened salmon & kelp clinging to the cliffs.

…”everything must change

whether you like it or not ….I will turn you in to a kite the shape of a star piñata

No grinding stone or sarcophagus will redeem you and and and you will love me, says the wind, you will love me and my swish swoosh my incessant having to be right my meandering and fickle affections my tempestuousness my garrulous temperment…”

I take hold of the Raven’s wings bandage my feet in gauze soaked in the oils of myrrh&patchouli take flight once again hoping the next fall will be more gentle than the last.

2010-04-22T07:02:00.001-07:00

rosie at 6:45am

2010-04-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

If some one were to touch me right now, I would fly like a thousand

swallows perched on a wire..i would explode into new galaxies and

shatter in to prism and light cluster

I would soften and yield as does mud under river bank I would lay

still as morning

Listening For Birds.

2010-04-15T06:55:00.001-07:00

2010-04-14T11:49:00.001-07:00

2010-04-14T11:36:00.001-07:00

2010-04-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

don’t know

If the dream I had last night was

really a dream or if some kind of phantom

came to visit me amid the smoke

smell.

The incessant hail. Bloody riverbank&

swollen river

The fiery planet Mars

is winking at me

thru the open window in my kitchen.

see the shadow of a manzanita bush

all stirred up into a state by the moon void of course&longing.

The wind picking up now

just as the dream begins suddenly ends

without warning and my

nose is tickled from the acrid smell

of wildfire

burning bush

steam hissing water quenching open flame

a mighty hand.

A poem for Anu

2010-04-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

Labyrinth

Unspoken wall gilded in some kinda crazy

Golden Aftershock there were seventeen cars holding

a sacred fire

In time there are these forests appearing in deep green

Nesting firebrand

Light coming from the shaft in the back room lighting up

a day dream

fine diamonds.

2010-04-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

the lineage of lipstick

2010-04-09T19:44:00.001-07:00

2010-04-09T17:22:00.003-07:00

2010-04-09T09:21:00.001-07:00

Somewhere between here & Alder Creek

2010-04-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

Somewhere between here and Alder Creek

I lost that permanent feeling as if to say that thank god

finally all that really mattered was the haze out

over the gulch the way the mist settles into the pockets

of forest as would a small bird tender to the nest.

All that really matters now is the thick redolent oils of coffee

and hot milk and how I might crowd myself into the belly

of a burned out old growth and continue to cast spells and conjure

the dead might they come forth and explain some things that I still do not understand?

How the rushing flow of creek reminded me of making crazylove

after an X show

on a stranger’s leather couch in Mill Valley.

How I revolted against civilization and returned to this coven of

Watershed Pirateship Monastery

now

This celibate chatter finds no audience among the thicket of Manzanita

finds no smart quippy repartee with the raven’s wife who is too busy

protecting a coliseum of tangled twigs and glitter filled with 7 new off

Spring

I think the hyacinth are blooming now in the cemetery at Windy Hollow Road.

I see that the white caps have quit their tantrum and finally settled down,
I heard folks can fish for salmon soon.

my monster

2010-04-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

oil on redwood

2010-04-07T16:07:00.003-07:00

2010-04-07T11:15:00.001-07:00

2010-04-06T16:08:00.003-07:00

Point Arena Upanishad

2010-04-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

"That’s alright, I still got my guitar.”

Jimi Hendrix

I am in some kind of Blakean tailspin.

Hurled from the crest down into canopy

Pluto stations retrograde as I pull up my knickers,

wipe the salt from my eyes, dig the creek mud outta my ears.

I’ll declare myself, goddamit, right now, here, right now

to be passive and compliant.

I draw the 5 of swords defeat for the hundredth time this year

so fuck yea I kneel down vanquished into submission

to Venus in Aquarius.

Make a reverent puja to Kali and her empowered yoni.

Burn the cobalt to benevolent deity, who ever you are .

Are you

Kali now heavenly consort to Pluto, Joe Strummer and Leopard ?

Servant and mistress to shift and radical change?

I get confused thinking eternity is constant as the sea is always changing yet looking out at the same piece of the Pacific for over twenty years, it remains familiar .

I get confused thinking god is love and love is truth and truth is beauty and beauty is sublime.

2010-04-03T16:31:00.000-07:00

"Soul is to be found, in the vicinity of taboo"

Reading a Good Friday Poem... Los Angeles 1964

2010-04-02T16:39:00.000-07:00

April Fool's Day

2010-04-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

Hightailed it to the ridge of the watershed

took refuge in pilot and craggy arms of wind broken

Oak.

Vanquished by marauding fox set afire by the nesting raven

I cross my arms over my heart to protect myself from the

boom boom pow and spurt of the break at Moat Creek

the

tawdry explicit come on's from a jay bird.

I rambled about the wet creek bed confused by my dreaming

of a time when you would drive here, to Point Arena
all the way from Petaluma

just to have a piece of
my

white

peach pie.

2010-03-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom smasher on the quest to discover the 'God particle,' has smashed its previous record for particle collisions.

2010-03-30T07:01:00.001-07:00

6 in the morning ode to the sea swell and the setting moon

2010-03-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

Now let me speak to you of wetness

Moisture

Flow of creek

River

Sea

All life

might spring forth from water but what of the wetness of

Spirit?

What of the space between our legs

The place where heaven begins

Where water pours forth

often to bring joy and pleasure?

The precursor to child birth?

Child sprung in fluid and blood and clean clean water

Wetness surrounded

womb and now

in womanhood.

The wetness that just is there

Resident.

The amniotic fullness of

longing.

Yolk suspended in viscous clarity.

cleansed

alive

pulsing

swimming toward some unknown form

of ecstasy and release

squeals of delight that often resemble falling rain or

the wail of wild cat mourning wife or mother

the call to prayer

A cry to Christ or Allah the Buddha crossing river

The dew drop in its fall from cloud.

The mist rested upon limb.

Steam vents rising through forest canopy.

A face seen in a puddle sky behind this face.

Squall dark ascending.

Vertical water descending.

Waterfall that flows from the hearts desire to a pool

of clear passion.

Revived by a sparking of blossomed garden.

The faucet opened by the hands of myself

as I reach for this transformed spirit.

released by my sorrow.

My Wetness met by tears shed under night sky and full moon.

Face covered in salt my black

shirt stained with white rings of dried salt from this crying

Flooded marsh.

Torrential current.

Spring .

2010-03-28T10:02:00.001-07:00

2010-03-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

Take this piece of blue rag cloth I roll up the edges as a sow bug rolls out of

danger

I remember laying down on the stark wooden pew bench in a church

scented with myrrh and terror

I remember watching the baby jesus looking

at his effigy

on the cross

the bleeding

of wine and host the din and the bla bla bla of choir rolling up the pages of a missle thin

thin

paper with tiny words that meant nothing.

Now I take the blue cloth and hang it on the fence with a prayer written on it .

I’ll breathe into the gold. I’ll give my breath up for the dead for earthquake tsunami
frost. Extinction.

For the lipstick red sacred owl song and moon in exhaltation

my breath belongs to a

Manzanita

fire in winter starlight then night then sky void of moon
then fox print along the morning path.

the barn where the wind rests in the evening right before supper.

2010-03-26T18:42:00.001-07:00

2010-03-26T17:42:00.003-07:00

Ode to Will Amato’s Teeth

2010-03-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

I was not given a glimpse of them
so quickly despite
yr mercurial wit, yr wryness and swift
acerbic humor how your eyes
willingly smile way before your
mouth ever does.

There is no agreement between them.

As the lines at the corner of your eyes grimace
and resist muscles twitch a rising of blood
pulses.

I see you

as your lips begin to wrestle with your
reluctance to acquiesce to the pleasure
of a smile.

The exposure of one’s feigned amusement
all this lay to rest sullenness

dark
brooding.

Lost Bardo.
Plank walked.

My eye arrives to the tiptop of your lower incisor
slightly higher than the others
as if it were your first baby tooth
the first one to break gum and bleed.

Emerging in shocking disharmony.

Rebellious in the company of your other teeth.

As if it were the first skyscraper in barren landscape.

Yet, as this vanguard clears

Undaunted, periscopic

The air and it’s climate and determines

Safe surroundings

courageous grin unravels

and sparkle flashes from within your

black black eyes

erupting smoke stained ivory.

Surrendered.

Whimsy’s muse.

Red House

2010-03-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

Coming home

from radiation this morning

crossing town in the rain

up Market Street across the Civic Center

I listen to Jimi Hendrix in my car turned up loud to

drown out the din & the cacophony of city morning

I listen to

Jimi play Red House

and the guitar wails over the sounds of the busses and around the trench coated men crossing the street.

Jimi riffs over the commuters weaving

in and out

over and

across

the cable car tracks and the secretaries in high heels crossing

wet shiny streets and the bass line just now beat up the

shuffle of a homeless man

carrying his burden of a lifetime down sidewalks busy

with disinterested workers and mothers with strollers pushing cell phones.

Jimi made that guitar cry and sing wild moaning as I tried to breathe in the diesel fumes and bay water to

erase the smell of rotting flesh.

Lily.

from Singapore with no time at all really, left opens her gown and

shows me her blackened chest the sores that will not heal the rare cancer

they say is incurable she falls into my arms and I hold her she cries and in unconsolable holding my breath with nothing I can do nothing pounding me in the head with a mallet.

I hold my breath

anticipating

the smell of the gown room in the morning

sipping a large latte I hold my breath

a Chinese woman with her mahogany wigged hair and her blackened nose

rotted out to the cartilage

from a cancer found only in Cantonese women sits beside me curled up in a waiting room chair with a big box of coconut cupcakes to give to the nurses .

This morning Jimi sang the blues as I sat in the gown room as the only woman there this morning without a wig on.

My black watch cap pulled down low over my head no shield for all the

astonishment of sacrifice and worry

no match for the absence of eyelash, eyebrow the soft duff of fine peach fuzz on my chin no more statement of purpose rather than style no more

ode to my vanity than a wish for warmth to come from somewhere

there’s a red house over yonder and

rain pounds the asphalt and traffic snarls

as the guitar growls and leaps heights of fury and crescendo

and spit fire the blues

remain

here

resident .

04/05/06

Saturn goes direct

San Francisco

detail from 'a child's chair'

2010-03-25T06:56:00.000-07:00