autumn autumn autumn pt 6 million

Cinder and smoke
the wind curls around the trees
the juniper bends
as if it were listening

I eat wind like hot honey. My sisters are writing about their season, our season: colors turning like flames, russet, gold, a brown sweeter than any boy’s eyes… I could dance naked in falling leaves, warmed by the trees with their crinkling summer coat, burning breathing what we wrote, high on pine needles beneath my feet. Folk singer’s guitar blends into itself, the same sadness: a city Fall is only smog, fog and peacoats and romance like cigarettes. I’m longing for bonfires the way I used to long for boys, heavy drums that rattle my ribs, to let autumn winds lift my feet off the ground and the night’s breathe move me like the top of a cedar…

Cinder and smoke
you ask me to pray for rain
with ash in your mouth
you’ll ask it to burn again…

Tonight we followed the ghost drums: out the dorm window, down yellow lit walks, past the empty auditorium, doors open, curtains dark… I’ve never noticed the way it is never night here, the way streetlights show the trees: ominous, unnatural wood mountains amidst steel and concrete… The sky is a strange composite, like me, of city and wild—there may be few stars, but you can’t take away that velvet blue, a soft inviting darkness, not the shadows of the tree against the sky, or the way every sound breaks loud and drifts up only to be lost in the void. But there’s still that everpresent streetlamp or car, everything lit from below, an amber darkening…

We found the drums in a gym, along with a vocalist and small ensemble of dancers. By day I would have mistaken any of them for a half-urban punk or another indie-jock… But here they were one, something both different and deeply primal. There was a man holding a bongolike drum, and a vocalist wailing Arabic or Farsi or some other language I must learn simply because of its age… And along with them, four men: jumping, clapping, dancing, all in time, the hypnotic tattoo punctuated by ay ay ays, their movements free and synced and amazing. I’ve come a long way in my poetry, but never enough to describe music… And this: this was bonfire music, nighdark barefoot, wailing and godsex and a people and war and a fierce, fierce joy. I don’t know if it had anything to do with Ramadan, or perhaps an Indian holiday? I know that I was the only woman there, without color, and that all I wanted to do was jump out of my skin, my bones singing like antennae and cattails and violin strings, how I’ve missed drums and rhythm….

Cinder and smoke
The snake in the basement found
The juniper shade
The farmhouse is burning down

So, this is our season, sister lovers... First Virgo, the grounding and the harvest, then Libra, the balance and thanksgiving, then Scorpio, the death, the birth, the reflection we take after the ghosts drift up, trying to remember themselves. Autumn makes me sing, to fly into winterdeath like a war eagle and come out in spring: on fire, to burn and go down in flames the next time the grasses dry.

In this city I dream of a cottage in green, to make good potions and cast circles and runes, to walk the woods barefoot in love. I sleep naked to feel skin on skin, that burning. I read the Wiccan Rede 13 times just for the rhyme and ancientness of it, ask the cedar tree to remember its home and maybe give me a little taste of those mountains, there’s a bonfire burning in my heart and blood is the drum. My lover and I circle it, high on the bone beat, madly in lust with everything that’s bright; I know them from somewhere long ago and ahead… We dance around this earthen star, heady with the balance and the change, building up the flame… For when others settle down to sleep we dance, we burn with winter and awaken the fire in the pines, the heart, the pen...

photo courtesy of http://www.albertdirectory.net 2001 photo contest - "winter fire stand"
song from sam beam's/iron&wine "cinder and smoke"

Constructing the "I"

What makes you fall in love with yourself?

(This may sound like the same question, but it's not: What makes [made] you fall in love with me?)

How do you prove yourself to yourself? To others?


My answer: I don't know yet, specifically. In my own mind I am an energy, a taste, a be-ing, but I think of specific things: my poetry, the sweetness of my own skin, a desire to serve, good listening skills... it's good, but am I really in love with it?

It's ironic that when in love with another (or as "another" we can be) things to adore just bubble up, but how often do we do this for ourselves?

So what makes you unique to you, what makes sends you head over heels everytime you look in the mirror?

I have no idea how this relates to our current reading, "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki, but it was what we discussed in my humanities seminar today. Interesting as all hell.

autumn autumn autumn

Oh, this season I was born in- coming back around to help me remember because heartbreak can take so much from you." (davka)

These days I am high and beautiful and shining like topaz, hair bright as tiger's eye, soul glistening like magnetic slick-night hematite....

Samhain comes 7 days before my birthday - a week before 16 I finally let the life of Jesus slide off my shoulders and took on Their Mantle. The deepest part of me knew he had been a good man, a real person of God/s and that I wasn't doomed to hell (though I still had anxiety attacks about that fact for a few years.) Four years ago this fall I watched my own face in front of a mirror at midnight, lit only by candles, and was in love with the mysteries of Life and the Earth and my own candlebright autumnbronze self. Glowing, I spoke with my grandparents and great grandparents and the many mothers before me, asked them for guidance and blessings, and the flames guttered and danced in response. Every year, by candlelight, I draw cards or cast runes for the new year. We are so beautiful by candlelight, I thought, lit by heat that sleeps in our eyes. We glow.

I probably won't be able to do that this year, but I have finally set up an altar of sorts in front of the mirror in my room. Autumn is a nesting time for me: I long to can fruits and reap harvests and sing in the moonlight with my coven people, my urban tribe, I want to dust and sweep and pull out the down comforters... This year I am stuck in a no-open-flame dorm room. I guess I'll settle for naps in my shawl's scratchy wool, remembering the tongue of flames against my hypnotized hands and face, that heat, the ribbons of dusty smoke curling towards the rafters...

First Rains

First rains of fall are here in the South Bay! Happy new year!

The moment I noticed the rain falling I threw on the least amount of clothes possible (ie less to dry) and headed downstairs. It feels so real and right, to be soaked through and shivering along with the juniper and the pepper trees. And yeah, I’m in the middle of a city, and it’s probably acid rain, and I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow with extra eyes or toes, but it is worth it for the cleansing.

This is when the real Autumn begins. I miss the Falls of home, water running down the hills in rivulets, the culverts full and gurgling… Pulling on a yellow raincoat and too-big boots to slip and slide up the Little Hill behind the house, my hand small against the rough rusted water tank. Slopping through 2 feet of mud in the barnyard to get to whatever animals in the corral, the heady-earth scent of wet horse- and cowflesh slick against my cheek…

I grew up on a cattle ranch, where drought meant so much more than letting the front lawn go a little brown. The months leading up to the rains were full of worry, of “navy showers” and my father and grandfather checking the sunrise, the cloudfall, riding out on the quad each day to make sure the cows and calves had made it to water. Some days they brought back little black bodies of calves that laid down in the hot sun and never got up. The first rain would bring a little relief, a short coat of grass for the hills, and prayers for a wet winter.

We don’t do it for the money – my family works hard to barely break even every year … I’m not sure each family member’s individual reasons: it’s been tradition for the past hundred years, the need to be close to the land, that if we sold out our 80 acres would become a landfill and cookie-cutter houses. We’re stewards of the land and cattle, and if it means going a little thirsty, letting the lawn wither, that is fine. Putting something both higher and equal – the earth, innocent animals, the grass and the eagles—before yourself is a powerful thing.

When I’m waiting at the busstop after work soaked to the skin, or get my books wet on the way to class, I’m still going to thank the universe for this rain. Though this water may be poison or polluted, the earth is still trying to get her cycles back in order and I am so thankful for it, even as I dance between raindrops and feel my soul filling up like a crystal glass, even as my Self drinks her fill and the gutters gurgle and run overflowing…

when it rains it pours, part II

these days I smell of darkness, the dank new earth—
whiskey sweat, melted butter. sweetness left to age.
these dorm halls are caves, but why I chose this tall building

in my hotbox cell I wake moist, every time
blissful alone warmness, only my throat rasping dry—

boy leaves room as I walk by from brushing my teeth
(communal bathrooms, mock intimacy, irony trails..)
I hear his tongue on his lips, words rolled around
in his teeth, wet, skin dark for one so young.
What did she say she found here—“This place is
a suckhole for subarbia”, and I know that’s what
shycasual boy is thinking, his room across the way from mine—
my soul stretched beyond injustice this town, these kids can feel—

wait

when did I become her? the girl with hips and the mystery,
woman of closed doors and eyes that reflect the fires under our feet—
the girl
boys
want. What happened, love? Who changed?
The honeyhaired child you fell for?
Unafraid of big love and frightened of fire? Now, the opposite—
If we met again, (meet) still don’t know what I do. I imagine it
most days: you invade, dumb predetor
seeking something deeper than jaguar's teeth you wear. my tongue lashes.

Goddamit, heart says, you hurt me.
Every boy I know would be so surprised,
not at the strength,
but those passions. the way I sweat malt whiskey,
love that smell of tobacco in his t-shirt,
need to sleep and seek caves. that depth.
I’m still not sure how they’d feel
about the wounds behind it.

remove, rewind, slow motion

Poem taken down for two really good reasons:

This girl

helped to create

this mag.


It looks like good times. I'm pretty excited!


(thanks to davka for the heads up... Tomorrow I get to sit through three student assemblies and story-times, so I'm heading to bed... I haven't even started it, but I love my job. :)

Paths and Standards (whilst chanelling Pinkola Estes)

I will not brush my hair for you. I will not pull these haphazard waves into a smoothshiny sleekness, I will not put my mane under wraps. I will not press a pillow over the face of my hips and thighs so that I sway to your liking, will not take down the talk for you, will not wear heels to make my ass and back tight for you, I will not unfurrow my brow or unarrow my eyes or sheath my claws: I will not do anything that you wouldn’t do for me.

City-living is far more like a jungle than I’ve realized—I’m learning when to keep my shades on, when to look him in the eyes, when to run, to stride back…. Whether to judge a man by his gender or to trust, or to keep my head bent forward like he isn’t there. It’s like I’ve been walking this line all my life, blind, and now my eyes are open: when to turn on the impassivity, the knowledge of whom I can’t pin to the ground, that I have just as much right to be here—this dorm floor, this sidewalk, this classroom, this dark street—as you do. When to open those buffalo eyes their way, to open up enough that divine light can stretch from my eyes to theirs, like morning glory vines, the way smoke longs for the heights of the sky. When to defend and when to heal. Can you do both at once? Yes, yes, you must, something tells me. The same thing that tells me what girl has got her claws sheathed, when to go to bed, whether the shadow in my room is from moonlight or something far darker.
Something drew me to this city—instinct, my gut, my third eye seeing the poverty and injustice that lies wherever there concrete and cars outnumber life forms. The city that ties it’s Monterrey Oaks to stand upright, the city that just now finds it’s community gardens full of mercury and lead. The city that is the stage for immigrant rallies and Ginsberg and revolution…I know my calling is here, but what for, exactly? And how long? How long before my heart calls me back to the hills, to the sharpness of ground and true prairie-gold winds?
I’m not saying I don’t love it here—I’m walking my path, but I know it’s not the only path I could take. My life’s work, in my mind, was always a specific scientific computation: take path that offers maximum help to maximum people. Now, now it is more complicated: Where, exactly? Low-income housing? Veggielution? Immigrant education? Health education? Women’s rights? Advocate for battered women? I don’t know, I don’t really have a set of interests, except in the LBGT area… Social work has so many opportunities that the only way I’ll know is if I work in every one of them.

And then there are men. Oh, men, oh, boys. Boys make me forget my wild-womaness, my night-eyesight and my integrity. Boys make me want to frolic and laugh and forget, but I can’t: the lake of my soul reaches to earth’s corners, I get my fire from her roiling depths, so how can I forget her call? The boy-men here, I want them, but get to close and they scare me into running, fleeing without my claws and big-toothed-grace, tripping over roots in the night…. Alone, night, again.

But somethought bubbles up, lapping at the shore in waves: need, want, need, want, the three layers of myself: the lake, the trees, the sky. Water sinks as low as it can, as close as it can, seeps into earth like a lover; and sky, the wind of the mind flows confident as a stream, but the trees in between? My soul is in the earth and I cherish her like a lover, and my self, well, I love it too and am confident in my own being, but isn’t there something… closer? Something between self-love and earth-love? That missing piece sings in the trees a lonely song, the way redwoods do when their roots find nothing to cling to. There are only boy-men here, nothing substantive, but still my nose twitches and I find myself hunting, falling, forgetting… Cycle cycle spiral, samsara, great wheel, big red road…

My footprints sing my four directions song, my uncut mane whispers which way the wind blows, which turn is the instinct of my heart and my lust longs for her other and the horizon is but a haze, I can do nothing but follow that call…