Sometimes,
after staring at a wall
until a bell says stop,
 
I find I no longer have it in me
to muster up judgment, opinions, 
a local point of view.
 
Your sweater is … teal. 
Your iPhone seems … to be there for you. 
Your feet look … cold.
 
There’s still room for projections as
the reel churns on at this hand-crank of God
and we all have a craving for popcorn.
 
Yet drained of any stance-ness, I must say: 
that cup is black, with an inside of white.
 
My pen leaks blue liquid on this crisp bleached page 
like things we made to make our lives easier.
 
The basket is woven. 
Some socks match, some don’t.
 
A sword stands in the basket in the middle of the room 
like someone for some reason put it there.
 
I rose this morning with malaise in my fluids. 
 
In the car, NPR aired a piece on Mary Oliver. 
Some New Yorker editor and a critic of 
her very last book — Devotions.
 
They were playing nice the best they knew how; 
editor man gently noting how academic poets 
tend not to appreciate her 'blatancy'.
 
"I do!" I told the radio with waking veins.
 
So yes, let's be clear:
 
The cup is black.
The lotus blooms. 
 
The sword in the stone
is today in a basket.
 
Everything just wants
to be loved.
 

Butterflies still frolic 
in the meadow beyond the playground; 
their parties are smaller in number these days,
but they’re flying, all the same. 

I follow their flight, stepping into
their playground, where the grasses
sway with that pulsing call
of wilds beyond straight lines. 

Breath by breath, 
something shifts, 
in the hollows
of my perception

as the pepper trees and lizard trails 
pour aloe on old wounds, and I find
the body’s knowing way 
of laying on the earth — 

in her lap, through her ground, 
with her gravity... As if
she could truly hold us.

As if she could welcome in 
all of us, kindly...  
​
Could take us in — 
all our failings, transgressions; 

could take us in --
all our greatness, and size;
without straining her back, 
or heart. 

She holds us
in all our uncertainty, 

she holds us through all 
the trembling cries 
of the blood, and the bones, and
the tender cheeks; 

through the night and the wide, wild day. 

— 

‘Thank you’, ‘I love you’,

say the bones and the blood 
and the deepest breath

as I find myself 
in prayer 
with her skin 

in the sunday sun
tucked away 
from all steeples
 
in a park past the edge
of the city.   

​

To my soul friends turned parents that believed in the stars and inspired this poem, and of course, to the little ones.
(Michelle Vanya Laporte & baby Nico, Saulius Kliorys & baby Eva)

Child, tiny miracle, tender form,
Anchored wings – you are here
Because love carries forward. 
 
In the cold of the night and
The fog of these times, your
Parents believed in the stars.
 
Welcome, sweet being
To this mad, wondrous world!
 
Where – with you– love discovers itself
Once again,
 
As the sun blushes soft while she rises
And falls, and still dares to blaze on
Every day.
 
There is madness here that is shocking,
Yet ancient, and there’s goodness as well,
Just as old, just as strong;
 
May your guardians trust in the strength
Of your soul as they safeguard the dawn
Of your body.
 
May your entry be gentle, your softness protected,
Your wonder encouraged, your pure light seen,
And your parents nourished by the awesome charge
Of loving and nourishing you.  
  
 
And in time – in due time – as your senses expand,
And your own legs and hands start exploring the land,
Once you’ve started to speak in the tongue of this world
Where wonder is shaped into questions….
 
May the slow humming stones
Rock your bones into stillness,
And may whirlwinds of air
Tease your vision, and cheeks;
 
May the moist breathing soil
Kiss your hands and your toes,
And may birds help you hear
Your own heart. 
 
May you learn from the elders 
The quiet powers of this world:
Attention, and labor, kindness, and
Prayer;
 
May they teach you to dance in the thick
Of our darkness, to sing to the moon,
To weep for our cares, and to laugh
‘Til this world breaks you open.
 
And when you’ve grown strong – both in
Spirit and bone – may you find your own faith
In the far-gleaming stars,
 
And weave warming tapestries 
Of earth and your dreams 
 
To cover the trembling corners of life
With the light you were brought here
To shine.

Disclaimer: I wrote this in July of this year, and was nervous to post it until now, reviewing my writing for the year. I decided it's worth sharing even with the somewhat acidic tone. With tenderness in my heart for my longing lady friends, if you find this one close to home, take a breath, be willing to laugh a little at your own culture and community, and discern wheat from chaff for yourself as needed :) 

Every self-proclaimed ‘awakened woman’ I know spends half her time at home alone lighting incense at her altar and ‘calling in the one’. She and her awakened girlfriends talk over Kombucha and raw chocolate about why it’s hard to find an awakened man: there are so few; women are just further ahead; many awakened men are too freedom-oriented to commit; she won’t settle for less; she knows he’s out there; she’s happy alone and doesn’t need a man to fulfill her (though of course this claim is suspect given the focus of her daily manifestation rituals).

She also loves to write articles about it, I’ve noticed in my recent Facebook feed. Articles calling men to have the courage to receive a wild awakened woman. Articles calling women not to settle for less than the perfect awakened man, and inviting other yearning feminine hearts to dream into the idealized New Age Adonis with her. Articles solidifying the increasingly ritualized fantasy of Californicated notions of what it is to be good: Must have aligned chakras, spirit animals, meditation practice, Life Purpose, tantric sex, and walk often in the literal and metaphorical wilderness. Must do all this and also somehow earn a good living in this capitalist culture so she can ‘manifest’ sheepskin temple blankets, hand-made crystal-activated Burning Man outfits, and other shockingly expensive spiritual bling. Because we awakened women deserve to have what we want, and how we express the divine must be in line with the latest material forms of prayer. 

We call demanding all these things at once empowerment - the nature of a wild awakened woman. However, I have come to call it something simpler, from the old vernacular of pre-new age cult indoctrination: misguided.

Two things madden me about these increasingly popular articles and the strengthening wave of cultural assumptions behind them. First, they perpetuate the Western Disney love story fantasy disguised as something more righteous than a simple longing for love. Oh mysterious wild women of the festival scene, despite your adult lifestyle choices - many of which I whole-heartedly respect - most of you grew up in suburban homes in America. You know who Ariel, Bell, Elsa, Sleeping Beauty, and Jasmine are, you know their love songs by heart, and you have those imprints of Prince Charming from a very young age pulsing in your awakening bones.

There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this, but please just call a spade a spade. You’re merely putting Prince Charming in a steampunk leather vest with a sacred geometry tattoo on his chi gong buffened chest. Just please acknowledge more honestly that despite all your empowerment and appreciation of solitude, which is fantastic, you still want him to rescue you from your wild awakened loneliness so you can follow your primal human instincts to love and be loved, give birth, and be cared for. This is human, mama, and it’s okay. Own it. 

Second, and more disturbingly, these articles to me highlight the crystallization of a new cycle of spiritual dogma and social hierarchy that is hardening the mystical into the religious before our eyes. And we know from history where this goes. Remember Jesus, and Saint Francis? Remember the simple messages they preached, the simple lives of direct relationship with God that they practiced? Now think of a modern Catholic Mass: the giant ornately decorated and expensive building we call a church; the priests and all that come with that patriarchal institutional role; the layers of dull ritual and misinterpreted words all too often disconnected from their original intent, leading back from that historic awakened man, his words, his woman, their disciples. And the bling - the rosaries, gold crosses on the altar, votive candles, marble statues of Mary and priest robes made of silk.

There is much beauty in all this ritual and institution, of course. I just spent a week in Eastern Europe, visiting many Catholic churches, and my heart and spirit were opened by the power of these places and the deep institutional container of the Church.

But it’s an artfully crafted cage for a butterfly. And it has contributed to a lot of pain, distortion, and unawakened behavior over the centuries.  When I read these articles invoking the perfect awakened mate, I can’t help but notice how many of the criteria for the awakened man are more clothing than essence. And that includes the ones that, in the waters we seekers tend to swim in, we assume to be essence. 

For example: turns out a man does not actually need to have a formal meditation practice to have cultivated the depths of compassion and presence you are seeking through that signal. Try looking for a man who's committed to a craft - any craft - and you'll find the same benefits. Here's another favorite I hear a lot: woman wants man who is not afraid of her wild feminine. It's true, a lot of men out there are uncomfortable with emotion and 'irrational' behavior to the point of not being worth your time. (And this includes many of those beloved meditators first drawn to that practice as a form of escape.) But it's also true that we awakened women, in our less than awake moments, often use the wild femine thing as an excuse to be totally bitchy and inconsiderate to those we love. I find a man who draws lines and helps me understand the bounds of my own behavior a lot sexier and awakened than one who lets me walk all over him with my 'wildness' because that's the latest over-generalized criteria for what it means to be a man. (To all the men I've done this to: I'm sorry.)

I could go on, but that's part of the problem. After many years of swimming in the seductive waters of West Coast spiritual culture, and stepping away long enough to be able to discern the butterfly from the cage, I can’t help but say: it now seems a lot simpler than all that. And it’s not that different from the love stories and great teachings and piano duets we grew up with: Heart and Soul. That’s it. End of story.
 
And beginning.  
 
While visiting these churches in Europe, I had a man at my side. A man I met at a good old midwestern wedding during my hiatus from new age culture, and my hiatus from seeking a partner (ain’t that always the way). He speaks another language, which I have been bumblingly learning on this trip. We joke that he too is learning another language to make sense of all the spiritual jargon I use as a result of my long immersion in new age culture.   

My man watches and waits with love, if not understanding, as I do my weird witchy prayers at various sacred sites and chapels (without, I might add, the identifying attire). When he looks at me with those blue loving eyes, yes, like you call for, everything melts. In his arms the world dissolves into a soft, warm, golden pulse. The experience of this loving touches and opens and amazes me every day. I would like for all of us to get to experience this elixir of peace. May all beings be happy.  

But he is not ‘awakened’, by your standards. He is not present in the depths of his masculine essence 24/7, and he doesn’t have a big idea about his life purpose. He checks Facebook and Reddit a lot and has never attended a Deida workshop or danced naked at sunrise on the playa. Tantra is a foreign concept, he isn’t in tune with his 3rd eye, has never seen a shaman or channeled his spirit animal and sometimes dresses like Mr. Rogers. And it turns out in the end that I could care less. Because he loves and receives my love with a willingness and courage that, quite literally, obliterates any other idealized and materialized criteria. 

I have been with men, wonderful men, who have all of your awakened criteria in spades. Except one: a heart that is willing to open with mine. And ladies, let me tell you: if you’re willing to take off those last layers of spiritual robes and stand naked in the truth of what really matters when it comes to love, I swear to you, that one thing is all you really need to pray for. Your prince charming doesn’t need a Raven flying at his shoulder. He doesn’t need to follow The Way of the Superior Man. He doesn’t really even need to be awake. He just needs to love you with all the heart he has access to. And you the same. Raw, wild beauty will unfold from there. The rest, my friends, is just packaging. 

There is still joy 
On the other side 
Of the breathing shadow, where

A faithful moon rises
Over microchip skylines,

And the miraculous lift
Of two sheet-metal wings
Carries you 
Up,

Over red country, blue cities, 
Through the black, white, and grey
Of your nation’s upheaval.

Still your cells pump and shake 
To the beat in your earbuds, 
And loyalty earns you
A free glass of wine.

A day of good work 
Is still a good day

As we fight for this land
That is larger than politics,

And small, like today,

Like the patches of weeds
Feeding monarch flights
Down the slip-disc spine
Of this fractured way.

Raise a glass to the moon,
To the butterfly spirit,

To the red-loving man
Who despite all the polls 
Nearly shed tears today 
In a room of blue strangers
Sharing stories of nature’s design.

It is messy down there
In the dark of the motherboard – 
Where the chasing of green 
Has chased grasses away...

Where the valiant monarchs,
The low-hanging birds,
And the burrowing bees

Are all refugees now,
Moving where,
We don’t know,

Under light of this moon, or
Still in its shadows
Like yesterday’s assumptions, 

Or tomorrow’s dream.

So drink up, coastal grievers!
There is still room for joy –
For your poems, your kisses, 
Your dancing, your song

In this new world demanding our 
Vigilance.

There is hard work ahead,
And much good work behind,
​
And the salt of our effort 
Only sweetens the taste 
Of our tears for this heart-
bursting moon.
​

A gay man in Santa Monica
was beaten on election night.

November 8th, 2016.
Forty-seven years
after Stonewall.

Fans of the man whose name
I can barely let enter
the temple of my thoughts....

the man whose name
means surpass, or outdo.
Trick, fabricate.
Blow sound...

Fans of this man,
enboldened by bellows
of his hate-stoking words

These Fans
beat a man
who was visiting
from Canada

in an alley,
with beer bottles,
til his blue tears
turned red.

-
​
Democracy Day, 2016.

Five-hundred-
and-two days
after we honored his right
to marry
an American man.

(It was late, after midnight,
in the alley by the bar,
long after CNN had decided
to never sleep.)

Somebody snapped
his photo in the E.R. - 
his blood dripped
into my Facebook feed

Where I also read a story
of a Muslim
at a gas station,
being harassed and spat at
by more Fans of that man
when a heart-fisted ally
stood next to the old Muslim
and asked the young white men, quite plainly:

Why?

They looked down, walked away.

-

We rely in the end
on a limbic resonance -
hate for hate, love for love,
faith for faith,
fear for fear.
 
In the name
of the father, and the son,
and the holy appendage...

(The latex-laced fabric
of our social security
burns slow and emits toxic fumes.)

-

So that man and this man
and the man that's your son,
and the one who wasn't there
when you were tender and small,

and the man who took your mother
for granted,
or worse...

the ones whose indiscretions flow
unpunished down the drains of fraternity basements,

The man who's breasts
make our bodies pray 'whoah' -

the woman who's man thinks
she's best left at home

And the Governor whose wife
simply couldn't be trusted
Because she went out into the world
with her hair down, and brown
and excelled at their sword-fighting games. 

And she cared
as her shape kissed the glass curve of time,

and it hurt in the wounds
that have never been licked.

- 

That man, and the Muslim, 
and the stranger turned ally,

And the Canadian,
and the Fans who stepped out into the night

to Make America
Great Again

in an alley,
by a bar,
down in Santa Monica

where they passed on their pain
through the codes in the veins
of their fathers' tight hand-me-down
fists. 

-

November 8th, 2016 -
Ninety-seven years
after an all male congress
gave their own daughters
voice with the vote -

We can now officially count: 
more than half of the daughters
of the doubters of those daughters - 
more than half of our pussies today 
as his Fans.

We almost broke the glass 
differently.

But instead, it's in blood
on a gay man's scalp

in an alley
by a bar, in the wake 
of great consequence,
​
in a city
not too far
from the sea.

"Did you sleep well?” he asks, and I’m 
flooded with warm waves of kindness. 

Kindness that caresses, opens, cares. 
Kindness as foreplay for morning coffee, 
as breath shaping love into questions. 

It's alarm-clock eros, and it tingles below, 
as if cracking a cocoon in the hollow of the 
belly, then pausing for the sound of wings. 

This is creaturely kindness.
It opens the heart like an animal yawn,
brings warmth to the cheeks like a blushing dawn,
warms toes like favorite socks. 

It could be the weather, or aging, or love —  
but this body electric these days 
hums most sweetly on the sheer, simple eros 
of kindness.