the whole damn thing, unfiltered

If you’re looking for a light and breezy bit of inspiration, you may want to check out a different post on this site. The recent eclipse, new moon, and huge energy shifts around January 15 have provided us all with the opportunity to get up into the faces of our lingering dragons and inner beasts. If you’re serious about your journey to wholeness, there is peace to be found on the other side.

i awoke in a dazed state of transfiguration
blue oceansky above and below me
      heart perched on my shoulder
my mind jumped the tracks just outside the
long lumbering climb to exaltation,
parted ways familiar and unshorn
there would be no more circlings of the roundhouse!
      disembarkment offers the ultimate arrival.

peering toward a juxtaposed and jutting cliff
my eyes catch hold of an endless valley
      sage tumbles from celestial soil
skittering among a helix of disproportionate restitution
arms akimbo, the strands of life pirouette in a reconstitutional ballet,
about-facing a rapid succession of unfoldings, recouplings
coming to rest beyond the bounds of
      the lockstep march of time and space.

this is not an unfamiliar place for me
i will rock the boat if the only alternative is to sail into a placid sea of oblivion
walk to the showers weary of battle against a relentless tide of brutality
pack my dust-covered vessels and follow my blistered soles
into a desert intent on plastering my lungs with fine-ground sand.

i have come to feel a certain belonging here
surrounded by a reckoning sky whose only promise is to promise nothing,
      held captive in a prison of my own design
spine-tickling vines climb earnestly toward the stars
       just out of reach of my outstretched hand.

this game i will not continue–
when stakes are high does not the house always win?
every offer remains fraught with naught but a mathematical incredulity
must i return to the table again and again
only to lose all in the pursuit of winning nothing?

wordsongs plaintive and jubilant fall to the ground
leafy ribs underfoot the boots of single-minded soldiers,
when and wherefore were soul’s hearts bartered
in the endless race toward a preordained destination?
what hope alights for one pure expression
      amidst the thunderous hailstorm of violent assignation?

i will travel light
      though the seduction of empty no longer titillates
limitation gnaws at my underbelly and suffocates the breath of life
every time it begins its holy ascent
who amongst you would dare declare that i have not emptied every bag
      every trunk and barrel,
strewn the unnecessary and whimpering about the countryside
licked loam with parched tongue to reveal a single fingerling
lay in a blood-soaked field surrounded by my brothers
while bayonets point heavenward fixed in eternal thrust?

an ersatz reality leans hard against my door
       in an unmarked package clearly meant for someone else
there is no soul nourishment in this synthetic substitute!
none but the most substantial articulations of spirit and flesh
can satisfy a hunger so deep and ancient as this.

outside of time a child wanders alone
awakened by the moon’s illumined dependability
          already, she has forgotten what she came here for.