tide.

my love, my love
your heart is sore
and your voice is soft and low

you curl up with her
and tumble words back and forth
gathering time with urgency
and sorrow.

i cannot stop this tide from moving out.
my feet reach for the edge of the sea and
still she is carried by the wind,
out and away with the pull of the moon.
her deep, rhythmic breathing
soothes us to sleep
and we pull the windows up to hear her song
again
then, again
and forever.

I cannot say goodbye.
my mouth trembles like a moth
caught by a suddeness of light,
battering these useless wings
against the florescent air of night.

international day of peace.

i said i would
so i did
so i am

my belly is tight and my grief is gripping. something like the thing that lived inside me for most of my life.
but only a whisper of it.
thankfully.

today,
i humbled myself. I let my fear slide away and decided to open and see what might happen.
and in the din of construction, the zoom of traffic,
with rusted leaves trailing down the soft breezes,
i leaned into myself and
then, others.
i fell weightless into openings and found my hands held
and my heart widened.
the water was cool and there i was.
in a circle.
part of something.
and there my sweet soul, heart of hearts shone in the sunshine and lifted his dancing arms to the sky
and
there we were,
all of us,
testing out a way to laugh,
to connect,
to dance together.

in peace.
and stillness
and motion
and peace.

and love.


vance monument.

beginning to gather

start today.
a word. a phrase.
something to add to the center of the storm.
add a circle of people standing, bending at the knees with each swaying breath.
collapse and reach in a series of discoveries.

everyone has a story.
and someone else can speak it for the witnessing.

offer this now
and mend the small tear in this part of your heart,
mend the small tear in this part of the world.

wonder returns

I have a hero.
she found me, I found her when I was young.
I found her on Saturday mornings around the time when I smelled like a pasture filled with horses and my legs carried me faster than any of the boys in the neighborhood. I could hang from the jungle gym by the strength of my biceps, only letting go when I was bored, not tired.
She had a lasso and an invisible plane and the best red boots. And she was beautiful.

I sat in the theatre tonight, decades later, and she returned.
She returned to remind me of who I am.
In all these years of looking around for something in the culture, in the movies, television, even books, I rarely, if ever, have seen a reflection that made me stand taller in my own self wisdom.
Mostly I've seen: pretty, sexy, beautiful, sassy, strong but bitchy, powerful but ruthless, fierce but broken, truthful but neurotic....women as sluts, bitches, dykes, dipshits, bimbos, ballbusters, nerds, sidekicks, sidedishes, hotties, boobs, asses, fat slobs, giggling, superficial shoppers and gossipers, looking for romance, the duped, the dumped, the dopes...it's always all come down to sex.
Do they ooze it, sell it, provoke the fantasies of it, are they exploited by it or for it, or are they overtly sexless?
It's always about their parts and how useful or perfect or imperfect they are.
If a woman is intelligent or wise, she's usually an old dowager, a geek or a plain, unfashionable, awkward at life kind of character.
These cardboard cutouts make their way off the pages and screens of fiction into the women around me who bend and fold and squeeze themselves into agony about how they look, not who they are. Myself included.
I find myself mourning the loss of my dancer's body, my used to be effortless capacity to have a flat stomach and strong, lean limbs. I find myself wondering if I look good enough when I am going to be seen in public socially or to teach or do my work, instead of wondering if I am present and embodied and reminding myself I have a lot to offer.
I notice if I have a five pound weight gain or loss and I see that my husband doesn't notice that in himself.
He likes the way he feels when he is active but he doesn't ruminate about his body's shape or size. Not like I do.
Not like every woman I know does.
It is insidious how it penetrates every woman that we see in our culture: in fiction, in advertisements, in traditions, in law, in e v e r y t h i n g.
There is very little room in this culture for the celebration of or reverence for instinct and truth.
I live from this place.
I bristle when this innate wisdom is ignored. It is intolerable to watch truth become the martyr for social acceptance.
I don't want to smile when someone is slyly unjust. I want to have the courage to admit that I see it, smell it and know it when something mean or nasty is happening in the room that is trying to stay polite. I want to not prioritize being easy going when I get a whiff of aggression or toxicity.
I am getting better at it, for certain, but I am calling myself out for the distance I still have to go. It can be said that I've smiled on the outside and growled on the inside in the presence of subtle, and even not so subtle, racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, backstabbing, meanness, etc. disguised as "jokes". I'm a woman who has learned to literally survive by smiling and playing nice and trying to blend in...not too big, not too bright, not too talented, not too smart, not too dumb and certainly not too pretty or beautiful or sexy. I'm realizing that I have survived and those strategies are old business I don't need anymore.
I've come a long way.
I rise now and speak. I choose my silences with wisdom and I fight when necessary.
More often than I'd like, I fight with a sword when a step out of the line of attack might be better suited.
I have to brush up on my aikido.
But I'm also honing the skill of the fight with a capacity and clarity to stand embodied in a truth and knowing, to be the mirror and watch the momentum of another's transgressions topple them to the floor.
I am improving on my aikido.
I celebrate my instinct.
I seek out my animal self and I am cautious of those who do not know their own.
I return to my power as a woman and not in the wear a flower garland in my hair, dance around in flowing skirts while speaking in a new age yoga teachery voice kind of way.
In the real way.
The boots on the ground, sword in my hand, expansion in my heart, wisdom in my walk, animal allies by my side kind of way.


and this reminder tonight brought me back to what I know about myself, truly, as a woman.
Wisdom, Instinct, Fearlessness, Compassion, Truth, Justice, Principles, Love, Strength, Vulnerability.
Horses, hand to hand combat, power, athleticism, grit, grace....an intact heart.
That is the woman I am.
I thank you for the reminder and mirror of my own wonder.

she

"it's mine to do, I guess."

She said that as she stood chest deep in the raging water.
All the others stood on shore, walking to and fro, dancing and sharing metaphors about the rushing of life and how it is like this very river and how important it is to go with the current, not against, follow the flow and surrender, like this, with your arms up. Laughing while demonstrating the arms up position, lamenting with high theatre about the bumps along the way.

"as if."

She thought, with the sea filling inside of her; the sea... sharp as sticks and as brittle as bones.

"I'm having a panic attack", said someone to no one and everybody listened like it was the first word spoken. Like it was something new and original. Like it was really true, though it wasn't.

"you mean you're having a feeling? something other than numbness or blissful ignorance?"

she murmured to the roiling waves.
the others shifted their weight and complained about the weather. It was too hot today, though yesterday was chillier than one would've liked. And, thank goodness it didn't rain today, though wouldn't it be nice to have a break in this humidity. Then they reached across the picnic table for the salad and asked anybody to pass the bread.

the water leveled out at her cheekbones.

"it's what happens to the old and to those who can see."

she supposed.

The others got serious and deliberated over the melting ice caps, the divisions of race and gender, the wrongness of the other others and the rightness of themselves. They were happy again to discover the sameness of their truth and pointed their fingers collectively toward the moon rising and called it a prophecy. They celebrated their great knowing with books and speeches and thundering applause.

"it was the least I could do."

she exhaled.

obama

he got me up
and helped me to believe in
change.
I rallied and rose to his call.

now he says goodbye.
and I weep

believe in my ability to change.

that's all he asks of me.

What's the Queen Bey gonna do about it?

Miss Bee, Queen Bey
I found you today.
locked and loaded and got down into the grit of your lexicon
liked it,
loved it
and loosened my tongue.

I shaped the fingers around the light
spun and swatted at the power left behind
rocked the beauty and the badness and the bold
the art of mud and might takes hold.

You may consider me a white girl appropriating, who the fuck is she, kind of priveleged pony hopping part and piece and particle of snow
but here's what I want you to know
i know something about
that face in the footprint, end of the rope hopelessness
betrayed by my own shimmer
and bound by my own honor
to crawl, skinless, through a savage goddess empty briar
singing and screaming.

I saw my father called nigger with a fistful of sand
and I twisted in a tangle of confusion about who I should save in that moment.
when the moment before my father was a searing lash of rage struck at my own dumb brilliance, an emboldened inferno set loose on my paper soul.
I know the knowing of labyrinths with no escape.

I've been loved and left and betrayed and lied to and connived against and folded and discarded and abandoned and neglected and forgotten and disassembled and reassembled and disassembled and reassembled just for sport by women and men alike. I know cruelty. I know the outside. I know the wander without ground. I know how to bite bullets and pull shrapnel from my own skin. I know the art of self surgery without anesthesia. I know how to wield a sword and reclaim my own birthright.

You know it. or you wouldn't be able to write about it. sing about. pull the Goddess herself in so fiercely and let Her dance you. You know it.

You are a voice that sounds the alarm to all the sleeping...She is back. Be ready and Be fierce.
You are forgetting someone important. Something vital and so full of Her that you yourself run the risk of smoldering if you turn your cheek on this one.
The helpless. The voiceless. The teachers of us all. The ones who remind us of who we are. The animals.
They are the muses for you when you roll and rage as you dance and connect to everyone who is your fan. They feel and see the animals through you.  Through you they return to the wilderness. The wildness. The true nature of being alive and human.
And, yet, you participate in their pain and turn the terror on them for your beauty parade. Your exotic shoes made from endangered animals; their suffering is your branding. You are no better than a slave owner, permitting, condoning, celebrating and ignoring the wholesale exploitation of somebodies that you think of as nobodies. They are, in fact, a thousand times more powerful and wise than you. A thousand times more important than you. Or me. We are nothing without them. We are lost. When they suffer, we suffer. It goes on and on.
They hold the reminder of our own souls.
You are in a position to change this paradigm. To stand for the exploited. To bring them to the light and advocate for their rights to life without suffering or cruelty or slavery or imprisonment. You can be that voice.

Do it, fierce woman, do it.
or else, you are nothing but a shadow of bullshit.
The Goddess will find someone fiercer than you.