Coastal Sunset, Falcon Cove, Oregon. Image, my own.
No Phone
All this connectivity Search engines and Social media, email Severs and direct Message platforms Every app, it can Certainly feel Exhausting to be so very connected to each other, yet Barely involved with One another, Bodily, physically, Beyond productivity Trackers and fitness Bits what happens When you are Cabined away In the ferns, Sitka Spruce, magnolia, and Dogwood of the
Oregon Coast Magic as the mist rolls in from Cove Beach and you Stretch out on a Carnelian settee to Watch the fog billow In and congeal on the Picture windows and Back-bone of Driftwood lying in the Long grass Gray-white skeletons of the Ocean made Manifest to Remind that Everything has Source, spirit, purpose You put some Peace Piece, Bill Evans On the record player,
But eventually let Everything fall silent Once again because The treasure is the Stillness, the disconnect The quiet hum of the Needle across vinyl Being dampened by Swelling waves perhaps Yards away, the mighty Roll of the Ocean speaking that sometimes being Whole means being Havened away, un- Reachable, no phone, SOS, airplane mode, Out of service Out-of-office Elsewhere, gone
More sunset, i. Oregon, Coast. Image, my own.
Slow Dance
Slow dance with yourself on a Sunday morning Take your hair down and grab one hand in your other Life your spirit onto the raw wooden floor of the Little house you call home, hickory scraped by thoughtful Hands, where you live, sway to the beat of your heart, love In time to the pulse of your quiet longings, smile in self-solidarity, spin, circle, so that you see where you are, grounded, so that your heart senses that every part of you understands that you are the only one who can inhabit your soul, your spirit, your life, your love kiss your own vitality with a gentle nod, your body, your mind, your essence, well, whole, perfectly safe. Let the music take your shoulders and hips in the rhythm and stride or two, of just you, slow dancing with yourself
Beija Flora, Cove Beach, Oregon. Image, my own.
Yes
Yes to me Yes to life Yes to ocean Yes to mountain Yes to lift Yes to love Yes to change Yes to work Yes to nobility Yes to learning Yes to risk
Sunset, Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
New Mythologies: Achilles
I’ve needed new mythologies For a long while now, in fact, I remember stating this bluntly When heading out for a swim Around the long arm of a lake With a friend, and it turns Out that the inception of these
Tales and tides save(d) me from both pride and envy, boredom and bliss, these mythologies had already begun to Take root in my life, some of them recently, and some Long, long ago
Achilles was the son of Thetis And Peleus most strong and noble Soldier of the Trojan War who was Dipped in the River Styx by his ankle His weakness, you know it, Because it becomes the place of his Death, pierced by Paris’s arrow
But my achilles is the only thing that Was saved when I fell free Climbing, ten feet, and my foot was torn from My ankle nearly off, but for the tendon, the achilles, which saved me– my ability to walk, to run, to ambulate, to Be in the woods and rivers, canyons And valleys
How important then, that all that was Holding my life together actually was My hubris, my weakness, my ineptitude The irony wasn’t lost on me, and how Weakness is in us all, and thereby A crucial part of every life And maybe our downfall
But may actually become our very Strength as I learned the gift of Living, of understanding difference And ability across many fractals Was shown and learned to show Others empathy in their need, In their frailty
I was dipped back into mortality By my wound, by my heel, By my maiming The weak point The place of mortality The pinch of imperfection Made into strength
People. Suh See Ok. 1988. On view at The MET Fifth Avenue. Gallery 233.
Kiai!
Kiai! is a real thing A Japanese word A shout– ichi A battle cry– ni A spirit focus– san Not just protracted Onomatopoeia or a yell in Comedy-action sequence
Kiai! is designed for real life Try it on– shi— Go! A holler that signals Attack– jou-dan Assault– tsuki Let’s make it noble– roku For purposes of this poem Make it count– rei
Don’t hurt someone undeserving– youi What’s something in your Life that you wish would Dematerialize Infinity in a kick, jab What would you like to caterwaul Into counter-offensive– gedan
Just know that when You chop their solar plexus– chuudan The center, they may be More fragile than you imagine Just a human heart– shinzo In a suit of skin, sometimes No breath returns–shichi Hachi- Yame
Fumi Yanagimoto. Contemporary Artist. Painting.
Sushi
Get in my bell You gorgeous cut Of perfectly raw Snapper and White tail You delectable rolls Of seaweed rice Naked salmon Perfectly nicked Lemon save that horrible cream sauce For another palate The best advice Ever received regarding Sushi is that if it’s good No additives are the Way to go No unnecessary dressings If it is perfectly toothy Scrumptious sushi Undecorated ditch the Wasabi and Ginger Eat it by the mouthful bare
Buddha, Chinese, early 7th century. Probably Amitabha. On view at The MET Fifth Avenue, Gallery 208.
Kali
She cradled my head in her hands a portal opened to my heart
My body silently convulsed at the chaos
The truth was I needed love more than I needed life
I needed touch more than I needed bread.
I needed tears more than I needed water.
I needed someone who understood breath, meditation, muscle, sinew
Connection, bodies, I needed someone who understood
What being left felt like I wasn’t yet beginning
To believe I would survive yet, I wasn’t able to process the complexity
All raw edges and terrifying depths of memory, I didn’t know I’d return from death
I’d come back into the sunlight, warm and buttery on my chest, all senses awake
Breath Meditation N. 27. Thoth Adan.
Full Moon, Partial Lunar Eclipse, Pisces, September 2024
the earth comes between the moon and the sun do you feel energy shift
Lunar Eclipse. Ryan Moat. January 20, 2019.
Eschatology
Life took us to the edge of the known universe
this brink, this precipice, on a red dirt plateau, all rust-verged and jagged, like a tear in heart tissue, like broken bone projecting through soft skin.
skin, bone, sinew often don’t break cleanly so there, on that terrifying cliff, we looked out into the blackness and saw that it was our own
dotted with infinite, swirling stars, nebulous arms of our galaxy, folded across that night, that nothing. we realized the instant we stepped to the fathomless limit
all the light we carried in our core could somehow save us, from this end. So into the starry, inky ebony we leapt, being careful to be sure that we crossed over the boundary between
everything we’d known, into every night we’d ever feverishly dreamed. this jump, this real act of self-preservation flung us into
the heart of the unknown cosmos and there we were to greet ourselves at the gates of our unknowing. we opened the tiny, golden latch on the
impossibly large, swinging metalwork gate, stepped slowly, quietly over the threshold of revelation, everything open and waiting for us in that pitchy gloam still had
to be sensed– felt, touched, tasted, smelled– not physically, but by the fingers of the formerly known soul that now bore this greater knowing. this
was not the end but the beginning. a larger excursus on the limitless infinite than we had previously known. we’ll never know if there
was only one way to this beginning– the ledge, the leap, the jump– our tiny, finite, blink of a guess gives us the idea that, no, there are
many precipices, many pinnacles, many paths to the infinite edges of the unknown into new reaches of galactic consciousness– seeing and knowing more than we
Refined + Rugged 