On Twenty Twenty

---

Cicada Triad pushes and pulls

The weeds my ancestors laid.

We are not children any longer

Warriors in training, muscles in fine tuning, tilling

Legacies dripping with tar and with blood

One by one to the surface of consciousness

It is time.

The birth of a new nation and the 19th of June.

All of the amulets scatter to homes

Of families who have lost a brother, a sister

A son, a daughter

Whose stares still

Point in the eye of her cortex.

We know not what we do.

Reckon with yourself, ancestors.

Who are you to take a life of this spirit

Rejoicing in their river of light

A truth so powerful not even a gun could take away.

An interruption to the softness of flesh

A birthday that shares Bastille Day

A tightness in tendons connecting

Tissue to ligament to bone.

All of the systems that hold us together.

Every cord of every nerve unraveled

De-strangled, to a pile of knots

Laying entombed in the squash patch.

A maple's arms stretch out towards the endless sky

To a space not yet felt

What does peace feel like

Dappled sunlight on a fractured, softened log

Somewhere in the woods near our home

A young bear scampers along the treeline

Signals to us that something is coming.

Ocean blue fingerprints splayed out on the page.

Blueprints for our future.

Can poetry, can mushrooms, can curiosity

Save us

The golden yellow patches in my drawings

Affirm. The aloe on my reddened breast.

The piercing green of our cat's eyes.

The electric magenta of the grandmothers'

Silkened robes, glittering in golden flits.

Decentralize your mission, roll in the mud

Centralize your body into being, becoming

Sign your new documents of commitment

The birth of a whole new way.

Tell me what you long for

Let's go there together

On ships led by moonlight

A joining of tangles

A pulse of life that beats

Rising from the basal ganglia

The call of the 10,000 voices

The standing in the power

The sucking of water through gapped teeth

Ready to create worlds of prosper.

The dormant vessel springs to life.

Monolithic Conversations

---

Billions of rocks layered tirelessly upon one another. Some rest dutifully, as though they’ve found their spot in the world for an eon yet to come. Others perfidiously tower over others, vulnerable to toppling thousands of feet down at the rogue step of a mountain goat. All of these rocks are mere ripples on the surface of a vast ocean of rock.

Can you feel the collective power they all hold?

Monolithic conversations reverberate over the steady flow of rushing snowmelt through warm summer days.

Here you can view:

weather unfolding,

geology turning,

the full moon teetering on a jagged rockface,

wildflowers gleaning towards the sun,

mosquitos swarming,

ice sheets drifting,

and all the while,

Time does not exist.

- the Winds, Wyom

AlpenGlow

---

He is not the only one with greasy black fingers,

sun bleached hair.

The summer swelter awaiting the arrival of fish and money.

He sits perched on the edge of his vessel,

contemplating the mysteries of the sea.

The way the clocks turn in harmony

with the passage of time.

The way the docks lift and sink twice daily

but the sun never hides.

Somehow,

Green sundogs and flickering magnetic clouds

Means time does still turn.

It turns towards the softest alpenglow

Her beauty --

The mountain.

There is no limit to Her and to us. We look to ourselves

But we only see Her.

Our fingers ache from the work with the bounties She provides.

Salt stained and hazy eyed

We are drunk on fish.

Silver flecks, hooked bones projected on the surface of a shallow passage

Two deep oceans.

We are all just walking each other home.

Secure yourself to the edge of the sea in a thick black storm

and let Her pass through you to awaken to the most brilliant day.

A rebirth !

A glimpse of divinity !

Much like the sea, I sometimes sit in quiet radiance --

the gentlest thoughts drifting carried by

two knots

of velocity.

And sometimes,

Rage swells through porous rigid walls and beckons to signify

the presence of

sunken

golden

amulets.

We met at the cornerstone of the

Garden of the Sea.

And return there each night to pay homage to

Her pulsing black lungs.

Thoughts on Including Soul in Your Work

---

The soul is a mystifying, sometimes reclusive, and sometimes loud, force. I've come to respect it and look at it objectively, especially when allowing myself to create something with my hands. I let the soul speak up, and do my best to quiet the rambling mind. Thomas Moore, author of the excellent read "Soulmates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship" so pointedly writes:

"When we look at the soul of relationship, we may find positive values in failures, endings, complexities, doubts, distancing, the desire for separation and freedom, and other troubling aspects. We can see these as initiatory opportunities rather than simply as threats. Soul often hides in the darkest corners, in the very places we would rather avoid, and in the very problems that tempt us into disillusionment; and so, we have to be intrepid when we look for it in our lives."

Not only speaking of relationships with people, but through relationships with our art, our souls are engaged in an uncanny, mystical process that we may sometimes never be able to grasp. That is the beauty. The highest beauty in my humble opinion. Learning to appreciate the mysteries of our relationships with our art may be one of the most important lessons in living the creative life.

"Late Spring Tunnel" // David Hockney

---