Burn the Man

Come with me. 

Let’s circle around the man, our corporate captor, and show him our true numbers. 

Let’s barricade him in with our art, blast music in his face, and dance around him with fire spinning from our fingers like stars orbiting the center of the galaxy.

He’ll try, but he can’t stop us. He’ll scream, “I’m too big to fall!” 

And with a fireball to his ankles, we’ll ignite him.

The violet flames will rise — like the wild feminine within us — flicking heat tornados off his neck. 

We’ll cheer as his ash floats over us. 

We’ll howl to the moon as she watches his destruction, our preservation, the fireworks of our celebration. 

And when, at last, our fire brings him crashing down —

Our World will finally be free.   

Two Poems for Earth Day

To honor Earth Day, this year I am sharing two poems to show the beautiful and devastating reality of being a human on this planet right now. Both of these poems are remixed excerpts from my book Varanasi Sage.

“She Comes to Me”

I am soft and humble, yet unafraid

To share space with Titans,

Entities Unfathomable,

Spirits born from the depths.

I am a guest in their great hall.

Quietude surrenders me,

Dissolving me into the air,

The empty space.

Here

She comes to me,

The truest part of me, for

I am made of Her living body.

My heart turns over to Hers,

And our sacred Oneness,

Endlessly present in time.


“Where a Temple Once Lived”

Ghosts stand visible with

Charred, barren limbs

Naked arms reach for mercy

Bodies no longer breathing

No longer creating clouds

Nor home for animals and insects

Burned alive

Electrical wires cross the hills

Like music lines forming

Measures of a strange and deadly song

A transmission tower’s guilty buzz

Plays the melody composed by

Corporate greed

Man wasn’t exiled from the Garden

He chose his depraved separation

The Sleeping Bee

As the reclining sun made dense fog glow, I walked the path I had walked like a thread through my years. Memories returned a child, in these same feet, on this same path to the bus stop, imitating the red-winged black bird’s melody with her newly-developed whistle. 

With my first steps, I realized my pocket computer remained on the nightstand. Breathing the mist that merged land and sky, I didn’t miss a step. I didn’t need it — that taker of presence — I knew this path by heart. 

Along the creek, where we made movies with my father’s camcorder, and across the highway that never was this busy, I entered the forest. Owls lived in those trees, but now, only morning birds sang. Their notes brushed past the silver, camphor-scented leaves. Our mother accompanied them from a quarter mile away. Her watery voice now hushed; her soul now quiet. 

A narrow trail of sand through sap spikes took me from the forest to the cliff’s edge. The sun, unable to break the clouds, allowed the sky to hug me beside the Pacific’s expanse. Water and heaven: indistinguishable at the horizon. Ferocity made soft. 

Nothing between us, no dark window in my palm to disconnect my heart, nothing to take me away. In the salt air, I slowed to enjoy my solitary humanness and my awareness of each now. 

My eyes embraced the world. 

I stopped for a sparkle. With dew in diamond beads set symmetrically along each finger, a lupin leaf extended its palm to touch the day. Color called out and my eyes drifted to magenta muffin cup petals. Inside, on the yellow puff pillow, a bumble bee dozed. 

I reached for my pocket to document the sight, immortalize the memory, grasp and clasp at this now. To share it with my friends and receive heart-eyed emojis — each one a chemical thrill. I shook my head at the addict within and her insistence to go back and fetch the screen.

Instead, with nothing between us, I sat and observed the bee’s bottom rise and fall as it napped in its flower bed. Royal palms stretched to me, asking me to stay beside the ocean, held, as mist strung glittering beads in my hair.