A poem for Shirl, a poem for Lucy.
A poem for Jocelyn. Something for the old timers. I pass by the clapboarded houses and oppress them with my nostalgia, daydream about how sweet life could be with my lover and our children. Life could be sweet, sweet like a carrot frozen in the ground, sweet like something whose sturdy starches that it uses to sustain itself have been crucified, masticated into simple sugars by hard times and low down cold nights alone. Alone in the frozen ground with no way to harvest itself. Even if it could harvest itself, pulling it out of the frozen ground would mean death. Mastication not just by the cruel cycles of the seasons but now by nibbling jaws with little or big teeth. Either way, your food is not for you. It is of you but it is not for you. This is your world, your life - make it what you want it. I am my own family now. My naive ideas about togetherness, passion, treasuring, a community of friends are slowly dying. No one is coming. I am here, wand in hand. If I don't act soon, the Dementors will come and I will be worse than dead. I understand my mother better now. Life is a work of Tanztheater, nothing more and nothing less. Dream, yes. Love, yes. Practice, yes. Allow me my soothing bit of honeycomb when I am sick and sad, but don't expect me to harvest it from the same hive you get yours from. Mine isn't better than yours and yours isn't better than mine. But they are different.

Happy Birthday, Dear dear Cemplank! I love you and don't know what I'd do without you.

Happy Birthday, Grille.

We still use this language because we understand the need to learn our history, to know where we came from. But every word hurts, every word cuts into the unity. When we came here, when we came together, we decided we would only use words once the sun went down and we were in quieter mindspaces. During the day we call moan and sing to each other to express ourselves. We also touch each other with greater or less pressure to communicate our ideas. At the end of the night, when we are done using words, we wail in grief for all the cuts and scrapes into the unity. Our deep sorrow shows us that the unity is never really damaged, so then we sleep and rest peacefully. When the next day begins, our minds are clear that we are One.

The sun sometimes has rays like cocks and we think of it as masculine. Other times it is a circle, the shape of pussy lips held open, the shape of an opening, so we think of it as feminine. It shifts and changes as it goes through its lifespan, so we worship it.

We decided that running water made people too greedy, so we carry all of our water now. We don't use towels, either. It is too precious and shimmering to be covered in water - we let it stay there and feel it on our skin until the lifespan of water on our skin comes to its end.

We still embrace, but we changed the embrace. We hold onto each other for a little while and then when we let go we look in each other's eyes and share a moment of grief that everything our senses will ever experience will be taken from us. Then we share a moment of wild ecstasy that everything our senses will ever experience will be taken from us.

There is a famous battle story that we tell some nights. A young girl came to us for help. She was running away from a marriage into which she had been forced. The husband got all his men together and they came with guns. We understand that violence in the assertion of boundaries is a method of maintaining Homeostasis. We have certain advantages in this type of attack, being on our home turf. Four precious sisthers were killed. We captured the husband and one of his men and this is what we did:

We all gathered around them in a circle. They were in the middle of the circle. It took about a hundred times until they stopped trying to run away. We were all sitting down, rooting down. Then everyone in the community went around and said something we loved about those two men, and even the girl said her piece. There are so many of us, it took a few days to get through it all. The men were crying - maybe they were bored to tears! After that, they were too vulnerable to let them go back to the murder-as-entertainment world. In those situations, we keep them with us and feed them and invite them to join us in a transitional capacity.

For years after that, it was the fashion among the adorners to make bangles and necklaces with four beads representing the dead sisthers and two beads representing the two men, all together on a suture representing the unity.

We consider the beginning of agriculture to be the beginning of violence against women, but we are wondering if we can grow out of that. So we still have cows and goats and geese around - it is brutal and violent. We work together. We don't grow very much grain, so we are all becoming more feral. But we all love to work and the work feels good. We love to keep our calves with us and let them suckle at our breasts as much as they want, and we bring our babies over to us and all the different kinds of mothers spend time together and consider each other. We all show each other our different kinds of calves and babies and goslings - we are all proud mamas, so it is easier to share our gifts.

Some of us are concerned that we shouldn't cut into Mother Earth at all. Some of us think violence is everywhere and Mother knows that. We learn from the trespasses made against us. Also, penetration feels good sometimes. We don't need to use words to communicate about this particular issue. As a compromise, we are working only with our hands if there is a green thing we would like to grow or grow and eat.

Old habits die hard. We noticed early on that the young ones want to be desired. Now we raise them up to learn that their bodies are made of desire. That is what we call each other at night - Desire. When we get shot through with an electromagnetic spanda of jealousy, we immediately make a small group - whoever is around, and we just stop what we are doing and sit together in silence, or moaning. We know that this tactic means "Meyou are a lucky one, Sufferer! Shed your light on meyou, cover us in the mud of your anger, the fecund soil of your sorrow!" Often this passion inspires intense tenderness for Suffererdesire, and we cover her in kisses. It presents an opportunity for Suffererdesire to basically get fucked out of her bad mood. We mud wrestle and pull each other's raiments off, run our fingers through each other's hair and fuck. Our bodies smell like sex and low tide - it's incredible. These feelings of passion create the thought-waves of bondage, they increase our investment in one another and in life. Our bodies vibrate with joy, oneness, honesty, transience. It is dangerous and sensitive, so afterwards we walk together to bathe and meditate.

On our farthest field a wild turkey has a nest. When we ride the motorcycle up there she squawks at us and we wail, "MOTHERHOOD IS POWERFUL!"

On the ledges by the island in the cove the seals come up to rest and sunbathe. When we take the canoe out to get mussels, the females bark at us. They fan out to protect the young ones. That is when we cry, "MOTHERHOOD IS COMMUNAL WORK!"

Under the clear cold ocean water lie the sea urchins. When we pick them up their spines move gently, their little pussylips kiss our palms, looking for information, wondering without anxiety if they are safe or in danger. This experience is extremely important, because we feel so powerful, so connected, our hearts are bursting and we scream, "INTERSPECIES LOVE IS ILLUMINATION!"

The other day I started reading Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening by Daniel Odier. I don't have it with me right now, so I can't quote it, but it's been giving me crazy-wisdom dreams. There are a few things I'd like to write about it.
- Frank (not the cadaver) vs me in our approaches to life and meditation: Frank is the Zen type, I am the Shambhala type.
- Me as a vector/figure for awakening the senses.
-Ralu saying some of the most interesting relationships are short lived, like the person on the dance floor at jackie 60.
- My troubles and discomfort don't come from the fact that life isn't how I want it to be deep in my heart. They come from the fact that life is that way, but I'm not allowing myself to fully recognize it.

After reading an article in which Lady Gaga said "I want to strap a penis onto my vagina" or something like that, I dreamed that Hugh and I were dancing in a kitchen somewhere and he whispered in my ear, "I've been thinking about it." I said, "You should go for it!" So he had this surgery done where he had a tiny vagina opened into his perineum.

Then last night I dreamed I was on a bed with a sister figure from my childhood, her baby who was around the age of 8 months or so, and a man who was the husband of some other woman. In the middle of the night I was awakened (in my dream) as if called by a higher purpose, and I very directly and without a single moment of nervous faltering, initiated what can only be called an orgy between us three adults. This was intermixed with some of the most intense and deeply satisfying baby cooing and cuddling I have ever experienced, and though the sensual directness and joy of these moments were very connected and unified, there was a clear delineation between the interactions with the adults and those with the baby. In the morning of my dream, society set in and was very angry with me for having sex with a married man. The era became the 1800's and I was in a small coastal Canadian town. The townspeople were setting out to lynch me and I was on the lam. I was also fluidly switching between being a man and being a woman as I ran and hid from the mob.

I felt you coming, girl, as you drew near.
I knew you'd find me cause I longed you here.
Are you my destiny? Is this how you'll appear,
Wrapped in a coat with a tear in your eye?
Take that coat, babe, throw it on the floor.
Are you the one that I've been waiting for?

As you've been moving surely toward me,
My soul has comforted and assured me
That in time my heart it will reward me
And that all will be revealed.
So I've sat and I've watched an ice age thaw-r
Are you the one that I've been waiting for?

I exist in a world where the pulsing sap fills the trees with passion and they reach their branches out to me, calling these lyrics. The snow balancing on a tall branch glitters like an aerialist and then dives toward the earth, longing to delight my eyes.