The Naked Truth

How do I not love thee that What Is?
More ways than I know
And less even show.
I wish other than, impose a quiz:

Why would you, how could, and can you be
Something different?
Yet you are intent,
You have no concern to appease me.

And in love, again and again, I rise to thee.
Not through surrender, but simply, clearly to see

That you never argue a solitary thing
Neither happy nor unhappy
Singing out loud, sometimes snappy,
You emerge, blending it all with no effort and Sing!

gaian thriving

i feel how i am accruing,

the body that is not these cells but the place cells like these

will take life and flow away

the empress is everywhere, she never had any clothes

neither did we til this habit of hiding and lying

arose, and now soon

the demise of our species

part of me looks forward to the dissolution of flesh wrecked by time

and deception, but mostly, the release

what is the larger thing that this life is not but just the placeholder

for the process of. my life form a cellstuff  passing away

what is the feel of the feelless pattern

all our sense words are nonsense

to describe the eluctable, numinous, sensuous

oblivion of intensity/surrendered/releasing/

effortlesspeace.

i feel the clouds smiling at sunrise. which is really earthspin

momentary alignment sun earth horizon line really a curve

glad for the fireinthesun and the deep ineluctable spinofearth

the lightintheskythroughthenakedarmsofwinter smokefromneightborschimneywhispingoffinlightbreeze

i always think of ants, how a curve in the tablecloth will feel like a mountain steep

that is how we are, these insurmountables are tableclothfolds

in the greater pattern that we are just stuff passing through to make

i heavemyloadofearthlife over this moundofexperience huff

but i am also inconsequent, also the fiber of being, passing through in the sewingmachine of gaia, just a breathhumripple

baskinginmorningsun, a smallglintorfleckofblueinthelargerpainting

important,insignificant,hereandgone,thegiddyrapidsofgaiandelighting

flashinginthelargerriversolargeitisfathomlesspouringintotheevenlargermorefathmolessgalacticocean

Bath view

Mirror submarine legs in foreshortened view,

hairiest in the middle, tapering and

plumping; two knees like balding pates—I see you—

swelling junctions of ankle; ten stubs reddened

by heat. This body bears this body I use.

This body chooses to treat this body kind,

to soak its aging paleness without staring,

to coax my collected coils toward unwinding.

Look at this furred belly skin, orangutan

contours and twin volunteering nipples, too…

When you fall into the sound of words, meanings

go blurred; as now in this undersea body

i’m getting unthought and undiscovering

what all this flesh and hair and structure could mean.

Through the surface emerges a dripping hand.

I feel its weight from inside. Two eyeballs see

this gesture of matter I think of as me.

Prompt: The Empress Has No Clothes

and now for something completely different...

Our naked bodies, fleshy, opulent or lean [we are what we eat: broccoli calves and cauliflower palms]

the volumes of personal herstory (history) [impaired range of motion at the wrist from broken arm in '95]

and tugs ticks kicks clicks [the groans of morning, subluxation sounds near the shoulder]

my ancestors in the mirror [potato farmer girth and strength]

Near spring time, as we rise again from the earth like green sprouts and reach the root toes of our being into renewal, write a poem from your body. [cf Empress card in the Tarot]

Feeling gutsy? Stand in front of a mirror, naked, and write the poem. Or just visualize: wax poetic about your elbow. This is about sense, not sex. Go natural, be a naturalist (british). Perhaps nekkidness can serve as a kind of vulnerable-making revelation. Write what happens. Scribble scribble.

Tags: empress, moniker, poem

Image:  Catal Huyuk [Turkey] goddess, with Demeter, Great Mother images - Empress Card from Vicki Noble and Karen Vogel, Motherpeace tarot