.. .. .. .. .. .. ....

let’s live in silverlake in a craftsman cottage

strung with funny-shaped lights along the broad post porch

we’ll walk to vegan pancakes and skylight books

we’ll wear black velvet, fishnets and eyeliner

we’ll go the dresden room and sit in a booth and sip fake cocktails

we’ll make soup in the evening and sleep all day

we’ll eat pho and go to the nine dollar movie theater....

we’ll take the kids to ride the haunted carousel ingGriffith park

and see outdoor shakespeare under jacaranda trees at barndsdall

i’ll write poetry on your shoulders with halloween make up

we’ll write a screenplay and i’ll buy a new mattress and good dish towels

and vintage necklaces and creepers and feather boas

i’ll make vegan gluten free agave sweetened pumpkin pie we can eat

we’ll have dance parties until the candles burn to pools

people will stop by for food and comfort

there will be flowers on the table

we’ll have a little dollhouse where one of us can go when we need space

but i promise i will always turn back to normal size

and crawl into bed with you when i am done

i love you so much everything hurts the way it is when dreams come true

.. .. .. .. .. .. ....

.. ..

When the white owl comes the old part of us dies

But the new soul rises up

Like you standing on my bed.

God-tall and shaped as if by sculptor’s loving hands

Long legs marble hard

Broad shoulders chest fashioned out of skin bone quartz

My foot felt the beating

Bird of heart

The cleft of chin that erotic crevice where I fall

Above it all

drift locks of dark hair and eyes of summer springs

And then you say goodbye, are gone

But only for awhile

.. ..

What we leave behind

 in the dark and ragged canyon

Lost babies, ruined marriages, broken hearts

Obliterating pain fear self hatred  tumescent loneliness

What we find when we emerge the other side

Donuts dancing making love

 a hundred ways a hundred years

as through the space of lace

dawn turns to sun to glittered green to dusk to dark and back again

and many many years from now

we turn to white

feathers

our hearts are bird

we fly

Iounn

For many long years I was an old
woman early grayed and wrinkled before my time
There were lines around my eyes
and across my brow when I was but a girl
My body frail and hunched my skin so parched
It was not until I carried the apples in my ashwood box
That I became a youth in middle age

My cheeks grew rosy and my eyes were bright
I frolicked danced with gliding step
My hair grew long and full the gray was gone
My face grew round and lines unseen
But when those fruits were robbed from me
I fell upon the ground
I wept and cried raw sobs
My body shook
as hollow as the ashwood box
For my sweet apples promise of my days were gone
My daughters and my sons were gone

I screamed so shrill
The gentle creatures who attended me
Ran off in fear
I became wild and wolfen with ragged fangs and claws
And my fur turned gray
My spine a broken branch bent by the breeze
And no fruits fell

My darling
Poet, bard, singer of dreams
I did not find you yet
But somehow I was saved
The apples all returned to me
A daughter and a son
Their heads so round and damp their shining eyes
Skin pinked with birth their elfish cries
I would have died my love I would have died without them
As I almost died when their predecessors stolen were
They brought me back my youth my life
that had not existed truly until them

And so I sat my lap so full my breasts engorged
I sat and gods came forth to ressurect their youth
To worship me again with glyphs for gifts
But still the trickster preyed his bitter grin his prying hands
He could no longer take what now was fully mine

My hair spills round your shoulder
and my body folds, unfolds in apple blossom births
For now I am bestowed with children two
The apples of the world
And you my love and you

Freya’s Cave

The suitors came to Freya’s cave--the giants with their their broken lumbering strides, their skin like ice that burned and their thick, rough, pillagers.  The wolves and the tricksters and the greedy dwarves and demon elves sundered from light.  They tore ruthlessly the moss that grew around the mouth of Freya’s cave. They trampled and cracked the rose quartz flooring , they scratched with their talons the shell-encrusted walls, they shattered the crystal that adorned the entrance and reflected distant lights like a beacon so that now it could no longer do its work and serve its mistress.  The suitors took jewels and radiant flowers from that once hallowed place.  They pummeled through with rough hewn swords and staves. The cave grew dark and frosty; no blooms grew in its wake.  The walls froze and the gleaming sheen of shallow spring that had run through Freya’s cave turned to ice and mud and slush.

Then he who serves Love came and found Freya weeping.  He spoke to her softly and heard her tales.  He stroked her tangled hair and sang to her his verses.  He filled her cave with amber beads and petals, horns of mead and flutes and feathered cloaks.  He brought a great cat to guard the entryway.  He stoked a fire and melted ice so that the spring returned.  The flowers scattered seeds and more blooms grew.  The cave swelled with radiance, exuded fragrance. He who serves Love and whom Love serves returned the crystal to its place and wooed it til it shook with light.  And then and then the elves emerged from deep in Freya’s cave and cried out as if in pain, the pain of birth, and sang their songs.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .... your eyes that are colors of sea and sky and rain and mist and pond and lily could not fool me in spite of their glaze of sorrow for i saw in them beneath that haze the elflands of whence you speak.  your eyes have bowers.  your eyes have steppes.  your eyes have unruly gardens and mazes and castles, meadows.  turrets and balustrades and spires and rose windows of colored glass.  your eyes have vaulted halls and jeweled thrones.  your eyes have vast beds covered in feathers where lovers may toss and tumble.  there was no denial of love in your eyes though your brow dripped with frost and your shoulders hunched forward with cold beneath your cloak.  your eyes spoke in poetry distilled crystal amber quartz the sheen of water  on bulb filled earth.  and it was not just your eyes.  it was, my love, your voice.  your voice that is the  rumbling of the  ore that runs through  veins of mother earth.  your voice that is the echoing glow of twilit sea.  your voice that is the  wilding  snarl of  vision questing beast.  your voice that is the lull of mama and the father's fierce protection and the lilt of beautiful golden gilded  boy.  there was no disguising the knowledge of love in that full and sensate voice.  and though i fear to say the words those three words so misused abused like a  broken blinded muted woman you can see them in my eyes my eyes and you can hear them in the inarticulate howls of joy that escape my throat

.. .. .. .. .. .. ....

.. ..

I wear a mound of dark feathers between my legs oh yes I have a cat that purrs between my legs oh yes I have a hard and bristling boar I ride between my legs....

I wear the giant beads and rod of your sex as jewels when you straddle me ....

My nipples are rose quartz turned to flesh....

Oh yes I become a deer and offer you my backside....

Oh yes liquid amber pours from me....

Hardening into ornaments for you to wear my love....

.. ..

Oh yes though I was in a tangled trance of pain still I remember how you rescued me from the suitors who would eat me alive....

with their teeth filed sharp to distract from flaccid members....

Who would reach inside of me without looking in my eyes....

Who would call me witch and slave and beast and ugly whore....

.. ..

Oh yes I remember how you came and rescued me....

How you held me in that dark cave and comforted me ....

how you came with me into the world of ice....

and slew death with your wand and the crust of white burn cracked and my mother opened her eyes like leaves and breathed again....

I had almost surrendered....

No you said, do not give in....

Your kisses infused me....

Your wand inside me reawakened the power of potential cretaion that lives between us....

As the babe of poetry and love and hope....

.. .. .. .. .. .. ....

.. ..

My heart lusts for you.... The way they say my body lusted after all those men.... And that gold necklace.... For which i fucked four dwarves to own.... But never did I lust for gold or sex or the worship of subjects.... I lusted for your heart your mind your soul your company.... I lusted for your voice lulling me to sleep.... And the curve of your naked back turned to me curled to me in the bed.... I lusted for your elvish tales.... And your sinuous fountain dances.... And your merry laughter.... And the precious liquid in your veins.... I wore a cloak of feathers and huge beads of amber but not out of greed....  or narcissism.... I wore these things so you would notice me if you walked past.... I rode a boar or a chariot drawn by cats.... Not out of pride.... But so you would see me when I flew across your sky.... I love your loins your sex the thrust of you inside me.... But it is something much more ephemeral I dreamed of those long days.... And if I ever was called whore or, then, queen.... They were only dresses I put on to make bearable the wait....

Husband I have grown weary from searching
The cats that draw my chariot are ragged fur on pointed bone
The feathers of my cloak are moulting
The amber beads upon my neck have melted and turned to tears
like the tree tears from whence they came
Even our child’s smile is not enough to soothe me
Even my dearest jewel with her eyes aglitter and her voice of birds
For how will I care for her alone?
How will she learn the ways of love
Seeing only a weeping woman who has ceased to dance?
Here I sit, holding her in my arms, offering her my breast
But she does not know how I wander

I will become the silvered glint of dawn on the lake
I will become the pale blue flowered flax ripped from the soil, winnowed retted, scutched and heckled as you will
I will shape shift to animal
Rooting in the mud, exposing my raw teats to the hungry mouths of many fat, pink and snouted babes, running from the butcher’s blade
I will wear a disguise of my former beauty and go into the tent
I will spread my legs for any man that comes
And I will bleed and burn and dream of you

I will go down to hell and sit on a throne
I will wait through this long, long winter
Holding my child to my breast for comfort
But I remember how you and I danced on the bridge how the moon became my jewels afloat upon the water
How we heard the drums beating and the tree dripped amber and held our bodies as you entered me?
If this happened my love if I can remember this
Then all is not lost
What exists in my heart is as real as what my eyes see
In the dark chambers  I sit
And breathe in the memory of the spring that evermore awaits