sacrifice

An Elegy of Leaves

Hours and hours,
and hours
into the woods-

through the rainfall,
the sunpierce,
the pine and spruce;
off the trail
of the acorn and ash,
of the prairie lily,
of light and water dancing
on needles and leaves;
past the hidden spring,
yawning cavern,
past limestone spires
and granite punctured
up from the heart of the earth;
in the forest and veldt
of the snake and the lark,
and the ram and the elk.

Your lungs are thirsty,
your heart, hungry,
your mind, tired- no?

And so we pass
into the land of the gods
of life and death.

But what else to be said?
What else,
as we tread perdition
through our doctrine of the night,
seeking a horizon reckoning?
What verdict given?

Shall I say,
“hold your sins & dreams
as you would your breath,
hold them now
until the coming dawn!”

?

No.
It is all ashen
and ground to dust.

Even if you cannot see
that the flame
I carry in my heart
could burn this place clear,
I still must lay it
before this living altar.

Listen.
Birds are singing in the thicket.

There is more music,
deeper in,
deeper still.
There hums a resonation.

What else, then?
What else to offer beyond this-
this sad
and staggering presumption
that I can somehow relay
this sanctification
to you
in words,
as though I have the skill,
and the right?

For I am no priest
and this place
has no need of one.

Here then-
let me lay down a permanence
for you,
and in full artistic grace,
describe instead
the peace
and eternity of this place:

I wish you were here.

Feast of Light

(the song my mother taught me)
__________________________________

Yea, though I walk
through the valley
of the shadow of Death,

and you lament your simple self,
and shed tears in your unadornment-

wait,

for I too have cursed my own shadow.

So let us instead consider
things that carve and pierce,
let us feel the ground
upon which we stand,
for you only know the walking dead
by their tranquility,
and the truly content
by their graves.

Speak to me your nightprayers.
And watch.

We will learn of knots
and grindstones,
of prows and lathes,
of ecstasy​, of aurescence,
of momentum.

Let me then become
the bride of the earth,
and the groom of ships
that plow the rising waves;
let me be as one
who stalks and slays fear,
who preys upon the darkness,
who bathes in the falconfall
coup de grace of our prisons,
who devours
the terror in midnight
that chews and rends and swallows
your soul.

Let me sit then at the table
with your demons-
see how I’ve prepared a place
for them.

Now,
pay attention,

for the night is flayed open,
and the maw widens in hunger.

Can you learn to tack into the wind?
Can you sail into the storm’s embrace?
Can you carve the roil,
and bring your sails unfurled,
riding this deathsong
to strike through thunder’s inertia?

This is the only way I know
to cut off the black hand
that holds your heart,
for I can see your song;
it carries out
past the edge of lightning
sunset into glory.

My dear,
your heart is a spear,
and a compass-needle;
your soul is a sailor,
young and bold,
come to spit in the Devil’s eye;
you are Incarnate,
you are Destiny.

From here, the stars.
From here, the stars.

artist credit requested

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I have offered up my lamentations
out of the dust of Eden
and painted them into the night.

I have trodden stars underfoot
and crushed them
into the wine of singularities.

(so my younger self told me in a dream,
reaching forward in the temporal
as I now enter the embrace of the world
and age into my slavery)
I’d pay good money to hear what yours told you.

Shall we build a fire then, in this desolation,
and brand me with the aspect of shadow?
How shall we brand you?

If Pride were ground into powder,
I suspect it could then be an anointing
upon this corruption;
perhaps even an atonement-
simple enough, yes?

Enough.

Show me then-
come, show me,
while there is still some serenity;
let us examine your engines of the dark
and the nightmare-fuel within
(are you watching closely?
energy equals matter
times the speed of light squared).

Drift you now to the far shores,
sleep, and dream,
drift with your own permission-
for a song of this magnitude radiant
shall fly only to constellations;
was meant only for the season of sowing.

Do you not see how alive you are?
And do we have an according then, you & I?

For as I see all hands open
in these songs of light and dark,
and music woven out of silence cleansed
in the cloudwalk ascendant,
purified in the cosmotic night,
washed in the blood of the earth;
so do I see you dare to direct your gaze
up.

Now
take my lantern
and I’ll hold your hymns-

say it’s a good trade.
(it’s a good trade)

Behold then:
the field opening verdant in its laughter,
bathed in blossomscent,
how even the black dirt and red clay
sing under the sun
in their rushing to meet the mountains;

for winter will come again,
and still all will sing,
still all will sing.
Come,
for the river is deep, and wide;
the water clear, and cool.
I tell you my grace and yours was bartered between us
in these bending waves of wildwheat.

Have you forgotten?
This is an accord, in fact,
with the song aureate in all things.

I know you can hear it.

The dark washes off so easily,
so easily, my love,
so easily.

There was an old father in the desert,
a long time ago,
(have you heard this one?)
who stretched his hands toward heaven,
and told his disciple
as his fingers turned to dancing fire,

“If you will,
you can become all flame.”

Thanotic

This is the final note,
this is where it all ends,
this is where it all goddamn ends.
And ends.
And ends.

This is the song divergent,
this is the souls’ reaping exigent;
this is the last pace before bloodlet-

ironscent tang in the dust
mingled,
oh yes.

This is the echochord of a sunset lightbreak;
this is your eulogy,
this is where you die.

This is where you
take
one
more
step-

for flame breeds fresh ash
and ash breeds a fertile ground.

Keep watching.

Dearly Beloved

We are gathered here today
to mark the passing of death;

Death-of-the-Inside,
the clinging fear
and the dénsed darkening,
nurtured since birth
that says

“No.
Not good enough.”

Mark well what you’ve missed
and what remains,
what you thirst for
and even what’s flayed your soul at night.
For this is all a kind of prayer.

So then stay with me awhile
after these words,
and we’ll lay our flowers and shadows
under the arms of the earth.

The tears of the air
tamp the ground,
erasing even our footprints,
and there will be no markers or epitaphs.

Say it now, and say you all so.

This dawn I sense beating draws close;
so I’ll join you at the wake,
when the clock strikes sunlight.

Leaf on the Wind

[I]

Could be my heart’s a heavy idol
slowly tearing out of my body,
to be placed at the altar of Shadow.
Maybe not.
In time, then,
I will make pilgrimages and offerings.

So we pass into the unwritten season.

But wind it back if you like,
the clock,
if only to hear me say

I would help you walk, someday.

[II]

Would you gather my bones
in your embrace,
one last time?

Then lay them to nourish the earth.

If you can hear them sing,
then come to me;
come sit, and listen with me.

If the songs I’ve given in this life
haven’t been enough,
come listen then to the song of my bones,
that you may see cleared a path
to the cliffs of your heart
and dive headfirst into the maelstrom of grace
that awaits you.

I would see you untense your shoulders again,
and laugh until your face rains
before you leave the living of the earth.

Is this like drinking darkness?
You must do that sometimes.
We all must.

If you will it,
this becomes fuel for the light.

[III]

Come, then.
Sit.
Listen.

The secret:
the whole cosmos
is made of music,
and you & I
are fleeting consonant harmonics,
waves embracing in the echo-

watch how we soar.

Three Words

Three words, like…
well, you know the variations.
Take your pick.
They all involve parting.
Falling, they sound of leaves.
They can begin the death of a heart’s song.

I did not know the future.
I was open to the love of things whole and broken.

come come come
yes no wait
go

So I turned my face from the sun,
and I transgressed into hiding;
I did not paint my door with the blood of sacrifice.

I felt the Angel of Death
descend in the dark,
and he did not pass over.
And I became sick with death,
from the bones out,
as I knew he had come to claim the light within.

wait, a moment’s breath

See now, the Angel of Death had brought a gift,
as all things die and come clean and are born.

I was shown a boy, reading a book,
under a pine standing on a hill.
I was shown a girl, reading a book,
under a cottonwood waving in the breeze.

He spoke, and pointed-
“Who between you
are among the bones of the earth?
I will not visit you
for some time.
Now there is work to be done.”

Rain pools itself in tire tracks.
At morning’s break,
they blind in the light.
At night’s fall,
they scintillate in the dark.

Some things dry, and fade,
and some do not.

Now there is work to be done.

Praésperō

She was sitting on the couch,
dying.

Well, not really dying, per se.

She was staring out the window
at the darkness fallen across the land.

“I hate winter.”

She shivered, even with the blanket.

The dog wandered over,
hopped up,
sat down next to her.
Opened its jaws, grinning.

{Hey.}
“What.”
{Know what I like about winter?}
“What’s that.”
{Spring’s just around the corner.}
She sighed.
“I suppose.”
She stared out the window again.

{Hey.}
“Yeah?”
{Let’s go run around and eat snow.}

She raised her eyebrow.
The dog raised one back.
{Please?}

“OK. Come on.”

{Cool. I’ll wait for you at the door.}

She grabbed her coat.

{Oh. My. God.}
“What now?”
{A small piece of bacon on the floor.
See! Like I told you
when I woke you this morning!
Best day ever!}

Audacity Beyond 2017: A Love Letter to the Human Race

Hope. Change. Love. Transformation. Luck. Finally.

Did these words bounce around in your mind as the clock rolled over to the new year?

I don’t blame you. Not one bit.

Our new culture is saturated with keys, triggers, signs; easy nuggets of hope that in turn saturate our subconscious, leaving us salivating for beautiful fruits that may never bear.

It’s ok, folks. I’m telling you, right here, right now, it’s ok.

I have walked with the hopeful, with the dreamers, with the expectant mothers and purposed fathers, with the wish-makers and wayfinders. I have also walked with the hopeless, with the downtrodden, the abused, the reckless and disillusioned, the cast-off chaff of this new world who’ve all but given up their faith in humanity.

Still, I say: it’s ok.

Are you calling me out on my BS yet? Please do. 

Bring me your broken dreams. Bring me your deaths. Bring me your fear. Bring me your burdens of blackness, your wreckage that writhes and grins at you in the night.

Do you truly believe, in your deep-heart, that an arbitrary number has anything to do with the timing of the universe, with the random dance of molecules or economies?

I don’t think you do. But it’s nice to believe, isn’t it?

That’s my point. Right there. I don’t care what you believe in. Just believe. The fact the you WANT to believe tells me your heart isn’t dead.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the symbolism. “New year, new you.” Fair enough. But I need you to do me a favor.

Accept that a new year, in and of itself, won’t change a damn thing.

Trust me. Knock it off. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment.

Set goals, yes. Retain hope in the future, yes. But you’ve just been handed an empty box.

Much like a new relationship, a new year comes with an empty box. What you get out is what you put in. It doesn’t come with anything. And this empty space is what’s important. 

We place value on the structure, but the space is what we use.

So what will you fill yours with?

I can’t stress how vitally important it is to define this concept. “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst”? When did we become so lost in our hearts? It’s not wrong to hope, nor to have a back-up plan, but I’ll challenge you right here and now to “hope for what you want, but prepare for what you need”.

You hate this already. I can tell. You don’t need death. You don’t need disease. You don’t need loss. You don’t need breakups, financial hardship, hatred, betrayal, anxiety.

What you need is the hope of the undying.

Allow me to set you up for the pain of the coming year right now.

Ready?

Some of you, this year, will lose something. Your car will get stolen. You’ll get divorced. Someone will die. You’ll experience betrayal. You’ll get diagnosed with something. You won’t get the job.

Can hardly wait, right?

Are any of you thinking of what could go RIGHT, though?

Hear me now.

In fact, how could we appreciate all that is Good without the absence of it? How could we grow in mind, in body, in heart, in spirit, without being broken on the altar of life? Without being hammered on its anvil? Would you wish for an easy life, or for the strength to endure a difficult one?

Better still, would you wish to walk through the flames and STILL COME OUT shining your light to the world, to hold out your scarred hand to a beaten soul and say, “come with me, for there is still Life up ahead”?

Would you wish, instead of being broken and clinging to your brokenness, of staring at your brokenness with resentment, to allow the light within yourself to shine through the cracks?

Only by being broken can we transform. In being broken, in being dealt a bad hand, we are given a choice; perhaps the most important choice in our lives.

You can choose to say “I didn’t deserve to be broken. I won’t trust life any more. I will exact revenge where I can, so I can reclaim some of what was stolen from me”…

…or you can choose to say, “I didn’t want to be broken, but I’m grateful that I did. Life has threshed my wheat from my chaff, has hammered my impurities from my metal, and if I alone can be broken again and again and AGAIN and walk away laughing, to love and hope and offer an outstretched hand, then I am glad.”

Peace is not found in what you get. It’s found in what you do with what you’re given.

Right here, right now, witness that I renounce all claims to what I think I deserve. I am not special. But nor am I a coward for losing faith, for wanting to give up. I am given a calling and a priceless gift. If I get what I desire, I will be grateful. If I do not, I will also be grateful. 

I will be lifted up on wings, and dashed on the rocks. My soul will dance at the coming dawn, and I will weep in my pain as I am broken again. I am being hammered on the anvil. I am losing myself, and I am becoming myself.

I will use my tears to wash the dirt from another’s face.

The universe will deal me the absolute worst hand, and I’ll say “Here, take my money. It’s time to play chess instead.”

I was so sure blackjack was the answer. But perhaps chess is the better path.

I renounce and refute my human inclination to be hurt by loss, to curl inwards, away from the world. To die from the inside out.

If my house is destroyed, I will wonder what my next house will look like.

Because if I don’t, if I hold on to my innate ability as a human for pattern recognition, and I apply THAT to what happens to me… can you guess what comes next?

Let me tell you. Listen.

I will be the victim of my own self-fulfilling prophecy. 

“See? It didn’t happen. I knew it wouldn’t.”

Bull. Shit.

I’m not advocating a relentless, creepy happiness. I’m not saying “be positive”. Nothing so trite and meaningless. In fact, I’d encourage you to stay as far as possible from sources that promote blind positivity. Or blind negativity, for that matter.

There is a middle path. And you need to walk it.

Good and Bad are cyclical. Sometimes, one wins out more than the other. And there is NOTHING, no matter what, that can take away your hope and the love hidden in your deep-heart unless you allow it to.

There’s always a choice.

We are such beautiful and horrendous creatures. Pitiful and incredible, we sacrifice out of love and wreak atrocities on each other in the same day.

Living for such a brief speck of cosmic time, staring out at the universe, we wonder. Why? If you find an answer that works for you, and you can be truly satisfied in your soul, then I commend you. If you don’t, then let me tell you again: it’s ok.

You need merely ask the question. That, in and of itself, is the mystery and the answer all in one.

The fact that you can ask is beautiful, even without a clear answer. The closure you seek may never come. But the closure you need comes from forging a new path, and to keep asking regardless.

Animals are blameless and pure. The angels some believe in are that also.

So here we stand. Brilliant and flawed, halfway between the ape and the angel, staring up at the night sky in hope. Ready to love and ready to fight in the same breath.

So as you watch the stars in this new year, and for the rest of your life, you might say “I wish for my shooting star, but it never comes. Maybe it never will.”

And you are right.

But this is not cause for despair.

Your strength lies in the ability to unceasingly watch the night sky, time after time after time, marveling at its beauty, drowning in the mystery and audacity of hope so that you might learn to breathe again.

And when someone else comes along, saddened and beaten, wishing for a star that may never come, you can say:

“Look! My God, just look at the stars! Can you believe we get to watch them one more night?”

This, then, is my only resolution I offer you: become a beacon of hope to yourself, and to others. 

Unfurl your banners of Light and watch the armies of death break themselves on your shields.

————————-

“Some day, you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

— C.S. Lewis