New Year's Day: Versions (orphans)

Orphan ghosts
Children of slaves
Rarely knowing which way is up or down
Constantly disappointed and anticipating trouble
Waiting to be seen by others
To be seen
By the Light
Whose despair do we carry?
For we are but children
We pay attention
Honour every thing
<God shows us why we are here>
Full of pleasure, full of pain
We are the loneliness, boredom
And pointlessness of God

We are children of the Morning
So full of His Story
We choose to heal all that has come before 
No longer content with this inheritance of heaviness
No lamentation, cynicism or doubt, now
Only praise and celebration 
The way we use time
To measure our lives
Soft children made of Light
Delicate. Fragile.
We come to earth in utero
Wrapped in these seven colours

We are river, we are earth
We are sky and forest
All the old things
From the time before there were people
We learn that we sense
And learn what we sense
We hold and grow ourselves
To make a better each other 
We are the other
It pulses, beats in our chests
Each night we willingly die
Again and again
Our dreams teach us
And bring us back

We make our mistakes upon each other
Then use guilt and shame as moral compasses
We course-correct and realign
Forgive ourselves, give thanks
Then seek kinder, gentler ways of being
As our dreams show us different versions of ourselves 
Shedding skins, many lives lived in one,
Our dreams show us the stories in us
Our Karma Drama

We are roses on the roadside 
Surviving 
In the best of all possible fashions
We only know our sharp edges, 
Until Grace and our own perfume
Show us it’s OK to soften
At Zero point
At least eight times a day
We are hearts beating
We need to beat our hearts often

Things she gave me

A jar of honey
Hope, energy and rot
Deep pockets of her time

Her confession
A seat next to her behind the shop counter
Permission to pounce her

The passport to her tongue and her pussy
The Honour of taking the first sapphic sips from her Gates of Heaven
Her Sex Song

A shea butter rub into my chest, arms and legs
A red rose, highest vibration
A copper ring from Madrid

The Time to walk into my own Goddess Sexy Being
The Space to be loving, kind, slow, patient, understanding, compassionate
The Opportunity to take care of her, to be my best

A tour of secret poems she found on a ruin in the dune forest
My first lesson on The Wheel
My first lesson in how to let go

Long hours and days of silence

Lemonbalm and yarrow


Lilies in my kitchen when she left

Kwelera

We arrived at the river banks to find
Two old crones already ensconced
In aeons-old afternoon armchair conversations;

We arrived to find that maybe Love
Is not the thing we think we love
But in the moving towards it,

And maybe we weren’t ever really rebellious,
Just slow to learn new things.
It may be that nothing is as it seems

As we lock up meaning quick safe and tight
To attach to old story lines
We don’t even know we are writing half the time,

Something to hold on to
In this magic maelstrom uncertainty eternity.
There’s no difference between the me

Of the Then and The Now
When I gaze me, happy face
In the bathroom mirror,

Beam my quasar being, and know 
You’re just my latest great teacher, Oh Supreme One,
And maybe not the thing I think I love.

Kitsune et Renard: His Story of Violence

I - Above ground

The old stones of these city streets
Slowly wearing away:
Foundations and philosophies,
The high ideals of the Humanities 
We sacrificed each other upon,
Becoming slippery and smooth
With each aeon’s steps,
Declarations composed
Heads cut off
The terrifying hunger of the Crowds
For meaning
For belonging
For celebration 
For something beautiful

- Or just warm -
To hold on to,
Crawl into,
Shaking the gates and calling for bread and heads!
HEADS AND BREAD!
Blood and spirit - 
The former often preferred as something one can have, now,
Take home,
Own; 
Exalting heroism and idiocy over everything
Is His Story of omissions and half truths
Where perhaps we were just hungry.
Tired and hungry.

II - Underground

Bodies
Disappear around bends in tunnels:
People alone together in mag-lev cars,
Hearts alive and open
Yet safer as anonymous strangers.
It’s easier to not connect lest we become overwhelmed.
Is this what we War and Battle and Revolution for? 
Linger a little on each line as we wait on the platform:
The flow of Love
Punctuated only by temporal moments of forgetful vitriol.
The world always warms up a little just after lunch.
Blood, then. And heads.
Desperate.
In the name of meaning and 
Manifestoes of believing.
His Story, it seems,
Serves only as a story of the violence of things.

- Paris 2025

Haiku: Irony

Best and worst. Blessed, cursed.

To whom do I say thank you?

Wise fool, eldest, first.

Haiku: Apples/Fire

She chops apples as she waits
-thack - thock - thack-
A gentle fire ready in the grate

RAGNAR

Little wizard, killer of lizards,
How I miss your keen kittenness,
Your quiet nudge hello on your walk past,
Your tail placed reassuringly on my foot;
You owning me.

In the midst of my deepest grief

-The Fight: ten years of grief-
I feel I let you fall through the cracks
Like a lot of my other poetry.

Espresso cups of patience we have,
Me and your brother.
Not the best hunters.
Not like you.
You knew what you were
And you were exactly, 

Unapologetically, that
Cat.

I, Hungry

I feel the world’s anger
I feel the world’s sadness, 
Loss and grief
I feel the world’s loneliness and despair
I feel the lack 
Of coffee
and 
Chocolate
I die
With the electricity

I feel

I feel the world’s astonishment
At existence
and The Everything
I feel the world’s magic and mood swings
I feel the world’s longing,
Lust and desire
I feel the world’s need to hide
I die

I growl

I want to be the woman I want 
One day

I eat with these people
In this posh room
I forsake knife and fork
I want to eat slowly
Taste every berry
Every slice of chicken strip
I growl with the wood and pictures of this room
I wine and dine my young self
I wolf this lettuce and cucumber
Lap this blue cheese dressing
I time my movements precisely
I wear these Adidasly
To fit in with this room of fine, posh people

I feel my power
I growl

Leopard's tail

The muses dance around with me
on the edge of my pillow.

The edge, in the sun:
My most blissful dreams.

I get a thrill
Feeling how marvellous it is
To be alive
and Thinking
I might be so easily forgotten
When I die.

Haiku: On being alive

Actors on a stage
Improvise for the first time.
We’re all new at this.

Haiku: Fire

I can feel your fire

not sure if I can help it

I'd better cool down

Haiku: Soon

Old versions of me

Overhauling of ego

Soon, she said, smiling

Haiku: Portal

Need this nakedness
Everything’s too visible
Pussy is Portal

Haiku: No

Today is still: No.
Like a lot of catching up,
That is how it feels.

Safety

When you misunderstand me,

Through no fault or weakness

Save your own pains and confusions of life,

It’s then I comprehend

You’ll be eternally blind to mine.

I retreat to the sanctuary

of my own secret mystery.

Haiku: Waiting

What’s with the weather?
I don’t like the phone ringing.
Neither does my cat.

Haiku: Onion girl

Warm winter’s evening

Beach walk. No moon

Self: contained

Haiku: My father's reluctant sigh

My father, learning
To take care of living things
His reluctant sigh

Tercet: Laughter part 2

This is the laugh of a heart
That’s been broken and broken and broken
But never fell apart

Haiku: All fours

Walk around on all fours
You are not mine anymore
Nor am I yours