sometimes i feel so alive it just about breaks my heart

The Shrine
(“She watches over the sea”)

I
Are your rocks shelter for ships—
have you sent galleys from your beach,
are you graded—a safe crescent—
where the tide lifts them back to port—
are you full and sweet,
tempting the quiet
to depart in their trading ships?

Nay, you are great, fierce, evil—
you are the land-blight—
you have tempted men
but they perished on your cliffs.

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I think dinosaurs could blink through time

they were always so present,
they didn’t know it couldn’t be done.

Gravity didn’t exist, either.
Everyone just floated above the ground–
rocks and water and trees and birds.

Sometimes a T-Rex would start soaring toward the stars;

he could create gravity in those moments…
come back to ground if she wanted to stay there
but outer space is kind of neat when
you’re not afraid of dying.

I think the world was a lot bigger when the dinosaurs lived

they were huge     the earth rose up
to meet their hunger–
for life & taste & touch.
Things only got smaller when humans came along
because we need so many rules.
We were curious & so we created linear time,
stopped remembering the future,
grew up in one direction: toward the sky.
Trees are shorter now, the air is thinner.
There’s never enough
because we imagined it that way.

I think we can go back in time when we die.
Instead of “What’s next? What’s next?” we can ask,
“What came before that? &what before that?”

I can be a dinosaur if I want,
going back and back

till I’m the very first breath that woke up the universe.

When I was a child and in the dumps about something, I would draw “architectural blueprints” of my imaginary dream house. I was obsessed with having a circular bedroom window (in a tower) complete with padded window seat where I could curl in on myself and press my face against the cold windowpane while the rain came down.

Trying to find the sky, she stuck a sunflower seed in her nose. Her face turned gray like the earth and when it sprouted she split open. Half of her remained a girl and the other half transformed.

There was this girl a few months ago. Every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. we would meet for a fight. I’d ram her, she’d yank my legs out from under me, we’d scream. It felt good. It hurt. I miss having bruises that I can press like a button to remind myself of my magnificent love. I love the feeling of a body that’s being used, I love the trust it takes to let someone punch me, I love the flood of endorphins letting me know I am alive. What I want is the sensuality of surrender, the afterglow of racing hearts and flushed faces and grins. I don’t want to fight with someone who might harm me, I want every blow to be a way of saying, “I love you.”

I love myself.

Image Description: “A Softer World” comic that says, “We are terrible for each other and, yes, we are a disaster. But tell me your heart doesn’t race for a hurricane or a burning building. I’d rather die terrified than live forever.”

introduced me to one of Rumi’s poems I had never read. I’m putting an excerpt here because it pierced my heart this morning. It was exactly what I needed. Thanks, chéri.

God fixes a passionate desire in you,
and then disappoints you.
God does that a hundred times!

God breaks the wings of one intention
and then gives you another,
cuts the rope of contriving,
so you’ll remember your dependence.

But sometimes your plans work out!
You feel fulfilled and in control.

That’s because, if you were always failing,
you might give up. But remember,
it is by failures that lovers
stay aware of how they are loved.

Failure is the key
to the kingdom within.

Your prayer should be, “Break the legs
of what I want to happen. Humiliate
my desire. Eat me like candy.
It’s spring and finally
I have no will.”

It’s been slow-raining for hours now, green and wet outside my window. I love the sounds it makes falling off the roof and steps, running grooves into the earth, trickling and spilling and living. On days like this, I move from my feet and my hips, breathe into my pelvis, feel my weight against the ground. I awoke feeling peaceful and bodied: it’s only deepened as I’ve gone about my day– slowly, present-ly. There’s a hum somewhere inside me and it resonates with the hum of the rain as it comes down to meet the dry land. There are corn ears left over from last night.

Good morning.

Maile wants me to call my budding chocolate business, “Lethal’s Magic Chocolates.” (That’s her nickname for me–Lethal.) I don’t know anything about being a chocolatier or marketing, but a friend of mine has a table at the farmer’s market and I have a passion for standing at the stove while miracles coalesce before my very eyes.

The other night, when there were 100 earthquakes an hour under Kilauea, I made a coffee chocolate sauce with Maile. She often chants over my desserts and this time she concluded the blessing with, “There! We just merged with the primordial geothermal forces on the Big Island.”I stood there for a minute, awestruck, while I watched chocolate birthing itself… pouring out of Pele’s vagina.