Where Else Could I Belong?

The pyramidal desert peaks of West Wendover, Nevada/ Photo by the author

(S, one isn't all there is)

I scrambled
Over the rocks
Digging into my flesh
Lit from within
By a sacral fire
Carrying the Spirits with me
Bleeding on the open earth
Parched, yet believing in love
Where else could I go?

Mysteries
I made a fine coat of you
To enfold me from the storms
Mother, you forgot
To wrap me up
As mothers wrap
Their children tight
But father stripped me
Your god left me out
In the tide
Washing cold over my bones
Exposed
Where else could I go?

Midnight came
Black brocade
Enthused with gilded threads
Of starlight
Generations of stars
Burning, burned out
Rising and falling down
Through the Ether
Where else could they go?

Did I become
A prophet
For our family story
Carrying with me
Father's transgressions
Mother's weaknesses
I pity both
Harbor no vengeance
For I have given them over
As an offering
To the sky
Where else could I give them?

I raged like a wounded animal
Stripped of its claws
Lovers were my fodder
Undressing them one by one
Stripping them of their frailties

One by one
I left behind me
A trail of water
In the burning and open
Desert
What else could I have left
Behind me?

I came
To your shrine
Open with offerings
Carrying my heart
In my hand
On fire and stripped
Naked
Without peers
Without family or tribe

The drum of your spirit
Sounded a regular beat
Through me
Dancing, whirling
A hand towards heaven
Fingers towards the earth

Your soil
Your fragrance
Your knowledge
Planted like a seed
In the empty soil
I became your devotee
What else could I become?

Fresh from your kiss
I gathered the water
I had left behind me
I nourished thirst
And fed the hungry spirits
All belong to me
I belong to all of them

There is not one
Never one
Not one god, not one heart
Single or demanding
Only the All
Where else could I belong?
 

A Doorway To My Heart

Natural cave-like formations in West Wendover, Nevada/ Photo by the author

Alone in a desert land
Not abandoned
Not left for dead
Yet finding solitude
In a barren land

Tucked high in the bosom
Of ruddy cliffs
Piercing the flank
Of a turquoise sky
Cloudless
The sky drifts by
My eyes
Drinking, drinking
Drinking deeply
Of the turquoise fountain
Flowing above my head

Security waits
Even in lonely valleys
Where rams rut
And bleached bones
Tell a tale of life's fragile struggle

I find a purpose
For life to continue
Far outside the temporary veil
Of mortal existence

This is a doorway to my heart
Worn into the ancient rock
Where my ancient memories
Wait
Clad in the ages
Of lives lived before
This body came into
My mother's womb

My real mother is above
Stretched out in Her turquoise body
Kissed by the shards of sharp sunlight
Tumbling down
Over the empty landscape

There is a doorway to my heart
Where one finds a portal
Into the spectral world
A ladder to heaven
The doors of the sky
Sheltered by monoliths
Raising the hot earth
Skyward
Up and into the etheric vastness

You cannot help
But make pilgrimage here
To the place where my heart
Has hallowed a shrine
To the near-forgotten Gods
But Their voices linger
Here where the one gives way
To the Ones who went before him
Their spirit lights
Calling down lightning
Given from a bare sky

Heaven calls from above
Earth makes love to my feet
And open up
Before me
At the doorway to my heart

I leave behind
All I thought I knew
And give way to
The company of spirits
Who, in silence, bestow
The Wisdom of millions of years

My real father is below
My feet firm planted
In his sacral history
His battles
His deaths
His resurrection
I gather up his bones
And call him to my counsel
At the doorway to my heart
Where the Ancestors
Make quiet pilgrimage
To speak without language
To initiate without action

Gratefully I receive
The spectral lights
Emerging from darkness
Where every seed grows
Before it flourishes
In the Light

And I too came from darkness
Into the world of light
From between my sacred mother's thighs
Like the sun
In the rosy mantle
Of the dawn sky
Renewed beyond death

If you travel here
To meet me
You must give up
All that you thought you knew
To enter the sacred portal
Burrowed deep
In the desert shrine
Where the Ancestors
traverse
To make communion
With their kin

Hear the drum
The awesome heights
Of my heart
Secreted in the ruddy mountains
Where a trail of light
Moves like quicksilver
Through a lens of spirit
Cutting through flesh

This is where I meet you
Again
This is where
You pick up the pieces
And love again
This is where
We begin again
Here at the doorway to my heart