Khamsin/ Lost In the Afterlife

I rise yet again
From the trappings holding me
From the coffin of the sky
My womb in the hallowed earth
Covering me with the pale light
Of the Ancients, the stars
Of the moon, the diadem
Of the heavenly vault
I rise
Having fallen, I rise
And where were you?

Left alone
In the dry soil
What bed would I need
What comfort could the ground give
With flowers now wilted
Left for dead
I was, I am
Coming into myself again
Watched over by the tender sky
My mother, conceiving again
Giving birth to me, again
As a star, an Ancestor
A descendant of the Milky Way
And who were you?

Hearing the early morning music
A caravan treading
On the shifting sands
Lonely yet crowded
Time watched them slip by
As it all slips by
These ephemeral things
My heart desired to take
And where were we?

We held hands in a moment
Already lost to us
To the temporary dunes
Playthings of the khamsin-winds
Angry, like the Gods
Giving pleasure, like the Gods
But for a fragile time
Gone again, but left
To the treasury of my memory
And where are you now?

Pale, fading
As the wash of stars
Paints the dunes
With timid color
I see the spirit of you
Appearing for the spirit of me
Only to ourselves
Are we a reality
Immortal like the Gods
Standing against time
As the living go on their way
Without us

We cannot consummate
Our vows
Nor halt the shifting dunes
From their destiny
In the tempestuous wind
The khamsin speaks to me
Like the thunder
Of my heart
Beating hard
Breathing the empty air
Over the desert
Where life is ephemeral
As twilight
And where were we then?

Free, my mind
From all of their constraints
Inhibited are they
From the fullness of my love
Clinging only to one
Their eyes could never behold
My many and generous reflections
For I have a manifold heart

One in the earth
One in the heavens
One for the sand between your toes
One for the burning plains
Where no thing grows
For want of sacred water
One for the sun, unforgiving
One for the moon, my lover in the shadows
One for every star, woven amongst the Imperishables
One for the flesh, longing
One for the voice, singing a song
For those who have gone before us
One for your thighs, open
Like sunbeams shattering over the sands
One for the Gods, all living in my veins
And how many do you have now?

I rise again
Forgetting the fall
Tasting freedom
Which is limitless experience
In the heart
Unencumbered by ephemeral conditions
These are the trappings that bind us
Here on earth
But these I have transcended
And shown the many colors
That shine from the mirror
Of my heart

Conscience, you are not bound
To this earth
Not bound to one
But married to many
Your freedom comes
After you have let go
Relinquishing the need to possess

Having fallen in you
I rise
My earth, my heaven
Reunited with them all
I have found at long last
The place where you are

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