Humans are so chimplike in our

Hierarchies

We posture and pose with a title

To tide us over

Or a taboo

To tuck in our crevices

Exchanging feathers, and sticks as though

They matter when its mostly

Tribal really, racial or familial

The in-chimp or the out-chimp

And so worried about the bananas if there

Are enough to go around

Could we be a better species?

Could we leap from the branches

Through our branching neurons

Into you-win and

I-win

And enough bananas for

All the monkeys so none must

Cry big tears and hunch their hairy

Sobbing shoulders

Or must we beat our chests

And be top or

Bottoming all the time

Lowering the common

Denominator of our

Reality

For Dalton

It is a red slash unit

And I am the lucky girl

With a propane torch

Strapped to her back

And a match

And I will set that shit ablaze inside a glorious summer day

Full of flame and black smoke

And I do not care if I know how to get out of it

Because I am the lucky girl

With the gift of fire

And it will burn burn burn

A night and a day and

Forever if you let me

Drip torches, and helicopters with exploding balls, and 22 flare guns, and a

Terratorch

A terratorch! You let me spit flame in napalm

Widening arce flying through the air

Sighing with content

I make small circles with gasoline in dry grass and watch the wind

The wind takes it up the canyon

And sparks fly they fly through the air to more sparks in

Whorling patterns of

Orange bright

Glorious destruction

Ash will come later

For now I am content with heat

And the aliveness of burning

Transmutation of one dry thing

To another live thing

To a thing that is empty

And nascent for replanting

In the spring.

Or never, because ash has its own haunting beauty years after the flame is gone.

So don’t let me near your red/heart

Because I will set it aflame

If only to watch it burn.

Those women, we say

The ones with fat hips

Dresses falling off their shoulders

Windblown hair

Sloppily applied makeup

A glitter in their eye

Those you can kill-destroy-embarrass-rape

Those you can impregnate without consequences

Those you can describe on locker-room walls

The poor ones

The ones with different features

Different hair

Who worry about paying rent

Who wear glitter in the daytime

The ones who jiggle when they walk

Whose boots go-go

Whose teeth shine in the night

The ones who want you to pay for dinner

You know the ones

The ones who got drunk and lost their friends

Didn’t say no loudly enough

Flirted, kissed, started, and did not finish

Called you handsome

Ate with crumbs

Danced with too many partners

Whose fathers didn’t care

Rode the bus, the subway, walked on the sidewalk

Those you can touch, they won’t mind

No one will listen to them

The ones who swayed their hips too far

Didn’t have a boyfriend

Made a coarse joke

Were not feminine enough

Painted nails, lips, the drinking straws of mojitos

Pop-rock lickers

Who looked at other women with appreciation

Who lust at life

Who love when they want to, as if it was up to them

Those women had it coming

They knew better and did it anyway

Spread their legs wide when they sat

Stayed too late at work

Ate with their mouth open

Thought they were better than you

Cried too much then

Interrupted you when you were speaking

Bested you a time too many

Whose makeup dripped below their eyes

Those women

Me, my many selves

Those women are also…

Me

Once I had a spiritual

Awakening and awoke

To see the

Core of the world layered like an

Onion first the

Self self-serving seriously flawed

Then the

Past lives living loops into now

Through the

Ancestral line of linking threads

To the archetypal

Layer

There are more, grids and colors

Shapes and sounds but

Ohm my we don’t need to

Cover that here I want to

Speak if speaking suffices

Of the gods and demons

The crone and crow

The maiden and marred beggar

The archetype in a vast

Twisting tapestry

Kaleidoscoping endlessly

Eventful

We assume that the building blocks of

Reality are somehow geometric

Mathematical

Perhaps biological a twist of DNA or

A circlet of quarks

But I think now that I have

Seen it although who would believe me?

That the building block of

Reality is

Story

Stories telling turning twisting

Pan and Pandora

Puck and Pippi

Peter and Paul

The phoenix

We are clay people molded from

Multicolored parts of story like

A five-year old sticks together

Play dough

Sometimes smeared but mostly just

Abutting poorly adhered

With parts falling off sometimes and

We don’t even miss them

As we turn another face

In another mask

To the fray

I was sick with the problem of consciousness

So I took tribal medicines to be better

And now I’m better

Not sick

Well.

Physician heal thyself

Is a starting point.

I wonder where it will lead

Now that I am Well.

Not sick.

Better.

I had better learn to be Well

Physicians do not know this yet

How to be not sick

Better.

Well.

Not sick does not need a physician to

Be better

It is already Well

So wellness

Is to be something else

Better.

Now that I am Well

What will I be

That is not sick

Better.

I think I will be...

Conscious.

Alone

Wished for often

Never achieved

No secrets in the psyche

We push them backwards into the universal billboard that is our face

Can you see my scars?

I used to try to hide them, now I wear them proudly

Perhaps too proudly

Seeing scars is no great feat

But can you

Iron them out?

Press them into shining stillness?

Perhaps if you could,

Should you?

Are they decoration, perhaps artfully arranged

Do we really want our scars

Undone, doneover, destroyed...

I had a vision…

They are still like baby

Birds,

Just out of the egg and

Chirping for

worms.

And I am at the edge of

The nest

Talking

About flying and it simply

Sounds insane to

Them

I think.

But its not, flight must

Sound really crazy

To a baby

Bird.

I wish I could gift you

Open spaces

You child of the city

Veteran of a thousand skirmishes

On the concrete playground

Heart stoned behind

Pewter eyes

I wish I could give you the sobs

That come in clean

Air when you lungs burn with

The fine, fine victory of

Shuffling footsteps and the not-giving-up

And you look down on the

Wooly backs of tottering

mountain goats

I wish I could give you clean pines

And fresh scat and the scattered blood

Of a real hunt

And a proper ceremony with a fresh heart stilled

And the gratitude of true death

In the right place and time

What I want to say

Is that there is nothing wrong with you

Nothing at all

You were simply compressed, into something smaller than you

True size

By fear and poverty and lies that someone told you

Or your parents

About what you could be

What I want to say is that

You are clean, and filled with

Awe and the stars hang

Dropped in your eyelashes

Like snowflakes

At night and when you see them you will know it to be

True

And this is

What the mountains would tell you if they

Could

If you let them if I gave you

Open spaces

The past is the

Past that’s why it’s

In the past

Back then I wanted different things

I wanted revenge and to be right

And I got them

I was hurt in ways

I thought I deserved

And learned we limit ourselves by what we

Wish for others

Now I want the peace

Of God and to Remember

So I get

That

It was the 11th hour

Past breakfast, and just before lunch boxes

When you decided

Not to wear

Your clothes

Years ago, my brother

I would have held you down and

Bitten your ear

Until you complied

But I am now much older, and you

Very small

Staring down at you staring up

Arms akimbo

Your small frame rigid with

Certitude

I felt that biting might be

Off the table

Nanny’s have

Greater responsibilities than big sisters

Not to use force majeure

In robing, or

Disrobing

Tiny charges

I made a swift decision

Based on a complex history of

Oldest-sibling-large-family

Early child development

Bumper-to-bumper traffic patterns

Scrappy pluck

And crafty calculation

And I told you that if

You could not comply with

Decency

And good judgement

We would go to school

In underpants

You shook with the magnitude of

Decision

And forthrightly stood your ground

I must confess an admiration for your

Consistency

So into the car we went

Arms and legs flailing

Wrapped in a seatbelt

And staring in awe

At action and consequence

We drove to school in

Underpants

There was a moment there in the

Back seat

When I saw you watching the trees

And cars we passed

With a tremulous

Exploration

You had crossed into the

Unknown, the captain of your own

Destiny

And your bare skin

Was off the edge of reason

And into the

Weightless air of possibility

Your brother was

Envious

Trembling with the aftermath

Of adrenaline I helped you dress in the

Backseat of the car before

School

I had secretly brought your clothes

And you were so grateful

To put them on

Walking in with

A small bright plastic

Lunchbox

We shared a strange collusion

In the normality of our entrance

And ever-after a friendship

That is difficult to explain

Because I had not let you

Fail or fall or

Flounder alone at the

End

And I wonder sometimes if

This is how God

Thinks of

Atheists