“feather clouds cry
a vale of tears to earth
morning breaks and
no one sees the quiet mountain birth
dressed in a brand new day
the sun is on its way
to a falling crescent noon
somewhere in
a fairytale forest lies one
answer that is waiting to be heard
you and I were
born like the breaking day
all our seasons
all our green septembers
burn away”
— “crescent noon” the carpenters (richard carpenter / john bettis)
drag name: giant flies
drag name: tuna slop
drag name: curbside compost
drag name: give two shits
drag name: taut conspiracy
drag name: known mononymously
drag name: extended stay america
drag name: whoopsy daisy
drag name: national part shortage
drag name: pricing trinkets
drag name: lesbian resume
drag name: abruptly cease
seen a cat playing mouse with a worm i took for a snake,
and an actual snake dead and dry on the walk,
rat in a field stuck in a glue trap,
plastic pumpkins, reaper standing watch,
so much fruit from trees dropped and left to rot,
people camped and living in an acre of second-growth which was probably field, lawn or farm house and before that, real forest —
at a paved over creek where people leave crap i offer to death.
(slow down, snail says, bravely crossing the street.
chew, consider, swallow, digest.
risk hearing no.
risk hearing whether your body really wants this or not.)
windows shut against pollen counts,
neighbors constantly burning trash,
there are nights when i actually like the smoke,
smells cool, kind of mentholated, seductive and sweet,
like a time when smoke meant season, not crisis.
another summer gone too quick,
cells calling multiversal selves back to present,
transcending time, potential and space,
grieving the lives i’ll never experience,
all the ways that wither with each choice i make —
we can never really know what comes of the seeds we plant.
grackle chorus, night swallows flight,
cricket song wherever there’s shade to escape the light,
more sunflowers this year than i’ve ever seen in my life,
grass seeding red, grass sprouting violet,
so many grass hoppers in kaleidoscoping carapace,
bovine, beautiful, wise and alert.
if the first world exists, have we slid to the second?
to the counters of worlds, is this fifth, sixth or seventh?
what makes a world liniment, slippery, filament,
how many a world keepers’ lineage lost?
how many worlds blossomed long gone extinct?
i write in loose verse so something makes sense,
write in loose verse to order my cosmos,
offer at wild places, also sprayed, dead and dry places,
for all the potential, wasted,
waiting to be left long enough to resume being life,
knowing we’re also meant to help like the rest,
bow to tradition, flow, breathe and stretch,
call in the directions, cottonwood east,
south willow, cyprus,
walnut lives west, for me,
here, muskrat, north.
darker mornings, dreamier nights.
gifts given freely without guaranteed recompense.
trust tended, tender, that we’ll have enough, no matter what.
may all the doors to your destiny open,
may all the means that you take honor life,
may all the delays and digressions be swift,
may the learning you find be the sweetest part.
smoke cleared yesterday,
misty cool came, then heat,
rain stirred the pollen,
made my baby sneeze a lot.
a brief exercise to try if you like:
find the most comfortable way you can stand, lie or sit. imagine that everything that exists is suffused with an organizing intelligence — the dance of order and chaos that creates life from protein soup, galaxies from space dust. imagine that you can align with this energy, this force, or essence or consciousness, just by breathing, that you always are, at all times, but you can align a little more by consciously choosing to do it.
imagine breathing this force in and out as a soft, glowing light. imagine it softening your sternum, the joints that help your collarbones connect, all the tissues that stitch together your chest, ribs and back, holding your lungs in place. imagine breathing with everything that exists, imagine being breathed by it. let your imagining be as important and real as the physical sensations of breath in your chest, any thoughts orbiting or emotions swirling into your awareness. notice how this feels after a few cycles, a few minutes, or as long as you can stand it. repeat as often and for as long as it holds your interest.
it really is a challenging time! i know i say this every month. it rocks me in waves, sometimes/especially when i see others (like myself!) pouring love into long-term goals, projects and commitments with no guarantee that the land, relationship, platform, market, culture or nation state will actually be there to give a return on the investment. surely some of us try to achieve in denial, grasping at normalcy or in outright reaction against the cascading paradigm shifts, but surely some of us also do whatever we’re doing in embrace of this time, because this time makes what we do and how we do it and who we choose to do it with all the more vital and precious. i’m not super clear on the collective pulse at the moment, but i like to think that the ‘great resignation’ the economists have been wringing-hands about has as much to do with burn-out as it does a great number of people waking up to their worth and choosing to do something meaningful with it. so…wherever you find yourself on that spectrum, give yourself a pat on the back and maybe a toast. totally normal and understandable to collapse in fear at times in the face of chaos and crisis. also, somehow, totally normal, human and extraordinarily rational to get back up and keep going at it.
thank you for reading this. thank you for being with. thank you for getting up this morning and doing the shit and also big love and honoring if you found that you couldn’t. and thank you to everyone who has contributed to my getting to sit here and have the time to write this, financially, spiritually, through your sharing of your own gifts, your inspiration, your love and readership.
i’m 11 years sober from alcohol this month. it’s 2 years that eric and i are together this week. we met about 6 months after i quit drinking when he still was and that was one of the many reasons i told myself we weren’t able to make our first brush stick, boundaries not being a word i recognized at that point. there’s no reason to tie my sobriety to our relationship, especially since, even after all this time, i’m still finding ways i can use pretty much anything to escape. but what i recognize now is that the choice to live and the choice to love were both choices to imagine a life with more meaning, heart, soul and purpose, a little more aligned with that cosmic pulse of all existence.
i knew i had more to do here, and when it became clear that i would have to challenge my relationship to alcohol (and many other things) to really bring that forward, i could finally make the choice to do it. i knew i wanted to be with someone i could both love, be loved by and truly grow with, had to chase a lot of wrong before i realized i’d been running from right, and thank goddess he hadn’t fully written me off! we have hurt, healed, held and taught each other so much these 2 years, there are a million and more reasons why no matter how hard or scary it gets sometimes i keep choosing my life with eric in it. i am certainly very purpose-driven, and the more we grow, the more ways our individual paths seem to twine together and resonate. growing together while doing work that we care deeply about is such an incredible gift. and even with all of that, my life is just so much sweeter with eric in it. you get me to slow down, to sit on the couch, to savor what we have even amidst the mess and the shit. you’ve shown me a side of myself i don’t think anyone else could have shown me the safety and acceptance to surface. you really are some kind of (stubborn, hilarious, brilliant) saint and i’m grateful every day to get to share this life, and for all the meanderings and mistakes and unlikely allies on the paths that led us back together. you are such a gift to this land and this planet. i love you so much.
<3
alexis
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ps, poetry:
“i am, you anxious one.
don’t you sense me ready to break
into being at your touch?
my murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
can’t you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
hasn’t my longing ripened in you
from the beginning
as fruit ripens on the branch?
i am the dream you are dreaming.
when you want to awaken, i am that wanting:
i grow strong in the beauty you behold.
and with the silence of stars i enfold
your cities made by time.”
- r.m. rilke (trans. joanna macy / anita barrows)
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