wyrdwind

Placenta

Fetal microchimerism

describes an intricate symbiosis,

a lacework dance between an infant

and her mother’s subconscious.

She can dispatch stem cell first responders

to repair damaged organs, regulate hormones,

fight diseases and signal nutrient deficiency

through cravings.

These cells can remain

for decades, addressing what should be

compatible needs. My mother

felt no pain, not even during labor,

suffered no discomfort beyond

voracious hunger, ate every two hours.

Awash

in sustained euphoria. All the trauma

some distant shore another life ago. The happiest

she’d ever been.

Then I was gone.

The shock

to her system bore

a somber resemblance

to opiate withdrawal.

I’ve mentioned of course, but

there are moments when you approach

the web of wyrd and trace the thread

pertaining your purpose in the world.

My Mother wasn’t Home.

Flow State

This landscape

was a foreign body

and I had no choice but to create

an estuary, multiple thought streams,

a constant imagining. Raw edge tumbling,

plasma abscess of reckoning. Nacre laved

bitter black grains, glass sharp sea of sand.

Endogenous opioids—endorphins—

a golden and sustained vibrato,

are just a story you tell yourself

about yourself. What even is this hurt?

How odd. How quaint. How

novel. Take it from the top, push

some notes around. Without

those subharmonics and big drums

the song’s just hollow. Empty calories, no

meat to those bones. Keep the count,

if no one hears it, say what you love

until it’s metronome, announce

appreciation, punctuate until

it’s all stars. Just stars and stars.

The flock of Isis, a herd of cows,

you know aspiring mothers tattooed her spread

across their lower backs for protection.

Safe voyage.

I dreamt

once that I soared across a desert wasteland

as a great vulture alongside my mentor and found

one woman left alive buried beneath garbage,

hiding in a tub, about to give birth.

It filled with water as I got in, and I could hear

everything.

It’s like that show

where an elf mage spends her entire life

in a state of constant mana suppression,

weaponizes underestimation,

and a demon general thinks to wager

the weight of its soul against Hers,

a slayer of legend. Who has slaughtered

more of its kind than any to live. Plays

for absolute command with full confidence

it’ll win,

boasts the naked might

of its 500 year cultivation

against an opponent who specializes in minor novelties,

such as Field of Flowers and Shaved Ice.

A halting shudder through an undead, unrestful legion

of fallen soldiers. Little left to identify them. A new wind.

No contest. Confusion. Sickly dread. Before you is one

who has lived for over a thousand.

Kill yourself.

Technology

The world was dark and cold

and the People did suffer mightily.

Every spirit on the Council tried.

Possum wrapped the fire

in his bushy tail, burnt bald.

Vulture attempted to affix flame

to his voluminous crown,

we know how that turned out.

Raven dared some cinders in her craw,

caught oxygen, singed her black,

and made her hoarse.

It seemed the People were doomed

to die off.

“I will go.”

They looked around, startled,

wondered which among them spoke,

if at all.

“I will go.”

It was Grandmother Spider.

“But you are very small!”

They had never heard her speak before.

“The Eastern Sky is dangerous,

the Fire’s guardians jealous!”

And she did plainly insist.

“I will go.”

Her journey was long,

she carried a pot like a swallow’s gourd.

Those guardians didn’t sense her approach.

When she returned,

her vessel contained a single spark.

“But how will that keep the People warm?”

She duly demonstrated, this tiny magician,

the secret of the fire’s house, which she had observed.

They would have never thought.

And so the wheel of time turned on,

and every time the world grew dark

and the People nearly forgot,

Grandmother Spider spoke up.

Earthenware, baskets, rugs, cloth,

the care and cultivation of crops.

Anywhere and everywhere

alone in a room burning midnight oil,

the long taper, where one might question

if any strength remained to give,

she flexed her unseen silk. Guest

in every home

welcome or not.

Then, the People faced a cruel dawn. Total

annihilation. Suffocation

of all life as they knew it

as the atmosphere siphoned off

into oblivion.

Or so they thought.

Grandmother Spider said

“This way. Leave these caves,

come outside and look up.”

The People followed

through a hole she made, her shadow abode.

She brought them over

a churning sea of fire and molten rock

and the People emerged

from the womb of Hollow Earth,

oh they never realized

their existence subterranean.

Above

a cradle sky wide open,

and the People did behold an endless

deep of tethered bonfire sparks and shaken dew,

saw the patterns of Grandmother Spider’s great design.

Echoes and reverb. Movements rhythmic, synchronous.

Cause and effect. A cool, lush mist

upon thick silver-tailed grass.

The Council said,

“We’re glad you could finally join us!”

And Grandmother Spider taught them all

how a tapestry of humble and deliberate acts

holds the Earth to Heaven,

binds the entire universe, gives it shape,

and should we the People face our end,

Grandmother Spider will speak again.

No Filter

I’m certain psychologists

have some fancy terms for this.

Some poorly understood suspect variables,

clinical interest.

I’ve observed

that a highly creative mind

with inexhaustible energy

and an apex predator’s focus

does NOT respond well

to tedium. Insufficient stimulus.

Empty pursuits. Which in this world means

nearly all of them.

You call this reality,

what is it?

How can this be what you accept?

I think not. One of us has to go,

you or me.

Perhaps there’s a continuum of sorts

between divine inspiration and funny business.

I refuse disintegration, assimilation.

Neuroplasticity Monkey D Luffy ass bitch,

I’ll come at you from any and every direction,

run all you want but I’m making connections,

I’ll beat you bloody or we’ll be best friends

on the ocean. Call me Captain,

I don’t make the rules that’s just

the hat that fits. Bodied

that Fruit now erryone gon’ see some shit,

and people ask

why Alaska. Girl what the fuck.

You work at a water and health food store??

Before that, fabric and crafts?? Above table that is.

Grew up in a desert? What??

Well first of all,

Her flag is the best. Blue

because water, mountain, and sky.

Gold because Gold.

Ursa Major because Big Strong Bears.

The North Star.

State flower is forget-me-not,

a symbol of true love and those precious

separated by distance or death.

Much like what they inflicted upon the indigenous

before they called Her the Last Frontier.

The fact remains, She is a stronghold

of ice, minerals, water, flora and megafauna for now,

rises via vulcan activity at a pace outstripping

the sea level at worst possible projection.

You’re limited by skill and guts,

not by what zoning laws allow.

In summer, when the sun lingers long, the evenings

merely a slow, blushy blink,

crops continuously photosynthesize, attain surreal size,

and as you accustom

to intermittent seismic tremors it’s easy to wonder

if there really are giants. Not to mention

the coastal temperate rainforest under threat,

a biome covering less than 1% of the Earth’s surface.

People been sleepin’ on Her long enough, bet.

My agent drove by my spot and caught with a drone

a sky unrecognizable

to any night I’ve ever known. Glimmering amethyst,

violet, indigo and royal. Rich as diamond studded velvet.

Sea and sparkling snow.

Mama moose and two calves.

So yeah. I’m about to go

full wool long johns goose down rabbit fur

triangle shawl babushka sausage

with a crossbow and a chainsaw.

Maybe a dog.

Fuck off.

Atropos

Now I’ve mentioned this before,

the human subconscious is the most

powerful supercomputer on Earth

by an overwhelming order of magnitude.

Dreams are risk assessment simulations,

models of abstract concepts, skill attunement.

They drastically reduce reaction times

and produce novel solutions

if you humor them.

Speak their language.

Instinct

is otherwise known

as thin-slicing, the honed ability

to make shockingly accurate snap judgments,

split-second calibrations,

and react without thinking, freeing

the prefrontal cortex for other tasks.

Even while awake,

visualizing a task in your mind’s eye

engages the same neural pathways

as actually performing it, the practice

of mind-body connection.

Reinforced coordination.

Knowing how something works

doesn’t stop it from being magic.

It’s about intention.

Knowing your loom. Understanding

your project. Something

went wrong with the weft,

this yarn poorly spun, crude texture,

frith in shreds, we must address

these tatters.

If you can,

find a lover who pierces your heart

blindfolded, resonance how its meant,

the ache where your sound’s best,

soothes your spirit in their sleep.

Don’t rely on an appliance

if you can’t disassemble and repair it,

or base your diet and civilization on a crop

if you’re a callous stranger

to its bed and harvest,

starve the ecosystem to grow it.

Don’t enshrine legacy and creation

if you aren’t the Mother or a musician. Love

necessitates Death

of the Ego. The ratio of sacrifice

is 1:1. How many men would pay the price

for all the sin they done? Stand on the shoulders of?

Every oppression that exists

is predicated upon the enslavement

of the female. When choice

is structurally impossible, independence

not an easily accessible option,

there is no consent. Full stop.

There is a word

for non-consensual intercourse,

and it’s all most women have known

for thousands of years.

Oh

those threads hurt to touch. The warp.

Why no progress ever stuck.

God is not

the office of a man.

Most hands

can’t palpate the pattern

if I directly point it out,

caught up in the but but but,

will reach for any other metaphor,

interpretation, confirmation bias. Ignore

the evidence of their own eyes.

I’ve got about .04%

of this crackhead curtain

in my hand. Shall I,

shall I run a systems check?

I digress.

As a youth I wondered

why my voice would snag, why

regular conversation caused such stress.

Then one night, as a young woman,

I dreamt

my candlelit bedroom, standing

in front of my mirror, staring

at a woman who bore only a passing

resemblance to myself. Hair up, dressed

in fine Victorian muslin.

We studied each other as one in silence.

Then, she sang. Or I did.

I felt each of my ribs, my spine, my throat,

my blood. Ours? We touched

the choke of her gown’s high neck,

and I saw the rage barely restrained.

Felt.

I woke wielding a brand new skill. Progress

sudden as a house spider on a fungus gnat.

It had never suited me

to mimic other girls. Took longer

for my thicker, heavier mechanism

and longer cords

to develop. In secret. Some still place. And magic,

that’s the realm of imagination.

Like another mage from that show says,

after failing an examination for official rank,

because a man of import in a cloak woven

of impenetrable and impervious enchantment

challenged novices to land a single hit.

She remembered her seamstress sister

sliding razor sharp scissors

smooth as butter through cloth.

Remembered the sound.

Her signature spell

cut him clean through the sternum

in an instant.

Dead.

Defensible Spaces

Where there’s a forest,

there’s mycoremediation,

and there’s a reason

France, America, and China

stumbled in Vietnam.

Strong in their jungle, guerrilla

combat and hard defense.

Draw your opponent out

at natal disadvantage

into a battle of attrition.

Force them to overextend.

Plants, terrain, pests and diseases.

Sabotaged “infrastructure” and stealth.

Quick, decisive strikes and insulated cells.

It’s simple physics.

The further from center you extend a limb

the weaker it gets. The most effective

position is Turtle. Rock. Mind your fuckin’ business.

Obscure their line of sight. Muddy morale. There’s no such thing

as a fair fight. Reason. They only know concrete feed lots, violence,

religion, greed, and lies. Ah but

I don’t mean to give you a fright.

Mycelium, well,

he’s more of a laid back guy,

desiccates upon exposure to sunlight,

his is a delicate and sensual strength,

not immediately recognized as such,

creepin’ and fiddlin’ all along her underside.

That is, his giant green wife.

Ready with swathing bands anywhere

a corpse festers long enough, a latticework

of secret silk cozied up to her roots, no one

turns a mind to mush faster, makes a better chef

for that good good mama soup. Any substance

or poison. Heavy metals, plastics, and petroleum.

He can become melanistic—turn black—

and digest radiation ala Chernobyl.

No matter the contamination, he’ll break it down. In time.

Even his dispatched bodies or fruits pass on

their protections. Their benefits. In return,

she gives him sugars. He’s no fan of bein’ up top,

comin’ out from under her skirt as it were,

like good god good god nope. What vigor he possess,

he nurses directly from her efforts. Her affection. I’m sayin’

the forest floor fucks. These two are a team.

In a sense, we humans may be considered

their children.

However wayward.

She’ll see your abandoned buildings

and monster truck right over them,

hit manual override.

Closer to home

this means I grow trees and shrubs, we don’t see

our neighbors unless we want to,

and we’re never so inconsiderate

as to assume we’re the only creatures

who live here.

There’s no form I’m not familiar with,

and not a day will pass you don’t feel my touch.

No matter your dress. Loss of function. Decomposition.

It’s all just soil to me.

I’m sure

whatever’s goin’ on is at least 5% better

if I’m pettin’ your belly hairs. See? Right?

My fingers barely there across your thighs and behind.

You’ll taste the sweeter side of this continuum

in my arms

and it is worth all the rest. This typoglycemia,

so long as I’m the beginning and the end,

I can make sense of your mess. I’ll be

your fondly whispering sky,

tenderly watchful eyes.

If everything outside seems insurmountable,

and you just don’t know where to start,

imagine a world where you and I.