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.
wyrdwind 