Small rememberings of Santorini this afternoon—
The donkey ride to navigate the steep incline.
Walking up and down the small stairs and tight alleyways.
Buying ceramics, coffee, and souvlaki.
A camera heavy around my neck.
~Pretty Thunder
Poem
The House has Chocolate and Coffee
The house has chocolate and coffee. In the refrigerator there’s sausage and cheese. Tomatoes and pears are ripening on the kitchen counter. I never forget how blessed some of us are. Washing our hands under warm water that comes from a pipe.
12AM
screams like an animal Is animal
strange being wrapped in the fur of a lynx belly Face painted with camwood powder and charcoal
she climbs the walls while you all sleep and feeds her orchids ice cubes
this all means nothing This all means everything
she is eating raw bison and sips a demitasse of white rum Talks to her beloved through a day moon
there is no grace here
where a lover can be seen in the black arc of a swallow’s feather
3AM
you lover
i see you on the moonglade
you lover On my tongue
you are my languages
i cuss and praise you equally You dissolve as clouds at daybreak tomorrow
you arrive as rain over Nea Bay
Vigil 3
Don’t speak
send me the arts
music poetry photography paintings Offer me magic and the West horizon Offer me incantations and prayers that require singing Bring me 8,000 candles and wood to burn mesquite piñon palo santo red cedar Bring me ceanothus root bring me chaparral for my tools set alight the resins breuzinho white copal and ghost pine i toil day and night searching for a place where’s he’s not gone from this world i do not rest i do not sleep i do not eat Bring me psilocybin DMT and iboga Bury me far beneath the Mourning Ground Send the Pointer and Shepard away Wrap me in my colors of annihilation
the colors of hurricanes and the endless road Wrap me in brown Wrap me in burlap
i have surrendered all my names and my foot print has changed
feed me small pieces of raw liver and salt Feed me the morning star
feed me glass from the collision at the crossroads
see me in the shaking earth
see me in the descending wren
see me walk among all that composts
summon me with your endless silence
summon me with your long gaze
you too are this
you too are oblivion
you too Are me closing the roads
Vigil 2
where
i seek a vanishing
to be pure essence Where i have no name No memories
more than exile
i seek oblivion
a nightjar lives in a starred sky
a nightjar lives in twilight
make the appropriate offerings
resin. vine. your hands. reaching. be my perfume.
i am a violet at the crest of spring Waning Turning into a traveling song Turning into paper under the sun This is delirium This is grief and longing This is a grocery list and a forced march through arduous terrain This is already tomorrow Dragging the mezcal bottle from room to room
votif rain
votif flame
votif petals on your palms
you are the rose