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

Vigil 1

this grief has me equipped for war

my eyes have no more tears yet still i cry Is this how deserts bloom?

i am plowing my little acre with a buffalo horn Season of violets and lupins salute me as i drive through the vineyards Pills tucked under each nail Hashish lined up like soldiers Tulips tired in my bedroom bend towards the sun How could i not simply dissolve and sink into the earth

Thank You

I lost my Beloved March 27, 2022. He lived, loved, gave, cared, laughed, sang, drummed, fished, traveled and never gave up hope and arrived fully at each juncture of his life. I will miss you for all eternity. I love you darlin.

A salute and thank you to all members of our Caregivers for Stroke Survivors Group.

I bow down deeply, and I’m grateful, for all that you gave me. You have been there when no one else was, you gave me solace, in my grief, and often gave me clarity, when none could be found anywhere else. You have been my rock, my family, and my support, and soothed my soul so often in the past years. I can never thank you enough, for caring for me, and my husband, and each other.

I say farewell to you all, yet it is bittersweet. I long to stay, as there exists remnants of my husband being alive in this world, within this group. 

My dear beloved husband, laid down his robe Sunday morning at 11:38 AM March 27, 2022.  I am more devastated that I could ever imagine. Thank you all again, and I wish you all love, joy, peace and ease as you navigate the complicated road of being a caregiver to a stroke survivor.  never give up hope, and remember what I’ve always said, never base one bad day as the whole of your loved one’s healing process. strokes are very strange and mysterious, and it is not always what it seems. There can often be really good clear days cognitive wise for our loved one, and there can be very bad days when it seems like it will never get better. But we have to remember that strokes are very strange and mysterious and they are not linear. 

Much love to you all, Prettythunder