Once upon a timeIn blood warm dark and wet,
a being came to life.
Elastic fluids, plastic, slick
designed to bind.
Cock and cunt
done it.
The source of life
not strife
but pleasure.
A baby come
and the mum,
she so happy,
don’t it?
Her belly swell
and grow.
Round and round and rounder we go,
the start of it just.
This baby inside a girl.
She form so lovely,
so nice, she become
this never before and neverafter
uniquely combined expression of DNA.
She done nothing, nothing at all.
So, so, so she was created
and so she was born
to celebration,
for she was indeed
-- and are we all not--
a gift to this earth.
Fulla grace, beauty, all the hidden code already written,
just waiting for time and life to print what she would become.
Who wants to leave the womb?
Maybe some, not me.
But magnetized and slippery
the convulsive power of birth deposited me
outside.
Luckily
I landed in love.
Hands caught me,
held me with
blessings, happily,
immediately,
I was given all.
Mother,
what else is there?
In the lagoon,
where lacy seafoam curls lazily over
the sheltering shoulders of candy coral,
they wash the girl in warm seawater.
Her limbs unfold.
In the june plum tree
where the cousins climb
a hummingbird in her mossy nest of spiderweb
cradles one tiny pearl
and a pair of parakeets punctuates
day’s end when the sun slips into the sea
and sprinkles sparkle
between the ocean’s blankets
to make dreams sweet.
Then the stars themselves alight on trees
and spill bioluminescence like borealis,
colour the dark with mystery.
A ritual:
the midwife must slice the skin.
She cuts it so so carefully with her fingernail,
its slim, sharp crescent shaped like the new moon,
and gently allows the first sweet drops to spring up
from the flesh of the ripe mango.
The mother receives the first
juice to rejuvenate her after the birth.
The fruit’s flesh is consumed
by the welcoming community,
and the seed is planted for the girl’s future.
This fecund fruit tree
will ensure that she is always wealthy.
The mother licks the juice;
her eyes roll back in pleasure,
at the sweet taste and the ecstasy of birth.
The impossibility of it,
and this perfect child,
lips pulling at her breast,
sucking the very joy of life itself
into existence.
The relief of birth a release,
a gush of gladness so profound
down there,
even at a time like this.
Every question is answered
and a deep understanding pervades.
But in that blazing flash of abandonment,
in swoops a terrible missionary
and takes the child.
For her safety he grabs her,
for her safekeeping,
for there is so much danger:
the thorns,
the fer de lance,
el scorpion,
fire ants,
the world is a dangerous place,
it’s for her own good.
Stolen, the child is taken,
a long way off,
far, faraway,
to a place for safekeeping,
to a church.
Inside this place there are no circles, no cycles,
no seasons, no songbirds,
only walls, windowed with panes,
squared pews, hard rhetoric, cold logic,
a book of rules.
There are other children,
so she is not alone,
But her mother is not there.
Her touch,
her feel,
her heart,
her breath,
her blood.
Gone,
all gone.
The devastation is primal,
her loss final.
The salvation they offer
false
and
empty.
Take pity on them,
Amen.
No mangoes grow.
But there is food.
Food
so
they
can’t
feel
or
think
just
stuffed
with
food
they
grow
fat
like
larva
fat
thick
and
dull
and
full.
Take the baby monkeys from their mothers,
and they will choose the softness of rags over
a milk bottle strapped to a wire frame.
They will starve.
This child clutches the only softness she can find,
her own sweet self.
Wraps her arms around herself,
finds comfort there.
Sucks on her own fingers,
licks her own skin,
finds the pleasure
from within.
Because she was born into it
and of it,
it is her birthright:
delicious shivering pleasure
calls her,
a sensual siren guides her
to herself.
But this is verboten.
The body is not good:
it is dirty,
see the feces, the fluids, the fallibility.
She was born bad
and there is only one way to good.
Look in the book.
Fear is used to control:
fear of the self,
fear of the other,
fear of the beginning and the end,
fear of the inside and of the out.
No way out.
So she goes in.
Inside,
buried within the folds
of her own sweet secret skin
a precious pearl
of pleasure,
her eyes close.
Untouchable.
They grab her
roughly.
She is unclean,
she is beyond redemption.
She is put out.
Outside
the world cold.
Rock,
ice,
snow.
Bleak.
Barren.
She is not hungry.
Cannot,
must not
eat.
No.
For even in the cold
fat melts
and beneath she is,
is she.
But who is she?
Or what?
Alone, certainly,
and bitter,
frigid,
frozen.
She aches for warmth
of arms,
of heart,
of breath and blood and body.
And for the drop of sweetness.
The river calls.
She goes,
watches water flow.
Pewter gray,
leaden, chilled.
Ice cold,
her fingerprints burn holes
in frost feathers,
and in the eddy at the edge
a piece of lacy water
folds itself
curling,
unfurling.
She watches it.
On the banks,
the river’s flanks,
she is sculpted:
bare bones,
a skeleton,
a zest for death.
She tumbles in.
Cold instantly turns to heat,
her eyes open wide,
surprise.
How can she be warm here?
And safe?
Yet she is.
Inside the river
she is held,
taken
all the way
home.
A fat lady,
grossly obese and
ponderously gorgeous
cradles a ladle.
A pot of Rondon,
fish and roots
in a stew.
Earth’s patchouli smells like heaven.
My mouth waters.
The fat lady offers:
Eat the earth’s flesh
drink the earth’s blood,
it is yours,
earthling.
Yours for the taking.
You belong here.
Just
because
you
are
here.
She takes the food,
sits by the lagoon,
where lacy seafoam curls lazily over
the sheltering shoulders of candy coral.
She washes herself in warm seawater
her limbs unfold.
In the june plum tree,
next to a burgeoning mango
the cousins them climb.
Don’t disturb the hummingbird,
a voice warns,
and the children pool and swim
down the coconut walk,
flinging june plum peels
screeching like naughty monkeys.
The bitty bird in her mossy nest of spiderweb
rocks gently on the ocean’s breeze,
the precious pearl protected.
A pair of parakeets punctuates
day’s end.
Sun slips into the sea
and sprinkles sparkle
between the ocean’s blankets
to make dreams sweet.
The children them school onto the porch
at the back of the house
alight themselves on warm bodies
and munch on mangos
as the stars themselves alight on trees
and spill bioluminescence like borealis,
colouring the dark with mystery.
A woman comes down to the beach.
Muttering, she sweeps debris
into a pile,
branches, bits of driftwood,
leaves the sand
smooth and swirled.
Her rake aside
she lights a fire,
blue and violet flames blaze,
the scent of nutmeg
in the smoke.
I am drawn,
fire does that.
Startled the woman turns.
Her face in the flames,
shadows,
the dancing light catches
familiarity,
a mutual yearning,
learning
it can be quelled.
She reaches for me.
Come.
Come near,
no fear.
We sit
our bench a capsized coconut palm,
sand between our toes.
Upon our arms,
the softest cloak of night.
The sea swelling
ardently.
At first
no words,
our breath.
Two hearts synching,
our very ions
interlinking.
Losing charge
now that we have found each other.
Then a torrent,
a cascade of words,
la lluvia rains from our lips.
Abatement,
comfort,
contentment,
bliss.
Then silence.
Nothing but the
eternal,
heaving,
sighing,
surging
sea.
Back to back
they rest,
finally complete,
replete.
They see
but cannot believe their eyes,
a sight
so startling,
astonishing,
rare and precious:
a full spectrum of light
drug out of the sea,
marine breath mated with the moon.
A moonbow?
Extra ordinary,
miraculous,
a celebration
of the circle,
the cycling,
the ringing,
round and round
of life.
