Florencia

Strings, bells, voices

All weaving together as signs to the pilot who drives her

Seeing cracked faces like puzzles waiting to be fit, her hands fail to

‘I see martha, she wants to be friends again’ .. she says to her mother that passed two years back

Each of her fingers has a mind, she wants to touch her toy.

When she writes her homework, letters flying as she tries to ground them on paper

‘Here is your colouring book, darling’ ..points out her father with his eyes moving to his hands

Colours are black, paints are white.. she hates the thought of a classic life

‘I paint with them on the other side, not with all of you out here, even mother, I paint with her’..

Her tongue scrambling words that are too piercing to her father

She falls down, shaking like her broken core, she falls, but she is smiling

You see pain is the only thing she has known.. since she can remember

Rounded candy as she names it… numbs it down, makes her rise again to her playful nature

She plays piano, effortlessly, her release, she calls it the eyes to her world

She reads books, like layers of her favourite dress

The only time her smile fades is when sandy comes, whispering

‘blades, needles, they are the real fables, use them, freedom’

Lines then scatter across her skin.. mapping, directing and freeing an anger she fails to understand

‘Even if it’s on you, dad, she says its fine, you are also a fable’

Most of the gold frames she sees are in the gallery of her mind

She feels it whole, they see it fragmented

She is twelve, she says she is ageless

The Mysteries of the dunes

I felt the air wearing me like the sun does the dawn

Wrapping my dry body in a moist that was hard to touch, eating the air seemed possible

I’m thirsty, ’30 more miles then we shall see him’, said Azania.. but I’m too frustrated to capture this

Words would only make my mouth drier, reminding me of the metallic scented water we collected

Only drops remaining in the container that looked like a melting bottle

I’m talking in between my worries, the dunes seem like waves of an ocean now

My eyes are becoming too heavy to truly see that I’m in dry lands

The delusion was comforting, like hope is

Facing the east as I walked my fifth day on the desert sands

We saw the compound a hundred feet from where we stood..my feet desired to leave my body behind

All I was depending on was a single sentence

‘He turns dust into gold’.. this couldn’t be a riddle, I pictured him doing it

I saw him grabbing grains of sand, yellow crystals forming within the depth of his hand

I would see all of it, no magick, or potions this time, but reality bended to his will

He looked very normal, like any old arab man would, wrinkled with experience

With a mix of black and semi white as his hair, I thought he would be more fascinating

For a man who could do such amazing things, miracle would not suit such a deed, it was more

 We walked toward his shrine, my skin raising to the energy my body couldn’t contain

Or even question, let alone understand.. it felt like the levitation me and Azania tried before

Our shoes had to be by the mat,my feet were breathing for the first time in five days

 We had to chant ‘ure li bo gre’ before entering

To invite our spirits to be welcomed, the energy was sacred, my body felt even lighter

The container he held was like sapphire crystals carefully crushed on each other

It was really beautiful, I never thought a container could be so beautiful

The sand was not like the sand dunes, it was darker, but still looked like soil

His hands were vibrating, slowly, then he poured it in his right hand

His pupils changed from blue to a glowing black colour, reflecting a light that wasn’t even in the room

I stood there, with no thought, thinking just seemed like a foreign language I had no patience to learn

It was like all of us were stateless, like a particle that exists everywhere

I saw something like how a river would reflect a sun ray, yet, still absorbing it

The grains grew larger, heavier, his hand shaped like a globe

All of a sudden, it was like a gold foil solidified on each grain, each grain becoming the other

Four crystals formed, all this happened in front of my eyes

The size of each was of a pearl, even more delicately made

His name is Muhhad, he lives a simple life

He isn’t rich.. he says nature has all the richness beyond the gold he can make by hand

Dark Skin Child

They said her skin reminded them of their past, the one they wished to forget

The colour of the coals they carried, the whip that raided scars on their backs

The dark nights that lengthened their labour, their sadness

She had been born into a stagnant time, in which your skin was your crown, at times, a crown made of thorns, piercing her heritage with persecution

Pain was always associated with her colour, it brought tears to her mother, she swallowed them like bitters

Her aunt had told her that when she was born, people mourned silently with their faces

‘she be of dark skin child, darker than any we seen with the eyes’ .. they murmured

Giving gifts of sympathetic glances to a woman already in pain from labour 

All the children started work at the age of two, helping with their tiny hands

They had mistaken it for play, they enjoyed running around the rows of cotton plants

She would hear songs about redemption on the fields, soul soothing comforting songs about a lord that saved people, yet she saw a light skinned person on the portraits, with the skin tone of the man who would take her mother away and spread her thighs in front of her

Her conflict was like a birth mark, only it covered her whole body

They looked at her as a painful reminder of their daily struggles, inner battles that they dared not mention in words. They feared death, but she didn’t. Her life already resembled death

Most days she sat at the barn, milking cows, seeing how white the milk was, wishing her skin was the same, so she could smile, laugh and be greeted with the same happiness they showed to their master’s eyes. She was only 10 years old, but her existence seemed longer, her eyes, frail with sadness, the spark of innocent life, gone, forgotten to be emphasized

She was taught to hate her skin, herself. And that is what she did. Nobody was there to show her how the dark soils were moulded into beautiful clay pots to collect water, how the coals gave life to food.  How her skin was of ancient goddesses that were worshipped in early times

All they ever did was spit on her with looks of detest, as if she could hear every woman praying that their daughters never become such a tone, full of damnation and scrutiny, when the very same people that hated her, had a similar tone. She felt inferior like they did, they fed her a poison they claimed was running in her veins.

The last they saw of her, was in her writing, when she mentioned how she was going to town, to beg to be lynched. As her own kind, had killed her at birth.

Merania

She was born the day the sun was covered with a ball of darkness

The tribesmen used to call this mysterious happening the blood of the sun

It’s bleeding signifying a foreseen greatness within the clan, an ancient prophecy

It said a woman with the sky people’s blood, with marks of nature’s carvings on her back, a wind symbol, will give birth to this child, an old soul becoming of flesh.

The puzzle pieces laid before them could not fit, ‘this is a girl child’ they said. This could not be.

But the gods had willed this, a girl child is the life giver after all.

Course long hair covered her head. She was the last of her kind. An aquarius, the one who can speak with the wind

Her eyes became the colour of the water spirit goddess Meran, at the age of five, the colour of perennial rain

The name she was given was Merania, the wind goddess, the name now owned her

Her hair would sing when she was the happiest, the healer’s trail as they called it, marked her as the one who could save her people from being annihilated.

When she was seven, which in their numerology symbolised perfect growth, they took her to the forest where her feet had to meet with the wilderness, to fuse with her spirit and ground her fragility, she needed to remember  how to use her gifts, and the mother giver, nature, the earth womb, would teach her within the silence.

She spent 60days with what felt like her real family, speaking with other worlds masked as trees and flowers. She knew this is where she would build her home

This was a time when foreign men would kill people for land, she had to be the barrier, she had to speak with the wind to offer protection for her people

She would summon ancestors, ten feet spirits that could manifest physically, to scare the foreign men away, their metal sticks had no magick, her hands did. They could not penetrate the seal of love she had blanketed her tribe with. This seal was considered the strongest

In the dawn of what was supposed to be their winter equinox , the wind told her it was getting heavy because of the cold, so it would not be able to protect them as it has did before

The foreign men had found an entrance that was much further from the forest, she could smell the blood from her vision, innocent blood

Her hair began singing a very painful song, the one that was written on the stones, by the ancestors who had come across the same fate

The people of her tribe heard it, they were ready for what was coming, their bodies were of no meaning now, their souls knew where they were going

The smell of copper bullets raided them, smoke, blood, fused. Spears and arrows piercing hearts, it was war. Merania was having a spiritual one, her tears had become bullets to the ground

The wind whispered ‘it is done, child, become the air that has made you’

She fought harder, conjuring a wind storm killing hundreds of men at once.  The earth stood still when she opened her eyes, seeing a massacre of both her people and these men she regarded having wounded souls to have committed such a deed.

The household that included her mother, which had twenty people inside, was the only legacy left of their tribe, the Watchers.

Even with most dead, they knew they would see them in blossoming flowers, on fields sprouting of fresh grass, even on the rays of the morning sun

Their tribe was selfless, the love they had for each other, was stronger than death itself

I find the design of a tree very intriguing. Yesterday while just travelling to my destination I tried to really see these beings (as I would call them since they are very much alive), like I was unfamiliar to them, as if I was a new born marvelling at a space I never thought as possible, I honestly tried. J . What I saw is something that resonated with my own life and actually, what I needed to learn and still continue to. First of all, the branches, which have sprouted in many directions, each seeming so perfect, made me to ask myself about the many choices I have made. How the tree has many paths, all from the same channel or lifeline, like the stem represents, not just one simple laid out branch. The collective umbrella-like structure, is what really made the tree so beautiful, these various projections. It’s like that channel, here being the stem, stored directions, choices each branch can make, but it felt to me that a tree didn’t have such a choice. It just grew, regardless.  It gave me a smile, to see how each tree has its own uniqueness in the shapes of its branches, leaves, and just the whole entire framework. How they are connected on the same ground for their roots to drink nutrients from the earth, the silence being caressed by the wind, the lack of comparison or competition, the sense of an energy that states, ‘we just ARE’, and we are here. Another smile arose, this time from my heart. It was comforting, as time and again we as human beings fail to see this kind of connection. To see this possibility on just an area with trees, did revive me that we also can have such. A reminder sank in, of how unique every experience is, especially for humans, even with such distinctions, the entirety of it all is, we are all people. And because we are people, choice is one gift we fail to fully explore why it has been given to us. We taint choice to the labels of ‘good or bad’, depending on what they have given us. One would say, but angie, there is a lot of bad choices people make. I have thought on this, in one point believing it, seeing bad choices in my life. But when I see what I learn from those ‘bad choices’, the label just disappears. It fails to be bad anymore. Thing is, YOU are the one who makes the choice that in turn makes itself into an experience you gain, whether you embrace it or not. And these words were just so hard to swallow, for me, to realize that choice is what makes me what I am and how I choose to see that self.  The roots of the tree grounded it, made it fortified in how it stood, in a way, appearing to mould how the tree would grow. And then, a thought rushed, ‘we also search for grounding, for a source that gives us the life we have’, yet, we still want to create that source in how it would suit us best, not just letting it be within us, and in turn in the midst of our lives. This confuses us very much, we create what we don’t know with what we know. Learn from a tree, it does not question its existence, it just knows it is where it needs to be

......

I heard someone say a devastating phrase ‘we are not equal, we are only equal beneath the ground’. What happened? Where is the root of the tree that made us think that its branches do not stem from the same tree, of oneness. People have mistaken this word ‘oneness’ into ‘sameness’. But it is not, oneness embraces the connection we each have with our surroundings, as we distinctly experience it differently. We need to see that poverty is a manifestation of our own internal unbalance, and that the wars we see are conducted by our own brothers, sisters, sons, loved ones who feel it patriotic to act against another since that is their occupation. They too have mouths to feed and the society that ‘cares’ about them is breaking them into vicious creatures with no drop of empathy when killing a family. Bloodshed, hunger, are all reflections of each person in this planet, our own stories, thoughts, beliefs manifesting. The sense of community in every society, which is a blatant façade, masks an internal cry which most do not feel the need to be aware of.  The way we, as a whole with obvious differences, have succumbed to petty labels of divisible nature, is sad. WE are more than that, more precious and amazing than what this world has made us think we are. To step into that awareness of how we have been deluded, and also deluded ourselves, is a great feel, not easy of course to embrace and unravel, because we love to feel that sense of belonging our communities give. We need to question though, if we deserve a sense of belonging that is not deep rooted, and that does not embrace our complete potential, but always constructs us into models of what they expect us to be. We have to rise above such limited existence. I do though, inner-stand that we have different cultures, backgrounds, but that should not be the only plane to which we choose to perceive this world. The love we truly are is that which a word cannot fathom, even the mind itself. 

hold me, like the last drag of your cigarette in your lungs, just inhale me like your last breath.. pixels of your face formed like a ray in my iris, bright, reflecting grace, as you slowly drank my blood as passion. Indulge in the lucid dreams it gives you..sniff me like the white devil.. i want to be your high.

The LifeLine

Her white beads, little pearls of hope she sees in the salt that she scatters

Her red beads, blood stained crystals of those that guide-be her

Her hair, think strings that source her to the Beloved

Ten magical wands make her hands, mapping  brown streams of healing

‘The bones speak, they have little mouths of truth, they release flesh from the body and free the spirit, they speak’.. she says this to a skin-made bag.. given to her by her grandmother.

She is now gasping, growling, bending to her own being

She is reaching out for thin air,  grabbing nothing, still gasping.. ‘they whisper to me you’.. now telling her uncle

She now holds water like she is one with it.

Red and white beads flying with the air of her locks

She now holds water like she is one with it.

‘cleanse him, cleanse him’!!!!

That cloth with ritualistic dances rhythms the connection with her tribe

She feels them surrounding her, their bare feet on the ground, holding her still, 'be, child'

But it’s only their spirits present

The cloth covers all her fears with a comfort she feels in her core.. it’s a sort of love.. a deep love that never leaves her.

‘shelter me from my fears great mother, I’m afraid’

‘My eyes burn with dreams’.. she notices.. but she loves the alternative existence they brew

Its peaceful, it heals her while it heals him, her uncle now saying incantations she fails to know why she understands  like the mother tongue she speaks

05/09/11

The God of passion

I knew of a place where I was the god of passion

Dripping desire from my fingertips in which the apathetic nation suckled

Having eyes of auburn nature, I was the fire in every heart

Ignited by flesh instead of spirit chants

I was a fountain, clothed with deity pigments of white silk around my brass body

Clouds were my messengers, engulfing sight into inspiration of those with the courage to look unto me and embrace my sun like face

‘Cut me loose from your breasts’, they all prayed... yet they were breathed from pebbles of purity that i fused with my own soul

Self-sacrifice is what I decided as my fate

Yet mortals of flesh clothing never worshipped my immortal glance to gain beauty-full inspiration, cleansed from a sort of fear, not completely

I wished to be seen as the only river in the drought of their lives

To be the only tree that gave them fruit to eat

Yet, they praised my brother, compassion, never dwelling under his protection

They loved his name as it gave re-birth to wilting souls

But none dwelled in him

This is why he broke himself into rays of hope, faith

For he was too much for such a timid race like theirs

They still fear me, saying 'glance so strong, we can never hold, be the light, but never bright'

Tears are still my oil, they keep my molded body shining, tears of those that worship me

I, in a world surrounded by solid matter that fantasized of becoming long fragments of energy

Dipped in all potential possibleness 

Was still, a god of passion