December 2, 2023

Vast Multiplicity


If, for most of my days 

alive upon this earth

I had been swallowed 

by an impotent collapse,

how would I rise 

into generative purpose

without abusing the animal softness 

of my body.

How do I also hold to the wisdom 

of that collapse 

that was something about gentleness 

and a longing for truth.

How do I slow, 

in the face of a harrowing regime 

of mindless obeyance to busyness, 

to learn to listen to the whispered wisdoms 

that sing inside 

the endless temple of soma?

How do I learn to listen?

If I have been taught to override,

with mind and vacant distraction,

how do I learn to slow and revere 

the voices that howl and moan, 

that ululate and keen 

in the holy resonance chamber,

the unruly menagerie

of my own interiority?

To drop to my knees and scry 

the star studded waters 

for hidden pleasure, 

treasured devotion, 

ancient hungering.

If I have been raised to suppress, 

to colonise and civilise 

the wild gestures,

the harrowing dance 

the tender beseeching

of my instinct,

how do I flower the great inner ear 

of my embracing becoming?

To seek and to coax 

and to patiently unfurl 

the tightly curled impulse 

of my wholeness?

How do I make peace 

with the driven tyrants 

that drive me forward 

in mechanised defence?

Driving me beyond my innate need 

for care and regeneration, 

for tenderness and communion, 

gestation and grief.

How do I dismantle the harrowing dictatorships 

that preside over my own body being?

How do I give equal weight 

to each of the subjugated voices 

that call in the dark chasm 

of my unconscious sub-terrain 

so that when I speak 

my voice is a generous multitude 

of possibilities?

That when I look I am seeing 

from the eye of both the bird and the worm, 

the blazing sun and also 

the dark eye at the centre of the heavy earth, 

from the driven imperative 

and the still reflection, 

from the silent 

and the beseeching both?

A receptive listening, 

an enduring council 

to the biodiversity of body speak, 

to the ecology of wisdoms, 

that swirl and erupt 

in the deep mystery 

of my own vast multiplicity.


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