Bodhairim and the Lurking Evil

The subconscious is a odd thing.

Once I produced a group of what I thought were random images of Portland on assignment for an artists’ group that I belong to. When I put them up in front of the group, several pointed out the threads that ran through the images: separation, isolation, loneliness, anger.

I had gone through the extremely painful breakup of my marriage some months before. I wasn’t really over the experience, but neither was I consciously taking pictures that reflected it. I thought I was making images of a city that I’ve come to love; the feelings about the breakup just sort of leaked out. All over Portland.

But then, that’s why getting the perspective of your peers can be so important.

So, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised last week when I attended our monthly critique session with new work on Bodhairim.

Let me just say that Bodhairim is meant neither as a lighthearted work, nor am I exorcising demons. It is simply (or not so simply) about positive, awe-inspiring experiences that have taken place over the course of my life. Most have taken just seconds in time, some are natural phenomena, some defy explanation.

They are good, existential, life-changing experiences without one fucking demon or sinister entity involved.

But that’s not necessarily what the group saw. I was actually pretty surprised that some saw faces, lurking shadows, foreboding, and ill portent in these images. Friends I’ve shown this work to say the same thing. I’ll admit to being a bit dark of mood lately. Do I need to step back and reexamine these with fresh eyes? Probably. Eventually. But for now, here is the latest of Bodhairim, including three new images and three new poems.

See how many evil faces you can count…

 

Southern Cross

There was day in the canyon
like sunlight collected in a bowl.
A white horse appeared
standing in my path, unmoving
and we regarded each other in stillness
safe from each other with polite distance.

He lead me on, lead me in for a while,
and I think I have been losing my mind.

Is it not good to be alone.
Is it not good to walk away from the future
into the long morning of primitive hands.
I moved though the shepherds and the sheep
I moved past the lovers and the friends
I carry no knife and hold no provisions
I have a horse and wild berries and the wind.

The wind blew to the end of all things
and the shadows became long.

Is it not good to be alone, lonely,
to no longer belong to anyone,
unbeholden; that is a new thought.
For I am no longer needed here,
my strings and knots I have cut.
And that is a new thought.

And I am very far away;
this is a very different world from my imagining.

Is it not good to be riding into the night,
to be stargazing as the fine wind blows
strange dust across my cheeks,
the southern cross, strange constellations.
We regard each other in stillness
and it is good that I am a different person
for seeing their arrangement.

 

 

 

New Year’s Eve

I would smile for your sake, in quinine,
give a peck and wish a good year,
may you drink and merry make in the frail hours.
You will be right to ruckus and I am wrong,
for I am January already, more winter than winter.

Brittle frost pregnant with sadness,
with sickness, a poison belonging to no place,
this flower has no root, but, strange, I am here.
I am here with wine and stew, wrapped with children,
with herbs and stones and books,

wrapped with song and fire, though
I am my own damp and chill, set mouth
I refuse to make my warmth, I refuse
to make yours and you then spite me;
smile and silently press your forehead to mine.

An odd thing and an odd thing
a concise maneuver crossing distance,
a simple soft razor slice between friends,
two slid between seconds, a wall crumbles
and the night slips free of its winding sheet;

It is a beat where what exists is, no more;
two bodies with a power to make all
balanced and good and the wine and the children,
the herbs and the stones, the books,
and you and I are golden and the air fairly shimmers,

a fire blaze and I warm to my bones,
cannot breathe enough, there in that small spit
a sight of that which has no name,
neither tether nor anchor, no lure nor barb
and we are knitted to some other world.

It cannot last; breathe and the glamour dissolves,
the clock will tick and the pang will shatter,
blink and memory is damned but
for this one small shard I swim in the honey of god
and the winter sun is shamed.

 

 

Road Songs

Pack up all my cares and woes
There I go, singing low
Bye bye blackbird.

He drives making miles in sleepy devotion
to a somewhere, to the east tunneling
through the night, the flat of Colorado
with the chill smell of dry night,
of new summer shoes and green weeds.

And she is the map keeper,
sure that we stay on the road
and watches him for signs of wear,
for cracks, and wishes for
clean sheets on a clean bed.

There is no light to read, I cannot sleep;
a child never believes that she can be tired,
so I hold Mr. Rabbit and stare out
thinking a green philosophy
watch cars streak by like comets,

watch lightning strikes out there
on the horizon far away and I am
unmoved, curious, unable to not look,
thickly and quietly restless
for things are and will be different.

She will sing and we join
songs sung to the road, all our roads.
I am learning the songbook while
fire punctuates the spilled ink distance
and our movement through space.

It is our song of loneliness
love lost, found, love of old ways,
campfires and Jesus in the garden;
valleys where men are killed,
where girls’ hearts are broken.

No one here can love or understand me
O what hard luck stories they all hand me.

And we are made safe.
And we are made warm.
And America is a bittersweet place,
lost out in the day and interstate,
found by night and wilderness

I drift in a harmony between these
bodies that make us and
the long miles of the highway
consumed like a rich mouthful of food;
we are the song of the infinite.

Make my bed and light the light,
I’ll be home late tonight,
Blackbird, bye bye.

 

 

(Hint: last count, four faces)

Prayer is Better than Sleep

Morning is broken,
dissolves even with eyes closed.

It is a yellow bald sun that leaks in,
that moves like a tongue through shutters,
moving with the breath of sandalwood.

Somewhere there is tea brewing
in quiet, like a secret, mint and oranges.

And it is the secret part of the day,
when my hair spills uncovered,
my shoulders exposed and arms naked,
cool white sheets and browned skin.

In the dimness of the room
I might have shape, breath, a body.

In the dimness of the room
comes the cry of morning time
with light and bread, reaching fingers

comes the adhan, come be holy
in this place, come see god,
the call of strange birds to ken,

a terrible fog wending high, stabbing
and low, spills into the fish, the spices,

The air is made heavy with god.
The air is given a tongue and throat,
settling on the butcher and the iron seller,
the tanner and thief, stop and hear,

love beside you, like pieces of yourself,
a song of honey, pain in the leafing,

How bare the night and desert,
how rich the day and breath,
long threads of word and echo
and word and mirror.

Come see god in the world and the red dust.

Prayer is better than sleep
and we begin the day.

 

 

 

 

Yak Butter Tea and the Evening Storm

Say that I was once a lost girl,
passing through the strange world,
the very tactile world, clamor and heat,
within and without and

a storm is plainly coming on,
outside as tangible holy, as petrol fumes,
outside as the chant and temple smoke,
the barter song and the soldier bark;

Inside, evening is the quiet tongue, washed,
all is silk and wool, red and gold,
and made more so by lamp flicker;
the weave of the hair rug rough

and good against tired feet, the scent of
rain, barley, sandalwood, spice, meat;
and the yak butter tea fogs, glowing,
divines the future at my window seat

where I roll the day without direction,
outside as incense and pilgrims, an old world
of ghosts and magic and desperation,
here I am with all that I have seen and stare

into the terrible spilled ink and starlessness,
struck dumb as balls of lightning explode
before me bleeding light into the sky,
a pornographic spectacle, an archangel;

should I not avert my eyes?
I think of violent watercolor portents,
of polarities and fishswimming ions,
empty, voiced and of all I do not know.

I want this thing as a sign,
but physics will play us for happy fools,
when it is done and I might breathe again
and the sky is sober again,

the mountains sleep sharp again,
outside as holy, outside as petrol fumes
outside as the chant and temple smoke,
the barter song and the soldier bark.

 

And the work goes on… Bodhairim is only perhaps half done and slow moving. I am hoping to complete some work that is truly dark soon. And for the folks who are part of my critique group who read this blog from time to time, your extra eyes and criticism is extremely valuable; no dismissal of your commentary implied here.