Love is alive {poem}

I want you to know what love is.

For it is not a feeling you have felt
nor one that you can learn.

No darling, it is something far more palpable.

Innate.

Pulsing.

Love is not something you fall into,
not anything to find or trade for,
but something you come from.

It exists in the marrow of your
soul, permeating your heart
and encompassing your entire being.

It is limitless, with a disregard
for object and highest reverence
for truth.

It hardly whispers at all, and is not
provoked by lust.
Love is not a stimulant,

not a high, not a vortex,
but a force, a vibration
of the most potent quality.

It is not something to complicate or master,
to control or understand,
but rather, when we are purified

it is love that we radiate.

Love is a light.
Love is life.
I want you to know love

so that you might know what it is like to truly live.



As published on Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/04/live-in-love-poem/

The poetry of alive {poem}

I set out to write by the sea:
the ocean in her grandeur
colliding with the rocks and shore
so fully alive
in her untraceable power.

Her body was a fortress
I could not move against,
and so, I moved with her--
allowed her fully palpable energy
to take me.

Bouyant.
Suspended.
Embraced.

My spine arching to each wave,
surges of energy into my chest
my heart,
my breathe.
I could feel her calm urgency
pulsing through me. I was

Reverent,
in awe,
humbled.

Black sand in the contours of my shape
and salted hair--the wisdom
of Grandfathers in each powdered
grain of volcanic ash
exfoliating my every part,

connecting me deeper to all
that was before me
and all that is with me.
Blending masculine
and feminine--
purifying.

Intoxicating.
Sweetly simple.

Every sound, every sensation,
every resonance
from everything living
massaged into my being
and messaged my soul:

Feel something

it was anything but a whisper.
And so I poured myself back into
the wildly mysterious ocean womb
Rolling, still, as she was.

I moved,
laughed,
wept. 

And the ocean became more
concentrated in salt
and more concentrated in me--
I became the sea
and the reflection of the stars and moon,
and I remembered again

that all life is one,
that all is alive.
I set out to write by the sea,
but she wrote herself into me--
Living is poetry.



As published by Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/04/living-is-poetry/

Wisdom Men

"Medicine Woman, Medicine Man

walking with grace, I know your face, and I trust your hands
Medicine Woman, Medicine Man
walking with grace, I know your face, and I trust your hands"

A week-ish ago I posted a shout out to the women in my life. Spoke of being so enraptured by Yelapa, by Mother Earth in all of her powerful, fertile, radiancy. It was a collection of words and photos redolent of feminine reverence, and while I have shared in celebrating this reverence with the women whom inspired that work, I have also come to believe the same can be celebrated with and for men. That the feminine and masculine are not in fact counteractive energies that serve to balance us humans, but instead, as all things yin and yan, we are one-- forever spiralling together, apart. Rather than try to balance the two, we ought to embrace each with equanimity--allow them to blend harmoniously.

(Harmony. That word. Mmmm.) 

There is conflict, often, when we are trying to achieve balance as if in fact it is something to achieve; in such it becomes counterintuitive to pursue balance when really surrender, listening, and internal wisdom will even you out so sweetly. You will, as you know, find within or be brought by the laws of attraction, precisely what you need. And so when the masculine requires the feminine, there she is. 

And when the feminine is as potent as she is here in Yelapa, there to receive is the masculine, and the two permeate, amalgamate, just mate. The two thrive from the same source of life, love. The two are one.

I felt this most in a powerful ceremony here, where the practice of surrender is necessary, where my sisters were alongside my guide, but the sensational safety I felt was in the men who have gifted me at one time or another, their strength, their unyielding support. There in spirit I came to realize what it is to be held without touching, that the stereotypical representations of men: strength, protection, honour, are so because they are true, and I sat, acutely aware of how blessed I was to have these men exist, now, within me. 


That masculine energy was in each Grandfather: volcanic rocks that rested for three hours in a well stoked fire, welcomed into our sweat lodge and persistently heating our skin as we prayed as I have never known prayer before. Father Sky, alive with stars and the calls of the jungle wild bathed over those who are now family to me, and those men who've been my always were there in the wisdom of the trees that encircled our maloca, with a powerful, quiet, loving attention. Some were there in the organized chaos of my mind, proving to me my propensity to expand and asking me to get more intimate with the workings of that ever working headspace. And the hands that had most recently, most literally held me lingered so tangibly that I could still feel his fingers not to guide me in anyway, but to touch with the longevity of our intimacy, the withstanding vibrancy of our vulnerability--so vital, so present. Presently. Right next to me in the purest of voices, a new male friend saturated the space with song when I needed the pull to that very moment the most. "Gracias al a Vida": thank you for life--the bad with the good, the dark and the light, the masculine and the feminine, in sweet harmony. 

I felt in those moments and my present moments since what it is to know the so called balance of masculine and feminine. I was reminded that I am blessed with men that have stood for me, have offered the same reverence that I offer to my sisters, who have loved me not because they have needed from me, but for what they have found in me. Men who understand that femininity demonstrates the versatility in strength, different than their own, but equally notable. Men who when they take my hand are not trying to take me at all, but to walk with me, at each others side. Who are not threatened when I am bigger, but encourage it. Men who look at me and know what they see and accept it is always changing and worth watching do so. Who know that the worrying suppressed identity of woman is not the true wildly capable, illustrious and intelligently provocative embodiment of feminine. Men made wilder themselves in knowing, seeing, and embracing this--who do not seek to tame; lions to her lioness. Men who allow, rather than control; move from love not force. Men who find harmony with women.

And men whom find the harmony of masculine and feminine within--not by blurring the lines between the two, but embracing both. Men whom can cry the same as they can yell, pull themselves up a mountain with the same raw attention as they plant the seeds of next season, can talk to Mother Earth and mothers in law with respect. Men who father with both their hands and all of their hearts. Men who love from their hearts with body and soul, who see the relationship in any propensity as sacred. Who know the divine feminine and the divine masculine are nearly synonymous. Men whose paradigms have expanded to include within and without themselves, the room for both masculine and feminine. Men whom grow more and more whole every time we meet in more than spirit.




















So to every man who is strong, protective, linear, and rationally discerning, embrace the gentle, empowering, creative, heart-forward side that is you too. So to every woman who is gentle, nurturing, thoughtful, and feeling, so embrace the strength, enabling, reasonable, willful masculine within. And so to every man and every woman: listen in, beyond the preconfigured roles we are so confined to by modern societies interpretation of masculine and feminine, and you will find that every jarring diversity comes to soften. The same that can be supposed as man, can be woman--she can be masculine, he can be feminine. Yes he may thrive in physical strength, and yes she may innately nurture, but so can the lines blur as reflections in water. So can we come from the same ever-loving source, for the purpose of something far greater than the simplicity of man and woman, when we can fully, earthily and soulfully, pulse--as one.

ps.  listen to this discussion, a gift from one of the first men to teach me purely by being any and most all of what I have written here:

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/aubrey-marcus-podcast/id521945322?mt=2&i=350488374

Ill wait for love {poem}

You say that you are waiting.

I will wait with you.

We can walk alone
but I will still feel your hand in mine,
remember the steps that we took to here,
fingers interlaced like the weaving of our paths
and I will try not to run, pummelling towards what is not yet real.

Our love is tenacious.
Loud.
Louder than either of these fearful hearts cared to hear
And that volume pounds in mine still.
Matches my footprints
as I take my road.

I am waiting too.
Waiting to know that
our love was meant for something,
that it wasn't just a seed
tossed carelessly into dry earth,
but tucked lovingly into fertile soil,
planted with prayer.

That we are still growing,
flourishing.
That the work of now
is for the work of a forever
that although we cannot know
we can use our hope to light these paths we travel alone.

I wait with you
in awe of the times
we have walked apart before,
and walked apart together,
and welcome each and every road less travelled.
We have never followed a map before
why would we start now.

So, love of mine,
take your path
and I will take mine.
Alive
in love
and waiting for what is waiting for us.




As published by Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/03/i-will-wait-with-you-poem/