The Story, The Story

And finally, simply living in the moment

Drinking deeply from the nothing that threatened me once

Finding the nectar-essence from a single drop of everything 

Forged from the song of myself sung in many rounds, out of order, asynchronous 

From which the drummer at the center 

Like an old drunk storyteller that pauses between stories to stop her hiccups 

But somehow what she doesn’t mean to leave out

Makes the silence of a deep resonance

Rupture all my worn-out stanzas:

The dull hero that beat and ironed out the complicated villainry

The vital shouts that denied the importance of decay, compost, and reincarnation 

Then running, shouting, pushing, pulling 

Many players erupted from her body

They wove themselves  passionately together again and she sobered right up

She was clashing and grappling like warriors with me, all together

Making love and crying out promises to invisible moons, as one mind

Making speeches of life's pride and shame and winding choices, revealing the mysteries 

One or two there on the side, sitting in silence, waiting, witnessing 

Some tried to lead, to reason, to win, to abolish

Some laughed and relaxed and lightened the mood

Others cried and moaned like nightmares personified 

Others slept in stasis, fruitful eggs

And I was the song and also the singers singing 

And standing there I numbered them and noticed their quality and kind

In the book of life I wrote their names like a lord of karma, for they were my names

Pathways to serve this complexity of evolution’s harmony

For these people were not only the stuff of my dreams, behaviors and desires

They were not only my moods, my choices, my limits and my talents

They were not only the organs in my body that measured the weight of my soul 

But so real were they, each had the power to share through my hands

My feet, my eyes, my beating heart, my breath, my orgasms, my craft

A gift so rare that all of humanity, with it, was richer and

Without it, was bereft of nourishment needed for the journey

For this was I made, oh storyteller 

Remind me! Remind me and I will make a true art 

Both of forgetting and remembering 

All of my conditioning and beliefs 

All of my politics and ambitions and griefs 

In order to give birth to an entirely new level of justice, detachment, enchanted, involved 

In order to forge a new ethics of spirit and flesh, laughing 

In order to repurpose all the energy and information I had been given

And also for unnumbered goddesses that roam the astral planes like battleships 

And dance on the heads of pins

Knowing that I have touched realness

In a world inhabited by phantoms and half-seizured faces

The organizing principle, the demi-urge, a melting formation, a nebula coalescing 

I was purified and found baptism in my own blood

(I had called it dirty so many times)

And I was consecrated by my own touch, last rattle of my final act of self-compassion 

And the innermost master spoke to me with my last thoughts

And the inner room opened upon the glory of total authenticity 

And that night I dreamed of colors, sounds and nectars that spoke of unimaginable knowledge

And in the morning I shrugged it all off like nothing because

Was I happy? Did it feel good?

And each day waking, I awoke again, lucid, to the dream of my species 

And though I tried, there were no more limits I could conceive of

And my desires resounded like thunder and earthquake such that
I held them back, forsaking them

That the daughter of my liberation would live on

And my prayers sooth the world, tempering its future enlightenments 

And I danced and opened wider to the heights and the depths so that

A dozen, a hundred, a hundred thousands voices spoke at once

And I, among them, found purpose like the forgotten horde of a mighty dragon 

And I, the voice of the queen of all treasures

Lord of a city of unborn prophets, bakers, and scoundrels 

Turned the Earth upside down without it ever knowing

And the divinity I created with this fast and complex ritual

Finally gave birth to me, the first human

Here I am again, so

Onward to our new timeline

Seeding galaxies and universes 

With life, always for life

Inexhaustible splendor 

Infinite alchemy

Romance

An ever-unconquered companion

You: Mystery