Temple Oracle

For my Husband

I wrap my arms

Around my Husband

And hope that he

Will forgive me

For having not done more

before

You are beauty
and you know it
You know it in your pores
If only
If only
You would listen

I love you
I breathe in your tears
See you soaked in your fear
and see you here
Beautiful

I want to be breathing

open sky

ancient memory

Everywhere we walk a memory before

I breathe

forgive

and remember that with this step

today

I am making the memories for tomorrow

For many, faith is black and white.  Right and wrong.  I long to communicate my desires, my realities, my journey… and yet, how can I do that for those who can not hear?

I think discussing faith like mine is like discussing complex relationships and love to someone whose heart has never been entangled, broken, smashed, glued back together with a few pieces on backwards and picked back up to be loved all over again.  Folks who are new to love believe, nay, KNOW that love can do no wrong.  That all is beautiful.  That if you understood their love it would all be okay for you.

And then they get their heart broken.  And they blame you, for mentioning it could be any other way, for breaking the spell.

They are enamored, and see the world simplified, codified.  The world is black and white, and grey might be tolerated, but what is this blood red and sky blue you speak of.

My faith is sticky.  It is gooey, broken, hard, challenging, inspirational, breathtaking.  It comes in a thousand colors, and the chords of the songs sung on the whispers of a sigh.  Sing me more than a simple song.  And yet… I appreciate your basic tune.  I love the classic ditties.  And I hate to shatter such illusions- of love, of faith, of life.  And yet, and yet… black and white is a lie.  Grey tells no tale.   Share your rainbow with me.  Share my rainbow… from side to side and back again.

We are building the temple, a physical temple, an echo and mirror of the temple of the heart.  I sit in a chair over a wood floor, my bare feet sliding along the polish.  Prayer flags frame the window, curtains finally hung.  We begin the sorting process… how true is this of life I ponder?  I long to do my great Work, serve the world as best I can- and yet – the sorting.

Here there is fur and feathers, horn and bone.  Here candles of many colors.  Here is statuary, Naga and Ku and Hanuman with Rama shining out from inside.  Here is incense, so much incense, the potential of prayers floating up and out and beyond.

This space is our sanctuary, this home our sanctuary.  Here a temple within the sanctuary, this space beyond and within.

I build, we build, we are building.  As we unpack, Ganesha multiplies.  The Oracle, here I sit, served so well by the Child of Lilith who I call mine.  My student, my beloved, my Property.  This will be our space… it had to be a Temple when we first saw it.  An empty nook, built into the wall, calls for statuary.  I hear the call of this space, we hear the call of this space… and we sort, we build, we prepare.

You turned to me...

Pages turn, keep turning.

You are on my lips, my works and words singing
Kiss me
Kiss me
you sing your strider song

I close my eyes and find myself back in the bin, back under him, smoke and shadow

Turn me, and find the Page within

Easy enough to read
You read me
a story that echos still

There is love here
in this place called shadow
There is love here
and dancing beyond the years

You gifted me with a story

With an echo

A gift forever held to my heart

I open my walls
Find the doors
Beneath

I breathe out
Dust beneath dust
Become kala

Feathered
Keys unlock
Firebird and Peacock

We untangle
Glittering gold chains
Become kala

I open my walls
Find the doors
And let you in

Mother...

Wrap me tight,
and let this being offer
all that it is.

I am grateful,
I am jubilant,
I am yours.

Starry Goddess

You are wrinkles with wrinkles

a star in each fold

You are impossibly young

embracing first touch

You are eternally all ages

Black and starry skin

You arc overhead

You

*

Once upon a time, that was a time before time, there was nothing except her.  Floating in the formless void, in a nothingness, in a black deeper than a sigh, she floated eternal in herself.  She, Star Goddess, Starry Goddess, blacker than a sigh.

Floating in the formless void, in a time before time, the Starry Goddess found herself before a mirror.  From the nothingness she gazed herself, saw herself, floating eternal in herself.  And she liked what she saw.

She breathed into herself and saw as she opened her eyes the majesty of herself.  The beauty of herself.  The grace of herself.  And became enamored.

In the time before time, with nothing but herself and the mirror that reflected her back, she was enamored.  She was delicious and delightful.  Her hands and thighs and moans echoed against one another, in the void that was blacker than a sigh.  Her skin, blacker than a sigh, took in her caresses and caressed her back.

Lover of self, self lover, lover Starry Goddess sighed.  She sighed and moaned and bucked against the blackness.  She felt herself full of potential, of bliss, of truth and possibilities.  She tensed up, arched her back, her long star-filled locks flowing down her body.  She arched and moaned, and let fly the stars from her body.

In her waves came forth the constellations.

In her waves came forth the nebulas and galaxies.

In her waves came forth the dust and the dreams.

In her waves she came and we came forth.

Once upon a time, that was a time before time, there was nothing except her.  Floating in the formless void, in a nothingness, in a black deeper than a sigh, she floated eternal in herself.  She, Star Goddess, Starry Goddess, blacker than a sigh.  Until she sighed, she moaned, gazing into the mirror.  Until she came, and we came forth.

*

Each act of self love is an act of recreation.  Is an act of devotion, for the beauty of her sacred act of creating the universe.  Starry Goddess, Star Goddess…

“…For if that which you seek you find not within yourself,
You will never find it without.
For behold, I have been with you from the beginning,
And I am that which is attained at the end of desire.”

-from The Charge of the Star Goddess

*

I kiss myself and know this act to be sacred.  I touch myself and know this act to be sacred.  Beyond gender or identity, we are all of and from her.  And with this offering act I give myself to myself, in a time between times, and remake the world.  I give birth to my own reality, with every sigh.

Last night, a dance into uncertainty, through fear, walking off the edge of a cliff and soaring back through shadows.

Silence

I first saw images of someone with their mouth sutured shut in my late teens, but years earlier my first boyfriend had told dirty fantasy stories to me about the concept.  It is what it is, my sex life being my own journey- and yet it is used to grab me hard, force me to wake up, take me on journeys.

In 2003 or so I was at an event and actually saw it done.  Sterile procedure, an interesting sight to behold- and yet, I was fine.  I was fine until I saw her scream.  Face to face I opened my eyes to find her face a few feet from mine.  Screaming through her sutures.  My mind sailed away, a fugue state descended, and I walked out of the space.  Walked away from my lover.  Walked away.  I could not process, could not cope, could not be there any more.

When fantasy becomes fear, the mix becomes fascinating.  Does the taboo draw me on, or the pain?  Where are the lines between Eros and Thanatos, between love and death?

Enter the working of 2 weeks ago.  Enter the underworld.  Enter me, clamp down on my lip and suture in his hand held tight with forceps.  Enter… gasp.  Metal punctures through.

Timelines shift.  It did not go so smoothly.  A few weeks ago when the plan came up, I started hyperventilating.  I need to.  I have to go here.  I wrote in a notebook that night:

I must face my fears, embrace them, love them.  This is the truth of finding God.
Piece at a time.

When we got to the space, to the gathering of friends who would bear witness… I felt my tongue getting dry.  My back ached, my head was spinning.  Like when I first went up on hooks, I debated if this really was the right place and time for this.  When it was hooks, I locked myself in a utility closet and pulled, and pulled, tears for the dead streaming out.  My father’s father, a man I had not wept for, as hooks pulled and pulled with paint buckets and ladders piled high.

Where people fuck, and strut, and are embracing hedonism is not always a time and place for the spirit.  And sometimes it is the perfect place.  This time was neither.  This time it just was.  However, what it did give me was a fellow beast seeing my hackles raised, looking and me, and grounding me out.  Feral to feral, snarl to snarl, he held me tight.  I breathed, shoulders lowered.  I breathed, spine relaxed.  I breathed, and was back.

The waves of emotion were intense.  Maniacal laughter, stars soaring, longing moans, deep growls, high pitched whines… they come in waves.  I come in waves.  I come back and forth to skin and sweat in waves.  Metal pushes through.

I close my eyes and see Marcus there, wondering if I’ll be joining him.

I close my eyes and see Euphrena there, kissing me on the cheek and having a long conversation with Tigre, this is the nature of flow.  This is the nature of flow.  This is the nature of flow.

I close my eyes and see Catherine there, smiling.

I close my eyes and see flames leap high, see rage and pain and the flash of a muzzle.

I close my eyes and am being fisted by a monster I love, and know I can not have.

I close my eyes.

Are you with me?  The question echoes from flesh-side across my screams.  My head is thrown back, they are concerned that I am going to pass out.  My chin is on my chest, they are concerned I am already unconcious.

I am hyper-conscious.  I am aware.  I give a thumbs up.  I close my eyes.

Blood drips out of my mouth.

My mouth is gone.

I am gone.

I am here, with blood dripping out of my mouth.

From the other side of the grave, I am sewn in, sewn shut.  I flex black leather wings, and am reminded of the mantle.  I close my eyes, and love.