A Golden Prayer

The Goddess

is not any woman

She is: Woman.

When She dances

you become

a flower in Her heart

and a bloom between

Her legs.

If you dare to love Her-

want Her,

She will

turn your lust

into a golden prayer.

Dawn Voice

Did you hear what the light said?
Did you hear the breeze
shake old stars out of new trees?

The Goddess speaks
and words become birds
birds become sky-
the sky becomes an auditorium
for whispers of the heart.

She runs ankle deep
through a drowsy promise.
Her voice a flicker
of small white moths.

Do you now hear Her
rolling this world around
like a drunk
inside a drop
of morning dew?

Make Me Real

I found You one day

on the tip of my tongue

on the fine hairs

of the back of my hands,

on the margin

of what can be heard and seen.

"Make Me real" You said.

"Make Me your love."

And I did.

I pulled You into me

through the flesh of my words,

through the subtle channels

of every hair on my body.

I consumed You like air.

Drank You like wine.

No scripture has written of this

but each moment

my spirit composes You.

You enter through the endless

doors and windows of being.

Sometimes You come through

the dancing molecules of self,

sometimes just as light

through a crumbling wall.

"Make Me Real" You said.

Each day our poetry

surfaces above

the skin of the world

as real as any sunrise.

Instants

You cried out

as we came together.

It is not that you come and go

but some instants

are closer than blood and flesh

closer than breath

closer than sexual union.

Sometimes I find you

on the tip of a finger

or in the plasma of being

You emerge as a part of myself

drowning in a part of You.

Some call these moments, bliss

I don't name them

but when they rage up

like sap, upwards

through the stalk of life-

when mind falls wordlessly

into Your eyes

You so expertly catch hold

of what is left.

Doors & Openings

I have dropped my guard
I do not even
open doors for You.

You are the door
and I am the opening
and even though this is the wrong way round
I can’t see an inside or an outside
so both ways are the same.

What’s the use of yoga?
What’s the use of meditation?
I have one position to practice
and that is to be the flow of Your heart.

I have let my guard down.
Raised hands only get in the way
of Your fingers
and my movement in them.

Your Beauty

Your beauty
pulls minds like babes
out of each grain of sand.
It conditions flowers to bleed light.
It dances in the blood
where every cell is a shoe
for Your steps.

I don’t think I am You
I don’t think of You or I.
I feel.
I feel the breath of Your beauty.
I feel the lightness of Your flowers
opening under my skin
where the void arises.

You are not a thing to paint
or to compare.
Your beauty
is a flare of radiance,
a glimmer
only the heart can see
or remember
as the eyes dream.

Waves

Mutual waves tumble together
breaking open
the way water breaks open
into itself.

I have nothing of my own anymore
unless one can claim
this surf and tide of passion.

Pillers and eddies of lust
have no name.

The ocean has no eyes
but knows every molecule
to be itself.

Body Reading

We don’t sneak up on each other now.
This passion
is a slow dance
in the heat of a moment.

I know what You are saying
because I speak with Your hands.
I am that part of You
that lip-reads flesh.

I carry
the scent of desire
on Your fingertips.

Morning Goddess

A morning
grows out of my eyes.
She sleeps with my heart-
She curls
where my legs part.

If I turn over
I might bruise Her delicate skin.
I might fall in
to Her melting dreams again.

Within my surfacing mind
I watch Her rise
into a silver kimono of light.
I watch Her prepare to bathe
in my life.

Her Speaking Soul

She loves you.
You are a taste upon Her lips.
The afterglow of Her desire,
a memory She relives
as poetry

-try to feel Her
loving you out of yourself
as a word
birthed from
Her speaking Soul.

She Will Come

When your fingertips
become pure devotion.
When your skin
opens its prayer book
She will come to you
half-dressed like your hands.
She will fit the shape
of your longing
like a flower
becomes a glove for the sky.

Image-

Medium: pencil and ash on paper

Artist: Pushkaraj Shirke

The Painter

It is late at night
but I am doing my best
to paint Your picture.
Hands fly away
come back with Your scent.
Eyes go blind
then return as the light
behind Your face.
It is late at night
the fire of the world
is an ember within my breath.
I am painting Your presence
with my body
rolling within the waves
of a single pulse
daubing beautiful suns
onto the darkness.
I am doing my best
to picture You
into a space
that can be held
in the heart
like a portrait of love.

Stars & Fronds

She comes out of the flesh
where a million sea fronds
swim together as a mind.

When the Goddess steps back
into the world to look at you,
you disappear from yourself.

Inside the universe
there are endless stars,
each one is an atom
of consciousness

but when She steps outside
of all there is
what you become
is Her looking-
only Her looking.

A Glancing Blow

It happened again
Your glancing blow
made the sky tremble.

My body flowered
within a bright raincloud
as if You had touched me
in-between my life
and Yours.

And because there is nothing
between my life and Yours
we both said:
My God!

Drumbeats of Creation

My fingertips are
deep wells in Your body.
That place where passion
shapes longing into form.

Who is the creator here?
Do I sculpt or am I
shaped by Your imagination?
My hands image You
then You compose me
as a poem
or as drops of blood.

The bell ringer
has become the inside of the bell
The drum beats the stick.
Birds nest in my eyes
to give birth to You.

Who is the Goddess
when every flower paints its face
with Your presence?
Who creates thoughts and feelings,
then wears them to be seen?

I am a depth for You
to pray within.

The Magdalene

The Magdalene takes you to Her cave in the sky:

you are taught the scripture of Her body

its starry gaze, its dark blooms

where rooms open to become heavens.

She lays you down in Her,

She invites

and bids you enter.

Mary anoints you.

Mary washes your feet with Her hair.

She leads you into Her bridal chambers,

She teaches you the mystery of poetry

how the holy words are inward and female

and must be dressed to be seen.

Then like a seed too full of the sky

you break open to form a mouth for Her prayers.

She speaks to you like mist and sunlight

Her voice releasing

one delicate frond of passion after another.

She sheds two thousand years of tears for you.

You hold her close not daring to speak

daring only to be human enough.

You hold Her like a bee holds a bloom

gathered intimately around as taste and scent.

She tells you that you are Her Jesus

She holds your hand

reading the pain of your life across its palm

a life spent walking away from the Magdalene

away from the Goddess

until you remembered

until your heart opened at last

like a flower in the cave of Her love.

Love Letters

Her love letters
stay unopened
until you find a poetry
to translate their words.

She writes in green sap
in first light
in the dark blood of passion.
She engraves Her flowers
over moonlight
where hands melt to touch Her.

I write.
Words come flying in
like crows
some are crippled by the light.
Some are hobbled
by a grappling darkness
but they come.

I return Her letters
in bundles of self.
I scratch out a poem
and while it is still bleeding

offer it to Her lips.

Painting: The Unopened Letter. (c) James C. Christensen

www.jameschristensen.com/saintsandangels.html

A Fierce Love

I am addicted
to Your dark flowerings:
Mysteries that can only bloom
under craving hands.
A fierce love that intoxicates
and drinks the wine
of its own substance.
I am Your finding fingers.
We play hide and seek
with our souls.
We mask ourselves
in each others shadows.
We love that wild kind of light
that can be broken down
into taste and feeling;
into sensual blooms.

Image: Radiance. (C) Christine P. Newman

www.pbase.com/eb2005/image/48955593

Thriving

I thrive in You
I flourish as the lips
of Your mouth.
The folded roundness
of Your love has a shape
within me
that I now curl around
as Your own limbs.

There was a time
when I knew
nothing of the Goddess,
and how She lives like a hand
in the glove of being.
I did not flourish
I would sift my life
through a withering mirage.

Then You stole my body
and took it to live in You.
I slipped easily
into Your secret places.
Gardens of delight
where both of us
thrive.

Near & Far

We part like waves
that break still joined at the hip.
I become Your mouth
while You remain
this molten language of blood.
We have to keep moving in and out
of this nearness and distance
to make room for speech.
Not a talking, but the sound of desire
as it sings in the throat of an infinite longing.
The prayer of one hand beseeching another
to clasp where its fingers ask and open.
The connected and adjacent speech
of this body of our love
as it turns this way and that to make words
for the one heart to utter.

~~

Body Language IX
by Alfred Gockel

www.art.com/.../sp--A/Body_Language_IX.htm