Bone slides along bone,
Scanty limbs raggedly,
Raggedly reaching out,
Unfilled need, a hollow.
If I could find the tears,
If I could cry those tears,
If I had more years still,
I’d cry until I laugh again.
If I could eat my fill daily,
If I could enjoy eating it,
If I had plenty more still,
I’d do my best to share it.
I fall forward, downward,
My face hits the ground,
Oh Great Mother, please,
Please give me strength.
I accept my weaknesses,
Or maybe I don’t accept,
I don’t want to accept them,
Is it really okay to be weak?
For so long I have been,
Not just weak but meek,
I’ve been far too humbled,
But I don’t need resilience.
Sometimes we lay fallow,
Becoming one with Earth,
Sinking into recomposition,
Becoming slow simplicity.
My thin ribs, hunger pangs,
Like a ladder downward in,
Into the abyss inside of me,
No light or sound, a Sheol.
I have died and descended,
Only my own bounds sense,
I listen with my hands and I,
I hungrily taste with my feet.
There is a path here I know,
I have walked it often before,
This place between places,
Between life and my rebirth.
Hunger doesn’t end here,
It becomes another pulse,
Cutting the rhythm of pain,
Duetting sorrow’s unwords,
Their chorus of discordance,
Dry cries whetted on bile,
Bitterness risen from within,
Wells of wrath and anger.
How easy it is to nest into it,
To let the darkness surround,
To only listen to the effluence,
To drown in my own sorrows.
So I let them sweep me away,
I let them feel my throat and,
So spilling out onto the world,
Pain carries me away further.
All the other lost souls drown,
Bitter sea filling endless void,
They reach to pull me down,
But others don’t let them.
In the dark, threads glimmer,
Chords of threaded words,
Red and vital like the pulse,
Connecting me to each life.
Each strand gifts to be twined,
Each strand the gift of a mind,
Each strand a blessed memory,
And I connect each one into me.
In the breath of life from high,
Lightening me and filling me,
Embodying blessings given,
Uplifting me from living death.
So may my laughter ring out,
May joyousness fill our hearts,
May food once again satisfy,
May we all sit together, living.
