I breathe the faces of dragons

summer-solstice-2016

The following is a poem I have written in preparation for and in spirit of the Summer Solstice. This year, the event is also a full moon, making it a Strawberry Moon. The poem was read for a private event entitled In Light We Are Brighter, which took place on the rooftop of the Angeline Apartments in Columbia City. This poem is dedicated to Paul Nelson, an important friend and mentor, and is written after Robin Blaser’s The Holy Forest. It is my intention to return to this poem in the next two solstices to engage with it serially, and add/evolve the poem based on a half-year and full-year of change.

 

I breathe the faces of dragons

Summer Solstice 2016, Seattle, Washington

 

0

Be it a body of rouge fizz that this longest day of the year is what I require?

On the lip of the coming of Saturn, a sharpened edge,

what I require to freely dance along the sky and before the moon?

A red water leaving a bitter taste.

Oh, bitter and tepid taste

the way the rust sits.

 

The way the braid of flavor chokes

juxtaposition before the fist of the celebrated.

 

No emoji left untapped

Attempts to express

To relate a sun’s kiss of fate.

The following terms of endearment:

Moaning mannequin

Morbid fool

The floating heron

Remembering the suicide birds peeping before Subaru Fleur’s roar

downcast just another Columbia City Street

just another dawn before a dawn before a dawn

light collapse

boxes of everglow

Touch face of palm to the most throbbing section of skull

This is how the ghosts go, how the ghost dance glows

This light, this light, this light

 

1

I breathe the faces of dragons in and out through cloak smoke, grizzled as the evergreens tower over my cheeks, pinnacled treetop tipping horizon to horizon, sealing up the sold, keeping drowned the void

 

symbols of ethos and logos

Visibility: the trees, threes

our comradery: what we may see, what we may access

Awakens, is approached, approaches

 

Terms:

maker

shifter

time keeper

the feathered serpent

 

The born before a sacred burn

 

Burning we are bright

 

In the light we are brighter

 

I breathe scales tough as nails

exhale bulges of wisdom, teeth gold coin glinted

Nearly the enshrining in the shadow alas but for you, light bearers

Scintillating: I scream

Murmuring: the public

 

Private screams. Public memories.

 

memory of the sun

memories of sun

blinding

binding agent

arousing

rousing agent

 

Suns speaking in tongues: memorandums

 

2

I breathe the farces of sibling dragons holding flames within

boulders for bellies and slingshots for shoulders

 

I breathe the farthest of the dragons whose languages we know not

no knowns, no nouns

 

Walk pavement see families hear birds

Ah, Rainier Vista, landscape the serpent’s spine

 

Observatories

 

A t-shirt off in the wrapping wind / sweat braided delta neck to soles

 

Pipe water burst from faucet nozzle / angleless shatter of color

Reminder: a touch: the memories of the sun, memory of many suns

 

Dry and cracked

Wet and sogged

Burn of the heat

Ache of the light

 

Presence, more presence

And your form

 

3

Breathe the faces: creatures wild

Screened and entoned

 

Uncontrolled

Entombed and scared

The tiptoe of anticipation

 

Lists of the fears that creep and curl

The scurry of the pound of the earlier and the later

 

The justice of the visage

A schedule of chiseled languages

Return to womb of day

Rise and fall of the heart

 

Twists of the street like lisps

Arcs of light across rooftop

 

A fully textured bed of hair on the arm warmed so early, gently

Thorough I breathe and I notice the breath changing

Longly I scream and I notice the reach and the control

And the whirl

 

A world sitting spliced upon by bone pike and the fumes of a fire

They are seen in the lenses of the eyes of many

 

4

The fusion of Mother, Father, and son has been symbolized as the feathered serpent—and can be found as the Mayan and Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, the Persian and Roman God Mithras, and prolifically throughout Egypt. The god Quetzalcoatl, Mithras, and Horus is the Son; the serpent is a symbol of the Mother; and the feathers symbolic of the Father—it is from the union of Father, Mother, and Son that Quetzalcoatl/Mithras/Horus becomes the feathered serpent.

The serpent is a symbol of the earthly mother, as it is an animal that is at all times in contact with the earth with its entire body. The feathers are those of an eagle, which is a symbol of the heavenly Father, as the eagle is an animal that flies and lives above all others and is thus associated with higher realms. The Son is a miraculous re-conciliatory being that is both personal and cosmic, a force that acts to unite and integrate the earthly human with divinity, joining the serpent with the feathers, and thus why the Son has been referred to as the light and savior of the world in so many different cultures.

At the winter solstice, the divine Son is born within a spiritually prepared person. At the spring Equinox, this Son dies, becomes one with the Great Mother of the universe and resurrects. At the summer solstice, the Mother and Son “ascend” to the Father, so that the forces of Son, Mother and Father become one.

Belsebuub and Angela Pritchard, 2013

 

5

Dear mother

Dear father

Bios, singular, fusion, root, core

I reach up and down for you

 

In my life I beg the questions of the rise and fall

And the begging the rise and the fall

and the life the rising and the fall

 

Now, rising

The lungs filled bags of air

 

Now, falling

Released bags of air

 

The blood clottable

Quotable

 

(I remember hospitals and care

edged flow in, out

filling, flailing, releasing)

 

Life is an etching

scratching upon surface

A noise settling beyond the distance

Where one can see or one cannot

It is the same

 

It is sonic but it is maturity

An open stance

Fulfilled

This fascination that brings us together

 

Flap in the face

Caw from the mountains

Skeletons of structures going up

coming down

 

The representation of a sunset in long delay

 

6

Here a sequence

I am reminded of Laughter in the Dark

A concept

 

I am reminded of Lake Washington

A place

 

I am reminded of chess sets and browning pages

The expanded divots

 

Growls like grommets pinning the self up

A-pinned to the T of the wall

At, before, upon

 

The way the light flickers before an expanse of wing

Feather a light brown beneath cerulean coolness

Feather flutter, flowers, flows

 

Watchface: time trickle

this is nothing but all

allergens to the calenderean chiseling

 

We segment. We classify. We know.

Beyond that: we have this.

A blast of shine, an open shrine, fingers in the pocket, unwavering triangulation

 

The first time, fiery, but no chance it will be the last