Fire to Earth

it's time to lead

Let me tell you something about intensive grief
It is big enough 
to reorganize 
the organs 
roiling beneath your skin
And that 
is how it should be. 
It will tear your gut asunder,
press your stomach up 
through the hole in your diaphragm
in an effort 
to scream 
louder
 
let me tell you something about intensive joy:
it will simmer under your skin;
 it will make you hot 
and wet
it will sparkle in your eyes
it will make everyone 
want 
(to fuck) 
you
like cold ocean in summer heat
when you know you are loved
when you are sure of yourself
there is nothing more magnetic in all the world. 

Let me tell you about intensive feelings:
They are so big. 

We are so big
we are dangerously big 
we are trouble 
in both the good and the bad sense, 
but when we are trouble in the good sense, 
nobody notices 
they are in thrall

when we are trouble in the bad sense, 
we get run out of town on a rail, 
burned at the stake 
pilloried 
drawn and quartered. 

(or made President)
or wait.
maybe it's the other way around.

White Westerners have never been kind 
to the kind 
of magic that we carry. 

...but once upon a time, a long time ago (and since)
we were (we are) the magicians, 
the shamans. 
the ones who translate the things 
that could not be seen 
and heard 
and understood. 
So that we could walk 
so that we could run 
so that we could sing 
so that we could beat the drum 
together. 
It's been a long time 
we have forgotten 
it is time. 
It is time to remember that we can heal what we rend 
and that we can knit what we unravel 
that all of it is required 
and that our bones and sinews are the things meant to do this work. 
We rise up 
from the belly
of the belly 
of being called 
we do not necessarily wish to be called 
but we rise up called 
we arrive called 
we cause all kinds of trouble 
because no one remembers that call anymore. 
But it is time for us to begin to live into the call 
that we have 
to bend 
and twist 
and plant 
and grow the world

to make art of vines and trees and magic 
to share our magic 
to protect each other, 
to gather communities around us who understand 
- that 
this 
is our work. 

- This is our work 
and we can only do it together 
with everyone, together,

- That we are not inconvenient anomalies. 
But instead we are 
the rods that call the fire to Earth

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Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/@wendelinjacober/