Beth Morey Quotes

do you dare to step in-to the vulnerable black, stripped to the soul with human blindness – when the full and weeping moon steps from the shade of a tumult of mountains – when, in the fragrant dim, day's tree stump transformsinto some nether-worldly other – when time's skin is thin and you arebared – when there is nothing between you and the Wildest Onewhose name is your own?

I am at the gates of my own destruction.(Or so I'm told.)

we have forgotten how to press our fingers to the tilting planet's jugular and measure her pulse. we have forgotten symbiosis, that she is our mother.we have forgotten that when we rape our world we rape ourselves.

what is poetry if not seeing and feeling, and feeling, feelings running deepand okay – do I see, notice the gray pigeon feathers that heave by on drafts of passing cars reeking, leaking gasoline fumesand okay – do I feel?

imagine the desertmothers, with hair tangledtighter than their theologyand breasts that flowed milkand mystic wisdom. theyknew how to draw the singingsigils in the sand, how to digrough and bitten fingersinto desiccated dirt for waterto wet the lips of their young.women of hips and heft, wholearned how to burnbeneath the wild and searingsun, who made loud loveagainst the star-flecked threatof night, who knew that strengthis not always a matter of muscle.imagine your ancestresses,the prophetesses of the aridlands, before these starchedtraditions and pews too hardto pray from, who bled trueritual and birthed their own fiercesouls at creation's crowning --

we have forgotten what night tastes like, salted by full moon silver rupturingthe dark. we have forgotten how the skin sings when the lunar fervor unfurls across its follicles.

absencelooks like a lake bed flooded with skysounds like cotton howlingtastes like tear-stained pillowssmells like churning bile and burnt hairfeels like screaming agony, my heart dying and dying

I wonder what freezesthe flurry of hurt on her cold-flushed cheeks, if his touch isa salve or the shattering.