My DNA results came in.
Just as I suspected, my great great grandfather
was a monarch butterfly.
Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.
My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.
Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
but I didn't get his dimples.
My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
My uncle is a mastodon.
There are traces of white people in my saliva.
3.7 billion years ago I swirled in hydrogen dust,
dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.
More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
joining Sweden to Botswana.
I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
I can no longer hide my heritage of raindrops and cougar scat.
I am made of your grandmother's tears.
I am the brother who sold you, and marched you to the sea.
I am the merchant from Savannah, and the cargo of blackness.
I am the chain.

Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,
like mine, like mine.
you have sweat, dark and salty,
like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
like mine, like mine.

Don't pretend that earth is not one family.
Don't pretend we never hung from the same branch.
Don't pretend we don't ripen on each other's breath.
Don't pretend we didn't come here to forgive.

- Alfred K. LaMotte

There is a place in my heart
When I sink down and in
Where I am surprised to discover
I am already whole
My mind is suspicious
Yet it is undeniably true

There is a place in my heart
When I sink down and in
Where I discover my problems
Are not actually problems
But places of wild tenderness
Where I find myself again

When I sink down and in
When I slow down inside
When I trust enough
To melt

I find
I am only ever meeting
Myself

And this meeting
Is the truth
It is the secret desire
Inside all desires:

All I ever really wanted
Was me

​- Maya Luna

We cannot live without the night,
gossamer veils of emptiness.
The Goddess is black,
but each pore of her body
emits a rainbow.
Motionless, she watches
beyond care, yet flows
like a river of healing.
Doesn't dark energy circle us all
like Mother Raven?
Take root in your grief.
That is where the sun is born.
Ascend through a bolder falling.
Her womb is immaculate silence.
Her void is moist with stars.
Yet she who cradles them all
has become your breath.
Haven't I told you there is wine
in the void between thoughts,
Joy and sorrow mingled in one cup?
Now taste, and who knows
if tonight you might not finally
embrace the fierce beauty
of your beaten heart?

- Alfred K. LaMotte