​We have come to be danced
Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdom’s collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced

WE HAVE COME

    - Jewel Mathieson

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.​

    -Ursula K. Le Guin

I commend my Spirit unto the Grace of the Great Way
Whether consciously or not,
this has always been the doorway to liberation.

All you lovers of truth
And all you true lovers
I tell you, now is the time to be done with it
Wash your battle-scarred hands in this Presence among us

Cast off your warrior clothing, and slip into your night slippers
Untie your hair or cut it off
The Holy One is present
And doesn’t care where you’ve been
Or what you’ve done
Or what you are doing now

Commend all of yourself - body, mind and spirit - to this Grace
And then, slip out into the night air, into the
waiting
quivering
birth
of this Golden Heart

Lean down now, like wet green grass
and kiss the bottoms of your feet.

​    - Adyashanti

By the time I recalled that it is also
terrifying, we had gone too far into
the charmed woods to return.  It was then

this beautiful animal appeared in our path:
ribs jutting, moon-fed eyes moving
from me to you and back.  If we show

none of the fear, it may tire of waiting
for the triggering flight, it may ask only
to lie between us and sleep, fur warm

on our skin, breath sweet on our necks
as it dreams of slaughter, as we dream
alternately of feeding and taming it

and of being the first to run.  The woods
close tight around us, lying nested here
like spoons in a drawer of knives, to see

​who wakes first, and from which dream.

​    - Geoffrey Brock

Make love
with the Earth.

Let her
have her way
with you.

Let her caress
your naked feet,
crawl up into your clothes.

Better yet,
slip them off
and let them fall
like leaves
to the ground,

so she can behold
your soft, animal skin,
your naked glory.

Let yourself be undone.

Lie with your belly
on her belly.

Inhale her heady aroma.
Give yourself to her.

Let her mark you
with her rich, fertile scent,
the scent of life itself.

Let her whisper
dark, moist secrets
to you,

awakening
the beautiful
wild animal
slumbering
deep inside you.

Let her
remind you
who
you really are.

- Kai Siedenburg

if music is the sound of fingertips 
hitting a jug 
in which someone once 
carried water

mother 
what purpose 
in my growing beyond
your dream of my birth?

many times i’ve watched you 
have it, the dream in the garden 
where i emerge:

an old wooden clothespin 
with cornsilk hair

you clip me to your breast then, 
as if to jumpstart it

and after    throw me away 
for a reason i have not yet figured out

mother i was born with a body 
thickly settled, dense 
as a pomegranate

not a fruit steeped in the syrup 
it will taste of

i was already hard 
with the things 
i had selected for myself

inside you i was 
choosing and discarding
without lifting
a finger, i was 

like the girl
in the department 
store, deciding what 
to steal
​
    - Francesca Preston

The song begins and the eyes are lifted
but the sickle points toward the ground,
its downward curve forgotten in the song she hears,
while over the dark wood, rising or falling,
the sun lifts on cool air, the small body of a singing lark.

The song falls, the eyes raise, the mouth opens
and her bare feet on the earth have stopped.

Whoever listens in this silence, as she listens,
will also stand opened, thoughtless, frightened
by the joy she feels, the pathway in the field
branching to a hundred more, no one has explored.
What is called in her rises from the ground
and is found in her body,
what she is given is secret even from her.

This silence is the seed in her
of everything she is
and falling through her body
to the ground from which she comes,
it finds a hidden place to grow
and rises, and flowers, in old wild places,
where the dark-edged sickle cannot go.

    - David Whyte