​Ma Kali, having You
Is like having a tiger
For a Mother. I don't
Mean the kind who
Pushes her child to
Become president,

Or an egomaniac, or
Both. There are tigers
And there are Tigers.
Your tongue could lick
The varnish off the world
With a single swipe.

It's not comfortable
Lying next to You
At night, but honestly
Where else could I go?
Who would lie elsewhere
When they've lain

With Kali Ma? Best not
Ask such questions
Anyway. There's no road
Back to the world
From Mother...when no one
​Wants to come back.

​    - Clark Strand

In an early morning vision, Mother
Carried me to the river that marks
The boundary between the worlds.

There I saw three women who faced
Away from me--respectfully, I thought--
For their backs were naked, and to gaze

Upon them when they turned carried
Certain inevitable obligations.
I would know things that could not

Be known, for these were not ordinary
Naked women a man might stumble upon
And remark later, "I saw these beauties,

Just there by the water!" To see them
Was to submit to something irrevocable.
But then one of them spoke and said,

"Only ask and we shall turn, and you may
Look upon us, but we would not force such
Knowledge upon the living." To Kali I said,

"Mother, what am I to do? I haven't even 
The sense to know what is being offered me."
Said Kali Ma: "They have offered the truth

In a false world. Would you presume
To come by that knowledge another way?"
It was enough. I gave my consent.

They turned, pale and silent and beautiful,
And led me with soft words and caresses
That pulled the flesh from my bones like

Well-cooked meat, and I left it there beside
The waters to come back for later, when I passed
Once more over the River of the Dead.

​    - Clark Strand

Mother, tonight I have taken my heart
From its cage and laid it at Your feet.
The rapture of this was indescribable.

For one thing, I didn't die as I thought.
I discovered that hearts were for giving
And not for having. This was the first

Lesson of the night. The second came
When I understood what it felt like
To lay one's heart upon the ground.

I wept to think how many years of life
I wasted not knowing where a heart
Belonged. Those were lessons enough,

But then You rested Your foot upon me
And I saw the Universe from the bottom up
The only way it could be witnessed.

That was as much as I could bear,
And there was no lesson in it, for it was
More than anyone could learn.

In the end I've decided to leave
This heart in Your keeping. Do with it just
What You do with the Universe,

And that will be good enough for me.

​    - Clark Strand

I was not aware of the moment
when I first crossed the threshold of this life.

What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery
like a bud in the forest at midnight!

When in the morning I looked upon the light
I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world,
that the inscrutable without name and form
had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother.

Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me.
And because I love this life,
I know I shall love death as well.

The child cries out
when from the right breast the mother takes it away,
in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.

    - Rabindranath Tagore

Let it be known—I worship the Goddess of Reality

The one with tangled hair where insects nest, 
the one with blood soaked thighs,
The one who crushes my concepts with her razor teeth
and spits my mind into the wind

​She shakes her belly to the beat of primordial passion 
and feasts on the meat of ignorance 

She wanders in the garden with a basket woven with the chaos of stars
She is savoring every petal and thorn
while casting the seeds of manifestation
without rhyme or reason

She is innocent and free
and her eyes are the sound of laughter
She can not be contained or rationalized 
and she will not conform to my ideas
of how reality should be 

She stomps to the beat and throws her hips 
She is the prowl of the panther
and the leaping deer of supreme delight
She is pure in heart and the darkness of thunder

Her ruthlessness is the compassion
that severs my arrogance
and undoes my separation
so that I may know her deeply
and drink in her wild radiance.

With all that I am 
I devote myself to her insane beauty.

​When I am humble and true
She comes to me: “Dance! Why aren’t you dancing?!”

She will not be tamed 
yet she is the Grace that opens up 
the blessed wound of living

Let it be known—I love Her
this feral beast Woman
the one who is drenched in the Nectar of Love.

​I dance with her
because there is  
nothing left 
to do.

    - Maya Luna

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

    - William Stafford

Deliver us, O Truth, O Love, from quiet prayer
from polite and politically correct language,
from appropriate gesture and form
and whatever else we think we must put forth to invoke
or to praise You.

Let us instead pray dangerously –
wantonly, lustily, passionately.
Let us demand with every ounce of our strength,
let us storm the gates of heaven, let us shake up ourselves
and our plaster saints from the sleep of years.

Let us pray dangerously.
Let us throw ourselves from the top of the tower,
let us risk a descent to the darkest region of the abyss,
let us put our head in the lion’s mouth
and direct our feet to the entrance of the dragon’s cave.

Let us pray dangerously.
Let us not hold back a little portion,
dealing out our lives–our precious minutes and our energies–like some efficient accountant.
Let us rather pray dangerously — unsafe, profligate, wasteful!

Let us ask for nothing less than the Infinite to ravage us.
Let us ask for nothing less than annihilation in the
Fires of Love.

Let us not pray in holy half-measures nor walk
the middle path
for too long,
but pray madly, foolishly.
Let us be too ecstatic,
let us be too overwhelmed with sorrow and remorse,
let us be undone, and dismembered…and gladly.

Left to our own devices, ah what structures of deceit
we have created;
what battlements erected, what labyrinths woven,
what traps set for ourselves, and then
fallen into. Enough.

Let us pray dangerously — hot prayer, wet prayer, fierce prayer,
fiery prayer, improper prayer,
exuberant prayer, drunken and completely unrealistic prayer.

Let us say Yes, again and again and again.
and Yes some more.
Let us pray dangerously,

the most dangerous prayer is YES. 

    - Regina Sara Ryan​