poetry transformed stale air into songs

plumbing the depths and rewilding the true origin of the word. Write with me.

Words are strange creatures. They can hex a soul, break a spell or help plants to grow more abundantly. Words pattern or foment chaos. Words make meaning or take it away. Words can hum, growl, sing, weep, howl and raucously jiggle. Words are elemental wonders. Words have the power to change a person. Words have the power to change the world.

What is your relationship to words?

How do your words spin, craft, stick, fragment and/or unfurl within the stories you tell?

If you only had 6 words to tell your life story in this moment, what would they be?

poetry transformed stale air into songs

Art: Brook Shaden

I like words. I like to eat them. I like to sleep with them. I like to dance with them and to sing them. I like when words find their way into unexpected places. I like the mystery of the spaces pregnant with words. Things that contain words we did not dream possibility. Do you ever think about the river and her flowing, roaring, rushing words? The trees and their bark speak root truth? The flower and her petalled word blooms? Butterflies sailing upon winged words?

Sometimes I catch my breath on words, as they catch me, unguarded. For a moment, they replace my lungs with a sensation different than breath. The sensation of the spell they contain. Words threaded together with spiderweb silk in the grove of my heart. Nested like tiny hummingbirds, generating vibrations larger than expected beyond their tiny ruby throated perfection.

How can you read this poem and not break into blossoms too?

The Blessing
James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Artist: Unknown

Just choose a line and linger over it. Again and again into the words ripple new pathways into you. Words —leading you from where you were, into a new frontier. Every poem, a foreign country -a heart land of transformation. How can a poem like this not transform you? You are different now that you have read those lines. And if you don’t feel it, why don’t you read them again. And again. To yourself. To a friend.

What is YOUR poem, dear friend? What is your spell song? Which words shape shift you into a new story? What is the story of your becoming, in words, in poems, in myths, in the rewilded fairytale of your hearth heart?

Words are profoundly powerful. There are mornings when I wake up and I tell myself shadow words —such as —why are you becoming an soul-preneur? it’s too hard. you’re not good enough. you should go back to teaching in a Waldorf school. you don’t need to create your own business. nobody is interested.

These words sometimes get under my skin. Actually, it is probably more accurate to say that they are already under my skin and despite the fact that they are lies seeded into my subconscious from patterns from ago ago or through ancestral patterns that challenge my sense of value or worth —I actually believe them. They stun me, stop me, numb me, and distort my sense of self.

There are days when I wake up and I am called to the sunshine words -that say -Write the day into becoming. Co-author with the sun. If the sun can make sunflowers rise and turn, what might sunflower words do for you or someone else? Write like a Sunflower.

Words can be profoundly playful. They get me out of my head. If I track them in my body. Go on a word hunt —I dare you…Be a huntress for new words, new ways of seeing. Track the words in your moving body. Move words through the spine, chest, hips, breath, belly, pelvis. Linger in your loins, just for fun. What words discover you anew? What does the baubo belly in you have to say?

Dance your words into your belly. Follow them without thinking. Get out of the head and into the Baubo breath belly. Baubo -the raucous greek woman tied to Eleusinian Mysteries -rituals honoring Demeter and Persephone. In the Orphic version of Persephone, when Demeter is grieving the loss of her daughter, Baubo lifts her skirt exposing her vulva and provoking laughter in an otherwise grief stricken mother. The laughter is a critical part of the myth -it breaks Demeter’s grief and enables her to continue searching for Persephone. Baubo is also rooted in older fertility goddesses of the Mediterranean. We need to plumb the golden depths to rediscover her fertile blooms in our bodies and our words.

Artist: Jana Brike

Excerpts from Baubo Belly, Stasha Ginsburg

I’m so on the surface. 
I grow and grow and
I’m feeling muddy and ruddy. 
red earth.   from the belly
to the belly.  clay and jungle bugs
and mystery and awakening. 
juice.  from the fruits.  of the trees.  and the sounds at night
of snakes and animals delighting in moonlight frolicking. 
I am your sin.

That’s right.  Go.  Go.  Grow. 
get out of the rut. 
rut with your man. 
get out of the rut. 
rut with your stuff. 
strut and rut and cock a doodle doo!
that’s right.  It’s crazy here, that’s right. 
yup, that’s right.  what do you know, girl,
what do you know?  you know,
where you feel it, down there
where it is hot and ripe and
juicky and alive.  yes, juice-ky.
 invent words, girl.
 
I am the heat of my passion
heart burning emboldening
skin with leopard print of steadfast courage
awake to the sun

get out of your own way girl!
get out of your head!
write the red thread.
that is what I said.
 
if you remember only one thing it is this and I say it again
get out of your own way
be what you came here to be.

rip it off tear it off
cut it off growl it off
shuck it off dance it off
asunder. hot fiery red hot cinnamon
yum. passion in oblivion

keep grinding
gyrating. pounding
gripping. exploring
exploding plums
against the sun
fucking hot
red hot cinnamon

come on, come one come all
come alive
yes!  don’t be shy
scream it paint it on the sky
words -your words -see them fly

I AM ALIVE!

Artist: Jana Brike

The right words…the write words…the rite words…will change you inside and out.

Once you make true contact living words, embodied words, StoryBody Tracking words…your life will never be the same. The living word is a well kept secret. I want you to remember the spell of her song in you.

Words. Wild worn. Well worn. Well said. Well kept. Silenced. Forgotten. Fragmented. Buried. Hidden. Split. Disassociated. Traumatized. Found. Retrieved. Renewed. Repatterned. Replenished. Resurrected. Rewilded Words.

Write with me. We are going to walk the slow walk around words. The slow food, slow cooked bone broth words. We are going to write our way into foreign territories, fed by the body, fed by our capacity to become stalkers, huntresses, sorceresses, seers, wisdom keepers, jesters, wild daughters, golden birds, friendly wolves —in and out of the belly of the wolf who has eaten devoured, taken the lost words, the fragmented words, the forgotten words, the wise words….we are going to retrieve words, sentences, stories. New poems. Vignettes. Life story writings. A story apothecary of becoming.

The power of the word is foundational, creative, and world-shaping. Words are not just tools of communication. They are a force of becoming, a bridge between the seen and unseen.

A few last words —because they are important -and because I want you to re-member:

Words —In Christian and Mythopoetic Traditions CREATE the World

In Christian traditions, the word is Divine.

Artist: Jana Brike

We are thirsty for the true power of the word. Where can we find the wells to rediscover it?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” —John 1:1

The Hebrew word for “word” (debar) means “thing” what is spoken becomes real

Listen, more often to things than to beings, listen more often to things, than to beings —tis the ancestors breath, in the fire’s voice is heard, tis the ancestor’s breath in the voice of the water. —Sweet Honey in the Rock

In John’s Gospel, the Word (Logos) is more than language —it is living logic, intelligence and breath of the divine. Christ is described as this Word made flesh —a literal embodiment of divine meaning

The act of speaking is not just divine communication, but divine —Incarnation —spirit into matter through voice.

In mythopoetic traditions -especially oral cultures —the word is sacred breath. It is enchantment, invocation and remembrance.

The word is often tied to naming. In many myths, to name something is to call it into being or hold power over it. —Think of Rumpelstiltskin, or the Egyptian myth of Isis learning Ra’s secret name to gain his wisdom and power.

In Norse myth, Odin sacrifices himself on the World Tree to gain the runes —sacred letters that hold the secret to shaping reality. These weren’t just an alphabet; they were cosmic utterances, each a tool for fate-weaving.

Among the Gaelic bards -the wordsmith or file had the power to praise or curse. Their satire could wilt crops or cause illness; their praise could bring blessings. Speech was an act of magic.

In the Finish epic Vainamoinen, the universe is sung into being. Words and songs literally and metaphorically move oceans, rivers, fight sorcerers, strengthen love, overcome trials and tribulations.

In African, Siberian and Indigenous storytelling traditions, the world is not a fixed stage but a living field of story. To speak the right story at the right time is to shift reality. Words are medicine.

Artist: Jana Brike

*****And the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS EMAIL, IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU!!!

REWILDING THE WORD: An embodied, mythopoetic mystery school of Story + creative Writes of Passage

Applications open now! Early bird $1000 off until 7/21. Go to my website for all details: Rewild the Word: The Wild RememberingWrite with me into a new world. Experience the medicine of words. Embody the true power of the word. Write your Sacred Manuscript of Becoming -a Story Apothecary in which your words are Spells, oaths, promises, vows, new myths, new stories, cocoons, transformations, roots and wings.