Refuge of the mind Between the spit and shout The growing pains in every bone Bent over and scrambling Retching dry cough for months now, For months now inflamed and getting hotter still Far gone far flung right over the lip Drinking in the sap as the tensions rise No steady drip Cut the whole damn tree down for the sweet inside Trophy life blood, trophy life blood Its getting hotter still And the rate of change is changing fast We bear witness, we cannot go back The rate of change is changing fast We must be witness, we cannot go back Stretching arthritic limbs Load bearing walls reveal they were nothing more than wings And the police car on fire Is a mother's grief and rage Just another devil to be sworn in A midwife is a person who Sees to it that birthing and dying is followed through With attention to the detail With a steady hand We must be midwives to the time we're in

We are the words that our ancestors give us The breath that they breathe into life into us The dreams that they dream in the days and the nights of us And if those ancestors speak in a tongue of drought A breath charred by the desert sun too long left out A dream splintered by what they've gone so long without I go through my days clasping spectres of what came before A riverbed deep and flooded with the law, lore Of the healers and witches When knowledge was the barter for bread And people knew something of what they live for There's a rope twisted salty and I burn my hands Defiantly wrapped by the herbs by the strands of the moon That float from the loom of the dark night calling me To take up corners and land Land But in the feel of it all I know something else Something bitter and acrid and pungent in the shadow self I may be born of the earth but the trees they were felled in my name My mother's name Grandmother's name We come from a rising and falling of swords Of blood smeared across chests and arrows in the horse Of states and their curse and their worth in the order Self willed no more My tongue comes from a civilisation that worships The pen and the fence and the men and the men It's all men and their minds What to ken from it all when the others were burned with their words I could be from people who saw a disorder in poor And strapped burden and death to their backs While they hoarded the grain Defiled the soul left it lame from the rain and the work And the begging for more But it might be that the people that fought in the fields and forests The line of their young led to me And the torrents that rage from mouth onto mouth Through song incantation it's what i breathe But i breathe in the air that was stolen from others From black and brown bodies children wrenched from mothers The ships, the trade and the cane and the fight to the death Smothered people felled in the name of a name And i see pillars of bone and blood for our foundations All these nations the state reactive independence But independence is frought with the gaping wound Left from the soul trading the empty womb What's left I turn to my cunt to my womb To the blood that flows tides into tides To the roar and the swell Capsizing the ships that sought dominance It trues and it weilds what we mean by common sense And what is trued if not sense Of our fingers our tongues and our ears Fumbling round for roots to follow, linger We cannot lie to our bodies they know Little shells of our wild selves So we live and we live and we dig and we pick At a scab of a guilt that just needs time to heal How to be real to another when the things that have built us Are the thefts and the kills and the wills of a wasteland We come from sickness in soil The rich and their spoils We are children of luddites and pagans and diggers Or we are children of war of gentry of piety However we came here Burnt by the same flame that splits veins casts chains Rearranges our minds into confessions and naming names Kill the cop in your head but what if the cop that is there Is a thousand year old figurehead The pain we inflict is a sign of the pain That bore blood and burnt crops in the homestead It is there that we come home to ourselves Come home to the things that were stolen from us long ago We need to come home to the things that were stolen from us long ago

The kids in this city they grow just like the trees Nothing sheltering and nourishing in the deeper ways they need Bolting upwards to the sun Fully grown but yet so young Fledglings in a world of nests Scattered by such bitter winds And the distance that grows between My hands and those born unto these days It's striking me how generations past Might have felt similar ways And the disconnect and the changes that are coming Some haven't happened yet Some are so deeply running What kind of person can I be to those Who live around my knees Being handed down the dregs Of what was handed down to me Maybe it's not a question of what we want to do or say But an urging for a blessing As we carve out these dark and troubled days There's a letter in the mail from my little cousins who Despite the crushing weight of it all on their shoulders See creativity bloom And I'm captured by the moment And I imagine bringing them here To share something of my world with them They can carry through their years But then the moments gone And I wonder what do I have to give When I'm a relic from a time But it wasn't always like this Can I meet them where they are What kind of person can I be to those Who bear the markings of the great transition Where live supposedly starts to set off When they find out they've been had In some grave and blinding telling In their eyes we did the damage It is us who did the felling Those who came before me They owe it to me But so far I'm mostly empty handed We're stacked and we're shipped And we're sold as ill equipped We're grieving and we're stranded I thought I knew where I could find them But it turns out I was wrong I have to will them into being I have to call that ancient song And as an older one to little ones Who might by chance sing it to If I don't know how to sing it back to them This is their bereavement too Time simultaneously feels tight around my chest While cutting loose it's fraying ties What do we have left When we're all as bereft as the next in the line We're all as bereft Maybe this is our time

Taking walks down the paths Again and again Revisitations reconsiderations of the learnt and the left Spiders webbing and ebbing and tidal consuming Losing my ankles to the peat-lands, the bog In the midst of it all I see spirals surround me As if time caught my wrist and turned me back to face it all I've been following time like the chase of a deer I've been following time keeping me out of my sight The energy of low sun reflects in my limbs What to fight for is dulled by hibernation The coldest moon for a long time It's not over yet Regathering after winter death I have hands that can only do as much as I will them But does something stronger and older will them too To stand chilled or wrapped warm In Burrowing time It's from those who come next that we're borrowing time Well i found so much to be true Now it's faltering Pining for shared stories To wrestle with my ego in The wisdom of those who took life from these deaths Those who acknowledge the void And go into the depths

Then the sky was pink And the moon was still And we listened for the sounds On the top of the hill Then our bodies were cold But our ears were tuned And our voices in their murmurs Asked each other what they knew And as it turned out some had a theory And some, well they had observed Strangers sharing hearts and tales Curious and alert Young ones in their coats and hats The dog with so many to meet Older folks who'd come to know The ground below their feet We cannot love what we don't know We cannot fight for what we don't love So much mystery above us But to wonder is sometimes enough Then the sky was blue And the air was hot And we exchanged our words of greeting On the paths that so many had walked Then the kids they ran To the place that I crouched And the three of us we wondered What it was we had stumbled upon Lichen in my pockets Soil between my toes Bird song in my memory The smell of salt in my clothes I take it all home and it makes its bed So that I can always remember Even when I seem to forget When I feel the sea wrapped around my calves Something unfolds in me I'm sure is part of this past And I want to hold the hands of everyone I love And guide them into the darkness Let the water tend to their cuts When I feel the sea around my calves Hold the hands of everyone I love

He put his hands on my body And took something from me It shook me to the core And I still struggle to believe The weight that is left there I lost the ground below me I haven't got it back These days are long and difficult I'm on the edge and full of cracks But I have to go on I said to the moon I will heal despite this And she said you know You can always find home here He was not welcome And you are not to blame Go easy on yourself child Go easy on yourself My beautiful lover was too close to this pain And in the darkness of my mind They are entangled And in the firing range But they didn't start the fire The grief is in my boots And I carry it around While doing what I can to cope with change To not look down But it is heavy and I feel it I cannot move on I must go through it The heart is so strong But only takes so much before it can't And I know I must go slowly I am kin of the trees Kin of the birds Kin of the mushroom Kin of the shoals and the herds He cannot take that from me

So I've been scared for a while For a long time actually It's like I built a foundation That is practically in pieces Just assembled for aesthetics For the sake of prosthetics Walls walls walls we all know the story It's taken time to see that this is me too Balanced on the edge of who I want to be And terrified of who I think I am And what is true What is true when we get down to it What is true when we cut right through the bullshit What is true when we don't hide From the depths of who we are I have to let the weight of your words Sit on my chest sit with it Cause I know that you say them with love Let the courage it takes To be honest, be real Be honoured Cause I know you say them with trust That I'll hear you That I won't shut you down Shut you out Even if I don't want to hear it Cause my shaky foundations Are no excuse for not building back up Learning as tiny little humans All the ways that were passed down from our older ones So much fear control and bitterness To survive is to hold back emotion But what comes from emotional repression We all bear scars from such long and brutal lessons We cannot look into ourselves Whether for compassion Or reflection What's my defense when I get down to it What's my defense when I cut right through the bullshit What's my defense when I don't hide From the depths of who I am Coming to terms With the totality of our minds Harbouring such beauty and strength But that light is never without its' shadow side It's blinding full beam on a lonely night Road draped in the bones of the bodies that you hit All the times you hadn't learnt to drive You can't change what you've done or who you've been The many things you didn't know As you clinged to the dregs in your cup Instead of emptying We're all sinking when we can't stop long enough to cry Not just to acknowledge our pain But to always ask why Where did it come from This free floating restless anxiety Where did it come from Our aggression our judgement our apathy Where did it come from This resistance to admitting we were wrong That we didn't have the tools needed to make better decisions You're not a monster for the wrath in your mind But it's down to you to find a way Climb down the rungs And get inside We're just layers and layers Of repression domestication The salt left after the heat of this Endless war on our conscience It's taken movement from our bodies Fire from our minds It's made us sick and contorted and many struggle to survive Clogged up stagnant brimming with a need Bigger than any one person But we're dry heaving with the shame and defeat Of loneliness Gulping air into our lungs to breathe Cause we believe we're all alone We won't ever get any better Always fucking up Always pushing the ones we love away Always afraid So be ready to hear something hard Be ready to claw at the earth Searching for something buried and decomposing You can't ever be ready really But it's happening anyway And I was raised in fear of the potency of my own being And you were raised a man so I'm amazed At all the things I hear you saying All things considered We're doing the best with what we've gota

Tail eater Dark as the womb Bright as the womb Climbing the spine Squeezing light from the moon The sea holds another soul Breaking waves on another day The sea holds another soul Breaking waves on another day It has gone on and continues to be When we are gone always something will breathe It is always changing it is never still It never stops it never will We burn the people on the stake in the square We are burnt people on the funeral pyre We dig the soil up over the heads We are laid down in the dirt with the worms On our soft earthen bed Passed down from the fauna The mushroom the cell We know things we don't know that we know In the primordial swell Born out of chaos Death as release Return to the depths to be born again As the wind in the trees

The heat descends upon the earth The divine of life erupting into song Sun highest in the sky until its next return At the rate that these days pass it won't be too long My skin it knows the feeling of fire But my heart is still beating in the snow and the dark We've travelled through this winter Through spring and into summer And we've reached understanding at last And so it ends And so it begins again Our dance with the darkness and the light And so we'll live our lives on the periphery of each other Hearts tender and broken and loving despite The way that it's gone The way that I've hurt you And the way that I've been hurt by other things too The way that it's gone The way that it'll be going But what a gift to love and be loved by you I was too scared to know myself too deeply When broken by a violence I didn't expect Closed to the heart where grief nested and made home of hearth A pain that took away my breath But this pain it barricaded myself from you And like the frosty northern wind I cut you deep All you tried to do was understand As I thrashed in my imagined cage What I do to you I also do to me And so it ends And so it begins again Our dance with the darkness and the light And so we'll live our lives on the periphery of each other Hearts tender and broken and loving despite The way that it's gone The way that I've hurt you And the way that I've been hurt by other things too The way that it's gone The way that it'll be going But what a gift to love and be loved by you May this ending bring us closer to ourselves In ways we couldn't anticipate before You found a voice under the layers That said you deserved better My voice was humbled and needing something more Than scattered attachment Or the illusion of freedom What you offered was a love beyond those binds Now I sit with the loss And open up to yours And hope our hearts can mend with patience and time And so it ends And so it begins again Our dance with the darkness and the light And so we'll live our lives on the periphery of each other Hearts tender and broken and loving despite The way that it's gone The way that I've hurt you And the way that I've been hurt by other things too The way that it's gone The way that it'll be going But what a gift to love and be loved by you

Earthen throne beneath me Pulsing sky above Lightning cracking throughout the fascia As I birth myself again into the world Dark red cave enclosing Silver pool to soothe Wrinkled hands inviting As I birth myself again into the world As I birth myself again into the world Snake emerges from my eyes my mouth Jaguar tracks the scent between my legs Owl appears in the mother dark As I birth myself again into the world As I birth myself again into the world Initiations An invitation to descend Shedding skins that mark the passage you take Fumbling Flesh bound coven of dark devout womb song In bodies that map the cosmos There is no binary to be found in this galacta nest Lest they confine us to the biology of violence That we have already had carved into our glistening Ambiguous forms Womb imagining defying the corporeal Alchemilla cloaks herself around me Rose entwines along my spine Stellaria webs across the cosmic vastness As I birth myself again into the world As I birth myself again into the world The cave The river The moon The earth The spiral The threading Birth myself again into the world Birth myself again into the world The markings The passage The symbols The blood The gathering The elders Birth myself again into the world Birth myself again into the world The screaming The keening The groaning The well The writhing The crying Birth myself again into the world Birth myself again into the world The hare came to me in the night I followed her She became the dog Kinfolk dancing ribbons of knowing into my heart The ground is moss and mud and grief and insight Carried in the woven basket of my birth Vastness of creation making Raging waters in the small temple bowl Drink it greedily and with no doubt You know Descent is the only way back up