Invoking Eve

Invoking Eve

 

If I look around

And see the unmade bed,

Laundry in a pile

And too many unanswered emails,

And believe somewhere in my flesh

That I cannot create

Until I have corralled chaos

Once again,

Then I am still believing

I am the Eve

They have gaslit us with.

 

But when I find

That I am caring for myself

In the warmth of my bed,

(Much welcome rains at the window)

Because I know that my flesh is saturated

With too many demands

And too few prayers,

Then

I know

Eve is singing within me,

More of a chanting hum,

The kind you sing to yourself

When tending a fire

Or folding clothes in peacefulness

Next to a sleeping baby.

 

I have been walking away from my conditioning

For as long as I can remember—

Well, maybe not walking away.

Often, yes, turning my back,

Saying No, not that anymore,

But,

Really,

It’s more like

Dancing and shaking and moaning out

The death cult I was forcibly infused with—

I mean, how the fuck do so many people believe

That a person is made of a rib?

From Adam’s fucking body?

 

Only wombs bear children—

The blessed wombs

Of women

Of trans men

Of non-binary folks

(I will not be taking any questions;

You are invited to liberate yourself)

 

What I now know

Is that there is no promise

That Patriarchy can make

That will be fulfilled—

They wrap fear in pretty boxes

Each with a different label

So that you believe it was meant just for you

They have no compunction about contradicting themselves

Should you switch

From one tenuous spoke

To another

To grasp a different lie

Made shiny in the manipulation

Of who is the real one to fear.

 

There is no one story

And yet,

Here is a big story,

One that if you cut the right thread

Exposes so much

Beneath the whitewashed surface

That posits itself

As the beginning

And the end

Of everything,

Always in a straight line.

 

I can let this all flow out

From the Goddess

Through me

To you

In verse

Because it is the most direct language,

The most ancient.

If we have past lives,

Or perhaps,

Remember ancestral threads,

Or both, plus something beyond,

We have opened our mouths over and over

In the fundamental act

Of the Goddex pouring through.

 

I have been in Her service

Since I was 4—

I cannot tell you how I know that

Except to say

How do we actually know anything

Except through directness?

 

At any rate,

Her arrow has always pointed me

Through the labyrinth,

Plunging in and out of rebirth:

Her arrow is not a straight line,

But a fierce tugging of the heart,

Sometimes a sudden waking up

Like the plunge into cold water,

And often as singular

As a complex longing

That cannot let me be.

 

Who I thought was Eve

Was the one belittled and abused

By ‘The Father’ who,

It seems,

Even then thought he knew best—

I have been bleeding him out

Each moon time

When secretly

The crescent moon glows

On my brow.

 

And maybe that is the best thing to do,

Make beauty in the shedding

Paint each other

With the original makeup

Of our mythic mother—

Eve, Artemis, Inanna

Cailleach, Kali, Coatlicue

Blood and pomegranates

Tongues, bellies, cunts and cocks

Marking holes as sacred

And drawing lines

Between the ways

We hold heaven and earth

Within us.

 

There is no devil

Except the one that shows me

What a fool I’ve been

Coddling Adam

And wishing he’d favor me—

 

All the beloveds that sit with me at this table

The beautiful bodies--

No fleshly plumage

More perfect than another—

We know each other

By Eve’s insistent humming in our bellies,

Our breasts,

Amplified and overlapping circles

Of stories of remembering

Of waking up

Of cherishing

And celebrating the

Mossygreen

Rubyred

Earthblack fruits

Of knowing ancient-future ways

As we walk

The soul serpent path.

 

3/4/2023, on the cusp of my 46th birthday as I embrace the fullness of my medicine and my path.