i want this world

For Desire

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best:

and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal

surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries ,

or cherries, the rich spurt in the back

of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.

Give me the lover who yanks open the door

of his house and presses me to the wall

in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched

and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload

and begin their delicious diaspora

through the cities and small towns of my body

To hell with the saints, with martyrs

of my childhood meant to instruct me

in the powers of endurance and faith,

to hell with the next world and its pallid angels,

swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.

I want this world. I want to walk into

the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along

like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,

and I want to resist it. I want to go

staggering and flailing my way

through the bars and back rooms,

through the gleaming hotels and the weedy

lots of abandoned sunflowers and and the parks

where dogs are left off their leashes

in spite of the signs, where they sniff each

other and roll together in the grass, I want

lie down somewhere and suffer for love until

it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again

and put on that little balck dress and wait

for you, yes you, to come over here

and get down on your knees and tell me

just how fucking good I look.

Kim Addonizio

Marla’s last words were “I’m alive”. Marla wanted this world. She smiled easily, and I know why so many journalists loved her. She loved life. She partied. She was fun. Even in a war zone. My guess is she had little black dress.

My friend Magda, in response to one of my last posts, said to me, “There’s no apocalypse; there’s just beginnings and endings.” I then asked her how she thought we could best devoke it. “That’s easy! You just keep loving life!”, she replied. The part of my pledge to Brigid to know the difference between what is alive and what is dead is proving to be challenging. The part of my pledge were I vowed to put my energy into what is living is being reinforced, underlined, and highlighted with a cosmic magic marker.

Marla the person is dead, yet her spirit is so alive, so vibrant.. I’m getting clearer that it may not be so important, this distinguishing between what is dead and living, the bigger question is; does it serve life? There are deaths are that are in the service of life. Marla’s is one. And there are lives and choices that serve death. Death is certainly part of life, but to serve life, this is where the best of humanity comes in. The ability to be kind, to be generous, to love, to sacrifice your self interest for the good of the whole; these are essential in serving the life force.

Ten years ago I did a ritual in which I wedded myself to the lusty current of the life force. This was a piece of magic called a Feri initiation. I feel that it changed my DNA. Feri is an ecstatic tradition, and many of its practioners are notoriously unethical.Ethics play no part in the lusty current. Ethics are not a big part of Feri My soul sister Reya and I had a big wake up call this spring, and while she’s been busy letting go, I’ve been busy figuring out how to serve this lusty current with human integrity.

She let go of the current this weekend, passed it on in her last initiatory act, giving the last of it to Henry. It was in service to the life force. She is more vibrant and vital than ever. It was an ending for her, but not a death. Like Dylan says, “you not busy being born is busy dying”. Reya is busy being born. She is alive.

I love the poem above for many reasons. It’s so incredibly Feri. It’s all about the lusty current. But applying my newfound sense of reclaiming feri to it, I’d end it with both of us on our knees.