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terror
tight blackness suffocating in my chest my own death this body disintegrated my flesh gone silently screaming, crying into void dark encloses pale world every darkness a portal, a hole in matter and I am going there I know I will as all faces that were flesh now decayed went there, my ancestors once flesh now dead where are you and those who chose to walk towards the eternal empty black I ache I can barely breathe hello. I go in, down, take me there I need to go, over the edge into the dark.  “love is not a symptom of time
time is just a symptom of love”* the leaves fall all around the cold wind rises + falls, it is a hushed, gentle wind. It tells me - “yes, quietly , softly, in good time , gather and move all life” - It brushes its many hands along my cheek and forehead and says “love rest be still a moment I am holding all the prayers let me show you how they feel upon your skin” they have come so far, I know the flavours whether or not I’ve stood on that soil - all the textures of the silent voices chanting ‘help us’, ‘let us be together’, and I sing the all-one song may we all ways work together for love me and you, alive and dead, body and spirit, all you named and unnamed all me - known and unknown and as the wind says “ always “ and lightly scatters tiny raindrops on us, I am ready to listen, to call out, listen, be still. re-member the heat generated inside carry the fire, the breath, the light *from 'Time, As A Symptom' by Joanna Newsom I sit, sensitised
I stand, I walk up the hill and my hand tingles where the air kisses it I am always seeking something but today I wait for it to meet me - and it does not take long. The lichen. Symbiotic poetic cross-collaboration cell integration performance a way for both of us to survive the body bursting from the dirt in slow power lifting rocks and forcing the compacted matter aside, away, to display the efforts of decay Continuum being nourished by the dead emerging in the autumn performing the all-time (long-time) heavyweight champion the rush and swirl of the unhushed world, oceanic traffic distances being-becoming entangled in birdsong softly, gently, the aircraft rumble in cloudscape meeting rock and scrape crunch step by step and step here to stand, here to breathe the ridge and the world has heard this story before the world has heard this story before it is a love story, remember? it is desire the desire to exist to feel to be in cross-collaboration in sympoetic elation symphonic dégustation to taste the possible combinations pair me, love meet me here I am listening, my glands activating my spirit salivating I have room and room and room for you - this dirt become wood become lichen-carrier rock crumbled pigmenting sap infinite drip star infinite map slipping between my organs listen the many-called organism glistens ready for the infinite potential of dreaming - I am sensitised. slow, slow fast the pace of the living. I am buffeted, there are waves, there are ways to swim and float and thrash and drown and dive, I walk, I sit, I breathe, I dig, I sing it is all here I am here each moment rustling gently against its companions I am here Thank you for being - becoming - rock - ground - root - leaf - sun - fire here I am a lichen fungus bird song engine companion collection here. Waves,
the flux of rush-relax patterning, an ebb-flow action and depth I’ve not known til now. What are our realities made of? microorganism interrelation symbiosis symbiogenesis integration consumption and procreation we have always been lichens. The birds take wing and sing in the golden light long shadows, settling sun play and desire reaching towards the light - oh, my love is all I need Come close to me, my love I will show you how I feel I am here a live I feel fine and absurd fear and love freedom is calling, dear ones, in all its forms. just a choice away to choose each day, each moment to listen to return again, here alive love I feel a lilt
in my heart song responding as the intrepid path winds out to touch my foot - a filament of not-yet-known and the reverberant echo as I allow my body to be carried by that reaching It is a strange, interlocking sadness. like galaxies meeting a feeling of unfathomable space between but the oceanic ripple makes land at the shores in me I remember… you. Territories of my breaking and remaking terraforming my sediment There are places you lived, places you still reside. a cave system curving to circumscribe my core - a soft dusty plain covered with moss-made loss retaining moisture slowly regenerating my voice oscillates like the trajectories of healing and time like the path of celestial bodies subtle warmth and the tug of desire descend into green. The most fertile and biodiverse lands - hold me. I must revisit this grief, and remediate the deep that has long been waiting for me. Holy holy
The god of the gaps sings holy Sorrow bleeding out only for One at a time One moment at a time Holy my Breath swims holy through Low lying water and hollow bones Uncompromisingly slowly In a moment cracked and calloused crow call coded showing my shadow’s soul Holy solely scored striated and dark Lonely Everything was broken and opened and ready to be filled Everything is spilt from the cracks no way of holding Just alone and moving from room to room ghostly Now I know How do I know and still go Return or go Just floating Beneath
there are tender tendrils creeping and tiny life forms masticating digesting excreting out the transformed dead we feed each other we eat each other we scatter and lay and dampen and decay and the tiny veins take us over take us down slowly slowly we cross the ground until we are broken and fall slowly slowly we hasten towards death transform our withering we eat each other we are fed drift down through the layers and be consumed mycelial skin coating devouring slowly slowly the soil is patient we are patient soil we carry and are carried across and down we filter it all through us and we are dispersed in the quiet dark of the earth the mosses and lichens and liverworts the microbes and tiny bugs ants and shadows break down the broken and dead we are steadily transformed we are not waiting we tend to this every moment (solve et coagula) the soil feeds us and we feed it it is patiently waiting feeling our weight as we move across and down into the tender tendrils the arms and mouths of the quiet dark earth serpent coiled
deep beneath me roiling I hear your hiss no more tell me what do you know that I don’t what do you know that I don’t what is in my home that I don’t know when I go home what will I find that I don’t know? The dead there all the clay pit holes you coiled around something not hope no that is gone. a single star in the dark sky spark gold at the core what do you hoard when I go down there to look you in the eye gold I am terrified you could destroy it all You tell me nothing just hiss and I am terrified you could destroy everything and I love you anyway I love you because I am here I want to look at you. and tell you this and feel the shatter split scatter dissolve will I…? re-member these roiling demons underneath me no they are not underneath they are within me on this hill, this ridge between smells like home but different this vault of sky above me earth beneath I, within listening for the sussuruss the utterances, your sibilances grist the sound of spirit houseless and ground to dust motes and float we must the body remembers the mill grinds the soul unshucked four wheels carrying me a chariot for the waking dreamer’s ashes travelling crushed This here this edge Wurundjeri Boonwurrung Kulin You are here this is your country and I hear your spirit in every sound your voice elders, ancestors you are All ancestors I know this ocean sing to me and I will sing back thank you  Thunder overhead.
The rain comes. The rain falls. I feel it clear, feeding my skin, the soil I can taste its droplets in my body. I will walk out into it (entering you) it will be absorbed ~ (enter me) move between bring the smell and the sound closer bring this desire thundering into reprieve the vessel refilling the delivery spilling here is the thunder I collect the water and relinquish my holdings old things dead things be freed feed underneath the skin spirit sings as we share in this short downpour rise and cool the air sink into the soil diffuse and rest bleed through spectral fields a moment’s ingress how
does the heart still somehow continue its breaking all this time later there are still cracks that relinquish their light up and out into the dark sky will I ever know how deep they go? chasms to the core of me, deeper that shudder open when I find a reminder some days it feels more like there are lines cast down into the rivers that run as deep as rivers can run and the hooks are snagged and dragging forever I remind myself that it is okay to allow the tears to come. they pushpull at the edges, but I don’t need to fight off that pain though it threatened to obliterate me drown me in my own love, black and torpid, washed down dirty alleyways and pooled in dim caves I rained in the all the wrong places some days it feels more like this a steady ache at the base of my throat and its veins so strong pulse still bleeding after all this time is it still open or is it phantom pain reminding me that healing is not linear even as I say the words reminding me that this language does not resolve - speaking protective spells to try and weather the storms as they hit over and over is it phantom pain reminding me that you will always be a spectre in my periphery I am trying to release this hauntology |
J.L.Walsh~ yearning and wonder ~ archives
March 2020
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My practice occurs predominantly on the stolen lands of Wurundjeri and Bunurong people, part of the great Kulin Nations. I offer my gratitude, thanks and love to the Elders and Ancestors of this place. I pay my deepest respects to the traditional custodians of these lands, waters and skies, and all kin, without which I would not be able to live and practice. Always was, always will be.
nourishment ~ multiplicity ~ reciprocity
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