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over the edge

26/3/2020

 
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.

all ways

25/3/2020

 
Picture
“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

slow power

18/3/2020

 
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.


come close to me

16/3/2020

 
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


untitled

28/11/2019

 
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

17/9/2019

 
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

Patient Soil

29/5/2019

 
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


May 23rd, 2019

23/5/2019

 
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

A Moment's Ingress

3/2/2019

 
Picture
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

February 01st, 2019

1/2/2019

 
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

​

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    J.L.Walsh

    ~ yearning and wonder ~

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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
Copyright © 2020
  • Home
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