The Shaman Cycle
Noni Howard
Half-Moon Bay, CA

I.

You lie in complete abandonment
one arm thrown up
soft belly exposed to the purity
of vulnerability,
head back into eternity.

You are for me that beauty
of completeness
so mortal my own flesh aches
for the finality of unexplained
desire

that i must stop
this process of words
and lay down by your side

II.

the great muscles of the god
stretch out to me
in your hand.

i bend my lips
to your knuckles.
i kiss my death;

and raise my eyes to your eyes
with the blood of life
on my mouth.

we do not speak.
i turn your hand over
and touch the centre
of the soft palm
with my tongue.

i swallow your cupped fingers
letting them slide softly
down my throat
deep inside of me

and spit you out.

i command you to strike me
and you obey
my head is filled with sunlight.

i walk into the water
and do not fall.

what is this new body
that we pass between us.

we do not speak.

answers are not/
what love is.

III.

i lick and touch myself wantonly
like a dog, knowing you are alone
somewhere doing the same
without me, and i must have you
in all your scents and glory, i must
run myself into you without shame or hesitation,
take you and be taken by
the majesty of our spoken silences
and all that words deny.

IV.

Like the Pure Poem Without Obsession
is what love is:
strong
simple
a tired yoke of life on its
back, still beautiful.

V.

i woke up dreaming of you
and now my mind flies dreaming
over the paper
of this poem
kissing your ear lightly.

you are somewhere
meditating or masturbating
it makes no difference;
the reverence you bring to every act
is like how
you hold my head
in your hands.

i am dreaming
of your cat's eyes slit into the cosmos
your mouth open
to take in every sound
of my pleasure
and my fear
that grows barbed wire in my veins.

i am veins stripped
under your hands. the wire sings
out of me
and the blood flows
into the chalice of your mind.

i woke up dreaming of you
and i now understand
that there is nothing that i want,

as i move
as if from a great distance
into your line of vision
i am nothing.
and i am complete.

i want no-thing
i want you
they are the same.

VI.

Death of a Muse

you can't kill me; I've
already been killed

i can't lose you.
you are already lost.

i don't
want you. i want
to want you. i

want you.

VII.

When you say
- i miss you - i know
i am in your mind
i know I am living in you.

and suddenly
part of me
is
a flower sending
a seed into
a different planet.
am planting life
if i ' am good enough
love.
and
i know of no
better
tradition.

VIII.

wind raging rain of my tears
i feel you/
Ii my body
fire daemon

your marks indelible
O monster of my every wish!
O person behind cracked mirror/

illusion
gone i face
naked
the woman
of my dreams

O spare me my Mistress
submit to me
once/again

IX.

we come again to the cacophony
of silence
the music love makes when it is
undirected and finite.

i rap my mind in silence
and become the images of my eyes.

my heart speaks like a low sapling
in the birch wind of winter.

i cannot speak my name
yet I know who I am.

the past is forest green
and touching me gently, oh
so gently

your fingers trace
the crisp air, the few fall leaves.

we have touched and looked
beyond our widening eyes
into another moment.

we look still.
the fragile air is a winter's night.

X.

it is the green season, mist
and wintry dew on the hills
you in mind
i risk saying everything.

i pass valleys mists shrouding
the upper pastures
the sea tracing the isthmus of land
with white fingers. How can i be
so unforgiving?

the valley encircles my car
with a cloud of frost and unreason.
i love you.

ducks glaze the shore
with black feathered islands,
as I pass lone dark trees
a few white nosed bulls grazing.

a tongue of water
comes towards me.
i wrap around the side wall of mountain
as I embrace
and touch
your neck.

XI.

the morning glories are blooming
Ii the rain
purple dots of incandescence
like my tongue
tracing
your lips.

a humming bird shatters
the crystal of my thoughts,
silently, a perfected miracle.

oh look, I say
and we both look together.

i cannot see inside your mind
yet
i catch your surprised beauty
your joy.
i am caught into the moment
of your flight.
we have radiance, not bodies

when we have bodies
we are the bird
in flight.

XII.

the grass, the leaves bow
like the snow in my mind.

it is a winter's day.
my gloved hand
reaches to pull you from the crunch of ice

the road stretches white and monotonous
silently into infinity

we are walking, our breath tiny
smokestacks
powerlines twisted with ice.

here a bare tree
agonizes against the sky.
the hill slopes into white distance.
there are no birds.

everything is asleep dreaming.
we walk silently
into the dream
of becoming.

we walk towards home. it is still
a long way into time.

we look at each other
and see
the only thing
that is alive.

XIII.

the sky bleeds
over the snow forgotten
mountains

the air is crisp and sharp
as the blade of a hawk's wing.

i can't forget the future
in my hands/
the way I look at you,

the way I sing with words
floating on the paper of the mind
like the snow
falling backward
into time.

XIV.

it must have always been like this:

the spears of pine
white in white
pushing into the blueness of the sky

the fullest wilderness
in my imagination

and you
in my empty
gloved hand.

XV.

we are talking
it is
something complicated
the thought could be
easily broken
fragile as the air between us. but you turn the phrase
for me to see the crystal
of its light, cupping the meaning
to my ear.

i pull you into me/

the sound
of your voice becomes
my own mind speaking

until
the silence of your eyes, lying so quiet now,
bids everything
good night.

XVI.

love doesn't die
because
we cupped the past
in our delicate fingers
too closely/

so easily
bruised
by our desires
our wishes
for each other
and ourselves.

i choose to say one thing to you
before I draw this circle:

the earth is open
for your reaping
sweet shaman of the future

i wish the textures
of the land
to pour through
your fingers
igniting all the
colors
beneath your flesh

and when you feel me
in your hands

you may remember
my body

that was open to you
that watered you
with my tears and sweat
and unspoken messages

and how
i loved you.

XVII.

Watching your sleeping
breathless
curled beneath my arms
tightened lines still tracing
your brows.

soft childlike face
in my hands
our breath rising and falling
together

i know I am close to you
than in all the moments
of our lovemaking.

i lie protecting you
from even your or my self
and all that is not us

my arm encircles our griefs
and the separation
that is senseless
and inevitable.

while I wait
even now hunted
by your presence
i listen
to your purity.

XVIII.

one leg thrown
across another
flesh soft on soft
flesh

a delicate whisper
from your lips
tells me you are still awake,

and i think of all those
who have never had
this moment
with love wrapped around
the bursting craters of the
world

and I weep
for them
and for us
lying in the memory
of wonderment

lying still
beyond the white
curtains
of the day.


© Copyright 1997 Noni Howard.