el wolf @boskywolf - Tumblr Blog

What people here don’t understand

is how I pine

for a land like lost lovers: their names

Victoria, Nanaimo,

an Island, I felt I married;

even when the human

relationship turned mean.

Not SHE: my Island! She never

did turn against me, but promised

to care for me, in the sunshine

under the granny oaks.

What do I do with THAT?

When on paper, I am due to divorce

a human who once loved me;

but really hated me, by the end,

and it feels my fate

is obscured by an international border

and a society who tells me

fate is a fantasy;

well, it is! It is all just fantasy!

That’s the trick

in “trickster spirit;” My reality

and yours, the same; just stories

we tell ourselves. So I always

Always

tell myself: love

and follow my heart.

Because why the fuck

NOT, dude? Why else

would I bother

even fuxking being here?

And if I say: it were the ravens

call me back

It is true.

Because ever has been my truth:

I speak in bird,

better than human. If that makes me

crazy

I choose crazy. I choose the wild

green spaces

within my own soul, boundless

and real as anything, as I have known

stoned and sober alike

for ancestral sorts of lifetimes

and visions of aurora over snow. I know these

visions

from bird eyes, ten thousand

bird dreams — don’t tell me I’m wrong!

my faith is here:

Those stories; those towers, falling,

those Deaths, pulled. THOSE are

OUR STORIES. Mine. And if I say

the Salish Sea calls to me

and says SHE is the one who chooses

to heal me, do I listen? Why

shouldn’t I? Who is anyone

to tell me I don’t deserve

her healing?

Now I must go make dinner for the kids.

My Kemetic ancestors say: we are not like the patriarchy says we are. We are not the pharoahs immortal in their pyramids, their colonization, their desertification of our swamp gods; for we are people of the Nile bayou. We are swamp folk, our gods are swamp gods, our magic is African swamp magic. We have lived here forever, since ages before humanity left Africa and left us here. These are the gods we speak to; not desert gods, like the same Empire speaks now, of one upstart young Primary Sun God, the eye of the pyramid. But a boundless world of ancient swamp gods! A million upon million gods, fetid and fertile, mother gods whom guided the birth of humanity going back to when humanoids were perhaps several species and we as so-called *Homo sapiens* but one of them. Our gods are shapeshifters, the moon is more real than you know. You forget so quickly that the Nile’s mouth was the greatest wetland in humanity’s history, and within its soil of boundless miracles lay most of our species, prosperous and whole, perhaps since we have all been human. Here, is humanity’s infancy: at the Nile’s breast. (Now near dry.) We have been here so long, we are the ancestors of everyone alive today; everyone.

To wander the desert a slave among the pharoahs was an exile; such was the story, millennia before the Bible was written — perhaps since the advent of writing, and pharoahs. Thus was the jackal forced into the desert, for their tricks, and is one of the few creatures who thrives in both habitats, shapeshifter, sneaksneak; thus did Anubis (Anpu-the-Marabu) wander to their death and rebirth three times in the desert before bringing forgiveness to their people, in the form of a scale and Ma’at’s feather; hint, we are all bodhisattvas, and thus do our hearts always weigh even. Thus do Anubis and Thoth together have their own story of sin and forgiveness, rather long and long before Jesus. It isn’t that one of these stories is wrong and one is right, or one is first and one is past; it is just that it is so endlessly mirrored across universal scales, you can find it among the modern Inuit and hints in pre-Vedic art, and if you’re taking my word for it, among birds and trees. Forgiveness, as inherent to the balance of a just Universe and existence itself, seems to be terribly important to humanity, gods, and certainly Mother Earth, though shall we call her the undammed Nile, or undamned. Stories seem to take similar shapes among cultures and soils the same.

I dreamed the story, more than once, my own in their own times and places, and have bits and pieces of them back and clear again. I mean to write them as fiction, someday. Anbu the jackal-man speaks to me in dreams; his story is super gay and so very deeply fucked up. But then that’s most of my dreams for you. The other fellow is Toth of the quill, and the mirror shatters; for Toth is… ha, I hope someday, to have the time to write their dream I dreamt, when I was 23 and contemplating suicide. (Some dreams have saved me.) Swamp and desert. Sphere and pyramid. An animate world and a patriarchal God. The wildfolk and the Empire — you know that story, right?

That one, being told right now? I wish I had time. I’m too busy trying to write my own story, which too, surely must be about forgiveness. It always does seem to start there, right along with changeling bringing fire; for changeling, as we ourselves, must be forgiven first, for being the spark.

I don’t know the end, yet, to any of these stories. Yet I catch glimpses, sometimes. “What’s the difference between a comedy and a tragedy?” asks my father in my head. I roll my eyes; I’ve heard this joke before.

“Which part of the story you choose to stop telling it at. It goes on forever.”

#original prose #animism #storytelling #paganism #devotional polytheism

There are whole archives of me

locked away in “I forgot my password,”

left behind when we moved, burnt

in spiral bound campfires.

I am the tree who falls in the forest;

never made it to paper.

If a poet speaks silently into an empty wood;

how many universes of spirits are listening?

If I never stopped to think

“but what will they say beyond

the woods, if they were to speak

of what they heard, there?”

Well, then, what then?

Who would I be, then?

As if I were alone in the woods,

just another bird when the tree falls?

Isn’t that what poetry is supposed to be?

Mostly, in all respects, a prayer, like a bird?

or anyway… why else would I bother to write?

#poetry community #original poem #american photographer #queer pagan #queer artist #poets on tumblr #vancouver island #animism #earth

The difficulties of living queer in a small town

is they all know me

but they don’t know ME

y’know?

but that’s true anyway because

I’m the fuckin’ weirdo

EVERYWHERE. If I’m not something you hate

you probably just don’t know enough

about me. Where’s the <<shapeshifter/faggot/dragon/woke/spirit-talker/punk/queer/weird/geeky/gypsy/shy/fat/ugly/genderFUCKed/freak-of-nature/autistic/homestead mama/patchwork quilt/am FACTUALLY A BIRd and occasionally a slut>>

club? Where’s the intersectional space in which I truly belong, beeotch, dragon spirit, because I believe my particular language is broken in all of them, somehow, because I too am a flawed soul with an injured voice.

Who else knows what it’s like to be “dirtied” in every possible sense of the word, good and bad,

before the age of six?

Who else has held power like that

between their outstretched wings?

Or to die, and be returned, for what good

I do not know

three times for certain, and a million times over

in PTSD repetition?

I made this bargain THREe TiMES thIS

liFETiME for realsies

drowned hung and broke my skull

these happened.

I chose to come back because I still

have hopes this sadsack tired mama

is doing some real good in the World,

on balance —

as my dear friends Anubis

(and Mehdi in Nanaimo)

reassure me.

I want to find my voice,

so I can speak my gratitude

for being here.

My diagnosis is:

my soggy broken heart

otherwise I’ve been doing okay.

Just missing home.

#original poem #michigan #american poetry #canadian poetry #queer artist #cptsd survivor #living with cptsd #mad pride #polytheistic witch #kemetic #queer pagan #vancouver island #intersex #genderqueer #therian

new counselor so i am attempting to convey something of myself but as usual i am mostly scribbles

#original art #actually autistic #mad pride #anarcho communist #queer artist #actually bpd #mental illness #mental health #dragonkin #dragon art #pagan artist #tarot cards #csa survivor #cptsd survivor #ink drawing #pen and ink #handwriting #hand drawn #hand drawings

It was us getting stoned

(I am, but I’m not talking that kind of stoned)

killed. Just for fun.

Just for being weird. Just for being different

or smart or poked the wrong bear

with an off-key joke.

The jesters and the Fools.

The autistic artistic daydreaming datakeeping

freaks, like Circus freaks, and geeks and proud

of our ancestors and our animals.

Those kind of freaks

those kind of geeks

so family isn’t determined by colour

but by travelling together. Supporting

each other.

We were owned and bought and traded

until we freed ourselves and began

our own circuses, or settled down.

Then we were freer than the rest.

Even our women had freedom —

Even I, a bearded lady, therefore

creature betwixt and between, or both:

FREEDOM.

It was our battle cry, as every former slave

knows in their bones.

Here’s to wearing wounds proud,

and keening:

FREEDOM.

#poetry community #queer poetry #poets of tumblr #revolution #anti capitalist #anarcho communist #punk

“and I will fill your breaks golden,”

she says to me, even as i keep breaking;

“for I am your heart still spilling forth.”

—

re: Epstein files and the system of slavery related. Was this what my father was involved in, back in the 80’s? It surely stemmed directly from the child sexual liberation movement, flawed from the beginning and put forth as a justification for the corruption of humanity now coming fully to the surface.

I remember letters I wasn’t to read, and descriptions of theories in alignment. This would have all been conducted by snail mail and perhaps occasional phone calls. Let me be very clear: what was described to me was why it would be morally acceptable for adults to fuck and even kill children. These were the ideas I survived, as a child.

I knew they were wrong from a young age. I was taught respect for every living being as a primary directive, as a covenant with any God at all, no matter how secular. My father contained no such respect. My father had no gods, nothing greater than himself, and was freed to create his own morality.

These ideas took over the world.

I live now in a world shaped at large by my own personal abuse. I pray, to any God at all but especially she who mends my heart, I can be as powerful as the child who survived.

I am surviving, still.

#csa survivor #cptsd survivor #human trafficking #child abuse #abuse survivor #family violence #i am proud

my life feels like threat when i know it is adventure. time to clear some demons. this is Imbolc, for me, really every year. i’m prone to demons. they’re especially global this year.

#poetry community #trans poets on tumblr #poets of tumblr #spiritual awakening #imbolc #animist #the trickster #ink drawing #mental illness #mental health #nuerospicy #pagan artist #queer pagan #queer artist

lost me so bad lately. but look today i did a wroting

<image description> iridescentally pointillized laptop screen showing the text:

“and then I lost it all because I couldn’t do it alone.

—

like it used to be people knew:

most germs are good for us

and just a few go kind of silly

like cancer

but the rest are just. part of

everything. you. me. the food we eat.

the dirt. Everything.

what happened to the world?

telling us our friends are going to kill us?”

#poetry #poetry community #poetry corner #lgbt poetry #original poem #poets of tumblr #trans poets on tumblr #artists of tumblr #writers of tumblr #queer writers #neurodivergent poetry

talking to bearchildren again

follow the storm and set free the light,

Stormchaser:

rainbow being, you are.

what lives in me isn't filth like you say,

but swampmuck like the beginning of it all,

like of course we all sparked, indiscriminately;

I just held my spark tighter, with my teeth

and refuse to let go. The joke there is;

I'm supposed to be ashamed?

of what my strength my spark my

awful bared teeth?

of everything that ever kept me safe

he’s half the pair I talk to on the regular as they fly over. quork, quork. he was alone today. he perched as close to the house as I have ever seen one, the nearest street lamp. when I was too distracted packing the van to respond to his quorks, he repeated a great loud noise I’ve never heard from a raven. he got my attention. we talked back and forth for whole minutes. quork, quork, hello, quork, quork, quork, thank you, friend. I love you. quork, quork.

I believe he was saying good-bye.

it is hard to leave this Island. I’ll be back.