Dear Love

Dear Love,

-for Marcela Liniero Singleton, who sang me this tale of remember 

            what i have learned is much is confusion

            it’s easy to get lost

            you think you hold truth        like childhood

it’s slippery, & memory shifts: you travel back to sift

a collected narrative of the i am all i have survived and then some

            we run programs designed so smoothly we only catch it in glimpses, unbelieving      is that really how we make sense of the world

            let’s back to manifesting

            how from sound we emerged to make all of this, the great dream upon us

where we are all in the net

                        and the net is how we get free, the medicine in the poison

you think what will i sacrifice or you don’t consider & it’s taken anyway

            you put your hand in the mouth of a wolf & lose your hand

but what if you are the wolf

            and now you are in chains you cannot escape with a strange hand filling your mouth

                                    let me tell you how to drop it

let me read you what the magic sings for i’ve a spell you would name a love potion

it weaves nine times round the center where the serpent coils

in the root of what makes us—what stirs us, older than ancient

i would you remember to taste danger in the air

i would you remember to never let go the wilderness of things

do not be afraid of the dead

            we are them: do not be afraid of anything you find inside

it will tell you it will kill you but it lies: there is fear always but never when it’s happening which is to say unlike love that is always happening but you choose not to see –it’s a matter of gaze & what you are capable of holding

what do you practice every day.  what are you honing.  are you asking for things you spend no time handling.  

love is that winged beast who sits behind me & when the seraphim whispers, its truth rings—when they aren’t singing and they are always singing b/c it is in their nature to sing &

            let me turn this rune for you—read there what is in your nature, being human

it is in your nature to forget what you are   (that’s how often we come round) 

we make a practice of forgetting

dear love, why familiar

no one really believes in you

until they do, until they can hold it in their hands

but what of all the unseen gestures

all the codes of love flowing between us

practicing love is gratitude for all the small accumulated, unnoticed gestures

in our lives—it is an old story

so let me pull up this fire i carry inside my self

let me warm you by it so the sound of what i am saying roots deeply inside spreading

there is nothing outside love

it is the only program running

it is the only program running

& we are all so perfectly magical

we are all someone’s blood and someone’s story: why need you believe me in this chaos

you know truth when you hear it: no one has to tell you

don’t you: let me ask you, can you give and receive

can you see it for the oneness it is

let me ask you, can you practice hearing truth before that skill is lost in our bones

will someone have to die for you to wake           it’s ok

we don’t have to be afraid of what is asked of us

would you lay down your fears at the feet of the wolf

watch me slip these old chains, watch me swallow these dark dreams: everywhere

out of slumber we tumble

i see you and mark you well. i have carried your scent in my pelt for all of time.

you can come for me for i know what i am. now i am this vessel. now i sing & next

we find ourselves destroyer of worlds.  what one doesn’t do for love or what one does for love : a boon of no matter

you choose to see or you choose to stumble in darkness: what does not change is the terrain

i forgive everything. i forgive it all to the depth of what i am. & run program

tell me how the light here is dreadful

but nonetheless we carry on

Megan Burns

2.14.19