Friday Night Poetry Blogging

FULL MOON ON K STREET

The moon has your face tonight,
hiding behind black-violet veils
of clouds, coy, intimating nothing.

Like an orange outside the grasp
of a starving child, you stab my heart.
All longing is the same.

No natural light penetrates
this street; the lampposts rule.
The high-rises have mothered

them from their concrete wombs,
bidding us rejoice in coldness,
disdaining the celestial tease.

The moon has phases. Though I pray
not, you might be one. The clouds
pull tight, tight around your mouth.
~ Miles David Moore

Picture (from a different part of DC) found here.

Feast Of The Red Dragon: You Should Go!

What are you doing on Saturday that's more important?

The Red Dragon Feast is an annual magical feast and fundraiser for
healing blood-borne disease. Donations benefit community building and
a local charity committed to healing blood borne disease.

The event takes place in three phases: 1. drumming, dancing and
ritual; 2. feasting and toasting; and 3. a silent and live auction.
We focus our intent by wearing red clothes, eating red food, and
toasting with red drink.

All Hail the Red Dragon!
All Hail the Life Giving Blood

Date: Saturday, April 10, 2010
Time: 2:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Renaissance Hall, Westminster Presbyterian Church
Street: 400 I St. S.W.
City: Washington, DC
Donation: $13.00
Contact: Eldritch@EldritchVentures.org

The Trustees of the Ecumenicon Fellowship have given the 2010
Infinity Award for "Group Public Service" to the DC Radical Faeries.
"As the sponsors of the Red Dragon Feast for blood-borne diseases, by
this alone you all deserve an award. We also recognize the work of
the DC Radical Faeries as active facilitators in the early years of
the Pagan Leadership Conference; energetic ritualists at several
Pagan Pride Festivals; and wonderful participants in the DC Pride
Interfaith Services." Representatives of the DC Radical Faeries
received this award on behalf of the DC Radical Faeries as a whole.
The Infinity Awards were presented at an awards banquet in Rockwood
Manor, in Potomac, MD on Friday, March 26, 2010. Eldritch, Aero,
Tigre, Scorch and Chanel were present to receive this honor.
Congratulations Everyone!

Picture found here.

Things That Make Me Smile

But America is a "xian nation" they keep telling us.

Picture found here.

No One Could Have Anticipated . . . .

Turns out, there are no African Americans in Washington, D.C. Who knew?

And the WaPo wonders why it's become completely irrelevant?

Picture found here.

Necessary Work

Animating the Spirit of Democracy
With a Ritual of Unity and Blessing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 6 JANUARY 2009
CONTACT: CAROLINE KENNER
301-384-8455
301-412-1760

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND, 6 JANUARY 2009
The Washington, D.C. community of magical and spiritual progressives
will join together on Monday afternoon, January 19th, at the Jefferson
Memorial Plaza, to sweep the town clean and welcome President-elect
Obama and his administration to the White House.

The Ritual of Unity and Blessing is organized by a triumvirate of
native Washingtonians, one of whom is the great-granddaughter of
slaves, one the great-granddaughter of slave owners, and one the
daughter of a populist New Deal Congressman. The ceremony will begin
promptly at 2pm with a Witches' Broom Dance, intended to cleanse
Washington of the malfeasance, deceit and partisanship of the last
eight years.

Washington Witchdoctor Caroline Kenner, a Pagan shamanic healer and
organizer for the Sacred Space Foundation, says, "Many of us are
worried by the ruinous course our country has taken for the last eight
years, and we are also concerned for the safety of the Obama and Biden
families. This ceremony gives us a chance to request help from our
loving ancestors and our multitude of deities, and to bless and
protect the incoming administration. We will begin the work by
magically sweeping away the detritus of the worst administration in
American history with our consecrated Witches' Brooms."

Wiccan Priestess Katrina Messenger, founder of Connect DC and the
Reflections Mystery School, and faculty member at Cherry Hill
Seminary, says, "We have an opportunity not only to sweep away the
old, we also need to bless this beautiful city in preparation for what
is to come. With all that is churning around the world in recent
times, we need clear leadership and compassionate hearts at the helm
of this great nation. Washington is such a jewel in the larger fabric
of peace, freedom, beauty and justice, let us charge this historic
incoming administration with all the good juice we can conjure!"

Caroline W. Casey, founder of Coyote Network News (the Compassionate
Trickster Mythological News Service) as well as the host-creator of
Pacifica Radio Network's, "The Visionary Activist Show," says, "The
word "inauguration" comes from the word "augur", the pattern-tracker,
the diviner within us all. The augur would walk out into nature to
divine the patterns indicating which human was deemed the most
responsible steward of the Common Wealth, the well-being of all our
relations. And that chosen person would be "inaugurated" as the ruler
who weds the land. We invite you to contribute your medicine blessing
to our collective brew, and toast our new President, with whom we vow
to collaborate: Barack Hussein Obama!"

A large quartz crystal resembling the Washington Monument will be
charged with the blessings of unity and protection during the ritual.
At the culmination of the ceremony, the crystal will be sacrificed
into the Tidal Basin, whence it will broadcast the energies of the
ritual to the Potomac River and the world at large. A Drum Circle
will follow, lasting until 4:45pm. People from all religious faiths
and spiritual traditions, or none, are welcome to join us.

A detailed description of the ceremony, including instructions for
parking and what to bring, can be found at
www.paganreligiousrights.org starting January 6th.

~Photo found here.

Hold On

I went to sit this afternoon near one of my favorite spots along the beautiful Potomac River, the river that both flows through and brings flow to Washington, D.C. I go to this spot often and was looking forward to going there today, to allowing peace to seep through me while I was seeing the bleached-bone bodies of the beech trees and the grey waters of the wintry river.

And, whoah!

I could only stay for a few minutes and those by force of will. The magic of the place was so loud, the message so demanding, the feeling so strong: Change!

Change is coming to my beautiful city on a swamp.

The only way that I can describe the feeling is to say that the land was flowing much faster than the water, that everything is moving, moving, moving quickly along.

Little Cat Feet

Recently, I was in Vermont at night and I looked up at the sky and was BLOWN AWAY by the night sky absent light pollution. Blown away.

But I will say that I love city lights in the night-time fog. Tonight, I was visiting a friend who lives on Capitol Hill and I drove home past the Capitol, all the museums, all the monuments, the Kennedy Center, and all the bridges (DC has some lovely bridges. My favorite is the TR bridge between DC and TR Island) in the fog and I remembered just how wonderfully creepy and gorgeous this city is in the fog.

Pretend You're A River

It was such an amazingly lovely Autumn day, that I debated going to my class today. Yeah, I wanted to learn more about knitting, but the whole "sitting inside" thing tore at me. In the end, I went, and I was glad. I learned something new, sat in a circle with women (no one could have anticipated), and then had the joy of coming home along the Western side of the beautiful Potomac River. I love that river. It blesses my life every single day.

Pretend you're a river
Pretend you are the mist who falls so fine, so gentle, that nothing separates water and air
You are the rain who falls in sheets, explodes onto the ground to leave pocks and puddles
You are the ground who receives this water, soaking it up, taking it in, carrying it deep inside
You are the cracks and fissures where the waters accumulate, flow, fall to join more water and more
in pools and rivers who move slowly through cavities, crevices, pores
You are the sounds and silence of water seeping or staying still
You are the meeting of wet and dry, the union of liquid and solid, where solids dissolve and liquids solidify
You are the pressure who pushes water through seams
You are the rushing water who bubbles from the earth
You are a tiny pool between rocks
You overflow, find your way to join others who, like you, are moving, moving
You are the air at the surface of the water
the joining of substantial and insubstantial
the union of under and over, weight and not weight
You are the riffle, the rapid, the tiny waterfall who turns water to air and air to water
You are the mist who settles on the soil
You are the plants who drink the mist, and you are the sun who warms and feeds them
You are the fish who feed on insects, who feed on plants, who feed on soil, who feed on fish
You are the fish who become soil, who become plants, who become insects, who become fish, who flow down the river
You are the river who joins other rivers to become a new river, who is all the rivers, and something else
You are the river
You do not stop at the banks where liquid turns to solid
You reach into the sky, and into the soil
Water moves through rocks, comes up to form pools far from the fast flow where the rivers move together
seeps down to join still waters beneath the surface
waters who sleep and wake and sleep, and mingle with the stones who are the river too
You are the river who is married to the mountains you have known since they were young
who have given themselves to you, as you have given yourself to them
You are the canyons you nestle into, each year deeper than the year before
You are the forests who give you their fallen trees
the meadows you flood and feed
and they feed you back their fruits and fine insects
who fly to your surface to be taken in by the fish
who again with their owns bodies feed the meadows
You are the river who feeds the ocean
who feels the tides pushing and pulling against your mouth
the waves mixing fresh and salt
you are that intermingling, that is who you are
that is who you have always been
You are the river
You have lived with volcanoes and glaciers
You have been dammed by lava and ice
You've carried log jams so large and so old that they grow their own forests, with you running beneath
You have lived through droughts and floods
You are the river
You miss the salmon, you miss the sturgeon, you miss the ocean
you miss the meadows, you miss the forests, you miss the beavers, and otters and bears
you miss the humans
You are the river, you want them back
You want to feel the tickling of the sturgeon and the thrusting of the Salmon
You want to carry food and soil to the ocean
You want to cover the meadows as you used to
and you want to give yourself to them
and you want them to give themselves to you
as you have done forever and as they have too

Now, pretend you are a forest
You are the bark of trees and the hairy moss who hangs from them
You are the duff, who becomes soil, who becomes trees, who becomes seeds, who becomes squirrels, who become owls who become slugs, who become shrews, who become soil
You are the trees who cannot live without the fungi, who cannot live without the voles, who cannot live without the trees
You are the fire, who cannot live without the trees, who cannot live without the woodpeckers, who cannot live without the beetles, who cannot live without the fire
You are the wind who speaks through the trees, and the trees who speak through the wind
You are the birds who sing, and the birds who do not
You are the salamanders, the ferns, the millipedes
the bumble bees who sleep on flowers, waiting for the morning to warm you so you can eat and fly on home
You to have lived through drought and flood, hot and cold
and you too miss the salmon
you miss the owls, the bears
you miss the rivers
you miss the people, the humans
you want them all back
you need them back
or you will die

-Derrick Jensen.

In Which Our Heroine Has Too Much Fun

I love Washington, D.C.

It's a city of monuments, sculpture, public gardens, and, of course, government, which, even as sucky as it's been for, well, for ever, I adore. In my most important and memorable dreams, I wander through these monuments and past these marble statues of Prosperity, Truth, Commerce, and Justice.

I came to D.C. as a far-too-full-of-myself (some things never change!) five-year-old, stepping off the train from Chicago at Union Station with my mom, my brother and sister, and one tiny turtle (the kind they used to sell in drug stores). I was born in the college town of Boulder, Colorado, where I learned my mad love for mountains, but I'd never seen anything -- anything -- that spoke to my deep soul the way that this city of marble and high ideals spoke to me. We moved because my dad took a job writing speeches here, but he had a meeting in Cincinnati the week that we got off the train. My mother, may the Goddess guard her, took three little kids (and a turtle) to the Hotel Continental just around the corner from the office where my dad was going to be working. For a week, we lived in that hotel and, every day, Mom would take all three kids (but not the turtle) out for a long walk in the city and through one of Washington's many, many museums. We'd walk until we were tired, at which point, my brother, Joe, who was, I swear to the Goddess all of four years old, would (after the first day) just hail a cab.

When Son was young, I was a young, single mother on a school-teacher's salary. We spent, I warrant, more time wandering the (free!) museums of Washington, D.C. than most other mothers and sons. Son adored the Air & Space Museum, but, Goddess knows, we covered every inch in every museum up and down the Mall, more than once. Do you ever wish that you could remember "the last" time that something happened? I don't remember "the last" time that I took Son to the museums in D.C.; I'm sure at the time it didn't at all seem like "the last" time. But eventually, he got into high school sports, found girlfriends, got busy studying for SATs, and there was, sadly, a last time. It may have been a trip to see the Boating Party by Renoir at the Phillips, but I can't be sure. I do have a vague memory of lunch afterwards at Teaism.

This morning, G/Son and I got up early, had strawberries and orange juice, and headed down to the Mall. Nonna miscalculated how early you need to get down there to get a parking space. We were a little early.

At two-and-a-quarter, G/Son's started asking one of the first questions for which I ever got in trouble: What's going to happen? It's an attempt, as my mother knew and resented, to figure out how to be in control, to prepare, to master the situation. I have a different approach than did my mother. I provide the kind of detailed information that I'd have appreciated at two: We're going to get in Nonna's car; you can have your water bottle while we're driving. We're going to drive downtown, past the beautiful Potomac River that Nonna loves, we'll go to the dinosaur museum, see dinosaur bones, and then we'll get back in Nonna's car, drive to your house, and tell Mommy and Daddy about it.

We got down a bit early, so we walked around the Mall for a while, waiting for the dinosaur museum to open. We fed a muffin to the v brave pigeons of D.C. We chased a v bold D.C. squirrel who lives out of the trash cans around the Mall refreshment stand. We looked at the Enid Haupt garden and tried to decide if the fountain inside the Sackler Gallery was a reflection of the outside fountain or another one, inside. We decided that we preferred a fruit bar to popcorn from the little red cart. We watched bees and butterflies in the outside butterfly garden near the dinosaur museum.

And, there, although I'd forgotten it for decades, it was. The Carousel on the Mall. People who hate Washington, D.C. just don't realize how many lovely hidden treasures it has. And one of them is the carousel just outside the Smithsonian Castle on the Mall. I used to spring, and it was "springing" back then, for a ride for Son on that carousel, with its old-fashioned animals and carousel music and bright lights. It was still closed when G/Son spotted it from across the Mall and said, "Nonna, is that a merry-go-round?" We went over to investigate and, there it was, the blue horse with a blue saddle of G/Son's dreams. He told me, "Nonna, I've got to ride that blue horse." I've lived too long to disregard a message from the deep psyche/the Gods like that one.

We waited, and waited, and waited for the nice man to show up and start selling tickets. We had a fruit bar and a bottle of water and we decided that the beautiful blue horse was named Herman. We waited some more. When Nonna suggested that we walk around and come back in a bit, we decided that was a bad idea. When other little kids began to get in line behind us at the ticket stand, we agreed: She doesn't want to ride Herman; she must want to ride the zebra. He doesn't want to ride Herman, he must want to ride the black horse with the lightning strikes on his saddle. She doesn't want to ride Herman; she wants to ride the blue dragon.

We got (hell, yes there are benefits to always needing to be in control) the first two tickets, were the first two on the carousel, got to Herman before anyone else. G/Son was pretty accurate about which horses the other kids wanted to ride; well, he's the witch's grandson. (What's going to happen? What does your intuition tell you?)

And then, we were doing it. Life caught us up in the moment and all the waiting was over. The music was playing, the lights were on, Herman went up and down, G/Son sat in the saddle, absolutely equally divided between the mad joy of Pan and the odd terror of going too fast and having too much fun. Nonna (a late-coming advocate of Pan's side of things) stood near Herman's head and said, "You're doing great. You're having a good time. This is fun! Whee! Go, Herman!" G/Son alternated between calling out, "Go Herman," and yelling "Hold on tight, everybody!"

Too soon, but not a minute too soon, the carousel slowed, and it was over. We gave Herman a hug and a pat on the neck, and said, "Good job, Herman. Thanks!" We got off the carousel and got into our stroller. G/Son told the man operating the carousel, "Thanks for letting me ride the blue horse on your merry-go-round!" and the man just cracked up.

It could be my last time on the carousel. I could die on the way to work tomorrow, driving past the lovely Potomac River, But it might not be. When we left, we called out, "Bye, Herman! See you the next time we come downtown!" I just want to remember every time so that, if that time is the last time, I'll still be able to recollect it, re-live it in memory, enjoy it over and over.

Who knew that I'd get this amazing blessing of being a Nonna? Once, in my wicked youth . . . .

Nah, I can't pretend that it's anything but lagniappe. And it is lagniappe, lagniappe, lagniappe. May it be so for you.