Atiratu

Goddess par excellence, She who treads on the sea,

Mother of gods, of dawn and dusk, Queen of the heavens,
She who determines the day and is Mistress of the fates,

She made the earth fertile, a womb for all life, for every plant
and animal including ourselves, and even the destruction
of Her groves could not end Her worship.

Al-Manāt (مناة)

Fate, fortune, time, destiny -
She measures out all blessings;
She watches over life and death;
She metes out everything.
No pilgrimage is complete
without homage paid to Her;
though Her temple be destroyed,
still She measures and weighs all.

Asintmah

The First Woman was Midwife to the Mother Earth;
She wove Her a great blanket to cover Her girth;
To mouse, and rabbit, and all multitudes helped birth;
From the Mother and Midwife come all things of worth.

A Broken River

The water used to flow freely
as blowing breezes,
now interrupted, it stutters,
stops, pools.

An oxbow lake, though cut off
from its parent, may nonetheless
have its own currents,
still flows.

Broken, I might be -
we all are -
broken in, broken down, broken up.
Yet we continue, we fools.

I am nevertheless a river
with my own eddies and tides
(though changed from her former self,
she flows).

The Edge of Infinity

Zipping around the event horizon
of a black hole, Schwarzchild radius -
a gravitational field outside
a non-rotating, spherically symmetrical
body, a coordinate singularity
where the escape velocity
is precisely equal to the speed of light.
The edge of infinity is proportional
to the mass of the object in question,
and a black hole has a radius
smaller than that of Schwarzchild's solution.
Neither light nor particles can escape -
and the smaller black holes
have greater density than
their supermassive counterparts.
There is a supermassive black hole
at the galactic center of the Milky Way,
around which our galaxy rotates,
and an accretion of gasses in a disk
around it releases energy
powering a radio source
pulsing waves of wind and weird
and angelic choruses
interrupted by the croaks
of frogs and sirens wailing -
the universe hums along.

Al-ʻUzzā (العزى‎)

Goddess of love, protection, and might,
Whose sacred trees hold a ring of endless light,
Thou art bathed in beauty to our sight.

Sister to destiny and prosperity,
Triune but not interchangeably,
We offer our worship and sensuality.

Most exalted Lady, highest and most kind,
To Thee ever turns the hopeful and weary mind;
Under Thy gaze are lovers entwined.

Let us swear oaths in Thy holy name,
That in our failures none but ourselves are to blame,
But our successes only add to Thy worship and fame.

The garden of earthly delights is Thine own,
The grove of heavenly joy is Thine alone,
It is only through Thee that joy is ever known.

A Paean

Praise to the Goddess for what
she has wrought.
Praise to the Goddess for all
she has brought.
Praise to the Goddess from the
one who sings.
Praise to the Goddess for all
that she brings.
Praise to the Goddess for what
she creates.
Praise to the Goddess for all
she relates.
Praise to the Goddess from the
ones who feel.
Praise to the Goddess for all
that is real.
Praise to the Goddess for what
we can learn.
Praise to the Goddess for all
times that turn.
Praise to the Goddess from the
heart within.
Praise to the Goddess for all
and again.

From Virgo to Aquarius

You bear the water
and I shall pour it.
You take the cost
and I shall mold it.

Sun and moon
rising, hold it,
flowing through
piping, goes it.

Without you -
but never let go of it.
Now with you -
this only grows it.

You bear the water
and I shall pour it.
You make the dough
and I shall bake it.

Mercury and Venus,
backwards, review it,
moving forward,
nothing to it.

Without you -
pulled and stretched it.
Now with you -
expands and reveals it.

You bear the water
and I shall pour it.
You bring the food
and I shall serve it.

Mars and Jupiter
swelling, comes it,
bounding onward
dancing, around it.

Without you -
could not starve it.
Now with you -
nourishes, heals it.

You bear the water
and I shall pour it.
You spin the yarn
and I shall knit it.

Saturn and Uranus
limiting, changes it,
rebelling against
restricting, finds it.

Without you -
never dried it.
Now with you -
hydrates and revives it.

You bear the water
and I shall pour it.
You hunt the prey
and I shall dress it.

Neptune and Pluto
dreaming, transforms it,
empowers upward
imagining, more of it.

Without you -
never suffocated it.
Now with you -
inspires more of it.

You bear the water
and I shall pour it.
You give a home
and I shall hold it.

Prolific Is the Secret Name

Prolific is the secret name
of genius.

Secret, silent name

Name a genius who produced
solely one genius production.

I'm sure they exist
or maybe they are known
by only solely one thing

But it is not their sole
genius level production

Secret, silent production.

Prolific is the secret name of genius.

Production.

Time is a thief -

Time
is a thief -
stolen: my innocence,
my freedom, my joy,
my friends and family
but I am not special
(no one is special)
time steals all
   from all
time is void
   from ashes to
      dust to
nothing,
time is
a gaping,
all-consuming
bloody maw
taking everything
from everyone
but it is just
balance
from time
gave us
all
in the
beginning.

I Am Words

I am words.

You can see me standing here,
and you see bones and skin,
muscle and sinew,
You can vivisect me and see my organs,
Put me under the microscope
and you can see my cellular structures
on down to the very atoms
and subatomic particles that form
this physical body.

But no.
I tell you
I am words.

I am transcendental
I am philosophical
I am sesquipedalian

I am Logos,
word, logic, reason,
I am made up of synonyms
and antonyms
I am a living contradiction,
the word made flesh
encased in what is visible,
tangible, audible, palatable, scentable

Beyond all this
I am words.

I am misted over dawn,
mornings saturated by rain,
I am bold midday
pregnant with thunderstorms
building up in strato-cumulus clouds
ready to rip open with lightning
cut across the zig-zag sky,
I am lazy afternoons
napping through the long hours
waiting for sunset and dusk,
I am the night,
long and rich with sacred darkness.

I am words
of wisdom and foolishness -
the right thing said, perfectly timed
and the faux pas, expertly misplaced.
I am hope,
I am fear,
I am here,
I am words.

I am words of comfort and healing.
I am words of mischief and humor.
I am words of thought and introspection.
I am words of love and longing.

I am ten-dollar words
and five-cent ones, too,
I am four letter words,
unprintable invective and censored cruelty,
I am simplicity and complexity,
I am kindness and vilification,
I am all things and nothing.

I am symbols scratched on paper,
I am utterances of sound,
      wafting through the air,
      fading from time,
I am the silent language of gesture
      and sign sketched softly
      against walls of noise,
I am signification,
I am semantic,
I am connotation and denotation
and I will not be defined
because I am -
I am words.

Akhushtal

Conceived in cold
winter, bold are
we old who birth
upon earth with
green mirth in later seasons.

Ai-tupuai

Head-eater, healing
and war her domains, her right,
ocean-born at night,
ever accompanying
her family to the fight.

Her father and her
mother, warrior and she
who stood to unfold
the sky, gave form to sisters
three. We worship thee, healer.