Ritual Sacrifice

I will end this, my very first blog ever, with a ritual sacrifice, which is pretty funny for a 99.9% vegetarian and 94.5% pacifist. Give or take a little. What I mean is that I'm throwing an early draft of a poem out here to you, knowing full well that it will decrease my chances of publishing it in a journal. Why would I do something so seemingly stupid? I do it to show you that, as the site name implies, there will be no holds barred in this exploration of creativity.

The poem "Bareback Alchemy" is the namesake of this blog, and to me it represents the facts that 1) when we create we tap into the divinity that lies within ourselves, and 2) creativity, strength, and life force can be born of pretty much anything, even the most profound suffering. For, while the poem grew from heartache, it ends in transformation to power and strength. And this is real power - not the fleeting, unimportant power over others, but the power to create, the power to romp with the gods on the playground of being and becoming, the chance to find out who you, yourself, really are.

What you can expect from me at Bareback Alchemy: deep and honest discussions about creativity in art and life, excerpts from my interviews at Tiferet Talk and my reviews of others' works, news about my own writing, discussions about spirituality, and more.

So, I offer you this poem as a brief and heartfelt manifesto - that out of the suffering and complexity of experience comes not silence. Out of the suffering let us instead raise our human voices, call up to the gods, sing to the goddesses, peer inward at the ominpresent, scratch at the dirt of divinty, and marvel at the boundlessness within our fellow humans and our fellow creatures.

Descartes said, "Cogito ergo sum" ( I think, therefore I am). Let us say, "We create, therefore we are gods." Blasphemy, phooey.

You knew where to look all along.

Bareback Alchemy

Bring on the cold.

I'm going to meet this life

without gloves or scarves or boots

and ride bareback through the cobbled

streets of time, howling incantations into the mist

and threading mystery through the folds of day.

Let the ticking minutes land where they may:

I point my heart at an uncharted

path, lift from the earth,

trot on the wind. No Nostradamus

could predict the intricate

twists and turns this horse will take

down alleys and through storms,

shaking its magical tail,

its righteous mane,

clopping the cobblestone

and trying, trying like hell

to buck me off. Let it

snow and sleet. I've got no fur

coat to meet winter with this year,

just a raw and broken heart

and the waterfalls in my chest

where my lungs should be.

So go ahead. Bring it on: cold

and heat, hurricanes, tornadoes, quakes.

I've got the freedom of the dispossessed,

that fire in my throat,

the lick of truth,

and I'll sing it loud

because I wear

the philosopher's stone

like a smile, don a raven

on my shoulder, sport the alchemy

to transform my demons into gods.