Susan Marie @ The Center For Inquiry [Eulogy & I Am]

This is my featured reading at The Center for Inquiry with Just Buffalo Literary Center Cafe. I read two poems, I Am and Eulogy. I Am I am that which cannot be caged, tamed, tried, understood, included, deluded, or left - misunderstood. I am the bleeding hearts of artists, voices of the oppressed painting alone, writing alone, speaking to the masses standing in galleries half numb from having their soul placed on a public platter picked apart and critiqued. I am Woman - Man - Child - Mother - Father - Brother - Sister - I am a lover, loved, loving - I am the volcanic rumblings of every tired soul and every smile and tear - I am all creatures every root and crevice, all footholds and paths, the falling leaves - kamikaze - every rock and shell, the waves and oceans, the bees that buzz around the new bud, the hand that guides a sprout from seed, the secrets the wind whispers, the fierce embrace of winter, the warmth upon your face, heart, body, soul, and the sweet cool calming waters of life - I am death wild, I am Woman. Here. Now. I am every element, all emotions, every fable told by firelight, every word written, spoken, uttered, screamed, and sighed - the true Goddess, the wild soul - I am that which cannot be kept nor set free. I exist without logic, in rational conscious thought, in esoteric holy nakedness. I am the rich man and beggar, the king and the jester - I am good versus evil versus self - I am a conundrum unto myself, a human shell existing as pure ether. I am heaven and hell. I am - the destroyer and creator simultaneous. © Susan Marie Eulogy The wind howls, magnificent and shrieking, like some wild woman, unabashed and naked. Her brow wet with brine, upturned to the most holy sky, arms raised in supplication to a dying world, embracing, all that is. And she, cross-legged, beneath Gods and Goddesses, hair whipping wind, eyes brazen, brown and soft. Her howling becomes one with the wind, distress signals to the raiment, the ancient raiment that poets and sages sat under and above for millenniums. A eulogy to the past, a welcome to the present, an embrace to the future. She is here now, waiting for you, to set you free from chains you have bound yourself with. Grab her hand, willing, loving, kind, calm, pure and desirous. Show her how you have released from your very soul, all the toxicity of existence. She is Earth, dirt, rocks and stones, limbs of trees, mighty oaks and maples, the birch and elm. She is the silt of fault lines holding this globe together. She is the mighty maelstrom, every season, without apology. She is you, me. Come, come and relish this moment, even if only once. Sing of the grace bestowed upon you for you are born to be supreme, you are born with the ability to fly, you are born with the gift to see with six senses, seven. You are powerful in your wildness, in your pure soul self. Let it wash upon you like a sweet cool dream, and come, come my dear soul. Do not wait. No hesitation. Moments are fleeting. She is here, now, with you, yet not eternal. She will share secrets with you, teach you how to see with eyes that have no place in the land of humankind. Each blade of grass, leaves of the trees of her mane, like a thoroughbred racing, wondrous, eyes staring, mad. There is no finish line, only now, here. This moment. Disrobe beneath this day. Give thanks to the Great Creator, to Mother Nature. To the spirits that speak to you in your dreams. To the souls that have guided you to this place, this patch of Earth, this precious time. Bow your head in prayer, dear soul. For you are in the presence of divinity. © Photo and words Susan Marie