Badger Woman, or Speaking in Tongues with the Voodoo Priestess The truth of me is messy and evolves every day and yet it’s been the same truth from the day I was born on a full moon night on Bastille Day In a segregated border town With Sun and the Moon in opposition, each in its fall, and Jupiter squaring Saturn, Mars squaring Uranus. I’m a collection of contradictions, perpetually putting my foot in it or blowing things up. It’s all for the good, I tell myself. Maybe I’m just rationalizing the wreckage. But I’m not going there because every stumble is a lesson and guilt does nothing but hold me back. The fact that most people don’t believe in Truth bothers me less and less as I meet more and more people who Live their Truth. The Truth is you can read people’s souls from the lines on their faces The way they carry themselves as if love and integrity matter even when no one notices. And they can see your shine as well. It’s the people whose eyes are clouded with dirt that look at you like an alien from another planet. They don’t yet know that all humans have the power to create the lives we want to live. It terrifies them that others can smell the despair they hide even from themselves. The Badger Clan digs deep to heal from the roots. Don’t tell my Shinto soul I’m appropriating from another culture because we are all of the land we live on—if we honor it. The truth is we’re messy. Our intentions rarely lead in a straight line because backroads and byways where stories are found. The Truth is we are everywhere we’ve ever been and everyone that we’ve ever met, Wandering homeless until we learn the world is our home, our kin anyone who can glimpse the Truth complex and liberating, just beneath the skin. The dark and light of it When did dark become a bad thing? Night is simply the absence of light Black cannot exist without white Each blink of eye a moment without sight Each rotation of earth brings dusk and dawn Black is the sum of all colors in pigment White is the sum of all colors in rainbows With dark matter more than 95% of the universe Why fear what we cannot see? Why not befriend the unknown? Simple is not simplistic, Simpletons do not always lead the dance of fools Don’t be beguiled by the arrogance of complexity Embroidered finery shot through with lies Gilded with guilt and laden with envy All that glitters is fool’s gold Encrusted with privilege bloated egos lusting for ornamentation borne on the blood of pricked fingers sewing, sewing into the night by the light of a guttering candle held aloft by a blackamoor. Underfoot— a 10,000-knot carpet of finest quality tied by the smallest child Steal away from the palace Become as a child to enter the kingdom. The fool steps joyously off the cliff.
