Juleen Johnson
Inspiration piece

This Old Bird Writes Something
By Missy Lambert
Response

It’s not easy to write when I feel like an old bird that has to dip its beak into ink and peck out some shapes and hope that they make sense to somebody. My clumsy thoughts stumble into words that have been in hiding, squint their eyes, trying to adjust to the light. Words that are no longer fluid and flowing with ease the way they used to. Bodies get old and stiff, maybe words do too. Old creaky stories that get half way down the hallway but never make it out the door. Oh the good old days, when words formed effortlessly from the ideas drifting by, paragraphs created with abandon! A beginning, middle and end! Imagine the pleasure, imagine!

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Juleen Johnson
Response

Ragged Heart Song
By Missy Lambert
Inspiration piece

Can’t see where you are now
nothing familiar, lost in your own house.
Your grip is slipping, no foothold to be found
And before you find a way out,
You’ll want to light it up
And burn the whole thing down.

Foundations crumbling, walls pushing forth
Every stone falling is Mystery calling,
“Hello? Are you home?”
Every stone falling is Mystery calling,
“Can you get to the door?”

Seems there’s nothing left to lose now
So just sing your ragged heart out
Listen to the echoes follow the rebounds.
Sing your ragged heart out
At home with the Mystery, the most sacred place to be now.
Sing your ragged heart out,
Listen to the echoes, follow the rebound.

(inspired by Toko-Pa, Drop Your Maps 2014)

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Sarah Pizer-Bush
“Something Swirling Within”
Response

44 Falls to Rapture
By Darice Jones
Inspiration iece

422 Falls To Rapture

Eight times a year since the day she was born
Something within would swirl furiously
like a twister in her core

destabilizing,

off-putting,

and she would stumble like a boozehound in a grimy parking lot, after a night of rebel rousing

inevitably
unfailingly miserable
and dizzied by life’s inside joke
she would fall

It took decades for her to see the pattern
and stop experiencing these moments as isolated curses
where some important aspect of herself was lain bare without her consent

and she was left vulnerable
feeling her inner seed exposed
before having a chance to germinate
before having a chance to grow into its uniqueness
before fully becoming

Eeli had thought it was so unfair
She had believed that she was alone
Eeli had wondered whether life had meaning
She had called out into the valley and heard only her own distant echo in return

But in this 4 th decade of her life, she’d been shedding her sadness and even disdain for the incessant falls

Being exposed, she realized, for all its aching tenderness was really what gave life meaning – to be seen as seed, and sapling, and strong root, and fully aged
To be loved and even despised right there, as yourself
Knowing it is the you of it all that has inspired such passion
And it wasn’t just being seen
but cultivating the ways of holding others,
of seeing them in all their stages
Of offering the respect of a passionate yes or no
Leaving not even a tiny bit of a potential exchange unrealized

These days Eeli expected and even welcomed the fall
She could feel each torrent, and stumble, and drop, and exposure, and reseeding, and growth as a blessing
Leading her steadily closer
To bliss.

By Darice Marcella Jones
In the year of Octavia Butler ©2022

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Sarah Pizer-Bush
“Together Not Alone”
Inspiration piece

Healing Time
By Darice Jones
Response

There is kind of healing that happens in solitude
Just you and the breath
Just you and the precious stone
Just you and the magical elixir
Just you and the burning bowl

Dig your toes in and hold your head back
Hear the songs that the V people sang
Before anyone was anyone

I swam deep down below the surface and learned to find the air in the water
I have touched the bottom of the sea
Built a comfy chair and sat there
Just to know that I had done the work
Of being myself
Of knowing who I am out in the cool, dark, beautiful obscurity
Of the ocean floor

And because I did that, I get to do this
To emerge into the land of many pleasures
And many pains
To do the other healing
One that matters just as much
One that can only be accomplished in the hands and eyes of another

Just you and they
Just you two and your precious stones
Just you two and your magical elixirs
Just you two and all your burning bowls

Dig your toes in, both of you together, and now hold your heads back
Hear the song of the Zo people, yet to come
After everyone is no one again

You’ll ascend, trying to catch your breath on the great heights of Mauna Kea
Find your other mind on the peaks of Ras Dashen
Lay echoes on future paths by reading scrolls buried under caves in Gniezno
Ask permission of your elders to set up shop along the ancient shrines of the first people’s of Zaire
Where the medicine is multi-generation, multi-dimensional, and free to those who allow real tears to flow

Whispers of COVID, SARS, or Yellow Fever
and none of them will matter when the Spirits call you into the first river
demanding you two together recount the wisdom on the walls of the Black liberators from Axum to Dahomey
until your healing is complete.

By Darice Marcella Jones

In the Year of Octavia Butler © 2022

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Cristal Brawley
Inspiration piece

How the Heart Works
By Amy Souza
Response

You hear tapping on hardwood like the dog still exists.

Wind shattered the night – rumbled windows, swung porch chimes – and you woke to a carpet of yellow-ochre leaves below the maple’s bare branches.

Once you saw a dying squirrel drag itself under a parked car in a last bid for safety, its tiny chest pounding hard, and you couldn’t look away.

A dead baby beaver on the street near your house. A stiff black lab on the side of a midwestern highway. Your own dogs dead in your childhood cellar, behind the neighbor’s bushes, at the vet’s office, in your sad solo apartment, in your current home spread atop the couch where you watch TV.

Your husband online dated first to investigate the algorithms and then to make sure he wasn’t staying because he couldn’t get someone else. His therapist asked how he felt about lying to strangers on the internet but not how he felt lying to you.

Imperfections show up every day.

Last week your therapist said that everyone needs love and you deserve to feel seen, but you’ve lived without basic human needs for so long it’s become habit.

You’ll never understand why people leap from airplanes to feel alive, as if they couldn’t sense their heartbeat on a regular morning looking out a window to catch the neighbors in a familiar embrace.

That bitter sense of humor snugs like armor.

Ghost white fingers, blue lips.

You wonder who you’d be if your ancestors stayed behind.

A tiny frog’s heart alone, pumping away in a scientist’s lab, might be the saddest thing you’ve seen.

You can know why you’re irrationally loyal but not know how to change it.

Breakdowns are only welcomed in film, television, novels, and song. Fiction tells a truth we’d rather not see at lunchtime.

Your mother felt ready to die at 80 but lived to 95 and you still can’t say whether that’s wonderful or tragic but you wish you could talk to her right now, tomorrow, and the day after that.

For two years straight your chest has hurt, like hands thrust into your sternum and squeezing tight, some days such a pressure you wonder when you’ll collapse.

All you really know is how little you understand.

And sometimes you forget to embrace the flux.

Remarkable a heart is the size of a fist. Pumps blood to lungs, which return it full of oxygen, until the heart shares that richness with the rest of you. Valves maintain the flow. Every intricacy plays a part.

Try not to forget you need all of it.

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Cristal Brawley
Response

Tourist Town
By Amy Souza
Inspiration piece

They haven’t solved the murder, Judy tells me. No one knows what happened but they assume the boy rode out and saw something he shouldn’t have, so the culprit shot him dead, straight through the chest with a thirty-aught-six rifle. Spared the horse.

Judy helped search. As a child, she’d learned tracking from her Native friends. Her husband of twenty-eight years recently left for a woman less than half his age and now they are expecting a baby. “What’s he going to do with a baby?” she says. Judy can’t sleep.

In the bed of a truck across the street, a dog sprawls atop a long metal tool chest and stares our way. Judy resembles the town—ragged and unwelcoming. There’d been beauty there once.

At night I dream of the boy with a hole through his heart, lying prone in a wide field, grasses swaying. Two turkey vultures circle above, land a few feet from the body, poised. I want to shoo them away, but I’m just a figment so the boy lies alone while the scavengers wait.

(Story first published in Unchaste Anthology, Volume 3.)

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Jennifer Fendya
Response

Do You Know Hunger’s Touch?
By Dale Leffler
Inspiration piece

Do you know hunger’s touch?

Do you have an appetite that comes after watching mashed potato clouds
drift over egg yolk sunsets alone?

Or when the easterly orb drives shafts of golden rods
through the curtain folds of your bedroom window?

Is there a kinda grumble with the absence of
of being cold-footed-pushed to make toast and morning coffee?

Is lunch at your favorite spot devoid of the flavorings that would
please the palate and satisfy more than protein, fiber, and carbs?

And the evening meal, prepared in the other room
by some other person and severed by someone wearing a mask?

Do we not crave the most to consume
fingers,

…..palms,

…..…..thighs,

…..…..…..neck,

…..…..…..…..lips,

…..…..…..…..…..and tongues

that of our own kind’s kindly touch?

Do you know touch’s hunger?

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Linda Mitchell
Inspiration piece

Dreams In Between
By Jone Rush MacCulloch
Response

Letters are small angels flying in between — Anne Wynne, from “Letters are Small Angels”

The queen dreams of letters,

written by cardinals in deep winter. Are

words written by the divine lost? Small

messages from everyday angels

found tucked in each envelope. I am flying

in the alleyways, a queen in

rainbow wings, delivering letters and dreams in between.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tiffany Golden
Response

Neither Here Nor There
By Darice Jones
Inspiration piece

It was like transitions were booming in her ears
in that way the first thunder of the season could shock you

It was like the transitions were shaking away her comfort
a big earthquake along the Hayward faultline, after years of stillness

Her consciousness had expanded and her sense of the things of being was broader
a big open field receiving months of rain, allowing itself to be soaked in life’s elixir

But it was not yet Spring
Everything was underneath
No one could see the seeds
And even the seeds themselves began to doubt as the days rolled by

Winter
a trickster that forced everything to slow down
a freezing breeze made of everything
that forced even the most formidable to fold into themselves

go inside
be alone
find the light within

you can’t ignore your breath now
it’s visible
it floats in front of you

wraps around you
pushing you indoors

be still and find your way
take a deep one – here and now

lay blankets on top of your skin
to weigh you down
to slow you down
to help you accept the middle part

this part that makes you tired, turns up your fear, rattles your faith

this part

when you’ve ventured out and transition has met you for the journey
arrival time unknown

Written By Darice Marcella Jones
In the year of Octavia Butler ©2022

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tiffany Golden
“Forever Connected”
Inspiration piece

Cosmic Colors and Fire Songs
By Darice Jones
Response

Davina and Monèt’s Spirits had come into being around the same time – way, way, way back when – as a result of the random joining of 6 celestial forms that were made of cosmic colors and fire songs. They’d recognized themselves as new beings by looking at each other. Because they were made of the same stuff, seeing each other was like looking into a magnificent and ever-welcoming mirror.

Every 200 years Davina and Monèt would meet up between the yellow planet called Kemi and the green & black swirl planet called Wee. They were family. The duo were sojourners, committed in a tight nit circle of jazzy beings who looked out for each other across physical incarnations. Still, the connection between just these two was an elemental bond that could never and would never unlink.

Davina and Monèt had developed a system – and it worked well for them. They’d spend 100 years on separate adventures, exploring the multiverse – gathering thrills, knowledge, and unending delights. When their adventures were complete, they’d communicate with each other across the galaxies through the evolved network of emotion, rhythm, and vibration that most beings used in the celestial realms. They would spend a year updating each other, laughing, and talking mess about beings and planets that didn’t have their shit together. Sometimes they’d have to spend time crying about unexpected friction they had each experienced with immature souls who still thought violence, competition, overaccumulation, and aimless destruction were natural parts of life. How dreary and exhausting it was to encounter these energies. How crazy it was for beings to be both hoarders and annihilators. Davina and Monèt would enlighten each other, educate each other, comfort each other, and very rarely scold each other if one of them did something unsafe.

During their year of talking about their adventures, they would also decide what planet they’d like to incarnate into next together. So many experiences to choose from, so many galaxies to explore. They could go for one of the more dense planets, like Earth, where remembering who they were as Souls could be difficult. Or, they could explore one of the planets with more flow and alignment with the rest of the cosmos. If they did this, they would easily remember themselves, but their bodies might go from whole to fragmented throughout their incarnation. Whatever type of planet they chose, they always chose to be siblings. They had made a pact when they first came into being, soon after developing a solid language between them. They shouted out into the cosmos that they would always be together, and never spend more than 100 years apart. That meant that if either of them transitioned out of any incarnation before the other, the one left behind would only remain for 99 more years or less. The one who transitioned out would hang around in the cosmos and watch the other live & learn.

Although they loved their 100 years of separate adventures across the galaxies, the gap separation that happened after a shared incarnation ended wasn’t easy. In fact, it could be excruciating. In dense bodies living on the surfaces of various planets, the spiritual memory was iffy – like a Metro phone in a rural area. I mean, good luck with that connection. The unstable connection to the cosmos had a huge impact on the siblings’ ability to remember themselves as infinite, everlasting Spiritual beings. When one left the planet before the other, the one left behind often spent years feeling that life was not fair and engaging in questionable behaviors. One time, on the colorful planet Ogra’li, Davina had become a thief of precious gems after Monèt transitioned out first. Davina found pleasure in watching people search for their prized items, and not be able to find them – just as she could no longer find Monet. Another time, on the cool dark planet BimBim, in the 8th dimension, Monèt began masterminding coups that forced small government structures to fail after Davina transitioned out first. Monèt found solace in seeing order dissolve into chaos, just as she felt her life had been disrupted with the passing of her sibling.

And now, here they were again, at the end of an incarnation on the cool blue planet Poj – a planet that seemed to be heating up by the day. Davina was long, thick, and curvy with wooly golden hair that coiled into itself but grew long enough to flow down half her frame. Monet was slender, wiry, and appeared to be always in motion, with wooly short red hair that coiled close to the scalp.

Davina had been hearing a Soul siren call from the cosmos for almost a year, but it took time to break through the static and recognize what she was hearing. Soul sirens were intoxicating beings that moved through the celestial worlds and kept Spirits from staying on any one planet for too long. The moving about of souls was essential to the continued expansion of beauty and knowledge and the general abundance that is the truth of all life forms. Sirens knew all the energies ever birthed anywhere, and they knew how to call those beings home. Their voices were an irresistible magnet, that could break through any atmosphere and go right to the core of a soul.

In the months after Davina first heard the call, even though she had no words for what it was, she felt motivated to do several things that she’d always wanted to do on this planet. One month after the first call, she swam in the KeKe Rivers – 20 consecutive rapids that lead one into the other, divided by waterfalls, and eventually spilling out into a warm orange-colored ocean. The waters were healing, drinkable, and once a person hopped into the rapids, they had to ride the waves forward all the way to the big sea. Davina had only told Monèt about it after the fact, because she didn’t want to be talked out of the risky endeavor.

Two months after hearing the call, Davina had entered a bellowing contest, where beings gathered and called out to the large purple flying animals on the planet. The being to gather the biggest army of royal birds behind them was declared Bellow Chief and given free passage to sacred halls and sanctuaries all over the world.

Davina had used every inch of here thick, tall, curvy, brown frame to reach as many flying beings as she could.

“Oooooooh Ahhhhh Weeeee, Ooooo Ahhhh Mohhhhh!”

She swept the whole sky with her voice, and it worked. She won. And then spent weeks visiting sacred grounds and marveling at how others decided what mattered in life and protected it however they saw fit.

3-6 months into hearing the Siren call, Davina gathered everyone in her family line and completed Poj’s Movel ritual, saving Monèt for the very last. On this planet, rites of passage were less like a transition from childhood to adulthood, and more of an acknowledgment of deepening connections between beings. Whenever two or more beings agreed to take their relationships to new depths, the Movel ritual was performed. A green gassy substance that glowed and sparked like fire sat in between the beings, while the initiator of the ritual recounted all the qualities about the being in front of them that made them want to go deeper – become closer. Davina did this with all 40 beings in her family line, but the only one she told about the others was Monèt. At the time, Monèt had felt so special to be let in on her older sibling’s secret activities. And Monèt was all too eager to be the final participant in the Movel ritual, deepening the relationship even more.

What she didn’t know then, was that all the amazing activities Davina had instigated and completed were a result of feeling herself being called away. Hell, Davina herself didn’t even know. Then, one evening after a fun night of telling stories and eating gold breads and creamy sauces, Monèt walked down to Davina’s house – only about 70 steps from her own and saw the entire home covered in red silk. On Poj, this was how communities let each other know that someone was gone.

Monèt was sure it wasn’t possible, so she broke through the long line of beings that were outside the red silk singing transition songs. Monèt used her teeth to cut a hole in the silk and gasped at the site of the empty space. She could see the home from front to back. She could feel the cold breeze. She could hear their other family members behind her joining in the transition song. Monèt could not go forward into the empty house. Davina was not there. Monèt could not turn around to face her family, Davina was not among them. So, for days she stood in the doorway, surrounded by red silk, and imagined herself riding the 20 rapids alongside her sibling. She felt their hands clasped. She saw Davina’s sparkly mischievous eyes as they went over the falls. She heard Davina’s laughter as they spilled out into the orange ocean. Monèt felt, each time she imagined that laughter, that they would be together, somehow, somewhere again.

Meanwhile, just above Poj, Davina watched it all happen with a mix of emotions. Now, back in the realm of everlasting things, Davina remembered that their time on Poj was only a small step in an eternal journey. But she wasn’t so far removed from that mortality as to not feel Monèt’s grief. Davina wanted to reach down and assure her sibling that all would be well. She looked away when Monèt tore the silk with her teeth.

But then, she remembered that she could send her sibling comfort. So she sent her the memory of her journey over the 20 falls – complete with the fact that she’d imagined them there together at the time. And she could feel Monèt’s anxiety and bitter pain fall sweetly into comfort.
It would be another 65 years before a soul Siren came by Poj and sang Monèt’s name, calling her back to the cosmic realm. Davina hovered there, waiting for another 2 years before Monèt got the message and finally made her way home.

When her Spirit ascended and the siblings stood again soul-to-soul, an energy burst across the cosmos, dozens of dimensions deep, lighting up everything and everyone. It was the sound of ever-going love, the vibration of ever-felt unity, the energy of never-ending connection. Even the Sirens were silent for a moment while Davina and Monet rejoined in perfect synergy. And they fell easily into their consistent rhythm, joking and jiving about what they might do next.

by Darice Marcella Jones
In the Year of Octavia Butler ©2022

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.