How to Dance Naked in the Moonlight Read online

How to Dance Naked in the Moonlight

  Celtic Pagan and Skeptic Confront the Ceremony

  By Katherine L. Gordon and Lenny Everson

  rev 1

  Copyright Katherine L. Gordon and Lenny Everson 2011

  This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

  Cover design by Lenny Everson

  ****

  Contents

  Fairly Factual Forward

  Preparation

  A Priestess Prepares

  Snakes and Ladders: The Truth about the Moon

  Return to the Source Vision 1

  Three Masks

  Faerie-Moon Wolf-Moon: Vision 2

  Stone and chalice: Earth, Air, Fire, Water

  In Moonlight The Sky Will Slide

  The Quarry

  Where Bones Dissolve

  Finding Myself in the Night

  I Also Find Myself in the Night

  Night Wind

  Ancient Cartography

  Of a Man With No Map to Leave

  The Disconnect of Days

  Madness in the Moonlight

  Care of the Elderly Moon-Mad

  You are part of the tumble

  Moon-Blest Wishes

  Moonlight Wish

  Dancers Never Die

  The Poets

  ****

  Fairly Factual Foreword

  By Katherine L. Gordon

  This is a book of maybes. Maybe it contains the key to traveling to a magical and powerful sphere as practiced for millennia by Celtic priestesses. Maybe it is just a cheeky romp in the moonlight by bare-assed bad boys. Maybe it contains the recipe for the exhilaration of stepping out of boundaries into the only freedom we have left: the unadorned experience of self in the lonely moon-lit night.

  Maybe it will help you see aspects of the brief human journey in ways that will change and transform you.

  If these verses make you wonder, smile, tearily respond, long to explore the un-mapped terrain that pulls your blood as the moon does the tides, then the skeptic and the pagan have reaped the moon - and are satisfied.

  ****

  Preparation

  If t’were done when ‘tis done then I’d best give you now

  A list of ways to prepare

  You’ll be mooning the moon in the deep of the night

  And it can get pretty chilly out there

  You’ll want clothes that come off with the tug of a string

  And slippers to put on your feet

  A path you can take if someone summons the cops

  And you need to make a retreat

  Inside your house you can clear from your mind

  Things that’ll get in the way

  Yesterday’s sorrows and all your tomorrows

  And whatever has happened this day

  Your fear of the night, that girl and her slight

  That she laid on you back in grade three

  Worldly news and those six-o’clock blues

  People you’d like to ‘set free’

  Now the light of the moon’s the light of the sun

  And the combo’s quite an effect

  But before you get too excited inside

  You should know what not to expect

  There’ll be no church choirs or warm comfy fires

  The keep the dew off your knees

  And deep in the winter you should be quite the sprinter

  Before certain parts start to freeze

  This won’t pay down your taxes or send off your faxes

  You can’t get a tan from the moon

  And that ghostly guide you’ll meet there outside

  Is probably just a raccoon.

  Well, I could be wrong (I haven’t done this long)

  Chocolates might fall from the sky

  But those golden beams are just perfect for dreams

  So I’m not sure one should ever ask “why”

  And it might cure your warts (if they’re the right sorts)

  It might get your spirit to soar

  So wait for the night and hold your doubts tight

  And bravely open that door.

  ****

  A Priestess Prepares

  Night approaches,

  excitement mounts:

  light has possessed me before.

  I leave hearth and duty

  silver-slippered and cloaked

  stand alone in a circle of stones

  bringing ONE question

  to petition all powers

  the answer will come before dawn.

  Step into lit circle of moon-laser

  shimmering power particles

  from earth stone and sky

  unfasten the cloak, bathe in light,

  soon your body will merge,

  magnetic pulses converge

  you have fasted and focused

  be ready to dance

  with the partner who first takes your hands

  you will sight other bodies of night

  dervish-twirling around each stone

  nothing is solid, you might disappear

  be prepared to simply let go.

  ****

  Snakes and Ladders: The Truth about the Moon

  As you go out to get coyote-drunk in the moonlight, maybe even moth-dazed silly in the moonlight, let me tell you a few things about that bastard cold and airless chunk of space flotsam.

  I will tell you, because they told me. But you may not want to know. That’s your business.

  Birth

  There was a time when two worlds collided at an unmarked intersection and married in haste.

  There was no insurance. There may have been passion, for after the throbbing and the pulsing and heat of that quickie rendezvous they became the planet beneath your trimmed toenails. Home to the dew worms who are wondering who’s standing on their doorstep.

  The moon was born that evening. It has rolled through Earth’s heavens ever since, its acne scars recording the hits it’s taken. Some were bullets meant for us, so give it a medal.

  Its legitimacy, as I said, is still in question, so read on.

  Rolling Around Heaven All Day

  It moves away like the uncertain bastard child it is; it was closer in the bellowing brontosaur days. But it drags on the earth, unwilling yet to skip off to Arcturus.

  The oceans of Earth rise and follow behind it, like the swell of breasts in the deep cedar forests when the brassiere is removed by love. Or whatever.

  But it’s not just salt-green seawater trailing; the whole freakin’ earth’s skin reaches for love; the whole earth dances to the pull. The very continents crack as the moon goes by smiling, grinning, laughing.

  It walks, and sets the continents adrift; now volcanoes heaves themselves moonward like basket snakes in some far east bazaar. Bellowing smoke, they must worship. In that act, in that moonlight dance, they create and destroy. And create and destroy.

  The volcanoes stewed us , chewed us, and screwed us so often, roiled and boiled the planet, turned amoebas into elephants and hauled the trilobites off to the gas chambers, destroying life a hundred times and the very beds of the oceans are littered with the bones and shells the howling volcanoes made and killed.

  Laddering

  Radiation coughs itself up and parents find themselves with strange children. The ladders of DNA are shattered and repaired and shattered again. And life ladders itself up rung by rung from algae to Albertosaurus to Albert (who lives just down my street and drinks only Bulgarian wines).

  No moon, and the world would be a stew of algae.
Without the moon, the earth might never have know your heartbeat and longing and the way your bare skin feels the chilly winds of midnight.

  Touch the green grass of home. You can thank the moon for it.

  Snaking

  It’s not all worship, you know, of this inconstant Moon. Those mountains of fire that wake to its call sometimes have poisoned breath. Diana’s kitchen erupts into smoke.

  You didn’t know that? How many times have these moon-follower mountains rolled a quilt over this planet and snaked life on earth almost back to square one? A quilt such as might be dreamed of by Satan’s last quilting bee. Years of darkness and rivers and oceans of dead and nothing for the winds to gather except dust. When the skies finally clear, years later, life plays a new game with the survivors. A new game every time.

  Does it scare you? It should.

  And Yet….

  We are small beneath the stars; we are a triumph of moonpull and luck. We are the most transitory part of the universe, like a single chord on an old guitar in a single song.

  One moon to make us.

  One moon to break us.

  Yet you are living. You have defied the odds and the dead, dead universe to be here. You are part of the fire and the warmth. You share with the trees and the grass and the sleeping squirrel and the earthworms beneath your feet a history of beating the moon at is mad-dog games.

  Worship all you want. Part of me knows I am out here dancing naked to thank the moon.

  Part of me know I am here to defy the moon.

  ****

  Return to the Source Vision 1

  Standing bare in moonlight

  recovering pre-birth time

  before collision of moon and sun

  surprised some womb,

  scattering once more into star-dust

  not wanting a body,

  blending into electric ecstasy

  with a dynamic universe

  where anything can be momently created

  from a hologram of god,

  free from circumscribed circle

  of our sentence here,

  drifting to other planets, other suns,

  a million moons,

  all reflecting fire-flickerings

  of manifested life.

  We never depart, only transform

  to other fields of energy.

  In moon-vision I see clearly my many forms:

  bird butterfly woman-spirit, animal and tree

  lit by the same fire-force.

  The planet changes,

  our essence appears near other suns

  until the hologram pieces

  rejoin to implode.

  ****

  Three Masks

  Remove the mask you wear for strangers -

  The disguise you strap on

  To allay their fears

  In shopping mall

  And video store.

  Your keep it firmly in place

  Even if only to be sure those people stay

  Well outside.

  Peel off the mask your wear for friends -

  The wry smile, the good silences

  The mask they helped you paint

  Because you did the same for them.

  A thinner cloth that lets

  Enough truth come through.

  But not too much.

  And never all.

  Claw off that mask you wear for you

  Even in the shower

  Even in those insomniac hours

  Even walking hospital corridors.

  It’ll come off -

  The clasps are rusty

  And it’s close to the skin

  So it’ll stick a bit.

  Pull harder, if you must.

  Tilt back to the moonlight

  More naked than offing clothes

  Could ever do

  ****

  Faerie-Moon Wolf-Moon: Vision 2

  At last a faerie foot-fall in circle's centre:

  my true kin.

  No one on the flat plain of day

  can ever really know me as I am,

  here stretched in dimensions of light,

  the thorn and velvet of his skin

  abrasing every pore of mine.

  Mortal make-believe of action and outcome

  becomes black comedy

  in unrelenting moon-glare.

  He whispers of the wolf who eats the moon -

  our end-of-days to follow the last jagged mouthful,

  our life a strobe-flash in a dancer's moon-temple.

  Faeries endure as the world breaks and re-forms,

  the life force he carries animates the dead.

  I inhale him greedily, every atom recharged

  with his white essence

  the power given to continue, to dance and to quest,

  to vision past Earth, future planet,

  when moonlight has scoured the bowl of fools

  all pretence banished.

  ****

  Stone and chalice: Earth, Air, Fire, Water

  If you feel you need a protocol

  (Some do, some don’t; it varies with the mind)

  You may add one step, this simple ritual

  Of calling up the elements of Earth

  Take a chalice, made of glass and colored blue

  (A wine glass from the dollar store is fine:

  Anything will do, for moonlight has no price)

  But Luna answers best to blue they say.

  Now fill it half with water from some creek

  Or puddle, or other rain-born source.

  Then find a stone you like, small enough

  To hold and fair enough to make you smile

  If you have a choice, then granite’s likely best

  Or limestone - rocks these share the tides of moon.

  Because the water’s ocean and your rock’s the Earth

  And hold them up, raise them to the light

  And while you live, you are air and fire

  You burn as embers every time you breathe.

  Defy the moon, or worship, as you wish:

  You have made your presence known to the moon.

  ****

  In Moonlight The Sky Will Slide

  The knife must be moon-blest

  and made of stone,

  iron grounds high magic.

  When the moon betrays a hiding place

  the sky slides - parts

  between the auraed trees.

  I step into the wind-wracked rent

  beyond the stones,

  shaping a space with my flint blade.

  This dimension is a circle dance

  lit by star fires,

  bodies as light as thistle-silk

  pirits chameleon flames

  in magnetic colours

  I am a link in the spiral chain

  of creation

  earth life a petty penance

  before the emergence of wings.

  Here is a belonging,

  fields of blue and silver flowers,

  if I drink the misty wine, eat of the feast-fruit,

  I may not return.

  This night I trade promises

  for an answer to the burning query,

  return at first light

  with enough to sustain,

  eyes like mountain people

  who have seen the grail

  in caves on cloud-secreted peaks.

  ****

  The Quarry

  Soft and wide in the moonlight

  my nets go out

  wet, cold

  like spiderwebs

  Hung from limb

  tied to tree

  staked deep and looped round

  solid granite rock

  they cover the time

  where tomorrow meets today

  In this night

  of angel flights

  the quarry comes

  to seek the golden

>   moonbright husk

  And nights and sights

  and little toy trains

  years and fears

  forgotten pains…

  All are woven into

  my finest mesh

  It happens quite often like this

  After the escape, the net

  must be woven again

  finer yet

  Last month I remembered the taste

  of wild raspberries

  when I was twelve.

  So this has been added

  to tighten the mesh.

  In the lunar light

  with nets drawn tight

  patiently

  I wait for me.

  ****

  Where Bones Dissolve

  Dance naked in moon-light

  to reveal who you are

  no ego, no identity

  in reflected light,

  your bones a collection

  of ancestral star-dust.

  Who inhabits them -

  wild as night thickets,

  brother of oak, sister of hawthorn,

  atavistic wolf, shadow-hunter,

  the owl who understands death.

  What you are is beyond bones

  your power waxes and wanes

  filling its own circle

  ever returning,

  memories span the centuries,

  blood and wine bonding soul-bridge

  all the lures that fasten life

  lose lustre when we see where spirit goes

  white light the purest path

  no pain can follow.

  Open the net, swim willingly

  into the seething silver sea

  of all that is about-to-be.

  ****

  Finding Myself in the Night

  I am the wild pig

  Skulking among lilacs

  Rooting in the memories

  I thought I’d forgotten

  I am the angel of the

  Strange heart

  Sitting in moonlight

  Covering myself with yellow leaves

  I am Adam's son in high leather boots

  Waltzing alone

  Under that big yellow eye

  Wondering if anyone will ever

  Speak my true name

  Aieee! Aieee! Aieee!

  I am that I am!

  It will take me days, perhaps weeks

  Just to haul all the costumes

  Down to the Sally Ann.

  ****

  I Also Find Myself in the Night

  I am the unfinished symphony

  sour-noting the famished spring

  I am fallen stars cindering

  black trees in winter

  I lurk in burnt barbeques

  black ovens

  fallen cakes

  nudging the hopeless

  over the thin red edge of sanity

  all the moon-struck fools with frost-bite

  think they have seen my demon face

  you will smell me in their hasty cast-offs

  at the Sally Ann

  Beware all omens-- lock out the moon.

  ****

  Night Wind

  Life is movement, and

  it is wind

  that makes the

  night world dance

  Grass loves wind

  and will

  forever.

  The dark trees

  call it friend

  and I

  too

  Now is the sound of the world

  Mine; I have leaned back

  Washed in moonlight

  and finally

  I have

  caught the wind.

  ****

  Ancient Cartography

  Let's tell them stories