The Goddess Kali
Blue midnight, the blush of her skin,
She is the Hidden within the hidden,
the inside of the dark moon
swallowed by darker heavens
Traverse her necklace of skulls,
if you dare, enter her body
via the throat, upper gateway
to liberation
Offered nectar she smiles, slightly.
If poison is your language, pure
whiplash-lick of the Mother’s tongue
is curative
Some say the fiercely passionate winds
are her eternal breath, the warm
whisper on your neck, sweet prelude
to her deep vanity-bruising kiss
Entangling the sum in its wild stream,
the length of centuries, her hair;
a revelatory maze for the resolute,
dreaded snare for the timid or reckless
She is the Key to the Locks of Time
and the Slayer of Time;
the Force between that and that,
She opens the crux of Now
Bangles on her ankles and wrists–
can you hear the shiny sounds
in the cacophony
of her roars and moans?
She is echoed in the people’s streets,
in the clamor of indelicate revolution
She does not fight for right or justice,
She is Justice.
She dances ecstatically in forests,
half-naked in the fires,
her skirt of arms flaring, knee bent,
pointed foot lifted, mid-air
She is and is not of the earth
that quakes, sinks, erupts, erodes
food fleeing with the fly-away lands
She is and is not elementally punitive
She does and does not stir the skies,
strike and thunder, damn the ground,
wound city and town, blood-red
the nail paint on her big toe
Glacial in its emanation, her heat
melts frosty feelings, the rime of reason,
frozen will, yet is wholly innocent
towards the globe’s icy crown and soles–
She holds sword and a severed head
in eastern hands, western hands gesturing
fear not, this is a gift. “How brutal!”
some exclaim, others, “What charity!”
She is Transcendent, hard to embrace
She is Immanent, ruthlessly Divine
Truth-filled her eyes, opening your own
She is the Dark One in the darkness
The Destroyer among destroyers–
She has cut out her own heart,
tossed it like a bone, boon to the world
She does not love, She is Love.
The Potency of Nothingness
The Emptiness of Cause
The Blue-Black Luminosity
Jaya Jaya Kali Ma!
The Transformative Kali Ma.
I first encountered Kali in my psyche and in my meditations during a time of life in which I was suppressing quite a bit of anger. She fixed that. She has come and gone over the years, showing up at pivotal points in one or another of her various aspects–as warrior, as ego-diminisher, as sexuality, as elemental force in nature, as disrupter of the status quo, as remover of obstacles to truth and speaking truth, etc. One night, as I lay down to sleep with a very tender heart, having assisted over the course of a few weeks two people through the dying process and death, I became aware of a Presence in my room. Soon it was right at my cheek and I recognized it as Kali. The mother-love that enveloped me was almost more than I could bear. I have “known” Kali as this incredible love ever since.
