Genesis

Reclaim creation

Photo by Stephen Bellocillo on Unsplash

I am putty in my own hands, I shape and mold myself as I will.

I am genesis. I reclaim creation. Life and death inseperable.

I birth myself by Lucy Morley Williams

The Goddess Nuwa in Chinese mythology harvested mud and earth from the Yellow River to craft humans.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Shamed by Lucy Morley Williams

Queer by Frank Bidart

Lie to yourself about this and you will

forever lie about everything

Everybody already knows everything

so you can

lie to them. That’s what they want.

But lie to yourself, what you will

lose, is yourself. Then you

Turn into them.

In Eygtian mythology the God Khnum employed the potter’s wheel to bring humans to life with clay sourced from the banks of the Nile.

I am therefore I am by Lucy Morley Williams

Search for My Tongue by Sujata Bhatt

I ask you, what would you do

If you had two tongues in your mouth

and lost the first one, the mother tongue

and could not really know the other

the foreign one,

And if you lived in a place you had to

speak a foreign tongue

your mother tongue would rot,

rot and die in your mouth

until you had to spit it out

In the African countries of Nigeria, Benin and Togo within the Yoruba community’s cosmology, creator god Obatula made the first people from clay.

Hand Tied by Lucy Morley Williams

Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

I celebrate myself, I sing myself

And what I assume you shall assume

for every atom belonging to me as

good as belongs to you

In Abrahmic traditions God created humans with clay, described in both in the Quaran and the bible. In Judasim, Adamah (Adam) means ground or red clay.

Can I come in? By Lucy Morley Williams

A Woman Speaks by Audre Lorde

I have been a woman

for a long time

beware my smile

I am trecherous with old magic

and the noon’s new fury

with all your wide futures

promised

I am woman

and not white

The Hopi Native American tribe had Spider Woman to produce humans from clay and her own saliva, she sang songs to impart life based on the Sun God Tawa’s design.

Tunnel Vision by Lucy Morley Williams

There is a a spiralling narrative of the heroic return; on death when body decays it is embraced by the earth, and life springs from the same source. Clay remains an abundant material, easy to manipulate and comes in a variety of forms such as porecalin, fire clay, terracotta, air dry clay. Some delicate, some ancient, sturdy, coarse and those that are versatile.

Wide eyed self by Lucy Morley Williams

Until next time

Lucy