And sometimes that wanting is nestled so deep it dare not show itself, for fear of being seen and known in a way that makes it too real to be denied. Sometimes that want becomes a small, hard kernel of longing that you can’t speak, because to speak it would be to make it real for the world. and to make it real for the world would be to acknowledge that it is not what is true in the here and now, that it may never be.

Because this is true. What you want may never be yours to know. It may never have been or it may never be again. There is no way to be human and not know this – to not hold the truth of this, gritty and hard between your teeth, to swallow it down and give it a home in your being.

And it doesn’t matter what it is that you want. A love. A life. To make your art. To speak truth without repercussions. To be fully you without the constant threat of losing. Infinite tenderness. Holy justice. The wild taste of true freedom. A stable ground underneath your feet. The space where bare skin meets bare skin and everything is salt and the crashing of wave after wave. A full bank account. A body that does not hurt. A heart that feels whole again. A safe home. A respite from the world that is found in the power of art or in strong arms that don’t let go or inside a fortress so tall the villains can never get in. To be seen and known and fully met in the moment when everything is crumbling. Something so small it feels unimportant. Something so big it feels like madness to even dream.

What matters is that the want has knit itself into the core of you, and no matter how you try to deny it – it sits and roots in your belly. Holy and longing and insistent in its need. That want is a small, sad, quiet thing. It is a craving animal. It is desire that lives whole and hungry. It is a sacred prayer to possibility.

It rises in safety and silence and in moments of conflict, ravenous in the way it wants to rise through your torso and through your throat and flies through your mouth, forming truths that cannot be unspoken or even unknown. Truths that hang in the air, crystalizing and freezing your longing right there in the air in front of your face.

Sometimes, my want comes up and out of nowhere.
Sometimes, all my denial and all of my toughness and all of my avoidance are spent, and all that is left is the entirety of the want, naked and needy.
It whispers and it howls.
It cries and rakes at the earth.
It does battle with its own inherent contractions, at war with the ways it refuses to surrender to sensible or defined.
It tumble trips out of me, a ragged gaping wound.
It is soft and smooth and fully formed and ready to be met.
It holds out both hands and whispers ‘please, meet me here, please’.

I am on the bridge between here and there.
I am on the field that Rumi built with words, the one that lives between right doing and wrongdoing.
I am safe in the home of my own knowing.
I am curled in the shadowed corner of my room, hoping you will come through the door and offer me everything.
I am standing in the middle of a vast, empty space – bare of everything except the truth of this.

That want breaks me wide open to a world where hope can be born and throws up walls of boundary and protection to define my space. It stills me so that I can rest and pushes me unceasingly forward. It is guide and it is protector.

I am the me that lives now and the me that lived then and all of the versions of me that ever were and ever will be.

And in all of these, no matter how much I try to imagine or want that it could be different, I want.

I want and I want and I want.

And finally, I understand what is most true.

My want is the path that will lead me home.

The post Creatures Built On A Foundation Of Want appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

do not
look away
right now you are
mine

right now
i am
lifting hair
from neck
running my finger
gently there.  across
the line of
clavicle.
down curve of rib
following
concave of waist
coming to rest on
the hard of hip.

revel, now
in the shiver that
rises
along your spine

it means you are awake.

stay awake , lover
because this is
a treatise of touch

{image via unsplash}

this is
a dedication to
the divinity
of want
this is an ode
to the fierce hunger of
your
animal skin
so bless your righteous body
bless it’s ancient hunger
bless it’s sacred need
bless the magnet pull
the utter madness
of want
and the selfish haunting
of desire

right here
on electric hipbone
right here
on staircase spine
here on nape of neck
on hollow of throat
on line and curve
on slick and sweat
here in the space where
body meets body
where want answers want
where primal, exalted lust
delivers
you
to your
knees

we all
pray best
on our knees

so let us pray

sanctify the body holy
the wicked desire
the backroom covenants of flesh
the slow slide of acquiesce
the hallowed space of want
the heavy shudder of yes
the burn of craving
the bliss of the fire.

find now
the center of your
longing
meet it where it lives
coax the tender tremor
tease response from
edge to depth to surface
to bone
to salt
to sweat
to skin
to teeth
to yes
to this

this is the
consecrated profanity of
seduction
this is the space where
shame is shed
you are a vessel of want

you are a master of desire
you are the fierce of supplication
the gentle of domination
you are holy
you are holy

you are holy

ask for what you need, lover
take what you want
bring it home
refuse the disgrace
with which you were raised
claim your untamable
unbind your wild
petition the air for your
every desire

Image © chanelle sinclair

this body is not the enemy
your sex is not a scandal
your skin needs no censor
you are not here for denial
your pleasure is
what the universe
demands
it is the purpose
of your
creation
anything else
is
blasphemy

so tattoo want along your rib
name it religion and church
and the rite of communion
take the body and the blood
sprinkle it with holy water
let the salt steam rise

and listen
just listen, lover
always
our bodies tell us
where
to
begin.

Listen:
The poem:

The soundtrack:

Treatise of touch: the official playlist for shedding shame and owning desire}

30 questions to bring you closer to your wild heart.
Join me for a month of prompts and write your way back home.
30 days | 30 questions |30 dollars — begins Feb. 14th 2016

The post a treatise of touch appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Tell me. What do you want? Right now. Don’t be shy.  Don’t look away. I’m right here. I’m listening. There’s nothing else I need right now besides you.

You, and the truth.

So, tell me every last thing.  What do you want? Do you want love? Lust? The hard edge of a soft body?

How do you want it? Rough and insistent?  Like a gentle caress? Or again and again, until the heat and sweat and electricity are spent and you drift into a long, slow sleep.

And where? In the depths of secret shadowed corners, or on a patchwork blanket under warm noon sun?

Does it make you uncomfortable that I’m asking you this? Yes? Good. We need discomfort, sometimes, to get to the heat at the core of things.

And it’s that heat we are craving right now. It’s been a long, cold winter. So much has been dormant, both inside and out. The world is awakening. The ground is fertile. The earth moves and breathes and undulates with the energy of things to come.  And here we are, right in the simmering crimson midst of it.

So, what do you want? Say it. Out loud. Even if you never have before. Especially if you never have before. Tell me where your desire lives? What calls your want home to you?  Show me the spaces where you are insatiable? What brings forth that low moan at the base of your throat? What touch makes ancient tremor and shiver rise along your spine? What brings you to your knees?

Name it lover. The time has come. To feel the weight and heat of it. To let it take shape and form. Feel it spiral deep inside you. Feel it gather force and radiate outwards. Hold the power of it, feel its mighty urgency, welcome its holy heat.

Are you afraid to speak it? Why? Has someone told you that this is not to be spoken of? That you mustn’t give it a voice. That you certainty can’t ask for it. Good girls don’t do that.

That ends now. Right here. Not for a second longer. This is a lie that has never served to do anything but keep you small and complacent.

And you are anything but small.

So shed the shame of your sex, goddess. It’s not yours to hold. It never was.

Your desire is here to teach you. It awaits a response. You were born to answer its call.

So, ask for what you need, lover. Take what you want. You were not placed on this earth to practice denial. Your pleasure? It’s what the universe demands.

Anything less is blasphemy.

“So, ask for what you need, lover. Take what you want. You were not placed on this earth to practice denial. Your pleasure? It’s what the universe demands. Anything less is blasphemy.”

Don’t look down. There is no shame here. No shyness. Only the bold of speaking your truth. So raise your face. Open your eyes. Meet my gaze. Part your lips. Breathe deep. Repeat after me.

I am a sacred body of want. I am soft tissue, hard joint, hallowed skin. I am a consecrated vessel of desire. My body is the answer to the questions of the cosmos. I was born for this. I am holy in my insatiable need. I am holy in my animal submission. I am holy in my fiery control.

There is no bargain to be made between wholeness and goodness. Between desire and divinity. You need not choose. They are the very same thing. They have always been.

So tell me what you want.  I am listening.

{this post was originally published in the Spring Issue of Amulet Magazine}

The post What do you want, lover? appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

I want to raise my face to the warm sun, a flowered sundress swirling around my thighs, bare feet on hard earth.  I want the floppy hat on my head to blow off in a sudden gust of wind  just so I can chase it down the street, giggling the entire way.

I want a purse that holds a well-used journal and a really good pen. What more could I need?

I want enough money for food and dusty books and things I want because I want them.  Wanting because I want will be reason enough to have.

I want no timeline, no agenda, no company. I am free to watch and absorb. To talk only when I want to. To turn cartwheels in the street, or laugh out loud, to make love to a delicious stranger, to let the delight of random things roll through my body and take me over for no other reason than that they delight me.

I want to give myself over to an orgy of desire and hedonism. I want to dance naked on a beach with a group of wild lovers, slide my bare body through the slick coolness of my ocean home until my gills return.   I want to eat things I have never heard of, let the juices from unfamiliar fruits drip down my face and lick my fingers and let it all dry in the sun.  I want sit at a long, well worn bar and tell my stories to an ancient bartender who does not speak my language but knows that my story is his story is everyone’s story.  I want to let the whiskey burn a path down my throat as I lock eyes with a brown-haired goddess whose hips move with the rhythm of the ancients.  I want to ruthlessly claim the joy of all experience, take it right to my center and taste it’s rough edges.

I want to recite poetry on a street corner, turning my floppy hat upside down to collect change from passersby. I want to throw these foreign coins in foreign fountains and wish for nothing but an extension of  reality.  I want to spend the last of my earnings on a glass of fine red wine and a loaf of crusty bread and some pages of blank paper and see what magic comes from that.

I want to follow my ceaseless longing, wallow in the lonely ache until my own company becomes the most exquisite companionship. I want to belong to no one and contain myself wholly.  I want to give myself over to every last thing that makes itself available to me with the knowledge that i am only becoming more.

I want to spend so long without speaking or hearing voices that the only sound in my head is the truth of the poems that are waiting to be born.

I want to sleep in a room with tattered wallpaper, overlooking a square in a town older than memory. I want to perch on my windowsill and spy on old men riding rickety bicycles and lovers having petty quarrels and roaming dogs and children playing hopscotch in the street below.  I want a bed that has been used by lovers and mothers and babies and old people and to feel them there with me as I sleep, living and breathing and fucking and birthing and dying in the space where I take my deepest exhale.

I want the rush of sweet sin and the holy hush of ancient temples.  The worship of bodies and the profanity of prayer.  I want to be brought to my knees by both.

I want to disappear into a crowd and reappear in the spotlight of a burlesque show.

I want to live ruthlessly.  To invite because I want to invite.  To sever because I want to sever.  To trust with reckless abandon my own intrinsic knowing.

I want to ride dusty trains to destinations I cannot pronounce, dive into conversations with lost souls and found souls and everyone in between.

I want to walk so far and so long that my body aches and my skin is covered in salt sheen.  I want to end with my toes dancing in the waves and my hair blowing wild around my head.

I want to receive a spontaneous invitation from a ridiculously handsome man to attend the wedding of people I have never met.  I want to dance with him under unfamiliar stars to songs sung in an unfamiliar language.  I want to close my eyes as he whispers in my ear words that require no translation.  And then I want to leave him, abruptly, and spend the entire evening letting the bride’s raunchy grandmother regale me with tales of her her younger years  –  stories of crazy adventure and tortured suitors and unrequited love and fevered, desperate affairs.

I want to spend endless days in musty antique shops discovering memories of my future in relics of other people’s past.  I want to hold them to my ear and listen to old love stories in the whispers of dust and long ago,  building my own memoirs from the lure of things discarded and things yet to be known.

I want to smell like fresh dirt, yellow roses, steamy sex and exotic perfume. I want to taste like oaky wine, and trails of tears and dark chocolate melted in the desert sun. I want to feel like gritty sand and smooth silk after a rainstorm and the skin of a peach by moonlight.  I want you to be able to catch a glimpse of me from across a crowded square and instinctively know these things and be filled with your own yearning for yellow roses and gritty sand and desert sun without really understanding why.

I want to be lit from within by the unending intoxication of this blessed life.  An internal bonfire of all I have been given and all that I have claimed and all that I have let slip away in my quest for wholeness.  I want to burn down in the fire of selfish desires and selfless sacrifice and use the flames to light the spark that moves you toward your destiny.  I want to live in the glory of the ashes that remain.

I want nobody to be waiting for me, but everyone to trust in my eventual return.

I want to travel to cities around the world to wander alone.

~~~~

Tell me, lover, what is it that you want?  For in the wanting, and the naming, your truth can be found.

The post the sweet and inarguable wisdom of want. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.