Ivy Ireland
Ivy Ireland is currently studying an M. Phil in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle. Ivy has a penchant for mysticism, cosmology and cabaret performance. In 2006, Ivy worked as a co-cordinator for “The National Young Writer’s Festival”, and has performed her poetry at various events including ” This Is Not Art” and “The Peats Ridge Festival” . Currently, Ivy is a co-director of the performance troupe, “The Lovelorn Living Party”. She is one of the Australian Young Poets Fellows 2007.
Wheel
‘For you yourself have created the karma that binds you. You are helpless in its power.
And you will do the very thing which your ignorance seeks to avoid.’ − Bhagavad Gita
1. MULADHARA
Off working for peanuts,
off the books,
off in some country where I was not allowed,
I fell down two flights of stairs
on my base chakra.
I did not see a doctor,
I knew better.
Six months later,
back on a slab in my rightful place,
dissection discovered
I had fractured my coccyx.
That type of thing never heals.
The root:
The grinding bone:
The tail that was:
I began the enquiry:
Injuries to the base chakra,
emotional or physical,
create uncertainty,
birth a wanderlust.
Back in that cold country,
lying prone on my solar plexus,
embalmed in numbing spray Laura’s ma stole
from the Falls Rd hospital,
I planned my escape–
Root cracked and numb,
no personal loophole in spacetime,
no tail to curl around the branches
of my family tree,
no train to wind around my lover as he twitched,
uneasy,
beside my blocked Kundalini.
Him: you’ll be alright,
you don’t need it,
we haven’t had tails for thousands off years,
at least.
Me: we nurse ghosts of all that has come before;
My tail will keep you awake at night
when I am gone.
2. SVADHISTHANA
One red blood rush.
It is correct to say the
sex
chakra contains the obvious pulleys and levers,
our basic understanding of the cycles:
Low heat rising.
The demand.
Whatever comes next.
It is also correct to say it contains all the dead:
The threads are sung back into our bodies,
we fuse them through only to gush them out again.
3. MANIPURA
Sol and Luna got married in my guts.
First flurry was fear,
then undying love,
then temperate flow like the guru said.
For followers of Kali,
union of irreconcilable opposites is All −
wine and illicit sex at night,
yoga and fasting in the morning.
I’m afraid of things that dissipate categories,
that are The Ultimate Aim.
Still, when you caused it,
something snapped in there, like the
corners of my mouth spanning outwards
in cuts.
4. ANAHUNTA
“gone, gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, oh what an awakening”
– Heart Sutra
don’t for a second think this one’s going to be about St Valentine or this or that fat goblin with a bow or even you
and me or this and that kissing some such under the waterfall or any other veiled reality the Buddhists tell me I
don’t understand or really participate in nor do I wish to
when I felt the invitation unfold from yours I wanted to hide but instead I wrote back
there is debate over the true colour of the heart chakra some say green of all colours it is compassionate green they
say others say rose pink which makes more sense to me though what would I know and anyway I hate rose pink
does that mean I hate hearts my own heart
that’s melodramatic and ridiculous how could I hate my own heart
in yoga meditation she tells me to pluck the twelve-petalled flower she says it’s gold residing there at the pump site
and send it to some significant one but I get scared that if I do that I won’t have any core to go home to when
it gets too rough out here on the sea of televisions so
I keep it for myself then feel selfish then decide to give it out to everyman
there are actually seven heart centres according to this or that holy text my friend Reuben says he’s got heart
centres in his heels they all represent a different love isn’t there a first principle in all this excess I want the right
doctrine to represent everything I want to feel it feel it for all and sundry no differentiation I want it to be atomic
that which can not be broken down
why does it always end up here at integers
5. VISHUDDA
I had a Inanna icon once,
believed in it,
for she is the oldest and the first.
Once, I held her up to my ear,
so she might say ancient things
my bleating throat could not.
She, too, refused to speak.
I got ill,
laryngitis in all this quiet,
moved house or country.
Somewhere in between,
Inanna fell out of the box.
I had thought she was impervious.
They say if you ask and mean it,
she will appear in the sky, the Great Goddess,
bless you with a boon. Perhaps say something.
There is sky blue where all I can’t say I wish for
There is the non-verbal stored elsewhere
There is the silence held dear haunting blood later
When they adjust a throat chakra,
they whirl the 16 petals to the left to let the emotions out.
The patient might start muttering things uncontrollably.
the first thing I mutter is Science where my bones are kept
the second thing I mutter is God where the disguise is kept
the third thing hints at Unity since I am now impervious
6. ANJA
there is a superstring
replacing the unbreakable
electron with something that
could be snapped
if we desire it
little threads of sea
connecting the
Oh Svaha
topography of my body
to its instigator and
back
through the firegate to
O Agni You
7. SAHASRARA
honey around the outside
inside white
white
like staring at fractals until your brain bursts
sahasrara is the channel vessel
inner lotus of 12 petals
outside honey flower has 960
what’s the meaning of this angel ladder?
why 960?
reclining in a quiet grey bubble
the pineal gland remembers.