Yellow angel hanging in the car by a blue thread, I regard one’s body as a mirror. To my devotees I am gracious, beautiful, but a dragon hoards its jewels, guarding them. A ziggurat is a rectangular stepped tower, a terraced compound of successively receding stories. Gods live at the top. It’s time to enter the mythological water, to seek out the monster, Makara, drink the ambrosiac juice.

At Nipomo Ave. at 13th St., a dog howls in the distance. I see the Tin Woodsmen through the jasmine bush and gray fence. Not an exact replica, it has a faded pink flamingo at its feet behind a gravel patch and a telephone pole with a sign for a missing dog, Grizzly, from two months ago. This Tin Man has no oil can, no legs, and no weapon. It is without bolts, welded together, and on his barrel chest is a red heart that reads, “have a heart.”

Today is Valentine’s, and I’m headed to a graveyard.

Cedar trees have a heavy presence. Grassy slope of graves leading to a boulder submerged in mist: how to have a heart in a graveyard? The difference between charnel grounds and a cemetery is bodies above ground decaying. Synthetic graveside flowers are a human’s pathetic attempts at perpetuity. Stone etchings recall, “Irene Swinney, loving wife and mother,” “Romona Romera–little she asked, much she gave.”

The Serpent Queen is held captive by her own dragon, life beyond sleep: release the jewel maid. The goal is to recognize an affirmative force, pass energies through a center, become naturally transformed, rich in happiness, sushuma.

At the graveyard, mosquitoes buzz around in chilly wind off Morro Bay, landing on my fingers, too dainty to suck blood. Is this the end of self-cherishment or the beginning? I’m scared of dissolution, loosing everything before it’s fathomed, but perhaps it’s like a poem, if I know what it’s about why write it in the first place; life fathomed = already dead.

Graves here are little beds. Grass grows covering the stone, a few half-wrought offerings: samples of cheap perfume, a flowerless vase filled with mist-water and green moss, faded toy American flag, little keychain of a miniature guitar with a painted rosette. The loss of a narrative engenders real pain. Chimes in the distance. A bleating goat. At the cemetery perimeter there’s barbed wire to keep animals out.

Sustaining something dead = mode of living in the world in a naive state. Heel and tame the outward through inculcation. Or anahata, two things striking that make no sound, creative universal hum, the voice, the antecedent of which things are precipitous. At the heart level, portals open to the void. A new reel, new frenzy stirring in my blood. The Tin Man won’t get rid of his axe even after all his limbs are cut. He loves his gift from the evil witch even as it dismembers him. This is how devoted I am to the wish-fulfilling tree, the sound aum, turning inward, burning away obstructions to the mother, dripping white seminal dew into the red Dumo fire.