When I was born I am sure the Voices took care to be quiet

And not terrify 

Or drive me mad 

From their thousands long dead 

Recent dead throats.

They were a faint rocking murmur 

Waves of generation 

Back generation

Connecting their voices

Their languages changed 

Changing 

The further back they went  until….

There were a few voices 

Of faint clicks 

Grunts

And snarls.

As a babe 

Then child,

The voices were a sea deep inside my consciousness

Slowly poking 

Prodding at me with THEIR long dead

Even recent dead

consciousness.

In my teens I thought the voices were the drugs I was using

Or using to silence the voices

Voices that spoke in so many ancient

And recent tongues

All so familiar because … 

They were my ancestors

alive still inside me

With death, 

Their voices not silence

Merely passed on through my parents 

From theirs

And theirs 

And 2 mirrors face each other and you see infinity

And that was 

Those were the voices inside me.

As an adult I would feel them crowded behind my eyes by the thousands

Watching all

Murmuring whispering laughing crying comments of everything in my life

I treated them with humor and compassion…

“Hush now,

I have to focus here

Finish this bowel movement

This job

This drive to work 

This meal 

This conversation

Or we’ll all be lost without being passed on.”

I did not pass them on but there was gratitude

That their thousands could vicariously live through me

at times like a mad crowd trying to experience all I 

Saw

Heard

Tasted

Smelled and felt.

They made me realize the joy of living

Everything

The rain

Sun

A cold winter’s day

panting in the heat

THIS WAS LIFE!

WE WERE

They were… ALIVE IN ME

All my ancestors going back to the most primitive incoherent yet…..

FEELING….. One’s. 

When I became sick they ran through my body like a maddened fever

All of them trying so hard to heal me

Making me sicker at times by whispering ancient even poisonous remedies.

Despite them 

Or because of them,

I healed I lived       until…

Those mutant cells grew in me and there was nothing THEY could do

Or the doctors

And I lay dying 

And dying

The greatest sadness 

The greatest joy,

Was hearing the thousands goodbyes 

Of ALL my ancestors

As they slow died

Again

As they had died before 

often in each other

lights that flicker and die 

And in a rush of final consciousness to me,

Gift me with their entire life stories

Life 

Feelings

Life 

Sensoried experience and sensation

Like thousands of orgasms

They died inside me as 

I LAY DYING…

Closer to death I heard the last voices

Men women and children

At times I felt even the unborn had tried to talk to me

To share that limited womb experience,

I heard the last voices

Joyful 

Sad

Loving 

Raging and hating… 

Against this dying with me

And vicariously from behind my eyes for the most unfathomable numbers of times.

Finally I knew what it was like to be like other people around me had been

To HEAR THAT SINGLE VOICE AND KNOW… 

This is ME

My birth voice beyond the ancestral multitudes I was born with

My ONE voice…

Hearing that last voice

I let go … 

And now within you…

Within your mind with these other multitudes…

I tell the tale of ancestral voices.