Becoming

The glory of nature falls

Like frozen angels turned to dust

Drift down to kiss this fleshy cheek

A gentle offer of chancy trust

From the white abyss above

To a stranger wandering the forest floor

The crinkle of snow beneath bare feet

Makes us strangers no more

Nature, my old lover

I sense you still

In stillness, I feel deeper

The rise of a thrill

Fear, perhaps, that propels my pace

But wait, what path is this

That I so eagerly chase?

Death is a familiar companion

Whose drum is always drumming

Wait before taking the next known step

Listen past the mind’s curious humming

In silence

There is the becoming

From walking to falling to crawling to level

The body, sprawled and equally as dirt disheveled

Begins a conversation between cold and heat

As the permeable membrane breathes, all senses open

Outer and inner worlds begin to meet

The trees listen with ears

Of every microcosmic organismic cell

The earth speaks and I hear

Along my spine, the gentlest vibrations swell

Can you hear it?

In the silence

There is the becoming

Breath of the wind

Blood of the river

Beat of the stone

Illusory bodies fold behind my gaze

As I sink into the bed of life

Beneath melting snow, a sensorial haze

Pulsating the impulse to survive

In the silence

There is the becoming

Fever dances under the skin

Chainsaws rumble and crack the unbreakable wind

Fervent movement shakes blind eyes open

As the cold holds all senses in its seductive bind

Spreading between my thighs

I surrender

Like a child

Bewitched by this forest fairy haven

I cry silent sounds of the poetic raven

Just as absolute nothingness consumes it all

Quiets the height

Turns mirror upon mirror

And reveals a light

To illuminate a dreamscape where all life lovingly unravels

Everything is felt

And everything travels

From the tip of my finger where an angel made its grave

To the top of this mountain

Where my soul is free to play

Formless

Undefined

Drifting between worlds

Tethered only by the far-off echo of a questioning mind

In the silence

There is the un-becoming

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Helen Tuggle (Kiki Marti) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose research is inspired by a desire to find the crossroads between movement and sound, color and texture, poetry and sensuality, body, nature and machine. She studied contact improvisation and Butoh dance with Reverse Rivers Company in Thailand for the past few years before moving to Berlin in September of this year.

The common threads that Kiki draws between her dance, visual art, music and poetic explorations are improvisation and abstraction, which are keys for unlocking present, authentic self-expression and methods for engaging in a self-actualizing creative process. She currently works with the design team at Studio Olafur Eliasson as assistant to the lead designer.

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