This poem was written by Blake More and performed as a performance dance by the dance company Illumiere, featuring Timothy Wooster and Blake More.
Snake Transmission
Throughout old Europe and the Mediterranean, the snake was revered as the sacred manifestation of female power, either as the Great Goddess herself or as her prophetic companion. With her ability to shed skin, the snake seemed never to die, and thus came to symbolize the regenerative life force of creation. Anata the Infinite is the Hindu serpent mother, and she is also Kundalini, the primal female energy coiled and waiting at the base of the spine. When awakened, this divine force unwinds, traveling and vibrating through the energy centers along the spine, opening us to powerful insight and truth. As the personification of living wisdom, the snake is the gateway between life, death and the infinite cycles of transformation.
Bite Snake Byte
we are the tree of knowledge
redwood, oak, apple
snake coiled around root
wound into a garden of spines
nursing from this mother ground
bite snake bite
bite until the apple is only seeds
let its red flesh turn your belly into stars
snake sheds her skin
rounds her tail with teethed-tongue
swallows sunlight and shadows
sees the cycle spin again
be born and die forever
snake equals woman equals man equals body equals earth
and these bodies, her bodies
lift in fixed impermanence
cloud shapes that drift
scatter brief handfuls of beauty
making love, making life
another infinite revolution
peels away the sacred marriage
creating and destroying
as nature wants
living this eden
of most magical skin