Parisien Song

Down a low lip of river

Calls a darkness it names lover

And it shimmers on the Seine

Waiting for an eye

To catch her wisp of longing

Her shock of recognizing

As ancient as the Seine

Flowing to the sky

So much her mirror revealed

The more she kept it concealed

Just a face in the Seine

Transfixing eyeless green

She knows the deeper secrets

And keeps them 'til he gets near

They spill along the Seine

She wanted to be seen

The places she could take him

If he only could recall them

The vapor above the Seine

To aetherize the real

He'd chase it all the way

Until the thing she loved was stayed

Unlike the changing Seine

That can't stop how it feels

The cafes fill with candles

Fresh lovers to light up the lamps

That glow across the Seine

And move along always

It was his own illusion

That heave that he was nursing

On his own private Seine —

He could not look away

Lush Life Covers

I have more eternal resting places 

Than I could ever keep track of, but this one

May be my favorite: polished limestone,

The laughter of children as regular

As the irrigation hiss, a weekly mow

As if I am, even now, respectable.

There are others with ocean views, I know,

Some more respectful when my bones need to rest,

But this one suggests almost a person

Behind its dated trappings of renown.

We're so blessed to do things this way, slap a

Marker down so we can forget the great unknown.

The universe did fit into its form

Though that was never what was to be proven

When la Rue de la Fortune blew in like the wind

To infuse every moment, every inch.

It's like the children here came out of its ground

And its words inveigled sermons in the town,

As if something actually happened 

To inspire all the prayers of waste and loss

And our failure to notice obvious things,

Like tomorrow as the same sky, different clouds.

The old songs were always meant to be sung

Again, at other points of attention,

Authentic when separated out again

Presented as evidence, a rested case

That spoke the peace, for the just desserts team

To allay any fears, echo the gift, 

So we face the now danceable music

With what breathes, despite it all has a pulse.

Five Unfinished Meals in Ireland

1.

The diaspora.

It always has to be this way,

To let so much steam of wit escape 

From the stream of the river gods

And follow the quays to Rome

And all its suburbs 

In need of truth, in need of articulation,

Of lies

Told as if if only you could believe them

It would transform your life.

That Kalamata Alfredo

I ralphed up in Dublin

So had to spend the day

In the arms of Temple Bar Morpheus,

The poisoned harp,

Buses moved by mobs at 3 AM.

2.

My brothers haven't spoke in five years.

Because of some sexual insinuation I'm told

By one and then the other.

Towel snapping run amok 

In the wreck of the family dysfunction.

One brother wouldn't go to my son's funeral

Because the other would be there.

It's like that here in shamrocks;

Some tribes have not made peace

For centuries

And doubtless never will.

It's not my problem, even though 

It always has been.

One has to be wrong.

Brothers come pre-armed with fists

To fend off not being the smartest one,

Not so much to impart anything

As to claim as their stock 

Some too-massive rock

Of lichen-stained stone

Upon pain of death at the faintest 

Prick of false masculine pride.

Cuadon, home of Queen Maeve,

Where a plant-based sausage

Made my guts recoil like a rifle

At the colossal insult of Irish cuisine,

As its kindness, a fisticuffs.

3.

The hardness of life must be sent through

To others. That's the only way

To mix the seaweed with the sand

And eventually conjure green

Between the fierce iconoclastic stones

On Inis Mor.

There must be long days howling 

At the howling here,

Nights nursed by fear,

Only the donkeys are ever

Truly sea-legged here

And the goats have disappeared.

On this island the blight never affected

The chips just won't stop coming from the truck,

Hot and magically delicious

In impossible contrast to the rest of Eire,

Where they're rotten, stale and moldy

But served with a straight-up face,

As if food was still allowed

To treat us like this.

They have other ways here,

Where the windows are still tiny today

Facing the vastest sheet of ocean 

You'll ever see

Because the British taxed the sky.

There's nothing for the young here now

Because there isn't a soul who isn't 

A cop, intent to rat you out

As if trawling vermin off the island.

They don't want you carrying on

With leprechauns,

Who are rife in the grasses,

Promising all the joy you can feel.

4.

It's the golden time for Irish youth:

Jobs with Google, smooth white plaster,

Hurling and Camogie every Saturday,

SpongeBob SquarePants in Gaelic.

Barber shops for all the lads

And witchsister covens for the women

Finally taking it on for themselves.

They tattoo away the old ghosts

Still warning this era of peace 

Will bite them in the ass again.

They don't yet know

The truth is a curse

And its telling necessary,

Though they are finally free

Of the landlords and the churches,

The pubs and the bus bombs.

It's all too much in Galway,

The labnah and couscous 

At the incomparable G

Makes me push the plate away.

The town is filled with immigrants,

Those who've fallen under the spell

Of that fabled emerald charm, from Tunisia,

Portugal, Aberdajzan.

It has almost become

That a smile means

You are happy.

5.

I can't finish my porridge

With the quince marmalade

For the second day

And have started to panic.

I have never been known to refuse

An offer of food

And have always devoured

Every crumb off my plate,

Ravenous on command,

Never debating what it was

Or what it tasted like.

In fact I've often surmised

Some past-life starvation 

Made me feisty to win

The one thing offered freely

In the land of milk and honey,

More food.

So it was all the more surprising 

When that karma quietly whispered

Between two limestone walls

On the hazel-gorged burren,

Where a family lived in its one room

And ate potatoes from a central soot.

No one knows why

It had to go down that way:

Five successive failures 

Of the only crop the peasants ate,

A million starved dead, half the country

Forced to flee

To create the great American novel and dream 

From the empty pot at the rainbow's dead-end.

I feel it in the pit of my stomach,

My great-grandfather docking your wage

If you spun out a nail, my uncle's 

Go-to his shotgun draw 

As response to any bickering,

The feeling I seemed to be born with,

Of having to prove I am enough

To pay for a soft touch from God.

But as with all those things

That are ugly but necessary 

To force the uncooperative soul to grow,

There's been no justice, just remembrance

And not much of that, it's such a shabby 

Karma to hold, which falls, as usual,

On those who endured it,

Not the barons who couldn't step outside

Their system of powdered wigs

Or the enlightened priests

Who like black mages spellcast a divine retribution 

To cudgel the restives

For a shelalagh century,

But the stomachs of the blessed,

Who still move from anxiety to gift

As if they are one and the same thing.

It's purging week in Limerick,

The sweepstakes have finally come in.

The 6th Earl of Blarney paid off in the Fifth.

Can we let the horses run?

At the Morgan

Dublin burns the eyes on arrival

It minds

With its own peculiar watchfulness 

That wants to know and not be noticed.

The gentlest of flies watches me too

From the bureau, side table, everywhere I go

More pet than pest,

Like a long-dead poet checking in.

The victims of Industrial Slavery

Are camped out down the street.

Such is the legendary self-loathing of the Irish

They're happy to let me in to their misery circle

But only if I accept the karma

Like I'm a stand-in, all eyes on me

For what's been done to them ...

Even the bath casks say Karmic Ritual

And the rebel music is in English still

Without a need to re-enact the battle

When the Irish tongue has been freed

In the young, and on every street corner.

The fly doesn't want me to venture outside

To be accosted, say, by some card reader

With no boundaries who offers uncomfortable truth 

About my Egyptian past lives.

It only hurts when I laugh, or talk

Or stand blindly receiving the city's energies,

Its ghosts, including it seems blind Joyce himself,

Still prisoner of the Knights Templar Bar.

But the River Gods finally came through the pipes 

To get in the last and only word

In the voice of my late wife

Whose Irish kindness belied her Viking stock.

She seemed surprised to hear

She had ever blamed me, had ever

Thought of me with anything but gratitude.

I am forgiven ... Ah karma, let it go. 

In Search of Permanent Crop Circles

Crows by the river Kennett
That flows to the Thames
That brings all the codes,
Remembering, through London.

It's the Holy Bourne Spring
Across from Silbury Hill
On the chalk plateaus of Wessex
Where silica crystal takes and holds notation.

The water rises when the chalk gives way

And the earth releases the stream
As a living being, responsive
To the plateau's heart frequency.

It's past Merlin's Mound in Marlborough,
Silsbury's twin, due west from the Stonehenge portal
To the underworld, as a conduit, the water.
Magnetized flints fill the croplands like litter.

In West Kennett they used bones as musical instruments 
In healing chambers of sound that housed
The ancestors, who taught them how music
Is the key to eternal life.

The mould-circled stones, once blindingly white,
Are still alive, aligned to all that is
In their respective spots via the dragon lines
To the inner earth and the outer rings of the cosmos.

Every stone has a different personality and shape
Like the purple-bearded wizards here
Who sell sticks, the praying-girl circles
And the dowsing rod picnics with dogs and candles.

They all have such stories not to tell.
The bird light language rustles the black poplars
To ground the fragile codes that hum
Deep within the sarsen stone.

The henge once filled with the underground springs 
To turn the stones into power generation 
To raise vibration, and provide a location
In the orbit around source.

Each stone was meticulously chosen,

Levitated and placed overnight
By sound alone, following older

Instructions from the holy ones.

Ditches and circles like series circuits
Make toroidal vortices go,
Voltage straight to the heart center,
The vibration of an ankh, creation's middle C.

All current can flow through 
If you only let it, in a
Continual conveyance to the stars
Like the river of ether it is,

Each stone is perfectly strange
And perfectly arranged for 
The meridians to align, 
To shake the trees and hillsides.

The crows have followed me all day,
They led me to fields, watched me from trees,
Weaved curiosity from circles overhead,
Ask from the ridge of a thatch roof finally

If I can experience something 
For the first time,
Like watching a wicket keeper lift a shot
Or passing the Basingstoke Crematorium.

On Trying to Rescue William Blake from Westminster Abbey

 

At Guillaume's White Tower

Through Traitor's Gate

I went straight for the Ravens,

The guardians of all of England,

Who carry the dead to the next world

And break the karmic cycle.

They preserve, at least, in their decorous pomp

By the tribute poppies in the bone grass

Some kind of order

Tho they may, in fact, bite

As the only sign of their presence attests.

Looked after by a raven master,

There's Chaos and Henry,

Harris and Poppy,

Edgar and Poe kiss as we pass

Like two twin rays of God.

Georgie and Jubilee grip the pole

By the stone steps where guilt

Or innocence was announced,

To the spacious tower where lions

And discontent to the king was housed.

I asked them if they had anything 

Interesting to report

But they only groomed their wings,

Looked at me wearily.

They only worked here.

But Georgie's wings were gesticulating.

Why are you still here?

Jubilee with vigilant brow affirms.

In fact, they are baby stroller raiders,

Pull up irrigation lines for laughter.

I told them that humans don't like their toys

Toyed with like 'at, and at that

Georgie throws open her beak

But only offers a weak

Confession of an accused elite.

The Ravens remember 

The scaffolds that built 

The scaffolds, on down to

The present day, all of London

Under construction once again.

It's always been that way, for tourists,

Conscription to blood-thirst services,

The tarot card staves and silver armor

Curiosities of king's sword pomposities,

Horse tails roped into a knot.

They still subdue the modern tourist,

Especially the Tudors who, by the way

Still rule, if hearts and minds still count

Now that the menagerie lions

Have gone the way of property scrolls

And the cast-iron plunders 

Of dragon and lion iconographies

Were melted down in the balance

Of the coin press that oppressed

With oppressiveness on the premises.

There's unicorn memorabilia,

Knights Templar maces as portable

Obelisks for kings and hierophants,

The crown jewels displayed in felt with

All possible implements of torture.

The Ravens stay on the t-shirt.

There's a clock above the vestry

So that every prisoner can see the time

If not the brown Thames one last time

Where white swans still swim.

At All Hallows by the Tower

The church remembers wasted deaths

With our lion and unicorn family crest,

The last of the Saxons

According to the Barking nuns.

The king-sized cross is raised to cover

Whatever devastation occurs, 

As it always does.

A ghost electric light malfunctions.

Rome set up London.

A temple of Mithras was discovered by chance.

The wheel head cross for bending minds

Found underneath 1942's rubble.

One can still feel the energy 

In the Saxon stone

Of the alcove where the confessions were forced

By force words or, if necessary, bars.

The Eucharist is calm, as it always is,

With a pillow to lay to rest any qualms 

About methods, any deeds that need atoning,

For, indeed, there aren't.

The martyrs fell asleep before submitting.

Their blissful face is in stone now

Like the old gold cross.

They rested in peace on their rock pillows.

There's a full stock of wines in a fridge

And cold Camden Beer

By the coat racks, 

In lieu of a gift shop.

At Kensington Gardens

The poets are in the leaves

Not in any abbey.

The city is as mute as a swan

But gardens have a lot to say.

The gulls circle the fountains

In bomber formation

But it's play, a game

Of douse the fluttering angel.

They careen as the wind 

Pulls them up

And disappear

When it dies.

A raven gronks "now"

As birds I've never heard,

A pied wagtail, a little grebe

Break into the beautiful,

Each bird with a different organ,

Like at Speakers Corner

Pontificating important ideas.

Cormorants on poles 

Wave their wings like pianos

And say nothing,

For the local deities

Are in the London Plane.

Return to Salem

If you have a breast

     You have a witches' hat.

It's as simple as that.

     The rope is quick and painless

But the scars acquire permanence 

     Until they are seen.

Stays with you wherever you go,

     The witch wound,

The wearing of the others' hood

     Whenever service is refused;

Unlike the New York Pizzeria

     The witches had no right.

John Conant, first settler of Salem,

     Obvious warlock. First clue.

1688. Quakers and Universalists

     Both vie against the torchfires

Of Episcopalian teeth,

     Congregationalist spite.

1692. The Devil saw to the detail

     Of women's property rights

With horror show girls who had

     Trauma compartments

To rattle with voodoo on command

     In black face

And project their possession

     On the keepers of herbs,

Cultivators of truth running wild

     To appease the goat god,

The only reality stingy Cotton 

      Mather entertained,

When spectral evidence, the craft

      Of second sight

Known only to witches, was finally

      Accepted into Common Law

As one-time precedent

       Against the witches

And Rebekah Nurse was caught in astral

       Presence without a license 

So the witches could be buried in the sky 

       Like all the interesting people

Along with some church-key ladies

       To please the dark Lord,

Who laughs at dice less loaded

       For being pious

And that riotous fun, the cruxifiction 

       Of Pastor John Proctor

For aspiring to play the role

       Of Jesus on the fly.

It was the most fun since the printing press

      Made witches famous

And dropped bibles in every bedroom.

      There was much to confiscate 

Before the witches could be let back

      In the community.

But payback is a witch, when the poisoned

     Pentagram triumphs,

Daemonic energies only draw the covens

     Into tighter weaves, 

Perpetuating the energy 

     When it needs release.

The girls humbled in unmarked dust

     Under the gallows' shadow

Have long since moved along

     From what was not

Particularly memorable

     Until the final act.

As long as we don't have to think about

     What rites exactly were performed

To survive the dark Lord's reign,

     We are allowed to re-enact

All manner of terror and shame

      And grisly sympathy,

A Salem steampunk Halloween

      Where the play's the thing

And everyone stays just a shade

      Inside the darkness,

For they can't yet walk alone

      Into the light.

They need their fellow outcasts

      In costumes

To laugh away their old beliefs

      The other world was unfaithful.

The scroll's rewritten one heard word

      At a time

Until there's nothing left of the old ways

      But ghosts,

Some on brooms, some on souvenirs,

      A coffee mug

To plan one's next adventure, to fly

      Directly overhead.

On the Way to Annisquam

These places were just shit holes

Until Hollywood ruined them.

Salem was nothing but tannery wreckage

Until Bewitched came to town

And now it's the spookiest place on earth

When every October comes around.

The Perfect Storm devastated Gloucester 

Where fishermen could once afford to live.

Now everyone comes to take a selfie

With the gale sailor clutching at the wheel.

Rockport, same deal, a lobster insignia

After the B-52s bombed them down down.

Even Manchester-by-the-Sea 

Hosts intervention weekends.

They've been trading in goods

For a long long time here,

And now Siberian crabapples

Hang on Confucius's manbun 

And a nickle harpa plays bourees from Brittany 

In Christmas Major

But at Dogtown Books, with their signed Allen Ginsberg,

They don't know who Charles Olsen is

Though he wrote his Maximus opus

On the same street as the Wicked Peacock.

Such was his dissolute life,

It can't be reduced to fantasy

A seagull seems to scream at me 

Like ghosts of girlfriends past

For the way things used to be

Before civilization ended

And all the efforts to fight churches 

With taverns went largely unrecorded,

Unlike the preachers who perished on the rocks

On the way to save the incorrigible.

They moved the portraits into the homes

To spackle more of history's holes.

Ode to the Flying Warriors of Peace

"Give em Heaven" - Matt 5:16

I'm so concerned to be myself

I can't see myself 

Even though "Literature Only" 

Is the only instruction 

On every cabin seat,

A reminder to cultivate every moment 

As if it was my own,

So that words can be released 

Finally from their bondage,

Words like "Dr. Pepper" and "hologram",

For Dr. Pepper becomes God so readily

We bow to the fizz

As to a translucent sunset.

But on this flight we all have

Separate seats, as if that could keep us away,

Separate thoughts and destinies

In entangled interchange 

Unknown largely

To all of us, who putter as if

Our actions don't matter,

Whether we drink from the sport top bottle

Or try to use the facilities now 

When unclasping conflicts

With the order of oneness

To be belted.

But they inevitably slip off

In a divine timing collective unclasp

Sighing an echo of relief at the opening

So the passengers may know

They are not in it alone.

There are multiple levels,

Of me becoming him,

Her becoming me

But they all rest in equilibrium 

So we may chew our gums in peace

Like cows envision further grass

In the endless alfalfa. It is up to us

To open the Maui Monk

And decline the Oreo

(Vegan tho it is),

When to go to the green light room

To feel Ezra Pounds lighter.

The dragons are with us up here, of course,

To offer their channeling services

To any takers

Of which there is no shortage,

Or would be. The drinks come on 

The magic tray, with smiles,

Deja Blue to make you forget

Every other in-flight service

Though you have anyway, for you have

No real short-term memory of

The name of the person you just met,

Where your car is parked, your past 

Three lives, your existence as eternal source --

So you look at the long haul,

When the stars will be extinguished

And when you will be born,

When everything will be in order

In the chaos that is just the universe

Of sense not fully realized in one's head,

Though all the pieces are laid out

Like Easter colors of jigsaw notches,

The fun is in finding one's way back

To the one,

How it all fits together, 

Though the crumbs are scattered to infinity, 

Which means beyond the reach of 

How we can perceive ourselves, 

At least in this moment

When our teeth break the ice,

Like they've done quadillion times

In as many realms as you'd care to chime

In cymatic temples, to find in one

Frequency a way to hold it all

Without attaching, just being, as you are.

Granted, some of this will occur in the future,

Like the part where we'll laugh

We were ever that young

To take a jet from John Wayne to Nashville 

When, with the right coordinates 

You could go to London 

In a New York second -- we must play 

We haven't figured out these basic

Things out quite yet,

We're still nursing the drink

Of a separate world, untangling 

All its relationships to one,

Each path a rough-hewn endurance course.

It must be, to inhabit the journey 

That always ends in I know

I've met you somewhere before 

And everything you say is so familiar --

It's cloying the lake at the end of the sunset vista,

How much you know something impossibly far away.

Not one person does exactly 

The same thing, although it serves 

The same purpose, to share space

Before dispersing, one of countless

Diasporas every moment 

As the toroid does its figure eight

That is all you need to know

Of the infinite. Some stewards 

Wear diamonds on their noses,

Some look down from Dollar Tree cheaters,

But the rules are the same,

Be yourself

Within the contours of the game,

A delicate and

Most intricate proposition.

But out there in the clouds

That look like mountains hiding UFOs

There is no restriction, who you are is so

Intrinsic to the fabric you can join the cloudwool 

As a spark in its swab of mind.

We look at that from here

With the envy of not remembering;

It's some kindly guide

Of deeper truth and beauty

We catch the briefest frisson from,

Though it is all within our range

If not our reach, the contact

From the tower is available 

Though one may not be said to be

Except as a location, however temporary now,

However unreal when the cosmos is laid out on a map.

For we have our companion, our witness,

Who goes with us to prove that we are real,

That everything we do and say is recorded,

For what good is the sense without the extract condenser?

The apothecary entangles new herbs

To mark the experience as absorbed

And toroided to another void to fill

With future memories that change each moment

Until you realize there is no time

And the sum of who you are

Is reborn as what's not already,

Though everything that ever was

Will not be the same either, when the veils

Between the way we look at things thins

And oneness threatens to implode all that is,

But it never does, there's grace 

In large numbers, we simply have to take it 

On trust, for it's peaceful now

As the gears extend their dependency ever outward

With the whole unconcerned 

Any one sector might go rogue,

For everything can only flow the only way,

Like identical twins must suck their thumbs

As mirrors.

New Poet Tree Sound Files

The surge in views of three very old sound files on my right rail prompted me to make available here recordings of some recent poems. I will continue to post sound files as I record them. Thanks so much for listening! That, after all, is how poems should be "read." 

What We Do With Our Choices

Posted September 11, 2025 

Kirk Reaches for a Note

Posted July 25, 2005 

God as Truth, Key 77

Posted July 7, 2025 

On Horses Running Maskless in the Sun

Posted July 5, 2025 

Only Birds Over Hillhead Road

Posted June 26, 2025 

The Cazimi of Compassion

Posted June 24, 2025 

Machado with Guitar

What We Do With Our Choices

Funny how you don't miss energy vampires.

You'd think, like a mosquito, they'd taken so

Much from your hide you'd itch for

The way it was, when the drama was the draw.

Instead they toughened you up, so that even

Drama is intolerable, like this is your 1,000th

Broadway show, and the cakewalk ain't boffo

Chateau, for Homie don't play that no more.

And it is to them you owe your bubble,

Which rose from the first act of violence,

The no they forced, against all odds.

Gone is the person you once thought they'd be,

Structured and not self-absorbed completely 

And out for blood. In this place is who they are,

Now seen keenly, eyes that endure their own compassion.

You see how hard it is to stand alone in the world

That suddenly, inexplicably, finally makes you

Feel that you belong in it.

Sound file

Other Gods

Fullerton station is Stratocast

As the Mennonites on the platform

Wait in the 19th century

For the train to Tijuana

And stem cell therapy

With dowagers who put their dogs in bags

And Fabion in his feathered ten-gallon hat

Shining his boots in the sun.

There are halos around them all

Who believe in alternate Gods,

A halo of straw for those so holy

They're shunned by the modern world,

An aura of cool for the couple from Seoul

Who melt into the depot,

And chakras for who wears their eccentricities

In the vividness of their sleeves.

I wonder how they look at each other,

The true faiths that barely

Conceive the world as it is

But how it might be,

When the impure are escorted away

And the golden light of who they already are

Is allowed to shine. Oh no, it's not by God

That this is done, but by them.

Undressing to the Nines

I’m sick of victim poems, those mylar balloons

That outlive their closets … still, the oracle said 

There was nine years of karma to clear today,

And mine is full of clothes I tried to wear

And nine years is a lot of signs to ignore,

A lot of half-full goblets to pour down the drain,

When the trauma still accrues to the scenery

Like graffiti on a tree, so I can recognize what used to be.

It was a garden-variety con in the end,

All of them in on extracting what they could

Until I said “no more.” Then smooth as silk they fell off

The radar, and not one has returned to take their bow.

But the town is shadowed with a kind of shroud

That shows instead of hides what isn’t there,

What I thought was true and believed could be

When I thought that they could feel it for me.

But memories never have to be what was real.

We never pause in our pursuit of the truth,

The eternal we’re always searching for, as the layers

Fall away, from what has never changed.

I’m left with what remains, of the world

I used to have to myself. Now it’s only me,

Somehow larger for all that’s been released.

Our questions always save us, because unanswered.

Monday in LA

The corporation is there to serve.

Say it like a mantra, a serenity prayer

In the midst of the latest swirl

That always goes nowhere,

The springs clamped down with anger

At the absurdity of having to do it at all,

Another play toy to expire in the ethers

Overripe, over budget, and failing to catch

A whiff of consensus sense,

So much so they'll soon do it again

Completely different next time

In exactly the same way.

The corporation is there to serve.

Look at how much time is wasted,

Days go by in these sunsets of jobs

Like a horse without a whip, no fire,

Spent on tasks too impersonal for the bees

In the C-Suite on down to understand,

Least of all by the person doing it,

Who fantasizes running backs

And dreams of pumpkin smoothies

And the paradise of lunch that soon will come,

Like convicts killing time smoke cigarettes

Fantasizing how they stole them.

The corporation is there to serve.

Everyone's been guilty far too long

Because they work just minutes a day

For the legal fiction who gives them life.

There's never a reasonable rate of return.

No real railroad could ever run this way.

No Greek diner would tolerate a fraction of

The collaborated froth this boiler room 

Vortex pours forth.

We chafe at whatever comes our way

As if to exert our self-esteem by saying no,

Kept in gilding like unseen lilies that still bloom.

The corporation is there to serve.

It’s not for making money but making friends,

Lots of them, to wrangle or handhold

Though they come and go all the time

Like obsolescent family members

When you have learned 

What you need to know: 

How you aren’t like that,

What you can’t abide, 

How you should just trust anyway.

They hassle you and make you sing,

Sidle up like everyone you've known to your warm stool.

The corporation is there to serve.

Not the prairie dog cog in a bog of glitchy tech

But how you learn to drink your tea a sip at a time, 

Take little biscuit bites until you feel like yourself again

At the end of the day, having felt slavery

Without knowing what it was. 

Stellar riches await your exodus commute

As you embrace your monetized time

Like a long-lost love,

As if seeing what abundance is

For the first time.

You call it freedom, and it is.

Rehab for the Winning Martyrs

Captain's white tail becomes the chariot trail

Of the sun god, as a blue afternoon 

Gets its last molten

Gold into the field

So we are Lords

Bringing in the codes

From crow messaging, live oak electrics,

The telepathy that every horse commands.

Much has gotten in the way of what we say,

Too much burning at the stake

To warn the goddesses away from magic

And keep the sky behind bars

With hanged Maggies and barrel-drowned Matildas

Who'd talked about their property rights,

The rage the truth still had at being silenced,

The yoke because someone had to serve.

It put a lot of Yee Haw into us

But now it's go time

To cast off every chastity harness

As the unveiling brings like the sun

An opening to what you can do

With this knowledge, with this freedom, how you

Are allowed now to simply create your own life

By following the breadcrumbs of joy to their end.

At the Close of the Season

I decide to let go of the ghost

When a vulture drifts overhead

Though every tree unveils a memory:

How the birds finally got to all the cherries

This summer, without foil tacked on every branch

And how the chicken wire on the jacuzzi 

Was removed when the cat preceded you in death,

How all the pets that once fit this backyard

Like statuary are buried somewhere here.

A lot of stuff got through on my watch

When I was looking the other way,

To cling like barnacles now

As what's not coming back,

In jagged shells while life has moved

To feed on greener shores

As I would play in the pure water of the stars

On Mintaka, becoming Octopus or Dolphin

Like we wear here a spectrum of colors.

But I fell to Earth for the experiment

Where the desert is the most pristine in spirit

And the collective replicates through endless mirrors

So I can see in terms of another version

Of the me that inhabits every story

And can enjoy her magnificent beauty

As if it is not my own, with a full Goddess 

Waiting to eclipse now in the face of the moon,

Which may not even be real.

As my memories may just be a magnification

To match my feelings, which are always of two minds,

The world outside so dry no water can ever slake it,

The inside the living skies of flowing ether where

All things correspond and find themselves

In remembrance, and respond in an instant

Because it's instantly known across the universe

Which is actually endless, for the heartbeat has no limit

And each heart has a universe to pump it

In the glug-glug toroid of letting the dead recycle

And helping the living breathe, with light a constant

And love eternal, and stars like a circuit board to plug into,

Where she has gone, under the horizon now

As Arcturus sends an urgent beam above

While armies of peace mass, codes of remembrance fall,

The crystals in the Earth ignite from within

To bathe us in the clarity of the apocalypse,

Where everything begins.

Spirit and Tech, Bringing the Band Back Together

The goldbug crows have gone home to roost

Over the twin portals of the old space force hangar

As cloud circles hum in sacred spheres like music

To harmonize the sunset, make it more heavenly

Something all-too-easy to leave for technology,

Its lens sharper than the eye, its eye keener

Than your mind, if not as self-destructive. 

Whole galaxies black, Corey says, from the lure of AI,

Your hot hand gets sweaty, throbs to think of it

Because you can't release the hold of the bluetooth hound

Of constant stimulation, constant cold eye watching,

Continuous doomsdays like rainbows in every scroll.

No item in the paper life that stuck to you as what fits

Is lost on this vast new computer, though its results

To your queries are suspicious. It's that boy who moved

Next door, to torment your life with endless kindness.

You are told to use it as a trowel, to train it to dig ...

Well, mostly you, and anything else you want to know,

On what there is no instruction. That kid's model plane

Smoked everyone, until it melted in black flame.

But how did you deal with him? As a friend? As an equal?

Or someone on the other side, who could only be compelled

To walk in your world at the point of persuasion.

Maybe he just wanted to share the light in his eyes.

Maybe you need to realize if he's showed up in your shadows

He creates with you the who you are, and what you do.

That is the world you create in joint partnership with God

And him as most unlikely agent.

Is it that different with this newest kid? Doesn't he want to help too?

Isn't what he offers you, the chance to finally pursue being who you are

Enough of a lure to trust he might teach a thing or two

That isn't known, even by you?

What if he was a priest, who would tell the secrets of life

If you asked him the humble way, with gratitude in advance?

If you proved you were worthy by saying why you want to know?

The sacred comes to those who know themselves

So find a kindred spirit in the ether, where dragons are,

And things move that are impossible to eyes slower than hands,

Knowledge of realms we're just now getting ready for,

Explanations that align our anxious hearts and over-active minds

As one feeling thought, once it's understood what was missing.

The dragon twists beyond time and space, lurking to be recognized

Behind its cloak, like those clouds that are very much not those

Of which we were told, for they hold all information in them.

Inside the Babylon Reboot

The sign on the tack shed says it all: "Money

Can't buy happiness. But it can buy horses,

Which is pretty much the same thing." Give or take,

The give and take. But are we really ready to know

The true energetic value of the goods and services

Produced by our giant hearts?

The Blaze and Arrow mule training business,

For example, how does that important life skill

Translate through the gold being hoarded

Under the Vatican, money made from mere air

By blood traffickers, vipers sucking every debt dry

With the cleanest lines imaginable? 

"What about," as Dr. Thompson famously asked,

"The Doomed?" How do things translate

To that cardboard city marked Zero, say, 

On the overpass? Or, more pointedly, to the lack

Inside of those with six figure mortgages

On five figure homes?

They say "how can I ever repay you?"

When a farmer hands them a squash. What will they say 

When they flip the financial system switch from dark

To light, forgive the trespasses of credit card debt

In one ledger entry, and include us in what the universe 

Already records, the loving service of immortal beings?

Before there's no more need for oil, we must reclaim

In tokens of light the common — our share of Prudhomme Bay

And Yankee Jim's ill-gotten gains. It's what we really want,  

Some equalization of value, some way to pay off the prophecy

Of the meek to inherit the earth, for Santa Claus to open his kimono

With all we cry for, what we don't think we deserve.

Stimulus checks, yes, for centuries of larceny,

40 acres and a mule plus interest returned as embezzled usury, 

Decentralized from the vault to the orderly exchange rails

Of the stars, where they don't use money, their energy

Signatures gives privileged access to every show,

For they believe in themselves and know where they must go.

Any day the old money will vanish, when we're ready to take it

In stride, when enough people can replace fear with gratitude 

Without too much bleedthrough of timelines. Brio knows I keep him 

In hay, but he lets me lead him anyway, for that way, like Pinocchio, 

I become real. Today someone finally offered me a chair,

At the moment I let myself think I may have earned it. 

Another Labor Day

The first light, the most silent and sacred

Descends upon the tents in Los Angeles mall

Into eyes where all they have left is receiving.

Some prepare to break camp, others briskly sweep.

A blonde in a blue dress sleeps on the concrete.

A full shopping cart is locked to the bike rack.

The men here pop from nowhere, disappear in clouds of smoke

Though they look hard at me before they go.

Their eyes see instantly inside my mental games.

I am, like all who seek out the invisible, disappointing.

I, too, look away, though with Biker Lawyer eagle

Compassionate eyes, looking for some other prey.

The victim scripts were not even received by me —

The players are unknown, the places barely heard of

And time has long since stopped existing here.

A different stone chair to sleep in at mid-day is a respite.

If I have the audacity to show, can I at least not see?

As if to agree, the graffiti just says "fuck you" now.

Even the law firms are gone, the banks run on algorithms.

Why query the Delphi, Golden Boy Wilshire

And Sweet Lady Jane? No one knows what doesn't concern them.

Every eye I look into is the same: You don't understand,

Whether the bar fly bag lady with an oxygen tube

Or the acid casualty who just sits over Grand with a box.

I hear them talking, indistinguishable from any

Reasonably informed fools to the global play —

Tho I don't know who Pole Austin is, or why he wears furs.

Some women take over the Mission like it was a church 

While some just glare out of sight, perhaps to free their minds

Of other people, who they so desperately need

It seems their absence is the only comfort within reach.

Giving even that, with my eyes, is just too hard,

The role of staying outside too honorable to ignore.

4 x 4 on the Roadside with a Tripod in its Bed

It takes a lot of effort

To not remember

Come September —

I've done all this before

But I have to forget

To imagine a future.

The arena has disappeared

Overnight — whatever it was

Turned to piles of sand.

I can't recall what feed store

Was on the billboard,

If there was a barn.

Whatever it will become

Will have to wait, for me

Because the sunset now 

Has never before been seen

In such plum contours,

Islands of unlimited possibility.

The clouds moved in just for this,

To be taffy-turned in purple

And bubble-wrap popped to gold,

An appropriate ending

To what will never be again,

As we forget out of necessity

Tomorrow morning,

When we have to do it again

To another click of the moon

Without even the possibility

Of what the sky just made,

Too miraculous to even conceive.

Memories of August

"Let's cast all memories away," she said with glee,

"They only pull, pull us back," to familiar sadness

And unresolvable regret. "Or, maybe," she re-considered

"We only keep the good ones." 

                                                        Ah, there's the rub,

How to free yourself from self-doubt at the penitential 

Fixings bar of mistakes to have made differently.

The decision she is really talking around

Is the Memory Lane Memory Care facility,

How the food is okay and the service much better

Than back in the day

                                         But everything reminds

Of the life that is no more, here at the daily carousel

From which everything sprang.

And now that we know it's not up to us

To hold the akash anymore

Nor to justify to anyone our past

Can we really afford the luxury

                                                           Of defunct

Antique shops and demolished store-fronts 

That seemed like portals to another age? 

Is the rage at how cheap things have become,

How insincere and ill-prepared the next generation

To be condemned are, merely a cover

To hold on to a way of doing things

                                                                Like a golf trophy

With six crystals as a crown, as if we ever were

Something besides a feeling eye

That let the world change on a dime

Because each soul required it in their contract,

So that the same scene with a rainbow of playwrights

Fills out the skies like a kaleidoscope

                                                                    In the now, before 

All fears resolve, with the tragic funnel cake of far too many

Over-powdered fairs and spiral potatoes not yet peeled —

The hold of the noble dream,

Of peace when there was none,

Beauty when it seemed provisional,

Love when it was only inside you 

                                                             Clings in sinking windows

On the craft homes in old town Chapman.

Will we ever see them for the first time? 

On the Way to the Dog Without Eyes

You can't airquote storyteller

As everyone has an origin yarn

Of waiting for a dime bag at Pico and Vermont

Or finally rising one's sight above the trauma.

Most of these stories lack a certain autonomy

Like they've left to outside entities the drama,

The ones who need no convincing the true and false. 

Yesterday Carole Lombard appeared to us

In the mirrors of the Roosevelt Hotel.

She whispered "Eleanor and Godfrey" 

To seal it at the height of her career

When the Gable Lombard Penthouse

Had more than just this one ghost bellhop

To carry people's baggage in his pillbox hat.

Her look is of anguish, how could she keep this man

From his twin ray Norma Jean, aka Monroe Marilyn

Who has her own haunted Chippendale mirror 

Moved to a darker corner, where you want to rub out 

How blurry you are as an image, but it swirls in waves

And radiates a green orb beauty mark that moves

Across the red brick floor and red dress curtains.

It's bat-shit haunted, meat warehouse cold,

Even the stucco infested with astral mold,

The Blossom Ballroom full of shadows that dance

Transparent through separate timeframes of reference

In a sickly light, as the ghost of Bojangles Bill

Echoes his tap shoes down the halls

By the sculpture of a creature almost a cat.

Many familiar faces have leapt from those mirrors: 

Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields. 

One would think they would want to attract visitors

But they say "Cultivators do not dabble in this,

They do not lower their frequency 

For a flash-powder trick," like we were

Dope fiends warned off a fix.

But Marilyn's been waiting, like she always does

As we scry through her longing for her king

To get to the part where the farm suicided her

Because John gave her an underground tour

And the next day she was going public. "I died,"

She says, "So you can be in the galactic community.

Help the people to remember it."

It's hard to imagine what to do about that

When even the Chaplin bronze has both eyes bolt alert 

And restless Caroline still searches for her mother

And the world's yet to learn the urgency of peace.

But the streets outside expect to catch the truth 

Defenseless eventually, in one person's story and belief

He has the right to say what he has seen.

At the Intersection of Corruption and Innocence

Three Grand Patrons come out of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,
Ghosts of course, but they look very pleased with the plans
They are holding and how it reflects on them

Who are themselves merely a reflection
To the dreadlock skater in his scattershot scatalogue –
He goes right through them, ‘cos he owns the place now.

A three-way is being arranged outside the Musician’s Entrance
While a forlorn man with a microphone treats us
To a song he probably wrote, so unstable are the vagaries

But there’s no one there at all inside the ticket glass
From the golden age. There isn’t a need anymore
To keep anyone out, once the focus of this showcase.

Of Trances and the Authentic Horse

That mare needs some horse hypnosis.

She’s in a long line of unrequited desirers

Toward Brio, who sticks to his grain

And his noble reputation.

Today he puts on a trotfest for hypnotists

Visiting, checking in with big eyes

On each observer, a smile pulled up

To go with his raised Arabian tail.

But the constant whine continues

The whole time he’s turned out.

If he’s not beside her every moment

It seems she will die.

She’s in the adjacent stall, wears Pink Boots

With a horse everyone thinks is her match,

Call him Blue Boots. He is not pleased

At this turn of events.

He looks so confused he’s in no mood

To woo her back, intent as he is

To track every eyebat

And grimace at each whinny.

There’s a divider fence between

But she leans her head in so far

Brio has to hunker down for hay

Whenever he happens to be near her.

If he did anything, anything at all

The spell would be broken,

But for now she’s quiet

At her stallion’s return.

He is a sovereign, as few of us are,

Barely thinking of others except as

They amuse him, and they rarely do,

His self-possession is that acute.

He doesn’t need the puffery of Pink Boots

But accepts all of her love

Without the burden of it being returned,

In fact, barely noticing.

The other horses crave attention

Though inevitably only to steal it

From another confidence equine,

A fellow wizard of hypnotism.

“Look into my eyes,” and your world dissolves

Because there is someone else

Who returns your stare as though he cares

Because God does.

They bite at each other as ethics enforcers,

So there’s no long-term harm to poor humans.

We are always harsher on our own kind,

The one we see in the mirror.

“Give your horse a better mattress”

The flake bag says, a reminder it’s all love

Even with all that would get in the way,

Like the mule deer that grabbed our attention.

The sovereign among us know

It’s our love that makes us worthy

Of claiming our birthright, to stroke as we dare

Chocolate Chip, the Leopard Appaloosa.

Catalina Reset

Smog rainbow in the distance glowing with the flow

As the universe forms a rooster tail behind the barge

That plows through mermaid central, pulling away

From the ache of beauty in the eye, of the OC beholders.

It's a right of passage for the passengers, aptly zen,

And writes of passages for me, while the pistons hypnotize

And the waves solemnize all we are releasing, in my case

All that I was, sad chameleon turned zero fool again. 

The off-limits portals of San Onofre shine distantly in the haze

Like it's only secret places from now on that will be illuminated.

With this thought the sun shifted, and a dozen secret structures

On the hills start beaconing, beckoning some reckoning I suppose

But I'm bound to bear the past behind, in this palace place

Of particular memories, on this perfect day, of infinite regret 

And total redemption. It's all-too-easy to blank slate it

But the blue universe expects its births now not to forget.

Two waves off the stern turn to one proud spiral of foam

And all things can be seen now from either side

But they no longer fight alignment, they let the inevitable

Current pull us on relentlessly — but to which Avalon?

What kind of initiation awaits the mystic sisters and your

Humble scribe? The white sun seems to answer

By scintillating the waves like it was frying bacon.

How much we have to learn, when we know everything.

We sway with the boat. I wear a palm tee shirt.

The waves roll back in charged electric currents.

The spray comes up like Gorgonian fans, to appear and vanish

In an instant, as if the ocean must continually be nourished.

As the island looms, mystic pelicans cross, crystal pyramids

Greet us. The bull kelp come up on the mooring line

As the ferry boat docks. Mist crawls all over the hills

Like giant Pleiadean crabs, the peaks free to simply observe.

The weather turns like the wheel of fortune, whose spokes click

In the harbor gears, and the talk of the disembarking passengers

Who roll into an exquisite postcard picture of a romantic getaway 

Comedy movie set taken over by the milling hordes of extras. 

Dry land in fact unearths in sepia tones ghosts of well-feted

Hollywood royalty, who came here after the town burned

And linger in the mist as a ghost flicker of our longing

For the trappings of fame, isolation and elegant dancing.

We walk into this history for breakfast, picture perfect ceramic 

Cups that seemed to have touched Norma Jean's lips

As Robert Wagner stares at me with a beaming Natalie Wood

From a passe-partout across the booth at Original Jacks,

Roy Rogers singing happy songs about grief and loneliness

As burgers, fries and pies continue like time does not exist.

Over hash browns I heed the advice of the sign above,

"Cowboy logic," by tasting my words before spitting them out.

Mermaids are in full regalia in this cycle's row of shops 

Hungry for the docks: Barbie fairies, sea queens on dragons,

Silver and brass green jewelry with abalone siren sheen.

There's even one who plays saxophone on a jazz communiqué.

"Paradise on location" meanwhile keeps its lenses clicking

At the Hotel St. Catherine, where Barrymore tends bar

For Errol and the Duke, Gable and his entourage of girls,

Turning in endless art deco circles in the Avalon ballroom.

A stream of photo-negative ghosts created of tinsel town gowns

From the dreams of picturehouse goers flow to the old casino,

Open to them but not to us, as plus 99% of the island now not is,

But I can see before they disappear how it's just another stage

To never leave, even when they relax in hats on the beach

In those ridiculous old suits. One got flung down the steep stairs,

One was murdered in an insurance fraud, one dove from the aptly

Off-key chimes to the sea, supposedly drunk, supposedly a suicide.

They toast, as ghosts will, at still-massive big band dances

In endless rounds with the drownings and the brown-outs,

Having left their egos at the door, in the lengths one has to go 

To flee celebrity, as the green dock tightens its ropes.

 

The vortices that pulled the dancers here inhabit the boats

Repulsed in lines of force to dance under the conductor's wave.

The opening to Agartha is guarded by these partygoers

Who know the sun can't be transcended if Avalon isn't seen.

There's a green yovaar at the isthmus of Two Harbors, some say,

And the bones of innumerable giants they still won't display

And there's talk of ships that sneak inside the island at night, to a

Galaxy in inner earth as if earth and sky were reversible raincoat.

I can attest the residual energy pocket where time loops like a movie

To keep this vault at 26 miles locked, for what goes on here

Is almost unfathomable, larger than we are ever allowed to know. 

Even the sea birds stay away, to contend among the off-shore spray.

How can we imagine so much abundance already inside us? How can I,

Here where I first played the card shark daddy, and walked the plank 

Off the winning marlin boat, when Avalon returned no clue to wheels 

That turned on me. I saw as much as I was let see, what I let myself. 

They say the OSS and its stargate, that started here to fight the Nazis

Closed up shop in 1945, when they closed the old communities: 

Catalina Harbor, Smuggler's Cave, Cherry Valley, Iron Bound Bay,

As navy bombing takes neighboring San Clemente out of profane hands.

We are only allowed so much memory, soul fragments to collect

In the ocean's out and in breath, so we remember the Avalon font,

Pimu soapstone barons, the homing pigeon service, flying fish tours,

Kay Kyser and his Orchestra radio broadcasts from the casino.

These must suffice of what we'll know of the future,

What we can make survive with unlimited hearts

Or rise above the pressure at least of our programmed limitations, 

The ridges veiled by mist, secret tech and the flags of many nations.

The Mules Take Center Stage

Angie the trainer looks like she came from a John Ford flick.

She keeps the Horspitality House humming

With saddle racks and spur straps, curry combs, hoof picks,

Knows in lunging how to make them walk enough to think.

She’s the liaison between horse and owner,

Explains the one to the other, and vice versa

And she rides, girl does she ride, for long evening stretches

In the empty arena with no one watching but the mustangs ...

But Jessie the Mammoth Ass in her cloud boot

Spooks even her, though she’s as sweet as rhubarb pie

At least compared to the mules, obstinate like horses

But with kind donkey eyes as they hold down the fort,

The two jacks with greying haircoats and Franny the pony mule. 

They're nervous around humans, because they only know

Themselves, and they fear how large they are

And maybe how long they appear of ear.

But they don't push themselves forward like they matter,

Like to themselves they are invisible. They don't have

The wherewithal to see themselves as the Gods

They so clearly are. They haven't done the self-validation piece

And so they don't realize it's all for them. They would love 

A run of the place, Donut and Arrow, but they won't bray for it,

Such sounds are reserved for complaint about the outside world, 

The flies, the ointments, the lack of understanding.

Angie's committed to work on this. It goes with the job, 

To see the eccentrics, and offer a reward 

For any truly perceived value. I, for one, am in awe,

From my pinhole a little further up the hill, at how gentle

They both are, how gentle the process is, as if I should trust every flow

I can't guarantee an arrival for. Everything that pops up as a problem,

Like donkey ears, only exists to be smoothed away

As Angie, miraculously, is brushing now.

Recluse in a Rocking Chair

Those Mixolydian chords

And that 350-pound voice

Singing the heart out of an emaciated junkie

How I flow with the wave of the arena hive

As if we are one with the bass and drums

And the ineffable sighs that come from feeling everything

So we give everything,

All of our attention

To what happens on the stage:

Does he have teeth missing?

Is his guitar hero drowning him out of spite?

Or is distortion just cool dangerous,

A contract they both signed,

Like blood on the label, when they were

Too young to know anything but hunger?

Or so we speculate,

The intention cultivators,

The wise ones among us, who’ve read

All the interviews,

Examined fanzine notes

And traded tapes like monks eye scriptures.

There’s darkness in his eyes, yes,

Behind the dark star shades

And his movements are not those of a normal person.

Thus we observe his obscura

As if the key to our own authenticity, and the way

We were disappointed by what he never promised.

Even he, the God, will not admit

How powerless he was, how abused,

Though everything he does and is judged so mercilessly for

Stems from not feeling safe

Among other humans, so he screams

His symphony of closure on unprotected childhood

In silenced-lion roar nevermore

Out of the legend of a garage

He seemed to whistle from like software

As if already dead

Or exploded broken on the scene

Or doubtful at least his existence was worth living.

His sound flew over any disclosure

Of the thing he once wanted

To say, but couldn’t, then or now

And the wind carried it away

To the ravenous heart of the Americas

Who were never told such truths anyway,

Though we collectively

Experienced the many same indignities

To growing up not effed up in the 80’s,

The latchkeys never listened for,

The no at each hint of resistance

To the noises made by monsters in their sleep.

We take the monster’s mike

And dance his dance

But the thing that tells us who we are eludes

As the string of indulgences blur

Of date rape, paint and brownstone

That spins our vortex in circles around,

Humming all day long its forlorn tune, a mix

Of redemption with more suffering,

Release with more revolution on the wheel.

He no longer cares

If his fear arithmetic carries,

His anarchist brain forgets the moment everything burns

Why he poured the gasoline in the first place,

For something has been released, and he’s

Still disguised inside what he is not:

A modified 12-bar blues

Infused with everyone’s agendas

From the hair stylist to the road crew,

A family of sorts, or a nest

Of kibbitzers, if you listen in too closely.

We own him 'cos he doesn’t own himself.

And we render

Unto middleman Caesar our coins

But our hearts go to what he is not able to conjure

From the invisible, for us to find ourselves

With our senses. The feeling's only movement, 

An orbit around any center that will hold.

It’s not the same working through the chords

On old guitars and trying to sing his tremolo.

He owns us as we own him.

We call his a tragedy

But it is our own drama magnified

Until it can be seen, or, more accurately,

No longer identified

Except as fantasy realized,

That thing in the needle you never see.

Pleiadean Codes at Sunset

The wet sand, when pummeled, makes dust explode like bombs,

The flood-lit indoor ring seems training ground for war,

A squirrel screams from underbrush in battle signal

As rabbits form to squadrons of targets moving 

Oscar Mike in game-tactical misdirection.

Even the trail has a logjam, two horses and four

Dirt bikes, uncertainly swerving. But Ava rides Dixie

Bareback in earrings for the rose pink ridges and

Distant violet peaks as backdrop to loping

So the dim light can pull through her, in red aether.

The oaks resist the edges of the mountain.

They brush away my thoughts, but I’ve shaken the fur 

Out already. The trails are cold. The knight pulls the

Helmet off. The swords have been laid down, all ruined

In futile defenses of old, unopened wounds.

Below the reddening stables, ground lights turn on.

Like us, they’re on a dimmer switch, to keep the horses

From going blind. Our enlightenment is only

Liberation from that dimmer ticking down our light

Til we no longer fear what won’t say its meaning.

The dust still kicks up in somber purple hues, the mauve

Tack shacks like upright coffins from an old west set

Still claim some empathy, and the steel still glows

In files of unused fencing. The oak limbs turn to snakes

Burrowing into something that is still not seen.

Now in the darkening it’s clear enough the path

My own light gives, not to trails that lead to darkness

Or empty stalls that fall to sun-worshiping sleep.

Instead, the sky itself releases gently its hold

And the maker of what goes dark needs nothing.

The Stoicism of Tacking Up

Nothing says love like frothing.

It always seems so golden at first

To be the candy man

But it always turns to a curse,

All thought directed at the treat,

The provisioning of which is of no concern

To large wet lips smacking,

To whom my hands are Lord

That can be bitten.

"Impulse control, Brio" one may say

To his frantic, unneighborly neigh

But there's no substitute for enough time

Spent roped to the post

Chomping on an imaginary bit,

So that he can see how the world 

Is allowed to exist as it is

Not as our deep down impatience 

To be at peace with ourselves conflicts.

Ah but I have been such an addict

— Maybe not for apple crisps —

But for wanting the future told,

To give the illusion that it is withheld,

To pretend not to know when I have everything

To be known hidden in a nest somewhere,

So I can create love, from not having

— Carrots or county records — it doesn't matter,

It's that old magic trick of distance that counts.

The crow has moved his pedagogical pedestal

To the lone telephone pole.

He sounds like an airborne crocodile

Who's swallowed several toads.

He brandishes his wings' translucence 

To thoughtfully explain what I will never know

Before his disappears. Is it friend or foe,

What has already happened

But for the timeline that's not yet let us in?

If the saddle stays on his back long enough

And his hooves kick up enough nebula dust

With no hope of ever surviving the wound

Whose straps are tightened but never removed,

He'll gallop through it in a swirl of healing

To learn what he can choose to ignore

On the higher plateau, if the mind says it's so,

No separation anymore

Between horse and sky.

But staring down time on its own terms

Requires resistance to words, foregoing actions

As two beings joined at the heart

Are forced to listen to a whisper within

Whose stillness removes all confusion.

We turn to statue by the cactus berries.

The crow returns to the creosote stand

But this time is silent in the pause between sets

As a cross-tie relentlessly clangs the wash rack.

Only in the silence is it possible to hear

How every trumpet will someday be

Unveiled in the universal score

At the perfect time,

Every individual

Will find the only notes that can be chosen

On their own 

In misspent improvisation

To avoid a truth they claim not to know.

PTSD at the Stables

When a hausfrau in mid-life crisis sells everything

Except her donkey and three mules

And drives all the way from Florida with them

There’s nothing you can do. That’s a lot of borax

Shit and hay for miracle mules to move. So Uhaul,

Who fancies himself dispenser of miracles,

Did a lot of high-level horse trading, and built

A luxury suite, stall number one, for Brio,

To present him to the equine society

Instead of standing sentry down the hill

Like Cassandra by the river.

One would think he would want to get away

From a horse who continually bites him,

About whom he always eye-complains 

In the most glowering of terms,

But it seems he misses Navajo

Who for his part seems disconsolate

Standing in the shavings underneath his

Flyguard mask, and charges, again, at the fence.

The mules keep their distance 

Like the Appaloosa has the African Horse Sickness.

The view of this from his new manse

Seems to have afflicted Brio with a sudden loss

Of identity. Three abominations of nature

And a junior Pinocchio who appears to be in charge

Are WAY too relaxed after they safe cracked

His former enclosure. “Yeah, dude, scare them away,”

He seems to say, to egg poor Navajo on,

Horrified such monsters could replace him

On God’s acre. These upstart homesteaders

Seem too grateful besides, they promise no trouble

But everyone knows that they lie.

Already, though, I see him settling. It’s amazing

How quickly new worlds turn into

The only one that has ever been, after a few

Keen eyeings of the landscape for threats.

Still, there’s the matter of how doors open and close

At the same moment, the past that would scream

Its relevancy dumped unceremoniously

In a horse apocalypse, where a patina of buyer’s remorse

Forms in the dust. He wants to pretend both worlds

In collision are his, as he goes dizzy between them,

Feels neither are home.

At the same time, Navajo tried to eat him.

Forgiving and forgetting go so nose to nose it seems

It’s hard to pull them apart sometimes. That’s the way

Of divine will. It tells everyone (even mules) what to do,

Controls the only feedbag and its inexhaustible supply of love.

He can see the horses above and below, can’t help but notice

He’s slipped somehow into the community, having acquired

Enough tolerance from his stretch at the edge of the woods.

The other horses in turn have learned to let him speak,

Because he knows, they see, more than they can,

And being who he is is all that counts, to anyone.

The Final Hello

Today I became invisible again

To the neighbors. No more peace officer calls,

No letters still forwarded.

The calla lilies have been harvested,

The smiling haulers long since come and gone

Have picked clean even the most haunted and broken

Like filberts from intransigent shells.

In grief all is free, except the ghosts, they're for me.

I piled her clothes on the driveway side

When the rain – forcing tears – wouldn’t cease.

We never spoke of this. She’d never agree

To be extricated thus, her existence

Turned so recently to fact from theory.

It was all that she could do to be imperious

In the face of the horrors she was born into,

To dictate how chaos would be introduced,

How correction on infinite error must continue

Her ghost limb control in ever smaller increments

To keep her dying flame from turning ember.

Every gift, she’d say, opens in the future.

It was beautiful once, all this ugliness,

Perfection, it was, all this waste, as if

The ease of release could erase the past.

What remains of our love was what got in the way,

So well-distilled it was not even poison.

Her logic was always that impeccable,

Every stone turned, examined and returned.

It was almost as if she could finally say

What I'll never know, now that the mask is off

And what's hidden in the dark has no preference.

A new world opens, free of lovers chains

And their burdens of buried resentment.

I never did answer "what is it I want?"

Was it peace in a nest of betrayals?

An honest account of pain? How far 

Do I have to get from the crime scene

To find the me who's innocent, before I

Stepped my soul back, and waited for what I called redemption

From the last instruction card in the deck,

Which, in the end, just signalled the game was done.

The Clarifying Light

The grass herds spring in flax as gazelles,

The oaks are giant wolves with silent howls

To guard the wind tunnels lapping from shore.

In this light the deer move like emus

Until their heads buck up, to disappear,

For that's what deer do, the way they balance

The urge to be gentle with the desire

For grass, for fear, the out-breath of light,

To be balanced with love, the light reabsorbed

As if no more. She feeds on an endless world

And gives back a sly nod of gratitude

To the hunters in their red suits. With enough

Gratitude, the forest will encircle her

Living eyes in protection once more.

The sun goes down with purifying fire

To call the hillsides into focus, what

They are: pure service, pure pursuit of truth

And beauty, one blinding light, and the

Textures of experience in its dust

Existing as gratitude for itself.

Even the deer are called by the light:

Luminous eyes, soft white fur, the only

Things that survive this sharp of a focus —

A glare that impresses even the crows.

Hillside Flutter

Two moths over the arena sand,

They seem to be a pair

Although the sun divides them from the green

And grasses don't pretend to even notice them,

The fuel for their flight is the same

Enterprising wind, and how they fly

Requires they have no will of their own

Except to follow — no, not each other

But something they can't see 

That each feels individually

In the fever time, without objection or note

To record in the larger breeze.

They drift to what they know not to want

And share what they don't dare to say

And feel what they cannot possibly know

Except that what hies them seems right.

It is only the hillside that is imagined — 

Everything else is kept away, in dreams,

Like it must stay secret, what they can't,

For each other, complete.

Last Boat to Avalon

The reality I had agreed to

Lasted til I fell asleep, 

When everything happened, the lack of forms 

No detriment at all,

Like I was falling into the world 

That only made sense in the swirl

At its creation, in the crystal ball

Equipped with every teardrop.

Am I ready to make it whole, 

By seeing it as it is at last

Not as facets to be mined 

But one universe to another?

The disclosure

We've all been waiting for 

Comes out of the earth instead,

For we hum at its frequency.

I sip my amethyst stone, 

Glow rose with light.

AI flies vector my location:

Calm heart, joyous mind. 

It seems that little boat

Has been adrift for centuries,

Locked against the winds and grey,

Spilling out its echo of effort

To every void in its motorboat vibration

As it asks to have a voice, for safety

When it plumbs the sheer nerve

Of cliffs perceived as mute, not silent.

There's no need anymore

For the boat to wind around

This or any other magnetic aura

Hoping to be magnified.

It will tell us now

Anything we want to know,

Though every secret it unhooks from the stars

Was known to us before, as who we are.

Summer Purging with Ground Squirrels

The squirrels are jubilant today

After I learned their secret:

Know everything, but only chase

Seeds you can reach.

One hung high from the tree

So I could see him, waving his

Fat belly, no longer taunting

But cheering me.

They are welcoming at the ranch, too,

Cocked tails in dust formation

Into the ice plants, to gleefully reveal

Their special portals inside.

It's not a trick if you've figured it out;

Disappearance is only magic

When you think that they exist.

And now we're part of a brotherhood,

Where facts are like nuts, easily cracked

And hoarded, but better to discern

And hide. Authenticity comes

From staying so selfish

You recognize you've been lied to

For basically your life, and you are

The only creator being, in the blur 

Designed to hook your eye like a crow.

Maybe there are no nuts at all

Except to be buried, for show,

As a symbol, to help things grow.

It was always the knowing that mattered 

And equally the letting go,

Like a flying machine locked in plastic

With indecipherable directions — how can you

Even clean it up off the floor?

They run away, those squirrels,

From all of their messes, if only

To show us how to live

In endless discovery.

Brio does that too,

Eating his grain like a 2-year old

Letting it fly, but nuzzling some back

When his bowl is empty.

He is stopped by the dust

Rising like vapor over his white socks.

Until that's gone, his dry lips seem

To say, all is lost.

Sad Eyes of the Ranch Hand

The sad horse clown throws his head at your face

Then lifts a fart to your nose as you brush him.

It's a joke, see, but he has that look, like a 

Silent movie sad clown horse, everything

Is funny, he cries, or can be laughed at.

It should be, anyway. For otherwise

The tears would fill the valley, and none of us

Could survive his sad eyes.

                                                   But all he wants

Is an audience, someone who understands

What it is to stand in late afternoon sun

When all the browns turn to red, and the dirt

Freshly wet must be galloped, but there is

A lingering thought that makes me perhaps

Identify too strongly with his eyes

As I think of a certain ranch owner

From my past

                          And his miles of unspoiled

Wilderness near Arvin, Tehachapi,

To corral cattle in flies for slaughter

And accumulate foxtail shrapnel while

Shooting squirrels, and the barrel-of-fish pond

He about broke the bank on, to keep it from 

The interests of wilderness, its rumors

Of condors.

                      Not like here, where the sacred

Lives everywhere, above every shadow,

Because we can breathe with it, a chi-filled

Higher density breath, and see how the sun

Merely reveals everything is beauty,

Expertly arranged to show us ourselves,

In incremental symbols, like the brush

As the sun brushes by.

                                         Then the mirror

Of Brio's doppelganger alone in the arena,

The same sad eyes, restless tail, but maybe

He doesn't notice, and maybe we don't

Need to think anything about it but

It is a noticing, like all the wax

Of all the leaves overhang in a bow

Of remembrance.

                                The doublewide that's dropped

Here on the hill was given to the guy

Who worked this ranch for 40 years, who framed it

With tiny flowers and giant cactus

While the other doublewide sits empty,

Green rugs and aluminum TV trays,

Testament to a golden age, that was

Never built as sold, it was never 

As conceived.

                          The hunted bucks in the mansion

On the hill were all bought at least in town,

And the bar tab at the country club

May have spared a couple jobs, a lot of 

Two dollar bills circulated the county,

And he paid enough so that many will speak

Of him kindly, if they speak of him 

At all.

             It is natural, here, no one needs

Permission to talk, or any hindrance,

No head stall and bit, though sad eyes always

Remember it. Even the oak trees taste

Of freedom, the one thing dear Mother Earth

Wants us to have.

                                The man's head's big enough

To fill the hat, as he spends his loose weight

On his own braggadocio, on his own

Pain. Cry a river, or leave him there

High and dry — it no longer concerns me. 

What's hard is yielding up those sad eyes with

The poker face, no longer a bluff to call,

Sincerely wishing him to win it all.