I dream of delirious shadows and frantic,
whispering light.
in the doom of an hour my bones
are opened to the sky.
rise from me, mortal pilot.
eyes unseamed to the foot of
a pillar of fire in the void,
screaming truths,
becoming.
vaporize and depart.
adrift in the hysteria of one second,
a rapidly receding horizon.
awash in a thunderous confluence,
mind rent.
I am clay,
transmuted.
Apr 22, 2020
Apr 22, 2020 at 8:20 PM UTC
He floats
like frizzy cottonwood seeds on a wind that is not really there,
not really.
And light and sound and rain
pass him through-
he is borne on a whim
over the still-living earth
waiting in the wetted hollow
of some behemoth fallen tree,
waiting.
Wistfully wandering
listlessly longing
dogtired daydreamer,
airy apparition,
are you just a moving lucid hallucination,
or is it me who lives in your
imagination?
Apr 22, 2020
Apr 22, 2020 at 8:19 PM UTC
Obscurity.
Mist.
The roar of the ocean drawing back
miles
and
miles
into the dawn of human existence.
Origin.
Fear.
Giant orbs of light emanating from
streetlights atop
the seaside
cliffs.
Terminus.
Void.
But not an empty void, no,
the dark side of this world
reflected.
Unknowable.
Occult.
Slicing through the murk,
a lighthouse
miles
and
miles
up the shore pings
and is gone.
Vision.
Wonder.
That there could be so
very
much
hiding in the dark.
Reckoning.
Completion.
Aug 13, 2018
Aug 13, 2018 at 11:52 PM UTC
The haze of a distant fire
flattens the light on the knolls
beyond the sageflats. Their half-tone
silhouettes jagged by tall pines.
The rumble of the engine as I stand beside the truck
with the door open, surveying the
horizon. Locusts crackling.
A patchwork of shadows washes
over the flats. Steel-gray clouds above.
The wind kicks up sparse columns of
dust. A lonely road
and a shot-up gate.
A glimmer in the dirt. Brass.
Nine millimiter. Discharged and forgotten.
The lock on the gate has been grazed by bullets.
Maybe this one.
The shadows wash over outcroppings
of lava rock amid the tall sage.
Nooks and crannies. Places to hide.
A gust of wind and I am standing in the shade
and my eyes relax as a prairie falcon
glides over the road to survey the
far side for something to eat,
close enough I can almost
hear the beating of his
wings and suddenly
zigs up and then
charges toward
the ground
and then
he has
gone.
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 1:31 AM UTC
per aspera, for the love of god
let me down
the oil of the asp,
the bee in my bonnet
in a needle
rolling deep
in the hay,
the raspy cough
from the hayfever on my
cilia,
on the kitchen counter,
in my mind.
Let me off this bottomless ladder
you ********
you fiends.
Jul 29, 2018
Jul 29, 2018 at 10:22 PM UTC
Walking out of the bank yesterday
I got blindsided
By the sight of the late-afternoon-early-evening
half-moon floating
in the overhead sea.
It wasn’t that I forgot it was there
and suddenly remembered, it was just so suddenly clear
that it wasn’t an image,
but a large and very real
and simplistic object
suspended
and the angle of the sun in the sky
was apparent by the shadow
cast on its surface.
For a moment I saw the grand order of it-
the scale and distance and relationships
of three orbs-
two dark, one light,
the big false hope machine in the sky,
like impressionist art
like an empty vase
like a blank sheet of paper
with three little circles on it.
Something I have seen every day
for my entire life,
as though anew.
And then I got in the truck
and I got on the highway
and I turned the radio on
to a commercial about a transmission shop in town
as someone cut me off in traffic.
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 2:23 AM UTC
Somewhere in the South Pacific
a human-shaped speck casts a bottle
from the shore of a tiny island
into the interminable sea.
The bottle contains a note
which bears:
a name
an approximate location
and a desperate plea.
The bottle drifts slowly away
flashing in and out of view
on the crests of passing swells.
It glides on mysterious currents
and a quiet modicum of hope.
Simultaneously,
Above a particular point in the Northern Hemisphere,
a ball of tin foil
labeled Voyager I
is crossing the threshold
into the world outside
the solar system.
On board are a pair of golden discs
engraved with:
images and voices of human beings
the relative location of the Sun to fourteen nearby pulsars
and a plea,
naively disguised to look like a proud declaration of identity
but what proud and accomplished
race of beings
would need to search for
companionship
among the stars?
The little metal ball floats away
blinking bits of data back to Earth
each grainier than
the last
tugged by the gravity of distant bodies
and a quiet modicum of
hope.
Jul 21, 2018
Jul 21, 2018 at 1:21 AM UTC
Dusk.
The black of undermaintained asphalt
in a ribbon rolling over
the volcanic hills,
the yellow of the centerline
flashing into view and passing beneath
in a rhythm,
like a heartbeat.
Jackrabbit on the shoulder
***** his head and springs
away from something in his imagination,
following the yellow dashes
in an awkward gait,
a single bold jump
followed by twenty yards of
dead sprint.
Not eight feet overhead
a pair of nighthawks bob and flutter
erratically
but following one another in
pursuit
of something I cannot see.
Jul 14, 2018
Jul 14, 2018 at 2:44 AM UTC
Silken stone
dewed damp
tipping to topple
over outcropping-
balanced buttress
feigning flightlessness
until, unexpected, uphill
avalanche advances
rushing, racing
poised to push-
rock rolls
sailing slow
slow
slow
slow-
explosion echoes
crisscross canyon.
Sheep stop,
listen long,
lingering
Jul 9, 2018
Jul 9, 2018 at 1:22 AM UTC
Scrubjay alights on dewdamp juniper
Jree?
he asks
Jreee?
There is no one around to answer.
Brook trout leaps to catch a bug on the wing
and for one moment
she is suspended between the stars
and their reflection
but this does not occur to her.
Ponderosa’s limbs and roots
streeeetch
into the soil and the air
it has been alive for one hundred
and ninety years
but it is not counting,
are you?
Jun 25, 2018
Jun 25, 2018 at 1:33 AM UTC