In the deep of time indigenous tribes
surfaced a red earth with protruding plateaus
and burnt canyons along the Cimarron River.
The ancient Anasazi settled
at the core of this mesa.
Scattered ponderosa pine.
Yet, their sudden demise echoed curiosity.
Navajo sensed a struggle of two infinite worlds,
a quivering inundation.
Circling its haunted ominous shape,
a skull with one eye, the apparition of light
rose into a blue desert sky.
Violent storms crackle hot lightning
strikes in a sulfurous summer-
an oracular hothouse.
Navajo talk of spirits or the gateway
to fire. Heaps of iron and lodestone
lodged in the cap. Only two
brazen, cat totem poles guarding its passage.
Standing among the mesa
to feel the verve of the earth.
A New Mexico sun beats down
burning the drowsed terrain.
To see the legendary shaman glow
in his ephemeral blue nimbus.
Bathed in gaudy turquoise.
Sensing the dark encroachment
of a ghost. Near the bony hills, soared
a turbulent black bird in full flight,
upward.
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 7:43 PM UTC
You want to go back
to where the sky was inside of us.
I walked in the white silences
of your mind and saw fear
multiply while summer
crackled beneath wet suns.
-
Inside is this rolling energy
tugging at the walls of body.
I do not know how to pull it apart
and separate it from myself.
A vulturous animal sleeps
inside of me, and all I want
is to close my eyes
and rest this feeble frame.
Apr 9, 2013
Apr 9, 2013 at 1:47 AM UTC
Wallowing inside the blackest sleep
I see images grow large and transform
into what feels like reality. Each night
my brain is transfixed on tragedy
and the loss of a loved one, as though
my soul is craving tears, lucid dreaming,
a haunted atmosphere.
These moments remind my body
that is alive, full of breath, a moving
corporeal skeleton. The wilderness
of my bones hear the dark silted thoughts.
Each wave comes with white spinning stars
as a granular moon sinks into my spine.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 10:05 PM UTC
A blackening morning bleeds and deepens
the opening of iron lungs. Paperweight
bones threaten gaiety and the smell of sleep.
Such sadness pours inward, it has chosen
the wrong body as cold folds over the world,
so it feels real, stained frost in vacuous black.
The pure leap of malignity agitates
the interior of a woman's red heart,
melting like embers.
In the sulphur, words dry while water
slides down. Drips and thickens.
Gaping hole exposed- too early for the dawn.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 12:53 PM UTC
There are too many people here.
Streets are crowded with vendors
and an indelible smell thickens.
Buildings are painted a faint blue, or pink;
they rise upwards, lofty and erratic.
On the balcony of my hotel their roofs are speckled;
one of every color.
Outlandish art fills sun-glazed shops.
Some are only twenty feet wide. Motorbikes
wiz down the cracked roads with intimidating speed.
I look up to the knotted powerlines strung above
cluttering the backdrop of twine green trees.
In the humidity, there is no fresh air.
I can scarcely breathe. Here is a city
impractically shaped, a different world,
but the tender is coming as I descend further.
In the interior is Birla Orphanage
where laughter spreads.
The children wade gigantic waves
on the shore of Do Son Beach.
Mucky water sticks to the sand on our skin.
A boy, three feet tall, beautiful bright brown eyes
peers into my life. I do not know his language,
the most we can do is share gaping smiles
as this city unfolds its secrets to me.
Mar 31, 2013
Mar 31, 2013 at 8:36 PM UTC
I met a girl under the quivering black water
washed by the icy sharpness of drowning.
She looked up at me, silent, faceless,
without identity. Breathing salt
from the river with a frozen voice.
Tiny electric eyes scanned
the colossal reservoir with a desire
to escape the surface of watery
dark weeds and coral twig.
The prickling ache of sleepless
blood stuck inside me as I stared
into the maelstrom of identity
swimming in warped silence.
Now I sit, spiderlike, waiting.
The cauldron of night dragging in my veins.
Mar 11, 2013
Mar 11, 2013 at 10:22 PM UTC
Your eyes mirrored pools of black
ink and I never knew that the flask
in your pocket would keep me wide
awake into the morning.
The olivine porch outside your country
home was shaped with darker thoughts
and milkweed seed that left me
wondering how you wake in winter.
You lived as a sleeper in the valley
with a zirconium smile and when light
rained down the glass of your hanging lanterns
would break across the sky.
The smoothness of smoke that wrapped
around my lungs kept me lurking
in the corners of drowsy living
and drunken rainbow fires.
You could never offer me more
than what I already had.
So as with everything, the end came
and now the wind is blowing prismatic stars.
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 10:12 PM UTC
Brassavola nodosa: Lady of the Night
Drinking deep the cold water
with her loose, slender petals
that wrap the aspidistra tree,
she waits, just before dusk
to release her moonlit fragrance.
Dark welcomes this ghost-white
orchid that proves love blooms
in nature with a night to drown
the stillness of a leafy bedding.
The wild-eyed child opens her gaze
to this wonder hidden in kudzu vines
of a Brazilian forest that does not sleep
so soundly with its dragonflies.
Only the moon knows she speaks
of fallen petals and longed for rain.
Feb 2, 2013
Feb 2, 2013 at 6:57 PM UTC
On the Summer Solstice
Half asleep wine-flushed stumbling on the internal billows.
Here is Where We Live
We are a companion to the owls with countless white moons.
Aurora Borealis
The earliest sway of dreamscapes came with dancing ghosts.
When Shall I get back to that Other World?
Thunder echoes off the walls of a tall obese world, pregnant & shifting.
On the Winter Solstice
Above the mountains earth drinks the sun quietly in the black Alaskan forest.
When People in the Lower 48 Marvel
All I want to tell them is how living in its dark bitter sadness is a voyage.
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 10:20 PM UTC
I hear bones twitch in the flower bed
turning over their trembling groan to the
deep soil with bitter solitude in some strange way.
Autumn swirled her cracked wind that shook the
willowed branches as I clung desperately to my
rhythm in the wilderness blindly following the
flicker of an empyreal garden that glowed
along the path in a mysterious way.
And me happiest, when the earth offers
a place to sleep amongst the billows of the sky.
Most beautiful as sunlight pours itself across
my body, a reminder of simply being alive.
Jan 20, 2013
Jan 20, 2013 at 11:05 PM UTC