When we stopped at the mission
The cracked Adobe was a message from god
Saying,

Centuries are just cracks in the stone, my world runs on diamonds and hydrocarbons
On charming interactions
On moments of synchronicity
On rubbing out heat to be dissatisfied into the void
To give feed for the new ones
In the feral zodiacs.

She frowned at this answer, said she wanted something less ethereal,
Something tight to clutch
Like the Parthenon's Corinthian columns
Or the great gables of a Neverending tabernacle
She was a greedy and godly girl

I was stupified, staring intently at the cracks
Asking what strange beings were created in between
Tracing the canyon routes with my hands, pressing the palm against the grooves
They were warm with lost sunshine, they had dust and life and creatures of God that sought not the gaze of us, but the eternal love of the dark

I have neglected many times this fact of life, pretending to be a stone in a world of pulsating flesh
Wanting to be abused eternally in exchange for experience

To be Boulder--
With granite cheeks and dusted neck
With cobalt eyes and chiseled chest
Tectonic movement, sparring feet
And left forever towards the seas.

You are a stone tablet
You are a cold, washed thing
You have fear in your eyes
And the light that shines from you is cold, alone, all over

I cannot connect the things that will not be
I cannot communicate fake things
I will take communion from flowers, asking you to be the petals

We are forgetting the nature of love,
Fogetting that it is mistakes and pain that makes happiness at the end of it
That joy and suffering are karmic and designed
Do not give up on these things

When I can reach no longer for you my heart will pang
The sadness of giving up on a soul that doesn't deserve it
A wanting to give God's incarnations the love he gave me
She will not take it

I do not want these feelings to be the only thing I know, but the fear I feel with you is making it difficult

Please don't play me, I have walked a thousand lifetimes of it and I don't need any more.

The air is burly
trees harvest soldiers on the line
combines, threads, manure, life--
A whole world lost amidst the flats

Saplings are the next season's
Almonds, Apples, Dates,
Waiting for food shelves and stockrooms
packed in banana boxes and given a place
They will find the plates of capitol city dwellers
They will be engorged far away from their origins

The Sierra-- oh the great plutonic mass
They are grey from age, peppered with white whiskers of snow
They are asking to be known as the interior

Pilgrims who traveled over their spines, seeking these fertile swampland
Now airstrips and dirigibles

The edges of clouds on the valley, the deserts and the mountains like folds of a book
they crackle in the sun and the skin of the earth shrinks in its gaze

Migratory birds dance in the fields, the lowly clang of bell
Bleached american flags tell us this is the land

The land of things and endless breadth

This is only California, but the majesty of it
a gem valley encased by the rocks, in silicates
A roaming place for cows, wanderers, farmers, dreams

Where the only edge of things is the mountains, saying
-Climb me, surmount me, lay me under your deeds-

With a citronella candle,
A lofty perfume,
Delayed expectations,
Friendly champagne flute--

I will wonder in between
Inebriation
Being patient,
Believing in the irredeemable soul.

There is nobody to leave you in the sands,
Where you leave yourself and the range of thoughts flows freely,
And the 20 mules are stuffed in some museum--their final gift

There is no place to clean your wounds
Just sand to stunt the bleeding

The Paiute, drunk off cactus and smoking themselves into oblivion

They understood that the desert has no need for sadness
the desert IS sadness.

Searching for what? Food? It's all spiked and scared of you out here--
No love on this plane, just in the shape of things

The nick of *****

The bleed of seed

The dream

Eternity.

It is the way the world looks
When the sun has hidden itself
And the sky is glowing in sad gradients of shadows
Teal, aqua, lilac nights
Making statements to space

I wanted to believe that rocks would take in stride their banishment from life

I wanted to believe they'd be okay with being stepped on
Ground up
Piecemeal
Tumbled, tributaried, washed and molded
Into a beaten perfection that lasts momentary--

But they weren't.

They cried gems!
they made the best replica in silica they could

They were insulted and worn close to the breast at first, but shining too bright those greedy fools mistook them for
Moonstone

a legendary thing, sacred, not God.

I wanted to believe that these rocks were intrinsic, that they had something in them
That gold was worth more than its weight
And malleable

That there was god in those plagioclase tears, that they were not the embodiment of sin

I was not convinced

Finally,

finally the winds have subsided
the grasses are no longer golden brown

The world is growing in joy!

I can feel my heart burn, the blood of love leaking upon the planks
But it is safe, it is home
It is the lapping shores of the familiar stones
No violent black rock of dreams to stop me from ascending the cliffs
finding solid ground
growing food and making love to the true beauty of it all

And the islands at the edge of the world
Anatolia, the dreams of a new kingdom
One where I was the man I was
Calyps, though kind,
Was a beautiful temptress and had nothing good to say
Just figments and dreams, illusory
She would never make me king.

So here I am friends!
I, your friend
Your crown and solemn head
Please, I ask with faith--
Give me this place to stay.