And how could I forget
Your broken wrist which
So delicately wore an emerald
Bracelet, or your shallow
Seas of miseries and vast plains
Of grass? But the beauty of
The flesh is this; that which
Hides within, a rose you once
Held to the sky and watched
It turn to stone.

What kind of stars do you worship are
They desert? What kind of pink are
Your sunsets? Dream. Mesa and
Moon, memories. Spring and
All the blood through these veins;
Carving out this dust from my eyes
So pharaoh.

Tonight my feelings have
Crept down below into
My chest; wanting to
Burst forth into the night
Like a source of great
Direct light but cannot.
Tonight, the desert sleeps
Outside of me but apart
Of me. Far off on mesa's
Edge coyote howls moon
Above in and out of heavy
Silver eyed clouds move too.
So empty now the tears flow
Like rain. Some ghosts
In my head again play the
Piano of memories these
Refrained and repeated
Until I will fall asleep then.

I was moon walking in the desert
Chasing the memory of rain
Down some dried washes, choked
Full of sand and silver. I was
Following the way of water
Tracing sideways into dead
End hills of Bentonite, purple
And grey I was moving in
And out of shadow like a
Fish in deeper eddies, laying
Down silently beneath the
Weeds and waves.

Beginning to Paint

Can I erase on my face, these tears?
Can I use a brush to flush out September?
Raise the moon high above the mesa
Now nothing more than a vermilion mist
Shaded in by the side of my thumb.

Can I draw a green plant in a red ***?
In the morning, when morning creeps
In through the window which looks
Out upon the young day with a long sigh
While I slowly sip my coffee.

Can I sketch a cloud into the empty afternoon
And make it into a memory? Can it be
Raining over the mountains while the wrens
Dart from juniper to juniper like
Conversation smothered?

Can I trace in your face, those cheeks?
Draw your firm lips into a red rose
And your eyes, such an emerald thought
Can I push them in to become black
And stay there?

So thoughtful to the wind
You cross the street like a
Flower sprouting up through
The rubble of an ancient village;
Some sort of low to the ground
Purple and white creature, with
bold eyes.

And it was only early April
When the sky moved too
Across the desert and
Like a blanket on the edge
Of a bed, crumpled into
The purple, midnight stars
That sagged all night
Over reckless mountains.

Overwhelming, you breathe in thoughtfully
The vastness of the outside of -you-
Where the horizon is a three hundred and sixty
Degree monotony of flatness, a rusty dream
A contrast to the dark blue of the afternoon
An endless prairie, a sweeping emotion
Of swaying saw grass, a waltz of simplicity
Dancing across a thin layer of water
A river! A thin layer of transparent sky fallen
In some rude manner during a summer storm
A dark blue blanket of infinity and the boom
Of thunder and the white flash of lightening
Between thin sheets of atmosphere but now
All is a translucent glide, a glade of reflection
An indulgent movement of enormous propensity
So silent the pensive egrets above make not even a sound
The white of their feathers like angels plunging from
Heaven, the hallucination of snow fall
Disappearing into the dark green jungle altogether
Vanishing into the tantalizing domain of sameness
So vast your knees may buckle underneath you
Your bones may become separated and
Your flesh may dilute into a million beads of
Silver floating softly through the multitude
Cutting even the droplets of -you- in half
So you may start your journey to the ocean
Through the boundless glades of saw grass
And open into the peculiar embrace of mangroves
The pulsating vein of the earth
The bulging vein of implication, re-claiming
Slowly, patiently until at last you open your eyes to
A moment of surrealism, dream-like
A blurring of orange then red then purple
A bleeding sunset of color enough to draw tears
From your ethereal spring of consciousness
But then you realize you are still standing straight
You are still alive, in a sense
Your head peaking over the grass like a deer
Frightened by the crack of a stick
Trembling inside immensely
As the day turns to night and the prairie
Is slowly shadowed by the flood of the universe
A billion distant fires blazing with such soft wind
Gleaming in the river of the vast sleeping saw grass now.