And first I smelled it
With crushing fingers passed
A striking sunset ablaze
And then I saw it
With eyes closed
A memory of love
(Those tumaltous times)
Out of wood comes blood
Frozen tears
The shy clouds hid
The old gods said
“What could make this be”
But I didn’t write this poem for me
Somewhere a star burst
I wrote it for the lonely
and the wrought
the tiresome fighter
(Much like myself
Standing, marching over lava and air
(a shipwreck)
          An impossible tree growing
          twisted, and free
Holding up its greener leaves
with no water for years.

Down by the waves where my thoughts go ahead
There goes my brain again, down by the shells
When the tide goes out and all the earth
Holds its breath, again sweeping and sweeping
All night the moon sinks slinks against dawn.

Down by the waves a piano plays; smooth
Wind blows midnight against palms quiet
Almost holding its breath crawling forth
The souls leaps the edge, grabs your hand
Ten thousand lights lay asleep.

I took my time getting here the desert
That is. Crossed the horizon once or twice
Four years of feeling bones, cold and quiet saw
Slipped a fox down the sandstone gone very little
Rain and a few tears. (Just one desert sunset can
change me)

will   stars   rain   moon   desert   night   snow   time   light   day   eyes   black   clouds   cold   beneath   sky   purple   love   red   dusk   wings   fall   green   river   dark   soft   mountains   wind   juniper   memories   move   walk   air   thought   silver   darkness   mesa   flowers   days   sun   tears   edges   death   stone   dead   full   deep   dreams   sleep   blue   memory   hole   forest   man   open   white   grey   tonight   mountain   edge   sunset   endless   walking   sound   moth   emerald   spring   long   grass   woods   song   vast   bird   water   slip   window   swamp   earth   slow   morning   empty   deeper   mind   infinity   ocean   weeds   broken   afternoon   head   smile   glit   garden   blanket   sand   small   thunder   filled   body   path   leaving   eye   heart   keep   sip   winter   waves   dream   years   birds   evening   shadows   dawn   flower   tree   sad   bough   petals   face   colors   find   piano   hope   sea   poem   slowly   frozen   cross   moment   early   reflection   summer   field   wet   color   laughing   born   mirror   trees   road   valley   october   draw   heaven   laying   emotions   falling   strong   great   leaves   emerge   feelings   cloud   call   coyote   hold   room   soul   gathers   thin   high   returned   divided   beauty   blood   remember   midnight   write   veins   fish   spider   january   living   opened   god   overwhelming   times   pines   tomorrow   ancient   silent   murky   storm   listen   half   falls   mouth   stood   junipers   stones   dorothy   ground   going   canyons   cry   view   asleep   existence   close   drunk   wall   mexico   soil   quiet   lascivious   things   stillness   breeze   left   distant   web   crying   game   shadow   clay   corn   universe   horizon   silence   lies   brush   low   deer   single   star   holes   teeth   forget   dance   hurricane   layers   shattered   hurry   flash   young   brown   wave   cool   die   race   entropy   venus   sigh   feathers   prairie   haiku   emptiness   plays   fingers   blur   toes   gathered   november   change   wait   crumbles   stalks   rests   changed   smoke   standing   primrose   lose   breathe   door   started   brings   warm   mesas   drops   history   beautiful   thirsty   expanding   pulling   bend   bones   sitting   pine   beach   map   wrong   bloom   grow   trembling   shore   crept   goodbye   tall   wing   help   september   limbs   feel   orange   covered   hidden   crawls   underneath   snake   kiss   hands   front   feathered   arrow   bats   loneliness   *****   heavy   house   zebra   space   misses   eternal   zuni   quick   reason   imagine   cough   florida   thing   disappearing   sounds   mist   flutter   final   kind   horizons   street   bare   gathering   mesquite   throat   rearranged   dancing   cave   jungle   pain   rearrange   flow   drive   gracefully   reflections   clean   shot   chopin   loved   watch   shy   naked   bad   delicately   set   burst   slanting   smiling   smallest   closed   boughs   petrified   elk   smoldering   hours   movement   april   plants   journey   canyon   three   lived   monsoons   wake   smoking   layer   fled   wound   lava   phoebe   drink   delicate   glades   mother   consciousness   flesh   moments   touch   hills   cuffs   rose   march   apart   desire   onion   spine   oblivion   people   hair   lips   erase   fox   fog   christmas   quit   choked   wept   side   seeds   tongue   quietly   fern   pink   rising   seasons   bought   shells   flying   hear   meditations   sadness   unfolding   prayer   watched   floating   ghosts   fill   dying   floor   nah   multiverse   tight   swirl   eternity   tides   stay   fell   snitch   vein   ghost   hammock   mud   moved   moonlight   songs   fawn   raining   crumpled   worms   vermilion   soften   thoughtful   skin   winds   follow   hate   youerode   vet   patches   slips   finally   sway   flowed   fax   coop   rise   swallows   misunderstanding   tantalizing   decide   forked   drinking   marrow   annihilated   wooden   leveled   ceaseless   gun   leave   dusky   dip   dilute   force   meadow   ten   bleeding   hanging   direct   waking   burger   rusty   dried   wrens   snipers   rator   anythin   poisonous   lights   haze   grandparens   pulsating   told   chaotic

The window would be half open to a mountain then
I’ll tell you something a window is all
Half left open before the rain; every day
Though the window has changed I’ll tell you
Something about the pain. They sit they sit
With their fingers tied, the pines are tired the
Mountains are wise. The window is wide.

Then they walk like bird and awkward is all
If the dead could talk they would say; I’m frightened
Yes the raindrops fall. Someone bends the tree tops
Tall. Someone leans and whispers in my ear. I hear the
Dirt I hear the dirt.

And then, they all go home even my lover goes back
Into the house. And then she sits upon the couch. Very
Very. Tiredly she walks they rise and touch my facesometimes
Sometimes the dead awake the window the window
And thanks for coming.

But the heart, she says It is just mine they rise they rise
She climbs inside. The hospital with grey wings I know
It isn’t impossible. But it's hope and love and love and love
and love and If I could die without a kiss. The window
would be half open then to a mountain.

But first the mountains
Covered in stars, the purple peeks
The emerald cliffs. The winter’s melt;
The rush and rage, oh at mid-life
That downward pull upwards.
The stream meets the river the
River sighs, red and full of clay
(I remember the day we met like that)
Full of fish and thoughts of…
First the moon, then the tide.
Onward through naked sand
Stone, full of compressed time.
The chromatic choir plays a
Crescendo, as the raven never
Really sleeps. Then the spring
Meets the summer dry and full
Of ash. How the ancestors came
Here to pass, that bridge and
All the distance. Down
By the river, covered in a deeper
Shadow, I kneel and feel
The river at midnight.

Not long ago the black ocean
Caught my eye the deep swamp
The lonely desert, starting on the
Edges but moving inward.

A dream remembered
A billion year old smile;
The river snakes on.

Cold and quiet twisted as she was on the edges of a dream of an endless amount of stars rose like the owl before dawn dragging the dead mouse among the shattered cottonwoods above blood on the canyon brighter than a rose, sank the grief from the lungs of the infiniteness of time oceans and deserts and swamps. Could not comprehend close the gargle of mud sat in her spat of the beauty of it all watching the gnarled dress unfurl beneath her ankles canyons full of color as she descended into another sleepless smile. The river moved on

The greatest memory of then was when upon the twisted edge. and sun receding in the West with reverie and joy was met. The fangled hand the broadened shoulder, only stars were to devour night the light was doubled dull. Depending on the eye you see. The ocean at my back, the desert and the swamp and all the history of man like walking in the rain. Fickle fallowed weeds in snow soon. November will be gone, but you and I will carry on; battered and beaten forgotten like the memories of sullen stained skies, banners of our innocence. Those deeper canyons beyond reach and somewhere, somehow, the path that was laid so long ago in this soft sand of mine. The river that goes forth

The windows of the world
Are open high and through them
Blow the desert air. Inside, on dusty shelves
The batteries sleep and dream of their
Childhood, poppies in the spring
And that deep dark forest of summer.
Light through the blinds through
The windows of the world.

Out there a dry and unspoken world
So much on the promise of one word
Upon waking, startled and shaken – found the day
Again revived.

Reflections before dawn, low
Gatherings of shadows against
An immense black ocean, the clouds
Of sleep against the purple glaze
Almost touching, almost free.

At first just a thought, like
Wind through the cedar’s – then
The slow evaporation of stars –
The piercing, tight muscles of the fisherman slowly pulling in the net.

Red, the color of the sun behind
These curtains, looking out upon the
cold black ocean sullen in its ways;
I’ve come too far now for disdain
Sometimes the weight is worth the strain.

Sometimes she can just appear
Like a flower
Even in the darkest hour
On the bench watching
The pigs, softly saying
Hello.

Upon looking back
        The universe expanding
Trying not to breathe
        Watching the dune shadows grow
And fade;
        Until the stars are sprinkled
Above and the galaxy slinks, as
        the cold palm of fall is pressed
, across this cold sand
        Across America.

On Sunday the fields were filled
with butterflies shimmering in the
sun like gold,
but by Monday their
bodies lay covered in the snow;
A million fluttering sparks
extinguished by the cold.

The sky has skin it is boiling red
Above scintillating mountains of
Granite the sun is low, the
Sun is low. I sit below a cactus
And dream of when an ocean
Was your heart, with nothing
With nothing.

Dried-out washes blood shot
I walk I walk. Chasing the memory of rain
You were the only one I
Ever loved; clouds of my youth
Slowly marched and true.

Stars, oh and an owl
Hidden in a bush of thorns, within
The canyon, echoing like the big
Bang, spiraling out.

Further and further
The night retreats into the grief of
The day.

The dark city of cactus and
Wrens frozen now

Fear

Take this flower, the dream of the weeds
Take these minutes and make a memory, sweeter
Softer than the rain. The ocean, the swamp and
The mountains. Take this soul, scoured like a shell,
And remember my bones, hard as if felt. The years, the hours
The minutes, all surely gone but not forgotten. And time?
Well time is thy womb and yours too. I listen to the piano
But hear only rain.

Feathered and wet, I wept and wept
Upon the shore's more sodden and
Unstable land (beyond the sand the boiled waves). With nothing left to give but tears; I stood and crept into the sea.

A road that ends in the heart of
the desert; a legion of arrows
of light - The marrow of horizon’s
softer bones, pinks and purples.

Mesquite dreams with soft smoking
edges; moth wings of morning
longing –  off into the flushed open wound

Of dawn; the rhythmic blood of our sun
Smoldering in the balmy hearts
Of those ghosts of the night; clouds, coagulating just above these sudden, silent mountains.

Th
e horizon use to be
the youth of summer’s
l
ov
e.

Now, a misunderstanding
Between night and day.

I know it for what it is, the saddest thought of all stretched out.

I’m not saying that inner peace isn’t possible |
Though it would take a strong soul to come
Home after forty years of living in the desert
And find out the bread’s stale. The stones
Cold. And I’ve been dreaming of the ocean
For four years since I left you on the island
Dashing off into the tall pines on the sound’s
Side crying with your long green eyes. Harmony
Needs to know pain. It’s this reason why
I’ve never learned to love, though I’ve tried.

Alone, alone along the shore
In these frozen moments
Like raindrops, the water laps
These petrified stones, I walk beyond
Before and between the grey
Fog, carrying something that
Can be taken; yes, I will not need this
For very much longer.

Stillness; an all-embracing hum
Of this balmy heart which can never be calmed
(This is something I wish to last)
Even this the winds of death will slow
Even these mountains of men will
Crumble. Stillness and soon the
Sun will set with ****** color, vigor.

Take only me; I laughed to the smoldering stars
Take only this sail set a long time ago;
Use it as a blanket or a robe
As you walk along the windy edges of this great shore.

Still the chicken coop
At the end of childhood still
The first snow fall soft as
Still the endless summer
Your emerald eyes, far out
At sea. And time. Leaves us
On the vine withered/broken;
Still your kisses in those misses
Out into the air off into the forest.

Beneath the intimate moon light
          Beneath the deep black night
Lay quiet and silent the ocean.
          Like a fish net hung
From the docks of eternity - draped
          among the stars.

Wave after wave the deep night tells
         Of fallowed weeds and ancient shells
Beneath the petrified moon -
         Beneath the deep black night
I walk among the strewn, I weep
         Among the wreckage of the dead.

Mesquite dreams, with soft smoking edges
Waft the darkness of this desert
          -Moth wings of the morning
Longing-
Off onto the red wound of the dawn.

Veins of stone spit out from scintillated mountains
Writing down the history of rain in beautiful scars.
Soon the sun, but first the birds

   In purple clouds of iron wood (I can map the day
by just the sounds) this peeling bark my
Hollowed past too.

Out of everything
Arises this life or
A single smile. And
The wind over the sound
At low tide, mud flats drawn
Slack. So I met you. Like the clouds
Far off the coast,  beautiful and dangerous, leaving as quick as you came. The sand
Leveled again.

Alone and growing
Small, this patch of snow is the
Flower’s only hope.

On the lava flow
A raven’s feather on snow;
Winter's quiet wing.

Well first you’d have to lose
Nearly half of your hope to just
Walk on the edge, then I would
Say become as sad as the thought
Of first snow, the dusk that brings
Winter and you may enter just far
Enough to hear the elk in alarm
Trample off as if they are walking on
Glass, then if you are brave and not
Afraid to die or have already died
I would say walk until the only thing
You see laying on your back is the
Soft impression of raven’s wings
On the canvas of this eternity/

I The Ravens

What spirit flies in fall the raven’s
Over mesa and on the wind
High above the valley of long light
And shadow, in waves towing
With their wings the seams of night
Tugging the tight veins of winter.

Against the wind, in pairs twirl
Like lover’s in the deeper woods, and
Shadows on the stone make four
But only from the dying sun.

II Venus

What pale star rests above the kiva
In dusk the last light is Venus wearing
A crown of waning purple light I know
I know I sulk among the junipers, like
A slug beneath a stone a snake
Within his hole I know the night
To come, the cold stars not so naked.

III So is Darkness

So is darkness but the desert of
Light, and just as long as sad?
The endless journey between the
Wall of pines, the dark oceans of
The mind, climbing toward the
Edges of the summit and declaring
The emptiness of things, fluttering
Just two beneath the newly birthed
Moon.

This morning on a walk
Propelled by utter joy
I couldn’t help but
Nudge my nose into
The end of a juniper
Bough bursting with
Crystalline rain drops;
Oh the emerald eyes of
Heaven I did look upon
And into, as the herbaceous
Tears flowed from my face.

When I move, the multiverse
Crumbles to the floor like
Snow falling through a darkening
Forest. I leave it behind in wake. A
Mirror with the reflection of god
Shatters—and we are born. Some
Vastly small burst of energy sitting
Down, beside a candle. Every moment
The substance of existence is washed
Against the shores of the mind. Sea
Birds swirl too in slanting rain. Christmas
In New Mexico now, snow falling on mesas
Outside of me, in the darkness and silence.
And why is the future so enthusiastically
Demanding, at all times, to be consumed?

And in the silent moments before the storm
--All bleached and prayer spoken-- clean
Out from the hushed juniper boughs
Spilled the song of the phoebe, shattering
The frozen apprehension of the air into
A million broken pieces of hurry! hurry!
Or wait.

It’s a movement, its going to be huge
It’s change change and hope
Divided divided divided down
The middle, no more rotten, and I see
The seeds that bare no fruit.

My stoves are empty my lungs are
Clean this desert drive is killenme
In early November remembering when
Times weren't so bad as neat said "
Ah ah ah could ya just killme or
Subway tomorrow at ten a m
It's not my van by then but
When I tend to bend toward en
Lightenment it could be as well as
Now and

She called it the dark place and
Then the spring, and I agreed
That those hills they seemed
So bare that, evening the
Sunset couldn’t stay
The moon the only
Flower grey behind shy
Clouds leaned all night
A bit further down on us

I’m only good when I’m leaving though
I’ve come around here before this time will
Only be pine trees in the rear view mirror
Teeth on hair from mustache must have
Been awhile before I’ll be back again
Only eyes in the sunset purple then
Dusk.

I’m going back I’m
Going back into the woods
Far beyond the reach of
Knowledge I’m walking
On no path and yet I
Feel the way before me

If you believe in a beginning
And you believe in an end then
I could be somewhere in between—
Laughing in the dusk of first snow
Walking quietly on the edges of some
Murky swamp.
But if you don’t believe in a beginning
And you don’t believe in an end then
I could be nowhere but---
Laughing in the dusk of first snow
Walking waist deep in the heart of some
Murky swamp.

You can see the lights form anywhere
I you didn’t know how to say when then
Theres. Said the city when you get drunk
If
When where Iraq vet couldn’t but be there
Yet said sorry head down bobbing b
***** b ***** road road the once liner
C snitch couldn’t quite catch when
They said only see snitch said if
Rich r say r can not be but r sway
Couldn’t say but if are we went
R own way then then only say
What you wand and the love though
Keep strong thought though through
Window with smile then bile but
D gone and dez gone said when wrong but
no **** and no wrong zebra is but gone and
**** game when no name is sure game but slay
nah nah if you laugh in cough cough "
parade say sa yong man
young man man you gone to far
blat vblaat

I came to you returned as a cloud though
Your arrival is as persuasive as a cross, soon
Snow will fall like needles from the purple
Boughs though in fall I know your principles
Are pressing. Soon I will be a memory
And cold light will crawl across the valley;
Cold light will die and
Soon roads will lead you home again
Somewhere warmer if I could take you
With then I wouldn’t hesitate
I came returned as a cloud and you
You were like a tree in spring
Ashen grey with bud and tears
Though not shaken

you wait
but should not
you be gone? you
bird with red wings and
black feathered body
with territorial sound
so strange should not
you be traveling? toward
the north, to find a mate
it is already march! Has
not the light told you
"you must be gone now!"
why? have not the signals
from without changed you
within?

but still even tomorrow
you may be gone flying
swift in the breeze, following
your instinctual soul and me too
me too my friend
I will be close behind, waiting no more

It was the whisky
eventually drove the eye
Wall to destruction.

Maybe I will listen to Chopin
One day and fall asleep do you
See the far stars on the near road
In early October? They are elk horns.
Dreams of rockets, bugle streams
Melvin at the pool table again
Beyond the eastern boundary
Of the reservation Germans who
Can’t speak English even say
How did we get here? They count
The time with each breath each
Sip then Blake’s lot a burger doesn’t
Sound so bad does it?

If I could make this landscape into a point Of light I would
Like trying to grab the stars so gracefully tiredly they would
Even say again go

First I inhaled the sky
And then I
Closed my eyes
Adjusted my spine
And started
Gathering pine nuts
Beside the cinder
Cone. Then I hid in
The shade and
Read Whitman’s pages of
Unknowing beauty
Standing and sitting and
Crying then.
Walked back as if hollow
More like floating
And there he was following

Behind me I could only smile
Looking back
Fingers full of sap eyes
Like volcanoes.

Say I’ve been 1:20 when
Politics is brought up call me
A Flaming liberal then.

Would it make you less depressed then
To know that in a world of hate
**** and death, there is a rock
Out in Utah that no eyes
have ever seen.

Not to soften the edges
Of evil
             but

A tree in Nevada, full of
Wind.

A moon gone at dawn
Stars, stars spilling canyons!

When love comes back to you, how
Many seasons will have passed?
Sun moon and mountain
Rain wind and snow.

What great silence lies between
Is now the reason for your happiness;
Though under no moon the vast
Expanse escapes you.

Look out into the world and see the
Fleeting colors before you I can
Tell you they are the clipped feathers
Of time.

And when I go then how sad will it be then
When the eternal forest changes from night
To Day will you be there in the back of
The hospital crying then under a ceaseless
Sun of an eventual goodbye will it be then like
The far corner of the woods or will it be rather
Like a thousand faces you decided never to
Look at. Puddles of rain, patches of snow. Will it be then like a beetle on a
Slow day when the only exit was a door out
Into oblivion? I decide then not to think of the times
When I turned on the front porch light and you were
Just outside of view. Will it be then?
Like leaving, rather on a slow day in say march

I rearranged my room but I could
Not rearrange the stars I bought a blue
Towel for the bathroom and I tried to
Forget about you but I could not.
I am more snipe when I drink
This is not a drunk poem…lies and lies
And lies. I rearranged my room but I could
Not rearrange you.