If you would like to write a poem run away
Into the far field of September choked with
Sunflowers full of bees become small become
More or less an endless possibility become
Light become dark, follow the coyote through
The junipers and see the stars. If you would like
To write a poem move to the desert develop
A sadness that can only be moved by a devotion
To the colors of the rain and devour hours
Of afternoons like a mountain gathering
Clouds gather truth. If you would like
To write a poem begin with the end
Draw a circle in the sand of some dead
River and then erase it, slip into October
Unnoticed and as the days become shorter
Become closer, remember what it's like to cry.

Maybe I will be around to tell them living that
The end is not the end show them my atoms
Flowing on through time backwards towards
The end maybe I will be a river I will be
A river then that flows on through and
Cascades into the endless emptiness of
Beyond time I will be like a bird there
A bird that waits to tell people the
End is not the end I will fly away again
The smallest parts of me somewhere
I will show them with their own existence
The beauty and horror of it all I will
Be like a river then like a bird there too
Singing two songs two songs to them

Bat calcar I would say would be
Fine emotions of desert say the
Pinprick of a moth’ wings on air
Junipers in some hard time
Blue and cold was the air.

No love’s a fern that
Cannot grow no
Heart’s a when rain
Is snow alone no
Moon’s a shoe no time’s
Time no time some

No fern's a love that
Cannot grow

August is the bird’s nest a
Broom that falls in the spider’s web when
The toad’s wet toes are the **** yo
                    Questions but but black
holes

Back by the fax machine
Say in summer when the
Clouds are rolling in like
A head of cauliflower; I know
Whose prayer we dance to
By the refrigerator
God of history
And laughter whom chews
On the benevolence of sadness;
Plants hands with seeds says
The story of rain with
Out a word believes in more or
Less the scrutiny of an infinity of
memories, just the satellites
Of death all primrose at dusk
        and paper cut dancing
In his mind the plaza.

Hold up your wooden cross to me
In the desert dear when you are crossing
The valley in moonlight you are killing me
And here there is no water for the blood
To move in so, just go, it seeps into the soil
As quiet as a dying star listen I can hear the
Insects that never were born the ones
That could not find the golden petals,
I watch, as you move on in moonlight
Between mesas and disappear again and again.

No body if ever right and you lose is not and is the way to never and always think
I don’t believe in things I can’t touch like stars or your soul but I’ve seen
Meadows of seasons changing at once, the sky not all there
Emotions enough to slip even waves I’ve seen a dream that was and
Wasn’t there. If you were smart you would blame it on contradiction
And then you wouldn’t. I believe.

How your face can be so taunted
Your smile so serene. Said if it wasn’t
For tomorrow never would have been
Ever, fish and things. This pyramid
Is a black man shot dead. Take off
The cuffs take off cuffs. So much
Freshwater birds say when. Why/
So much death and death through
Throat pronounced words like air
And when. Snipers don’t choose
Race been banging bullets long
Before then, let me say alligators
Would eat your throat again
And again. Less gun

Soon this room will be empty, yes
And another will move in, decorating
Corners I thought once impossible
Only to fill holes, in their loneliness.
Soon, monsoons will imbue mesa
In color, flowers will bloom too
Love can endure, and memories
Like smoke, will drift away.

Curved space so much
Said surface gathers
Information. My eyes
Are not mine, nor yours.
Infinity, or something close
Closes in. said I goodbye
And goodnight with no
End in sight. A sky
Full of electrons, cleansing
Consciousness, what a view.

The entropy
Of this
Evening is
Expanding.
All the flowers
Find the moth.
Thee clouds few
Are covered
In a
Haze. Two. Moon
I walk
And want to become
something more
Or less. I kiss
A black hole
And become none.
==then

The *** took a right
On Hennepin
Knew he shattered oblivion
While all the cars stood still
Still when he looked
To the winter sunset
Across the icy
River, frozen with thought
Thought well I
Know how this
Will end (stars

Make it a chiseled red line, with grey
With as many feelings as flowers
Opened petals to the rain. Take
A bough of juniper and brush
The soft skin of the sky.  The smoke
Of memories is stained. The arroyo is
Full of clay, sunken feet fill the
Mind. Thunder on the horizon
Shatters the rainbow into silence
Each color divides into dusk.
Underneath the red mesa
I peer into the purple twilight
Which is a closing eye. The
Stars open up like a field of
Evening primroses. The sound of
Frogs, from some hidden pond,
Echo in my dreams on the wetness of
Edges as I slip in and out of sleep.

Tell me what is it a hole into infinity the
Moon is but a moth wing rising above
The mesa.
         And all my anxiety is false
So even the desert primrose opens under
The milky moon light.

And loneliness too a coyote cry through
An ocean of juniper. They saw the same
          Moon as me how little it has
Changed.

I step over black holes of
Books when the time has come
To brush my teeth bats
Go back in their cave sud
Denlly I will listen to chopin
Slowly flying ants.

Maybe these feelings of the past
Which we say then cannot last can
In the dreams of dead "said"
They will come ofcourse

My re
Fridge ger
Rator has been out for years
The light that is and if
I wasn't to say anythin
G to anybody for years
No one would notice after

On wings of dusk emerge the dead
That tie the day with night in thread
As tight as when the stars were one
Before the weaver's web was spun;
I watch with blinking eye to see
Horizons which unbind from me.

Well I noticed the moth in the mirror
Nirvana plays on and on could you
Be two lines to heaven rather be
A spider than a cricket everyone always
Says “hell na you a spider” would have
Been infinity too if it wasn’t for sleep
Keep my neck crooked just in case such
Deer choice to leap through the pines
Green and black and what stars blur
Blur like dreams where the door meets
The wall is the hole I need never said
Moth stains ain’t free they just something
We can’t keep forever.

Uninspiringly a soft black snake slips across the path
Flicks its pink forked tongue in the damp Florida air
And disappears into the myriad of green ferns
As if you to say “Your existence is inconsequential”
And perhaps footsteps in the mud is all the hammock
Will remember of us (like memories of the dead).

So the zebra long-wing floats on an embankment of breeze
Stops to rest on an orchid high atop an oak tree
Covered in a vague blanket of whiskery purple plants
Hanging over the reflection of a speechless sinkhole
The gaping mouth of death where an alligator basks lazily
Stirring centuries in the silver swirl of his tail
Echoes outward from the beginning of time.

And your eyes begin to open widely
(Before now you have just been sleepwalking)
To the soft reflection of white wispy clouds
To the unbounded blue black of time, the sky
To the slow bend of emerald palms in the breeze
To the white flutter of egret wings rising up and over
Disappearing into the opacity of the jungle.

So the afternoon wanes in overwhelming branches
Colors blending delicately into mountains of azure
Lilac, plum, auburn, cherry, salmon
Whispering to you “Hold on to this moment”
Reverberating in the smooth glaze of reflections
(The first colors you have ever truly seen)
Dripping from the dusky tropical Florida sky
Melting into the expanding darkness of the night.

Darkness in the swamp
No slanting moon smiling tonight
Just an overwhelming vibration
From the universe above.

To be a part of the whole
And love in the time of living
In the smallest fraction of space
The hope that lingers near.

I am facing her now
My breathe frigid and cold
And she is staring back at me
With a question on her tongue.

I pull the stars so near to my body
The shadows between compress
And I hold her hand tightly
In spite of all our differences.

I have annihilated all fears
And as my head spins toward hers
A star very far away
Is born again.

Blue lilacs they remind me of
My mother’s blouse that time
I fell asleep between her arms on
That brown corduroy couch she
Kept next to the window open
Outside the humid forest was
Dark green down the ravine
Where a memory of river swept
My dreams were half pressed against
Her breast and the edge of some
Thunder heads billowing thinking
Back upon it now those forms
Opened up with so much force
With so much rain mother
She ran so quickly to the window
Laughing.

Tell me what love is I would say
Could be the seagulls thick
As clay.

Somewhere now
In the deeper canyons
Of night, hidden in a
Garden of stars, crawls
Out from a deeper woods,
A ghost of a ghost, hunched
On hind limbs and ready
For the pounce.
      All night.
And you, you are
The deer that wanders
Through the aspen doors
Of a meadowed mist,
Beside the dizzying stream.
And what, what will you
Do then, when those trees
Begin to shift, when the stars
Begin to move?

I started drinking scotch at twenty seven
Mostly the days were filled with mountains
Contradictions that gazed in mirrors
As wet as rain drops the hours.

Loved on a beach in the swamp and
Desert. Couldn’t be as sad one day

After rain when dusk is just
Distant owl call moon
Stone is wet white soon
Stars dull slip
                          through.

This is the nexus of never
An underlining sigh. Rain
Through the tall leaves
Tonight, tonight.

Dorothy is out in the garden again
Pulling the weeds out from the ground
Weaving between the green corn stalks
Like a spider spinning a web.

The brown adobe house rests quietly
In the shadow of the turquoise mountain
Which gathers the onion shaped clouds
With its immense emerald hands.

And Dorothy is laying down now
Beneath the sagging green corn stalks
With one ear planted in the soil
Listening to the distant song.

The song of the earth is thunder
Echoing down through the canyons
And the sky is filled with darkness
As the cool wind begins to cry.

Dorothy is out in the garden again
As the clouds roll down the mountain
Pulling the weeds out from the ground
As quickly as she can.

The hydrangea leaves, lime green
No purple flowers yet, weave up and down
In the afternoon storm, rain rain
Like fingers caressing piano keys
In the back of my mind.
The song of spring! Beautiful and chaotic;
Brings the tears from within me, out.

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.

Sun setting over
Swamp causes deep orange emotions
On the brim of thought.

Use to not be more than a memory
Some green grass in the far field; use
to remember when the corn fell; Gods
Were more than just a belt strap. Stood
In the sunrise smiling. Before all the
Katsinas and ketchup. Use to feel that
Soft days were no less than a slow
Slap.

I imagine the wind
Being taken out from the
Sails. Or that moment
Before you fall from
Your horse. If gravity
Were to flip itself.
An empty soda can
In the far woods
.
I imagine
A piano by the surf
Playing an endless song.
A simpler bird.
Beethoven and the rain
Or. The worse possible pain.
What it finally took to love
And understand.

Down by the ruffled river in the
Heart of the skeletal canyon
The cold stones begin to wake
As Hercules aims his arrow at the
Half-moon, misses wide, come those
Thirsty shadows with stretched necks
Dip their dry dusty lips into the
Silty water, ahhhh! Emerge the
People of clay, crude and
Broken apart like a mirror that has
Been dropped, shattered reflections
Of the earth, born, learning first how
To climb, and then how to walk.

Down by the river’s
Cold half-moon dance
Creep the thirsty
Shadows of canyon
For a quick sip,
                           Of time
Beneath all those stars
Of January.

These days they are the crimpled up
Wings of moth nights, warm moon
Flowers of valley, mesa and mountains
Through layers and layers of soil no
Wonder they are attracted to
That eternal flame of desire, trembling
So far away.

Down the hill along the cow path
We stumbled like fawn shaking off
The heavy fog of sleep the gray
October day unfolding its onerous
Wings through the gate which we
Were always so careful to close behind
Us past the silver slender ash trees
Between that old stone house and rotting
Garden toward the barn where the swallows
Lived up the ladder to the hay where we
Could swing all day if it wasn’t for
Those dreaded chores which came
So natural to you, in the silo
With those pitchforks trying not to
Slip down into that spiraling lascivious
Mouth of metal (death), where outside the
Silver bearded god watched as
We staggered out like mice from an
Old and rusted tractor into the
Soft polished air of first snow, laughing.

What is it about you?
You that rise into the
Onion peeled clouds,
That collect the cool rain
Like that and open your lascivious
Mouth to drink don’t you
Know it’s poisonous, useless.
You are no delicate flower
In a mountain meadow no
Swiftly swimming butterfly
In flight. You are only
Something strong, ugly
Motionless in the restless
Monsoon rains
Destroying your deepest
Darkest memories with each
Honest sip.

Beneath the silver snow which has gathered
And gathered for days and days
Between a dream and waking in
A cold purple January dusk. Beside the tender
Tongues of root far below the cold silver
Snow which gathers and gathers--
Sleep the soon to be moths
Of summer, those murky wings of midnight
Sleep with no sound gracefully in the warmth
Of the earth among the beginning of a
Million single sexless flowers (which
One day will guide them on the forsaken
Path of desire) deep beneath the lascivious
Warm moon will make love and love.

When the last light crawls through the opened broken winter clouds
Like that to touch the back-bone spine of the Zuni Mountains would think
A cross should be erected as a sign to the sun shuttering like the snow
Between your hair and ears which so soft sticks like stars between the
Void of you and me falls from this inconceivable sky which flutter small
Final birds from juniper bough to juniper bough. Between broken mesa’s  
Earth edge is closed sharp! As I fall down near the sandstone body of

                     you

We are becoming trees /// frozen in
The basement of December. Horizons
Of naked limbs, chattering like teeth +++
On grey air. A piano plays some
Blurred memory 1, silvering the
Dusk to sleep. Snow falls from the
Dark like stars but it is nothing that
We can keep. Out of a stump ()
stumbles the red fox. On and off
He goes all night >< >< >< ><

The multiverse, full of possibilities
Crumbles before me, like snow
Falling in the dark, cold night. We
Experience time because we can
Not help but be Conscious. I am
A black hole filled with sorrow
--There is no escaping.
Mountains of sea. Emerging.
In front of me. Through the
Out into the dark, cold night I go.

This flower of entropy, this
Single sullen bloom, ah
The universe, unfolding
Its many colored petals
In the lazy afternoon.