slowly
the tide turns
while the seagulls
ride the waves of air
above the dunes.
The white sails of
storms float on
and away, the broken
shell lays buried in the sand;
I grab it with my mind.
Beyond the dunes
in the cool, dark cedars
the old wind still stirs
salty and brash.

Somewhere in these eyes
A mountain lake
At dusk the rain
Through the pines
The mind
The soft stuff of stars
Between the clouds
Dreams! Life and
The forward falling
Of space
Backward into place
Like no other pattern

A path led me to a lake
A lake whose water says
The wind speaks
Beneath a mountain that
Swims in the clouds
In the dark.
What is left?
Dreams in the dirt
All these ticks trying to get at my. Blood.
Opportunity, the dawn so far away.

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.

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.

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

the burnt forest
of time, we climbed
to watch dusk -
to become dust.
the old path
that stretches on forever
(that follows the wind)
over the horizon-
i can see him walking
there now, smiling
in a golden blaze

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.

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.

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

the flower petal less
the moon wide
walking through the desert
in novembers purple dusk
Adrift without sail
no anchor no shore
to hold for to find
open up the heart wide
feel the stones inside
cold and dry the
empty vein bleeding
in the sand but wait
the sound
of nothing
the horizon hanging
like a senseless smile
a broken bone
fractured and frail
I carry this dead weight
forward and beyond
through bloodshot arroyos
through canyons of stars.

The hills
Ever so high
Grow higher
As I lower
Beside the river
Beside the stream
And dream or see
A single leaf
Still caught beneath
A rock, stuttering
As if alive
On high bough
Not boundless though
Close for awhile
Floating back and forth
Until carried away
And gone on
Forever there
And then
The course of
Course but more
The desert
Dead and dieing
The stars some
Black and bending
Some gone some
Yet born what is it
That takes and gives
So calculatedly carelessly
So surely spinning
Almost reckless like
Then tbe mother said
Almost motherless like
Could be brain or stem
Does not matter.

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.

Erase everything, start with nothing
Soon the desert takes hold, and
Doesn't forget. Stars. Love well your
Green eyes vanished long ago.
Not without anger, storms in reverie
Dark and menacing. The flood but
I wished for more. A million
Miles of wetter paint.

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.

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

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

Let us walk in the woods in
The mountains in the fall and
Convince ourselves side by side
Hand in hand (and alone in our
Minds) that not only do we have a problem but it is the very jaw we feed from that gnaws at our every moment of existence.

Let us see the sun light and shadow
And climb mountains and swim
In rivers after flood, let the sunlight
Caress our very bones and let us
Be in love with every smallest
Particle of energy and with the
Whole weight of the universe.
And history, let us not forget it is
One of harmony and despair.

The desert in winter at night. That is
Where I am now thinking of
Such things  mountains and forests,
Death and peace and time

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.

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

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.

This rock bombastic
Fallow fears real
Clinging like
To moss shadows
Even sun
In november caustic
Divide the day
Climb and descend
Love for
A time muscles
Pinched mind
Callowed flying
With soft strokes

after things lost in the cloudy past
In the night time barefoot in the plaza
Waiting for the last train north;
I fell asleep in the dry grass
Beneath the stony palms

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.

Blue, blue and green the intolerant mountain's rose
Exclaiming the melting point of snow
On the tips of their rocky tounges.

(Such a feeling of almost immortality)

I drove through the green and to the blue
Singing songs and crying, like a lost bird
And I didn't know what else to do
But leave the moment behind.

What coarse winds, rise you?
Even to think, an untamed spark
May burn such sorrow.

Death is the sun
Strained among brazen trees
Low in the sky and smoldering.
Burn away the cold
(oh even moon!)
Wash away the sorrow.
Now is the time for tears
Now is the time for growth.

I will one day become an ocean
And those that wish will come before me
And throw their troubles in my vastness
And pray their sorrows to my moons.

--I will soon become an answer
As silent as the evening sun
As changing as the seasons done
And bolder than the question.

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.

Moon climbs spring time smoke
Like a prayer I spoke last night;
The young aspen quake.

This land is bent
As yucca lingers *****;
Firm beetles push into soft
Sand, where soiled climates
Wet.

The arroyo is bloodshot and
Drunk, ******* rocks
Lay naked in sweat beneath
A colorful horizon of a smoked
Cigarette.

The moon, lubed, rises yellow
Bliss over ******* of
Red mountains embraced in
Night’s hard pressed
Kiss.

The stars are asleep and
Yet they keep a memory of
Love between juniper sheets;
Where you and I, and I
Weep.

The ****** sun is
Thrusting high, the day is
Climaxed in birdsong cry, without
Ever having to grasp (alas)
Goodbye.

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.

I could read it all from the earliest of times
To the most modern i could listen to it all
The jazz and all the drums and the soft whispers
Of love, and I could see all the mountains and
All the empty spaces, to know the difference between the
Mathematical infinities and reality or could i? The
Mississippi in winter, the desert in summer full
Of nothing but non emptiness to think or know
The physical is finite
And I can sleep good tonight. I feel like propane
I feel like nothing and could be
Just a comma before the unknown
Following the amazing and breath taking
Without breath, spineless and speechless
The reaction takes place and does all
Not at all and even then it's up to opinion
If it all matters or even if matter exists
It could be just an illusion for all you know
Now

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

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

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

What i seek the *****
the desert's way
of saying
I will show you the mountain
The moon. I will take you
Away from morning
from love the constant
thought of snakes
of stars

The river at night
The river beside the cottonwoods
The river beneath the moon
The early spring night
The cold wet stones
The distant owl calling
Through ribbed branches;
All our dreams floating
Further down stream
All our dreams driftin away.

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.

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.

Let me be so overcome with joy, I wag my tail
Let me walk out the door as if it’s the last day
Let me let you walk me, even on a leash
Even if it means you leave me let me walk
East and then west. On the sidewalk let me
*** on this bush of grass let me smell this
Javelina ***, this javeline *** let me
Mark the small path I walk on earth over
And over again let me say oh this this this
That and that that, palm frond let me ***
Here I will walk beneath the new moon
Beneath the stars even if it means you
Abandon me even if it means you die
Let’s sprint across the street lets fly
Past the church, oh a smell oh a scent
Let me smell this blade of grass and be
Happy oh the fence gate oh the door!
Let me lay beside your feet let me be warm
(oh, and the dreams come let me be free
Let me curl up beside you like so)

All these window lights are people
Eating, breathing sleeping
Like the sunrise, like the moonset
Devouring the space given to them
Like a river, like a mountain
(Sleeping, waking, moving).

All these stars are dying
Emptying out their existence to the
Emptiness of the unknown
Devouring the space in which they seek
Like a river, like a mountain
(Sleeping, waking, moving).

Who is it that wanders in their mind’s
But the ones who ask the harder questions?
Who is it that goes down into the black swamp
And confronts the age-old cypress?
It is the one’s filled with light and dying
Like a river, like a mountain
(Sleeping, waking, moving).

Isn't it ectastic
To live in a world of color
Or to think of you in the shower
Drying yourself off me, baby
Think about the distant stars
The lonely miles between
And all the lustful dreams
Of meeting you by the ocean
At low tide on a grey day
Nothing bombastic but
You said you loved me
And we walked out into
The waves and picked broken
Shells with our toes, like apples.
And isn't it ectastic
To live in a time of love
To love in a time of love

The farthest horizon
Have you seen it? In purple
Sunset above the mountain,
Above love, above grief.
I have.

For the mother's breath
For the baby's rest. and the rain
Let in. But the ice is thin
The water's cold.
From the daily woes
The keeper's best
Sucha  reverie, well
it's hooked like a net on the docks of
Inside of me

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.

When you look at him in the face
You can see yourself, a horizon
Of broken mountains. His eyes
The stars, they offer no solace
To the long dark nights. His smile
The sunset, it’s a million miles
Off.

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.

Erase it all, the heart
The desert. Even the horizon
For me.  One two the stones
Fall. The mountain. For you
From me. Escape
Eternity. The short trees
Even in the fog of the new rain.
From you, to me. It all makes sense
To build a home, a nest. Goodbye
Flowers, time to disperse your seeds
For you, for me. Though I have travelled
So far, for so long. Stardust
Moon.
You ask how I speak so naturally
Look at where I have lived.
The desolate inspires. phew
. lllllsalin the breakdown bewty

I hold too much in my head
Similar to how little
the desert recieves rain. Sometimes
I need to go into the mountains
and drink to feel peace.
I drink until I can begin to write
Then the words spurt how like a
Flash flood. I think about the horizon
and the breakdown of poetry
Everything mus
Even the brittle brush and stone
it's almost June, the mesquite
living is pain, it's every
barely languid
suffocatingly benign;
let it end here no go on
like last years flowers
this years doom.
I've been much further since leaving the ocean
the whole of america for me, to devoir
the stars and their stars
andtheirstarsandtheirstars
isn't that joy, begin

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