The red fox
That Lewis
Shot at
And missed.

A river
That snaked
Away into
Endless mountains.

Beyond smoke
Bird wings
Floated between
Broken desires.

And deeper
In brush
The shadow
Leaped away.

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.

Little tiny black dots to me
They climb and fight up to my knees
But every time I toss down my hand
And flick their tiny bodies away;
But evermore they continue to pest
And me to them the same I guess.

There is a path that leads to the heart of the swamp
That navigates the land like a vein
Start out from the Oasis Visitor Center and head south
Toward the Ocean like a single drop of rain
Fallen from the ancient summer storms
Along the way you will become much more than yourself
You will become part of the swamp and part of the cypress
The air plants will hang on your flesh and the spider webs
Will break on your sweaty face and crawl in your hair
Take your time and become patient because things will gradually start to show
Like a dead crawfish dry as a bone
Or an apple snail shell floating on cracked mud
Here there is both life and death
And now you are beginning to believe in neither
But be patient because things will start to show
Like the red tongues of the air plant
Reaching out to lick your swampy skin
Or the pale ghosts of the Spanish moss
Hanging like questions from your arms
Out here you will feel miles from anyone
And the best part is you are miles from anyone
Out here you will start to understand yourself
Your complexity just like the habitats scattered
Mixed in pieces like an ancient puzzle
One minute cypress another minute saw grass
One minute sunshine radiating another minute shade.

But continue navigating this vein and you will reach the heart
Its beauty beating loudly now the green trees are pulsating
Around your blue lungs you breathe in the air and feel refreshed

The living green ferns are reaching out to grab you
Hoping to take you away forever in the swamp
The living green ferns are reaching out to take you away now
And if you feel like you are ready, let them.

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.

Now and then
And every moment among
Poems, like mountains
With streams reach inward
And bend toward everything and nothingness

Read it a million ways
The mountain says
In stones, please no more.

It feels good to be on the ground,
doesn't it? Laughing in the sunshine,
crying in the rain. What a feeling to
have, what a wave to ride. And all the
stars and all the minds and every single moment and more. Mountains crumbling and the river long gliding off into the ocean, again. The sound of thunder a flower in spring and all the dew, I never knew, of just how great it is to be alive until the moment I met you.

The wind blows my ***
Towards my shins;
Salty breeze you joke!

Wet stones
Tired bones
Flowers wet
Spent out
Though
Like stars
Gone first
I know
Because your smile
Soft like
A cave
Phew
Your headlights
On
The bats are hanging
My thoughts
Dragging slow
Soon the sun
White
And bright
At dawn
The fawn
Wakes too

It was relatively nine
When I walked
To the plaza down
The sidewalk past
The bougainvillea that
Bursts out the fence
Like a volcano
To go see the pigs
That tip over
The trash cans
With their sense
Of smell;
And there she was
Like a ghost
On the bench
With sad eyes
Softly saying hello
Through the yellow glow
Of the streetlight
Behind her
And me being
Relatively shy
Loudly waved good bye
And walked back past
The church and
The old school
To emphatically sit
Back gaze back
At the past and
In thought with
Write about it.

It is like lying beneath burnt ashes
A blister on your memory. Beside
The rocks two eyes open again.

The tired sky is so dry it breaks
And then melts together again
and breaks and melts together again;
at sunset I nearly cry
Soon the clouds will be like that too.

I have been counting down the days until
The earth begins to lean away again
From the sun.

But who has been counting down the
Days until the sun becomes too hot
For the earth to touch?  And what will
The sky have to say then?

The old man beneath the mesquite tree
Whose roots are shallow and wide;
It is him who has such thoughts so close to death.

The thing about the future
It looks at you in the mirror
But you can't see it there
Smiling back at you like
A thousand sunsets at once;
But soon enough the time has come
Then it turns away and runs.

Twenty hundo on the brass tho
and they wonder why I flash glo
******* walking through the grass low
and they wonder why they crass, tho.

Ate some sea food and an *******
Now I'm swimming is some glass snow
Brain so stirred, I'm talking fast slow
Starry night, just like a Van Gogh.

Like the moon, I'm casting shadow
Laced with oil colored pastel
Call me empty, I'm a vast shell
Alexander, call me Graham Bell.

with all this noise
A flower
lover of light
with all these years
only minutes less
brittle, stiff
the wind
myself
a shell scoured
a lover
some
**** left
to grow then die
yet

That the sun begins its life in the palm through the eye
That the poem must be ignited in the heart
That the poet must be ready to jump off the edge smiling
And the clouds of white move across the morning sky blue
And everything has a mouth and a stomach
That the end is only the beginning
And these circles I make with my mind have reason
And my bones will remain in the ground after I die
That the smoke will remain rising after the fire
And the whole ground was burnt in a grey texture
The green and the golden of the saw grass swaying tantalizing
Taunting the loneliness in my shoulders and arms
That the afternoon descends in a purple hidden
In the cypress until it too awakes cautiously
That the soul wonders alone in a watery forest
That the sun sets in an orange yearning
(I will not soon forget the feeling of vastness
An open prairie and the emptiness involved)
That the gate to heaven is locked tightly
But one can slip in backwards on their spine
And the moon will shine if it can like a pearl
Hidden in the bottom depths of space like a seashell
And the somber piano cords of the night descending
Can make even the strongest man cry
That the salty streaks are like rivers to the ocean gliding
That one never truly wakes, wakes from the dream
That the sun will rise tomorrow.

There's a small stream that runs through a valley of white tent rocks
And i'm tuff enough to know that
It doesn't matter though I would
Say that the angle of the soft stone
Agrees to the gravity so casually as if
Or without any doubt the dead tree
Tbat hangs on so angrily will guide
Fate down the right path of finesse
You see you see

Riding on the. Bus in the rain
.up the tormented hill
In August. The people
Stir.like leaves. I'm
Leaving For the coast
Playing with my thoughts
With a. Stick. A lighted candle
Through the battered night. i go

Out from the warm-depths of an infinite sleep
Away from the cob-web dreams of the night
Me and her awake into a reality and bath in warm sunshine

Morning breaks the horizon and now it is moving
Across the undeniable intimidating blue sky
Moving in colorful waves but in silence
Peeling off the shrouds of sleep around our eyes
Bringing life to our bodies and to the world around
We glide and smile through the tropical vegetation
But no we are not alone there are others also gathering
Precisely estimating the strange reality of this morning

And look, there in the water
A bird that is
Swimming
We all feel the damp of its black feathers
We all feel the excitement of its peculiar existence
The anhinga breaks the water and smiles at us.

And look, there along the bank
An alligator basking
We are taking pictures and we are thinking deeply
With every bump of armor a million years of thought
The alligator opens his eye as we walk away.

And over there
Another bird is preying
It is white and grey and blue and red
It shifts its neck towards the water like an exclamation point
And no sooner breakfast is served for the great blue heron.

And further on
Something is breaking the
Water
A hundred or more creatures of the canal swimming
Shimmering bright black and brown on the surface
The Florida gar is slapping its tail in the air.

And on and on and on the creatures of the morning stir
In anxious anticipation of the fateful day
An infinite amount of possibilities hang and fall from the sky
They are falling among the cypress and saw grass, and into the water…
And into us
And into us, holding hand in hand
Me and her breathing in the tropic air, fresh and alive
Taking in all that is to be found, all the possibility and truth
We continue walking along to the end of the boardwalk;
We can go no further…
I smile at her through the orange rays of the morning sun
And kiss her musical lips.

This is the remains of progress
Pale dry dirt exposed in the
Tropical air rising out from the
Ground showing no sign
Of an ancient city constructed
No signs of life now but
Below below and out of sight
Is where the Crayfish waits patiently
In damp tunnels narrow
For a change to come.

And I feel like I can finally sleep again
And I thank you for that.

Burnt out arroyo's
Of centuries gone
Melt before the sun
Goes away,  before
Summer does. The
Carmalized scent
Of la chamisa
Dank and old
Reminds me of
A smile gone
A dream remembered.

Laid down like a pine
after a mountain wind
after billions of years
the forest of space
is still widening

Sleet rain at night
From a cloudless sky
Was such a beautiful sight
To see you there smiling
Between the stars

It’s as big as this farm field
The universe, after harvest
Tufts of emptiness covered
In first snow. Only the breeze
Of the cold afternoon
To rattle any **** that
was still left near the barb wire
Fence. All the trees were naked by
November. I went further. Supernova.
Where once a glacier slid. Now
Cows ramble on the hillside in
The unfolding evening. In and out of
Light, the clouds are coming back.
The deep ravine is hungry for snow.
Dusk is a ruddy purple and above
The geese are flying south.
Near a frozen pond I watched
The night come on. A constellation of
Branches. A nebula of memory.
And I was young and
And the moon was old. And
Love can only stretch so far
Before it shatters or recoils.
I took the cow path back home
Underneath the snowy stars and past
The woodpile through the gate.

I tend to stay as silent as possible when two minds interact
It is my camouflage
And the woven fragment of argument
Of ecology and war and more
Is overwhelming when the moon is so full
And the killdeers know not if it is a grey morning
Or midnight
But I am the last one left
Alone by the fire waning
While the embers orange dim off
And the cold creeps in from the swamp
And my thoughts begin to ignite
On the horizon of perpetual sleep

(But it is I who walk the gravel road in shadows
So deep into the forgotten night, into the illuminated swamp
Making sure the flames will not uproot again).

On January 27th, 2012 a life was lost
Along Highway 41 at 1:45 in the afternoon
Outside the Oasis Visitor Center
A women lost control of her vehicle
Corrected her mistake too much
And flew into the air like a nervous egret
The gas tank broke upon impact with the limestone
Cracked open I suppose like a frown
The flames ignited immediately
The driver was able to escape through the sunroof
With a few brave men pulling and yelling
I can imagine her thoughts as she escaped
And peered into the wild swamp and blue sky
Saw the green wax myrtle and the brown cypress trees hanging softly
The passenger however was trapped and within seconds
Died, she burned there in the swamp
Visitors from afar saw her life vanish in black smoke
86 years of existence taken away by the highway
That was completed three years after her birth.
(And of this line let us celebrate her life)
___________

And of this loss for a few days after
All were sunken with fear and uneasiness
All thought of how quickly life can be taken away
And within a few more days I suppose we will all forget
Her death and carry on with our own.

All the ravens
at the end of February
gathered in the leafless branches.
I now know the sound of death;
it is deep in the throat
and sonorous.  

Then what happens?
The snow will melt
The river's will flood
The summer will open
Its reckless hands again.

Tree limbs on moon beams
Leaps so frightfully to the edge
Of ever existence, only then
Will the shadows finally fear us.

Look at the stars, the space between
The owl and the deeper woods, why
Then would one begin to say
That this day, is far too short?

But a snake in the weeds,
beside the barn, sliding
away down the grassy wood.

This star dust is litter
The last tree is hope
I held my eyes to the cold light
Of a burning cigarette.

A man with no legs
A mountain full of rain
Who then comes here
Without any pain?

Grasp all the open
empty branches of the mind;
Keep all that is wasted
In the warm sands of time.

Beyond the farthest horizon
Past all the known light;
Grows then, a simple memory
Of a sudden, single spark.

Down by the river
At dusk, where eternity
Tiptoes like a cat.

Moon like dragon eye
A dull yellowish red
Moon half full above
The distant mountain
Moving ever so slightly
Pulling the soft roots of
My mind, those in between
Thoughts, down. Moon of
Midnight's horizon
In the middle of autumn
Moon that breathes not
Fire but frost, tugging
Off the leaves one by one
Keeping in tow
With the memory of
When everything was one.
Moon of want and moon
Of waiting, moon of fear
And moon of relief.
Reflection and folly
Restless yet calm.

Through the leaves
a fusion in my eyes
summer's light
embraced within and
On the breeze
the warmth lingers
Like a kiss suddenly
On humbled mountains;

See there, the old
trodden path of the stars?
The cold black wings
of bats, emerging
from the earth?
I feel it in my bones
As I lie in the dust
I see it in my dreams
those broken memories
of Horizons of unbounded
entropy ever unfolding
Like a flower even
Beyond the final petal;

Summer is, sweet and bold
And full of life
Sharper than a knife
And equally as clean
Hanging there waist side
Ready for a fight.

We all cling to the past
So tightly, rooted deeply
Into rock, breathing
Lovely moving through
The washes, the mountains
Have eyes too the moon
Looks lonely down upon
The cactus that begin to wake
In the ashes of the twilight
Out from the old stones
They break those chains
Like stars do far away.

A colorful glimmer of Christmas lights
In a dark room in December hid my grandfather
From the life he had proudly gathered.
Silence was taken as a relief from the rotting flesh
And smell of decay
Which had sank into every depth of the home.
My grandmother’s troubled eyes searched the
Room for useless words to fill the winter night.
Outside the heavens were covered by clouds
“How are you doing?” My mother spoke nervously
To him multiple times and in the faded dark he repeated each
“I’m trying the best I can.”
The cancer had slowly taken away his strength and
The wrist loosened around the faded arm chair which he gently sank into
The mutation made its way into a tumor over time
On his left cheek and his bottom lip hung motionless
In the flickering light of the candle.
Even with the form of dying
A shade of life could be seen in his eye
And some words echoed from the deepest parts
“You look older with your beard” he said
With a grin that showed us all that his time was near.
I left my grandfather with a bend of my body
“I love you” and a handshake that led to a hug.
His final beat was felt on a Monday afternoon
And the winter distance separated us.
I came home for the funeral and all the
Women cried and the men stood quiet.
The priest took a request from my grandfather
And told a story…
I was three years old and my grandfather raised
Me above his head with force
Quickly rising and sinking me into the air
I flung between his arms
On the strongest throw I flew above his head and into the sky
And proceeded down through his slipping fingers
His perpetual eyes looked down on my falling body
“Andy hang on!” he said, knowing I was perfectly safe
I must have been climbing back up with fear because
In that moment with my innocent eyes full of life
I gazed up toward my grandfather
“Grandpa, I’m trying the best I can!”

At night all the birds
Return to all the trees
Up on all the hills
Where the fog first touches all.
How they sleep in the cold fog
On the twisted trees! At night
When the golden light fails
All the people on the street
They head to the trees as well, a thousand
Dreams of endless possibility, they trudge
In the twilight up the hill. Ah the end
Comes heavy in a heavy fog. As I close
My eyes new shapes appear. I lie beneath the
"stars and shake".

Horizon doesn’t need a name
Not out here, the sun slips
Back again behind those mountains
Why do I always talk of endings?
She said, so petulantly with a
Cold whisper like moths
In the garden. The cactus have not
Had rain out here for months the canyons
Are still red as a beating heart;
Those caves out there they have eyes
And they hardly sleep in the day even
Gravity has a name even those
Cold dreams even the flower death
Has a name the moon is up
And the end is over, again
Horizon doesn’t need a name out
Here, the dawn has burst
Two baby deer in the desert roam free
Even the forgotten have a name
Twenty hundred souls break then
The surface shattered like a window
The desert lies open and free
I just try to climb mountains those near
Mountains but never can I reach the tops
The nerves run out splintered death becomes too real
I slip down endlessly and frustrated

We don't have to exist:
That's what nature has told me
With big blue hips unpalmed
Shoulders unfolding flowers
So delicately when it rains;
We only exist because we can
Not too. The desert is filled with
Scars, these mountains go on
Forever.

If you could squeeze
A poem
Out of me it would be like
A cloud against a great mountain
A trembling of flowers. I know
The mesa sunset. The balancing of
Moon and spirit.

I've aged more than a mountain
Can't you see my canyons?
Running off into the sun
Into the low ****** hills
The etched relief of a million years
Frozen, like autumn sleep
Restless with tension
Of a long winter. Can't you see
My desires, the thousand foot
Drop from sky to stone
Bellied out like a sword
Laid forth to the day,
Can't you see my pride?
This the empty scene
Only a thought, one of a million.

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.

At our saddest, the darkest
Of the night, we find our
Deepest purpose, the
Ultimate cause. Slipping
In and out of shadows
You once again become
Nothing more than a memory,
Colder than the emptiness of space.
(The sun rises again)
It was with burning tears
I kissed your forehead
And said goodbye.

Ignite these feelings I have lost
Directly, against the strong pull
Of gravity, drag them out across
The Desert tonight like violins.
And in the aftermath of death
After the flames consumed you
And your bones became dust
I went out beside the red cliffs
To hold you once again.
And when I finally let you go
In the summer, between my fingers
In the morning sun, I felt the flowers
quiver in the breeze, I watched the forest grow
deeper in shadow.

Hide all the cords;
Autumn has gone
And winter creeps in
Not yet
I say though
Go deep
Breathe
Fall
Back
In to place

Where is the horizon? I hope it’s the breakdown -
Those sweet memories; these sunsets and stars
The unmasked moon, some dead love net
Hanging from the docks at midnight;
Maybe a flower, better yet the moth
Better yet a path, the open wound

I opend my cold hands to the old sun
Grasping a memory, I once touched;
A forest's edge, faded in the dark mist
Of dawn, oh sweet spring! Open your
Eyes, open your mouth and taste
The sweet decaying soil, the death
Of everything come to life again.
I closed my eyes and feel the sweet embrace
Of my mother and father, the unspoken
Love I came to appreciate; and all at once
Existence (the mother and father of all)
Became a solid, soft thing, while
Time quietly showered over me
Electrical and phantasmical.

There in the sun with eyes closed
And hands open, raised
I opened my mind; like a
Lighthouse on the rocky shore
Sweeping the broken, brash horizon
(and finding more than what was there).

My bones, know this mountain range
My heart beats like an owl’s wing;
Soft, at the ending of a day.
Summer is fading, surely
Over the empty scabs of spring
And yet, a few flowers remain;
Penstemons and asters
Though their petals litter the sand
Like forgotten feathers.
Who then, calls on the wind
The moon, to transfer the dead
To the field of stars? Who then,
With strong bones, tends
To the living.

Above, on the bleeding cliffs
Petroglyphs illuminate in the sunset,
I see them, the remaining images, linger
In the last light.

The mind sleeps, slacken
Like a fish net hung to dry;
Catching the naked wind.

The third time I opened my eyes I began to cry
Midnight ferry ride silver full moon
Over black waves
A feeling beyond death
Following the blinking red lights
Letting the tears gather slowly

The white gulls diving like stars tumbling
From the cold cloudless night
(A father a mother and a daughter)
Her first boat ride ever
Perhaps the mystery of life exposed
Blonde hair blowing in the salty breeze
Her eyes open as wide as the Atlantic
--And to think in no time
She will be safe asleep in a warm bed
Dreaming of a thousand things to come.

This is all I can do to keep my thoughts straight
Ride midnight ferries to abandoned islands
Grey salty Atlantic silver rimmed islands
Where cars disappear into the frothy abyss
Where the newly paved roads lead to nowhere
But the blusterous sea where all is forgiven
And forgotten.

Then the desert
Speaks
To me you
Should not be
Here the old
Mountains
Say, no rain
It's true
As love
As blood.

I walked out from Eric’s trailer at 10:15 P.M.
I opened the metal door into a world of darkness
And nothing was known
I stepped down onto the crushed limestone that led home
My feet wrapped in soft flesh
With limestone pressing its white edge against my cotton skin
Like the way it rubs the back of the silver swamp sleeping
The night was damp cool and windy
I could smell the tropical cold in the air swelling
It pressed against my face like a soldier
It said to me, “I am to be reckoned”
It was a chill against my spine
I continued walking toward my house as if
Not knowing anything more than myself
A blink and another thought given but
Here I could only hear the sound of the wind
Rustling the branches of the cabbage palm
It was like a snake in my mind
Another gust of wind and I was further
Now all I could think about was the stars
Candles in the distance
Mysterious and deep as the flowered orchids nearby
Cast forever in the forested dark
They were holes into time
Gleaming bursts of something I will never understand

More limestone stretching against my cotton feet
More fears and more anxiety
More beautiful unknown and more gleaming fires
More of life and understanding and love
More of me feeling like a sword
Cast between the bridge of fear and love
Falling like a tear into the ocean of the night.

A few minutes of time spent between Eric’s trailer and my house
February 11th, 2012