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).

the moon is a man who walks with open hands
down an empty narrow valley And
may is a way to say horray! here are the flowers
and here are the lovers, but don't be bothered
by the moon he's just and old restless spirit
(and spring is only a simple season) attached to the stern
of night's mortality And who is the me there
say in the waves waving so tiredly
so zealously but the you I and all of everything everywhere

A hazy, senseless rain in the night
Steady, as if summer was, ah
Finally taking a deeper sigh
From its ancient, billowing lungs.
Entwined in the lethargic retreat of
Violins and a thousand dreams
Of death and love; what could be
More terrifying and exciting?
Bowing, as if to say goodbye
With shoulders bent and bruised;
I hold onto those tears I let go
A long time ago, but still so near.
A cacophony of dank mushrooms
And mossy stones (remembering now, a river sound).
And in the mountain of mystic slopes
Deep in some obscure aspen grove;
I wonder if a similar feeling stirs
And grows?

What remains in the space of death?
The crinkled mountains so resilient -
The battered shore ever-changing.
“A day full of rain”
“A net full of stars”.
In the distance, through the mist
The lighthouse rises and radiates
Warning of impending danger.
Through my fogged filled eyes
the truth pours out. A fern
begins to form.

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.

In my head between the mountains
And the plains, those flowers
Of autumn how they hang on
Loosely like a tired mind
Grip onto the gravity of dieing
Yellow, purple and orange
Fall off the stem like a dream
Full of nervous repetition
Sun and moon and stars
Off onto the horizin slowly
To the east or west I don't know
Marching onward with heads hung low, so low the clouds become mist
Among the rivers of dawn
What have we forgotten to remember
Is love's ultimate struggle death. The sweet smell of frost the cold wind
Of change blowing against the mind
Like the shore at high tide. We have time we have no time. The low clouds
Are clear winter is upon us
Grinning quietly, anxiously.

I've always exerted
My heart carefully
Not to attract attention.
Like a waiting lion
Or the empty night.
In the forest
My heart beats against
Time. The distant shores.
I breathe in the vastness
Of a darkening forest.

All the earth
Became the water
A question I
Could not answer.
Soft yet rigid
Slightly spinning
Love the same of
Sand.

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.

Yes the mountains in my mind
So ever rising from the horizon
Of my past, of my future
Seem to know no star, seem
To crumble in my waking, constantly.
What if, what if love held no fear
Like death, the way the stream flows
Forward and backward (remembering the rain).
The mud sun where once we came from
Rose up from the desert like a bruise
Like a black eye. And I remember passion
In strained muscles, exhaustion and composure
(the birth of an infinite healing) what if
That's how it flowed, reluctant?
The closing embrace of tears.

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.

Outside the hospital
Beneath the fathomless, burning rage of  a star. In February

The mountain rose like a wing.

An encroaching wing, like an
Owl's fateful flight, half the path

speckled in blood. Encircled by
the weight of parting, we waited
patiently, tiredly.

(Grief is but the path we blindly stumble)

Our tears, the briny residue
of electricity, poured out profusely
Like a thousand small rivers
Running wild in the desert

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.

There's a mountain in your mind
And it's covered in pine
On a lake in the night
That's swimming in light
Of a moon, that's too lost to find.

There's a valley below
Where the rivers all flow
And a tree, full of white flowers;
That's blooming sweet empty hours
Into a careless, intrusive spring.

And never mind the words I spoke
As the stars turned to smoke
Or the kiss, that I stole from your face;
A simple embrace, of a time and a place
Together, that stitched in the pain.

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".

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.

After the storm rolled by
The swollen edges of the swamp
Lifted their white wings to the night
In flocks of thousands. I watched
From the cypress as they became
The stars, burning in the farthest
Corners of my mind. Dreams
In the space between synapses,
Fizzled and died. Love was but
A question we hung carelessly
In the dense jungle air.

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

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.

There's a mountain in my mind
I've never been able to see
Beyond the farthest horizon
And I'm sailing away
Beyond the further shore
To where the ancient stars
Dance like fireflies in sky.
There's a story in the shells
Of those that have sunk to the
Bottom of the sea of those
I have loved shaped by
The waves of time.
There is a place in the pines
There is a space in my mind
Where even the wind won't blow
Where even sun won't shine.

What if, on the edge
Of oblivion
I spoke with golden eyes
Burning the horizon
Charting a new path forward
Through pain, joy?
What if, the mountain fell
Away into the flames
Of eternity, like the last
Embrace full of tears, sorrow?
Neigh, tomorrow the sun will
Rise, the clouds will grow
And in the thunderous chaos
Of this life, I will persist
Until the last word is spoken
The final breathe taken.

every inch of earth and more
i long to touch and love and know;
like dusk the quiet fingers hold
the nervous children laughing.

sleet, too wet for a bird's feather
drowned the cold sound of dawn;
now quiet only the sun shines
golden rays through hairy pines

the poem should melt the mind the
words should be so, lascivious as if to
jump from the lips of stone
and kiss death itself. I know
the sun, have seen it's curse.
I know the moon have cried.
I know nothing of mountains but
the climb. I look at the sky as if
it was the sky. I dream too little
dread too much.

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.

It was first a dark blue rattling
As dark as the deep ocean
Then turning brighter brighter
Creating silhouettes of the forest
--The birth of day stretches
In layered colors of silent waves
Now a sort of white pushing up
Like an angry fist piercing the sky
Breaking the shore finally
An orange layer pink to the south
Saturates the horizon and grunts and moans
The weight of a million years
The gravity of love turning and twisting

I’ve had this memory before.

--The bird wakes from the night
Without thought takes flight
Wings outstretched to the west
Upward and over the mountain goes.

--To a peaceful sunrise August 17th 2012--

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!”

Along the flowing path
Of illuminated light, smiling
Beside the stream

Among the smothered stone
Beneath the shadowless mountain
The burning sun rises

Bloodless as Osiris
Drinking in the dusk
And laughing.

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

Steering wind
Of sleep and dreams
Guide this restless mind to morn
Not to sail among the waves
But crash along the rocky shore;
Take the restless young and weak
Take the lonely, cold and meak
But leave me here among the dread
Of nothingness and emptiness
To wake the dawnless, heavy stars
To guide my soul between the tides
Of life and death the cruelest course.
And lift the anchor of my fear
From the sandy bottoms of despair
To free the pain that is not there
For only a moment longer.

The emerging minutes
Wrapped themselves
Loosely around the
Branches of my mind
(Like banners in the wind)
And the naked trees
Poetically, whispered
In a spoken silence
Beneath the shadow
Of the mountain.
Dusk was heavier than the stars
Heavier than my sadness
Here in the ravine, waiting
For the snow.

out with the ancient ones
beneath the rain
we spread our wings
and remembered the dead
.

Imagine being a hollow tree
On a damp morning in
November in Minnesota along Lake Superior
When lonesome is the
Only thought on your mind
When the clouds do not lift
For days and the wind
Is perilous from the north
And the white and black of your
Rotting trunk is the only disparity
To the orange and brown ground
Where the mushrooms, they even they
Are dead.

That is the way I felt walking up
The gravel path at dusk with two friends
Such a dusky hazy muffled
Moment when the only light was
A blue black that seemed to last
Eternity and our breathe from our
Mouths were drowsy ghosts in the air around us
And the cold hit our ashen cheeks
And stung red the luminous blood
Gathered in our eyes and
I thought of her how I would never
See her green eyes again looking out through
Up on the hill looking out through
The forest and over the lake which
Could not be seen as a lake anymore
Just a profound purple translucent hole
And out over into that last bit of day
That bitter blue black which
Hung so hallow on the horizon
The saddest light endlessly
The saddest light endlessly
“We are almost half way there”
Said ***** and I nearly died right there
Nearly crawled on my knees into the forest
And as I gazed behind me into that black emptiness
I saw something run across the path into the forest
Something run away from the fear of loss
From the feeling of hurt and pain
It might have been a deer or a wolf
It never looked back it never turned around
And then it disappeared into the woods forever
And the only thing I could do was turn my shoulder
The only thing I could do was continue on.

How far do we tend to travel beyond death?
Many people say only a few thousand feet.
Can you see me there stuttering?
And what memories do we take with us
Downstream  but only a few time heavy stones?
Those is which we chose to reminiscence.
Love the roundness of gravity
And hope the shape of change.
I can only remember that which
Only takes me as far as
The distant shore.

Like ships in the night
The armada of storms
Sail off across the horizon
Out onto the distant plains;
Booming and anguished.
I walk in the night electric
And feel a certain buzz inside
Cautious and wild, stirring.
The night is hidden from me
by the night, the young leaves ripple
In the empty wind.

On the desert was a horizon;
The hope for rain, scattered
About like stones
Onto the endless plains.

The smile of a sunset
The soft pink embrace
Of evening, held our breath
In, but only for a moment.

Inhaling the moon, I saw
the lesser stars, oh sweet death
As rigid as the moutains
As soft as the sand.

The mountains in winter
Full of those darker shades
Covered in snow. The deeper
Ravines, the frozen river.
Very little movement.
Who is it that speaks
Skittishly, naked on the breeze
Of coming snow, stars?
The mountains in winter
An overwhelming moment
Of peace. Opening my eyes
Into this incredible existence
To a cold thatched sky and beyond.

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

Underneath the cedar’s in the green grass
The orange cat spreads her bones a certain way
And every so often lifts her stout head
To see the people coming and going

To her the clouds take on the shape of fish
Swimming lazily in a shallow pond
Her body stalking silently the shore
Never letting her shadow reach the sky

The lull of the afternoon is immense
And the mourning doves gather on wires
Cooing every so often to make sure
The day does not slip away unnoticed

The lighthouse rises above the cedars
Rises above and into the ocean
Stretching its neck in anticipation
For the first hint of a gliding white sail

Now she departs that tangerine flower
Stalking ghost-like paw after silent paw
Strutting instinctively toward the water
Vanishing in the reeds which disclose her

The clouds drape across the waning evening
The sky turns blonde to pink to purple
The light from above shines the horizon
The soul escapes the body once again.

The corrosive canyon;
A precursor to hope,
Bent before me like a king
In dusty robes (how many
More years?). I felt the slow
Soft smile of the sunset
Slink away into the dusk
In one long smear of red.
I heard the coyote and the owl
Chattering back and forth
Beyond the broken horizon
Beneath the impalpable, stars.

An evening fear
--The stubborn tear--
The death of day has opened way.

The sun is low, the shadows long
The horizon sky a light blue purple
The frozen trees now naked free
Cling to every last ray.

Autumn
The sun rose like an old wave over
All the mountains that couldn’t contain
The light from which they came
A long time ago, yet the wary day was
Young and inexperienced in the season of
To shed a leaf, to feel first snow (ode to
the wiggling winds of change).
Love was both young and old and
In the hazy sky the light took on
More the color of an eternal being
Sitting down to read a book beside
A half open window, a fuming
Cup of coffee (oh to be both alive
and empty) more the color of
greeting than anything, a shy
"hello?"

Emerson I lost
A long time ago but
Whitman I picked up
The other day off
My bookshelf and
Read earth my
Likeness and thought
About bursting forth
Through the dreams
Though the night
Was dark the
Stars were cold
And the beginning

These waves, brought to life in full color
Against the brim of a tropical sunset
Over the weary Gulf of Mexico
Washed white and silver foamed upon this shore
These waves; complete movement upon the ocean, devout servants
Endlessly caressing the pale, sparkled sandy shore
Endlessly ebbing and flowing through time, space
Through all of deep day and all of long night
Between the setting sun orange and blue
Between that of land and that of mysterious ocean
Between that of water and sky, now darkening sky
Always there caressing
A fine line overlapping, again and again
Riding the spine of earthly force
Crashing against this fateful shore
Gaining strength, losing strength
Gaining strength, losing strength
A constant force upon the land, twisting
Twisting and punishing the pale sandy beach
Twisting rocks and driftwood into new life
Rocks and coral grinded into red dust over millions of waves
Driftwood brown, turned into dirt and black soil
Life molded into liquid, life turned into permanence
A reminder of this strange reality, gravitation
That of which expires, that of which grows
Working on this exact beach, at this exact moment
Grinding and pushing, bringing reason to things
Bringing new to life, destroying old to life
Exposing ancient shells to the sunlight
Woven by a certain pressure, creating detail
Beauty in detail, made by the constant waves
Of which they shall one day destroy
And this very land, one day they shall destroy.
These waves, moving in, in blue and gold before the sunset
Stretched out across all of the land on earth
They have not ceased, they will not, they are relentless
They are innovation in each, beauty of this earth
This universe!
Waves moving in and out, for eternity perhaps
These waves, beautiful forms
Have me mocking the very air I breathe
Have me mocking the very thought of life and death.
(To the waves that crash on Jewel Key)

Written into the sand
A delicate heart; the broken
Shape of a thousand footprints.
Sunlight moves like water here
Sweeping down the arroyo.
Carved into the sand
An open hand; holding on
To a thousand lonely stars.
The long-lasting embrace
Maintained through centuries.
-
I think to a time when
The bones of galaxies have faded
And all of space is abandon, in the evening of the end.
When there is no light left
To guide and the only
Sound is that of the dead
Tiptoeing on the shores of emptiness.

You must appreciate the lack
Of most everything, lean towards
Death with shallow roots or just
Get up and walk away again
Or know the moon's cycle study
Sadness satisfy your bones
What I've learned even
The horizon is both true
And un true we must accept
Color and the lack of too
Accept the risks and be constantly
Pulled away and back pushed
Down like the mountains
Stand up like the flowers
What is else, silence and then
Tears love and love
Even a feather on lava in winter
Even a broken heart on the shore
The desert whispers but never tells
Not like the ocean he is too brave
Not like the praire.or the swamp
The desert is final goodbye
Between the brighter moments and
Death if you believe in such a foolish thing if you all this and less just to
Say how happy how sad i have been
Ask the desert the mountain the forest the swamp the plains it knows the same it the cold the warmth i prefer tears to silence something about salt and soon the lack of just get up
Just get out hours minutes days
The piano plays and then

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

Look at me! I rise from the reading
Of Robert Frost and write the words
Of the earth like a volcano and beside
My brain the springtime flowers
Growing in the sunlight of thought
--There has to be a river somewhere
Said the mountain but it was gravity
Or even larger that said something
In this dark deep midnight hour.

There are faces in the stone
The cemented sand that face
The stumbling mountains
To the east, like prisoners
In prayer. There are
Stories here held loosely
In the empty rivers;
Afternoons full of
Electricity and rain
Winter nights cold and quiet
Days of endless aching wind
And mornings, fresh and new.
If you listen closely, you can hear
Them talking about such things as
Erosion, defiance
Moons and stars.

It pours from our eyes
From deep within our memories;
These tears of summer clouds
This flood of our existence;
Eating away at the dusty rocks
Grinding against our bruised bones (these twisted epochs).
Ah, the flotsam of evening!
In purple and carmine streams
Marks the path through the reeds; Through the diluted dusk
To the windswept stars
To the elemental island of
Now