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

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.

Beyond the mountain
Stars sleep
Free of prejudice.
In the pink light
Of morning the
Birds sing.

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.

Beyond the last breath
From the last wandering ghost;
Appears a flower of no color
Or shape.
I go there sometimes to escape.
Beneath the ravished moss covered pines
Between the sudden, golden mountains.

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

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.

Blurs of new growth needles in
Green patches on the horizon
In the afternoon I looked at
Cerisa the god of uncertainty and she
Smiled gold fears at me and later it was
A sunset expressed in fractions no
Complete notion of day or night
And night was compressed light
As Eric the god of thought held his
Chin up to the moon
And me the god of loneliness could not get over
How simple how simple the clouds were
In the midnight shadow could not get over how
How beautifully silver they were

It could be as simple as a seagull
White wings enamored in the morning blue
Or a smile from you over coffee
Underneath the soft light of the green cedars
That draws our bodies from a hazy sleep.

The village stirs, the people come and go
We amble hand in hand down to the shore
To see the golden waves, the golden grasses
To survey the flood-tide rise to our feet
To watch the ocean dispose of her shells.

If infinity is just a number
Then this morning will surely pass us by
The flood-tide will fall back into the deep
And the sun will trace its grin across us
And soon our lives will disappear as well.

So we walk the shore and gather the shells
And place them in our small crimson bucket
Shells of purple, orange and blue and turquoise
Bivalves and lightning whelks and sand dollars
Wastes of the dead, things that have expired.

And so to us one day our time will come
And we will be washed ashore by the flood-tide
Our bones will be nothing more than swirls of calcium
Our flesh will be nothing more than grains of sand.

And in the morning the Gods will come
With crimson buckets and gather our thoughts
Which fall through the grip of eternity
Of which time can’t take away.

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

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.

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

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.

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--

It was never easy, no
to love you fall;
so dearly and deeply
as it was to sleep
amongst the tall
pines of summer
(that strong spine of fear)
but I will confess
no more or less;
that your scent of la chamisa
in the evening of half moon
was a chill my flesh has
never confessed nor condoned.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Spring, after all the breathless
Leaves have been covered
In snow and ice
(after all the tears have dried).
I feel the earth's straining
And touch its stone;
As light as a kiss
After a trembling wind.
To be bare and bound
To be ponderous and placid
(a forgery of entropy)
In these egotistical ties
Of passion. (in these empty
Tide pools)
Sensuous to even death's
wicked smile  unfettered
from the last embrace.

Openly devout
The empty branches exhale;
Only the wind sways.

This, the last night of September
Moon over mesa in cool light no
Crickets left to serenate the
Stars.

Ruins on ruins on ruins
The past is but a sigh
If I could give up anything though
It would not be goodbye.

Ruins on ruins on ruins
What music drives you mad?
If it wasn’t for the loneliness
I wouldn’t be so sad.

Ruin of sunset ruin of
Moon night, last fragment
Of September in the air
Light as a feather and
Crisp as snow.

We gain immortality through death
Like snow through splintered sunlight

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

and then there was a desert
A mountain, without name
The begining and then there was
A tree, with no roots
Walking about in the night
Searching for rain
And then there was a dream
And then there was a desert
A new slate a new mind to construct;
Out of dawn's light the stars
Just ashes, just an owl on a cactus

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.

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

The aimless spaces
Of the desert
- The sweeping dunes,
Beyond the masked circle
Of an empty moon.

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

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.

Bluebird in the tree
Blue whale on the horizon, blue
Winter's shadow on white
Bleached sun song
Younger than time, the tune.
Here we are bird watching
In the space before love;
Strange how we read these rocks
The poetry of everything
We haven't said yet.
It's been a warm winter
The sky's tearing through
The binoculars, the soul;
Here comes the burning
Infinite again, like a slow wave.
Feathers ruffle, the day spins.

Take this thought of noon day sun
I give it to you with a flower
Purple like a July rain
In the evening of dusk
Yet this thought is tiresome
As the flower sags to the left
Your bones ache dry and your eyes
Glint in the rays of a gift of July
For you before July is gone
This year and August rushes in
I wish you take it softly so
And place it in your kitchen window
And as this thought and flower
Wither with the dying season
With the decaying thought of summer
I hope you stop to never think of me

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

You can open it up
With just your eyes
And smell it -
All the memories of
A summer field -
And feel it’s soft skin
In your fingers melting
Like the rain does
In the evening.

A red-bellied turtle lay
Nestled between the
Saw-grass edge of the trail
I ventured

It spoke of patience
And existence

I studied this
Strange creature
For a brief
Bid farewell
And headed on
My way.

Through the windows of spring
I’m going to take my time, now
Cleaning all these windows of mine;
It’ll take time, I will take the time, unforgivingly.
I’m going to stop to salute all the
Tender, murmuring purple flowers of spring
And all the blue birds in wavering branches.
Seeing the absolute, first star of night
Ah, my mind is open now, just come on home
Walking down dusk's open path,
I'll be there waiting, beside the stream of your choosing.

Flesh covers our bones
But reveals our movements
Two hands clasp a leash
Where a blonde puppy sits
Underneath a picnic table
And a baby dressed in white
Crawls across the wet
Green grass
The soul is an entirely different story
Most people imagine a transparent
Sphere or a box of golden liquid
Or an angel dressed in white
Or a ghost hidden beneath a cage of bones
A prison
But I’d like to imagine a separate being
As real as the people sitting in the grass
In a circle maybe not even one person
Maybe several strangers
Of different age groups, children, men
Women, Grandfather and Grandmother
That’s the perfect scenario, a heap of bones
Twisted together in unison over time
But then the rain falls in a drape
Around the oak tree, it’s like an
Umbrella
Reality sets in -- the soul is nothing more
Than what you see -- a young man
Sitting on a stool in front of the coffee shop
Blond hair blue eyes
His hand trembling as he lifts the cup to his mouth
His blood boils, his flesh turns ruddy
The rain falls ridiculously from a grey sky.

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

In the springtime after death
Like a flower in the blowing snow
I know, I know the way
The world feels – tired and anxious.
And time, like wine grows finer
With age (Can you feel it’s
Booming heartbeat) can
You taste its enticing bitterness?
The long sonorous days
Of dusk and love are near again
And the future tiptoes on the quiet shores
Of that boundless, nebulous sea
Exhausted but auspicious;
Like a shadow in the wind

Outside of my body the minutes fall like rain
Time sweeps the edges of a great ocean
The heart beats and the blood flows within
Confined and hallow I wait to escape eternity
Beyond which death awaits in a stifling wind

Today the rains fall among the green pines
On the sandy island the seagulls grounded
I look out from this tattered wooden home
Out across the grey water and beyond
You wouldn’t understand my thoughts at such a moment

Too dreadful for words I carry this dead weight
Like a slave I brood this awful feeling
Of isolation a prisoner of existence
I shift my body as if it wasn’t mine
I walk the beach alone amid the summer storm

The rusty wire of time shatters
And a million beads of life and nonlife
Plummet into the unconsciousness of the waves
Like seashells they lay strewn upon the shore
To be smothered by the waves the waves.

I tremble my mind to dream condition
I open up my body my bones and veins
I wait beneath the stars in benediction
The river flows within me and beyond
These lonely eyes turn into golden fire.

We have gotten here because
We cannot remember; if we
Remembered we would not be here
The folded field gold, the brown woods darkening. So far from where we began those softer memories, like a deeper mist moving through the trees. The open window the open mind, free of fear and full of love, it was there in all places hiding in plain sight, shy and nervous. I dreamed last before death of the sun dieing in the winter wood
Like a candle before the breathe
Of sleep blowing gently
Blurred, orange and grey.

My love, is a desert set on fire
Her hair the golden flames of
Evening, her eyes the purple dusk
That lingers, then fades
And when I touch her skin like that
With my mind the stars
Like bats, flutter from the cave.

In fall, when all the muscles and tendons
Of the mountain are struggling
To stretch out their bare stones, and
All the skies are waiting for the soft snow
To fall from those darker evenings;
I saw you standing there beside
The opaque lake, quivering in anticipation
Of what is to come, begin. And, and if the
Weight is to heavy to carry, to burdensome
To bear, then lean on those stronger slopes
Seize the moment of despair, and embrace
The grief of here and then. In me you have
Within in me there is, a way down to the valley
Where the desert begins, the red clay yearns
In such moments as these, sculpted as if to say
I too am standing, still.

There’s no time left here to linger in this stardust
Any longer, the feeling is magnifying to extreme
The moon is low and quiet against the mountain.
And who counts the hours, the minutes? Only the lonely
Owl in the woods, only those beautiful, lost souls of the desert.
And like an old, battered lighthouse, our tender senses
Search the broken horizon for any sign of a white sail.

And then we say goodbye, despairingly
With the starlight still left heavy, within our eyes.

I think I see one now, gliding like some ancient memory
Through the fog, there among the breakers of my mind
At low tide.

A swamp without
Edges - a white wing
On water –
A moth
That follows the
Unseen flower.

The land was more wild, more wild than us
Yet we sang to the moon and we bathed in the rain
With it’s mountains and rivers unfolding to plains
We rode steady and ready ahead of every bend
With the stars up above we could not comprehend
Just the complete emptiness of a forest with no path
A mountain with out name, and the days filled with memories
And the days filled with dreams.

The door of my home is opened and through it
The summer day is fading on the walls those dusty
Wooden planks soaked in rays for moments and through it
I step forward and into and around the corners as if I were
The sun on the horizon gleaming bursts of rays in those
Sullen corners through the dusty wooden slats.

Take seat and watch the completion of day finite resting thinking
Of a summer day spent among the hills of granite and pine
And all the dreams of day complete and spent jumping creek
And taking rest beneath green aspen or discovering
Caves or basking in the sun on granite spires.

Now exhausted in an enlightened thought
Sitting in my home resting with the sun fading into pale colors
On the walls thinking very carefully as the colors grow paler
A pale blue to grey now like frozen lines of shadows
The strangest colors of summer, dusk summer dusk.

“To which poet would find joy
In writing about joys and for why?
If summer is season it should
Be second thought to fall.”

I will punish my body
Like the mountain
Punishes me i will
Sleep beside the streams
Beneath the stars i will
Know the moon the

in the middle of my life i enjoyed the waves something about diving straight through them which made it great

Deep within the mountains a valley of green
In summer city of insects and towers of purple and
Yellow with the bees and butterflies preoccupied
With the joy of scent inspecting each door to find
The sweetness of living as the day descending
Sending rays through the spruce like some sort
Of king reaching for his laborers carelessly finding
His mark fallen short as the sunset frozen in
Lines of color spat white with roaming clouds
Yet the river gurgles even in the night and the song bird
Sings into the darkening hours a deafening cry
Hears a call back from some distant neighbor
“Will we survive the reckless night?”
As the howl of the mountain lion echoes granite
Sends a shiver through the ancient spine like
Some sort of expanding as the rooster calls the day
The lion births the night roaming silent paw
Across the nestled needles cracking
Sticks and pretend you are asleep because
Not even one eye on the ceaseless twinkle of
The stars will break your fear, wandering
Lonely as a deer in the midnight meadow
Head transfixed above the gas of space, the twist
Of galaxy and the silence of the forest leave me
Breathless, I hop from star to star like bees
Buzzing from flower to flower myself opening
The doors of sweetness, that unattainable nectar.
--I fall asleep in the meadow and wake to find the
Sun rising above another day and hear the cry of those
Same song birds “We have survived!” in soft sweet notes.