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

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.

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.

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.

repeat swamp, desert
same thing to this
damp mind. cold
soul. Sold
a long time ago
searching for my poems
in drawers
in deserts too
no more shores even

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

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.

The roots
          That twist
Around the stone
                 Will one day
        Loosen
The stone
           That twists
Out of the ground
                 One day will crumble
Into little more
           Than dust
And blow away
                  In the wind
Far across the ocean.
The earth
Too one day
           Will dissipate
Into nothing
                   More than gas
That will be carried
                       Across the cosmos
                           To start new beginnings
                                 And spread old roots

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".

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

I'm not pretty
Barely alive but
I felt the sunset and
Kissed your eyes. Mountains, aspen
Desert and sky, I heard the day
Go beneath your mind. Quiet and
Inconsequential. You went to bed
In the tent and I stayed out in the
Black rain beside the black lake.
I was beside the pines and estimated
The thunder go through me like stone,
And I could not leave, could not stay.

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

I went for a walk
Down a path
The day after all
The wind blew all
The leaves out
Off the trees
Onto the empty stream
Into the empty forest
And filled those cracks
With some pretty
Yellow for awhile
Before the snow
Came after dusk
And killed all those
Stars with dreams –
Everything was grey
And cold and I went
for a walk to get
further away

I went out to explore the night with my mind
Very delicately unweaving the onerous stitches of fear
To become as free as the wind, or say as free
As a bird in the wind. The thought of winter hung over
The town like an approaching glacier being
Very eminent, but not precisely clear, as if to leave us
In a state of perpetual dread (is pure freedom free
Of fear?) and grinding out the light. I wanted it to be
Then that I knew she loved me, walking beneath
The trees like giant balloons in the lampshade light
Swaying overhead, sipping in the night like
A fine cocktail before a fire, strolling through the
Streets and ally ways of the city brain. And perhaps it was then
When the lady whose car broke down outside of town
Asked for a place to stay was crying, that something
In the sky burst, like an explosion, seen but not felt.
The night was young, dependent on your age
And our love was young then too, much like
The first leaves of spring, or the first frost of winter.
Perhaps it was the intensity of the moment
The screaming cars, the vehement animosity
Of an open window, that lead me deeper into the
Mountains, walking beside a stream swollen
With the reflection of the loveliest of
Star blooms, the most delicate of flowers. It was then
And it wasn’t then. Just out of grasp, the mind reaching
Forward further.

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

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.

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.

will   stars   rain   moon   desert   night   snow   time   light   day   eyes   black   clouds   cold   beneath   sky   purple   love   red   dusk   wings   fall   green   river   dark   soft   mountains   wind   juniper   memories   move   walk   air   thought   silver   darkness   mesa   flowers   days   sun   tears   edges   death   stone   dead   full   deep   dreams   sleep   blue   memory   hole   forest   man   open   white   grey   tonight   mountain   edge   sunset   endless   walking   sound   moth   emerald   spring   long   grass   woods   song   vast   bird   water   slip   window   swamp   earth   slow   morning   empty   deeper   mind   infinity   ocean   weeds   broken   afternoon   head   smile   glit   garden   blanket   sand   small   thunder   filled   body   path   leaving   eye   heart   keep   sip   winter   waves   dream   years   birds   evening   shadows   dawn   flower   tree   sad   bough   petals   face   colors   find   piano   hope   sea   poem   slowly   frozen   cross   moment   early   reflection   summer   field   wet   color   laughing   born   mirror   trees   road   valley   october   draw   heaven   laying   emotions   falling   strong   great   leaves   emerge   feelings   cloud   call   coyote   hold   room   soul   gathers   thin   high   returned   divided   beauty   blood   remember   midnight   write   veins   fish   spider   january   living   opened   god   overwhelming   times   pines   tomorrow   ancient   silent   murky   storm   listen   half   falls   mouth   stood   junipers   stones   dorothy   ground   going   canyons   cry   view   asleep   existence   close   drunk   wall   mexico   soil   quiet   lascivious   things   stillness   breeze   left   distant   web   crying   game   shadow   clay   corn   universe   horizon   silence   lies   brush   low   deer   single   star   holes   teeth   forget   dance   hurricane   layers   shattered   hurry   flash   young   brown   wave   cool   die   race   entropy   venus   sigh   feathers   prairie   haiku   emptiness   plays   fingers   blur   toes   gathered   november   change   wait   crumbles   stalks   rests   changed   smoke   standing   primrose   lose   breathe   door   started   brings   warm   mesas   drops   history   beautiful   thirsty   expanding   pulling   bend   bones   sitting   pine   beach   map   wrong   bloom   grow   trembling   shore   crept   goodbye   tall   wing   help   september   limbs   feel   orange   covered   hidden   crawls   underneath   snake   kiss   hands   front   feathered   arrow   bats   loneliness   *****   heavy   house   zebra   space   misses   eternal   zuni   quick   reason   imagine   cough   florida   thing   disappearing   sounds   mist   flutter   final   kind   horizons   street   bare   gathering   mesquite   throat   rearranged   dancing   cave   jungle   pain   rearrange   flow   drive   gracefully   reflections   clean   shot   chopin   loved   watch   shy   naked   bad   delicately   set   burst   slanting   smiling   smallest   closed   boughs   petrified   elk   smoldering   hours   movement   april   plants   journey   canyon   three   lived   monsoons   wake   smoking   layer   fled   wound   lava   phoebe   drink   delicate   glades   mother   consciousness   flesh   moments   touch   hills   cuffs   rose   march   apart   desire   onion   spine   oblivion   people   hair   lips   erase   fox   fog   christmas   quit   choked   wept   side   seeds   tongue   quietly   fern   pink   rising   seasons   bought   shells   flying   hear   meditations   sadness   unfolding   prayer   watched   floating   ghosts   fill   dying   floor   nah   multiverse   tight   swirl   eternity   tides   stay   fell   snitch   vein   ghost   hammock   mud   moved   moonlight   songs   fawn   raining   crumpled   worms   vermilion   soften   thoughtful   skin   winds   follow   hate   youerode   vet   patches   slips   finally   sway   flowed   fax   coop   rise   swallows   misunderstanding   tantalizing   decide   forked   drinking   marrow   annihilated   wooden   leveled   ceaseless   gun   leave   dusky   dip   dilute   force   meadow   ten   bleeding   hanging   direct   waking   burger   rusty   dried   wrens   snipers   rator   anythin   poisonous   lights   haze   grandparens   pulsating   told   chaotic

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.

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.

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.

Alone and growing
Small, this patch of snow is the
Flower’s only hope.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Summer is a snake
Crossing the smoldering road
Stretched out like an
Exclamation of death!
This moment gone forever
Screaming out onto the horizon;
The old windswept mountains
Like broken waves, frozen
In the boat shaped mirror.
All is green, and all is forsaken
Driving down this path of light.

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.

Has springtime’s child shed its youthful skin?
Have you not seen it there beside the shore?
Where the water rises from the soul within
And sunshine’s gracious warmth from it explores
This summer warmth seems crude to my belief
Like weary trees naked in falls retreat
Have you not felt ascending winter’s relief?
Have you been tricked in nature’s deceit?
Summer rays fall hard in burning succession
From a silent springtime never embraced
Where graceful winds carry away questions
Of a seasoned feeling never replaced
Youthful days have passed through this ancient land
Spring lay twisted in summer’s open hand.

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

Ahead of me
In the woods
At dusk like
A big cat
With big eyes,
The future turns
Away and runs
Up the switchbacks
Without a sound
Each paw pressed
Into the spine
Of my anxiousness.

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.

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.

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

The air was thin and blue
When I saw you, down by the shore
Out among the dunes. The summer
Dream was all but dead, and all the
Foolish knew that love was all but over.
Yet I found you, scattered like the
Shells, smitten with rage. Those
Green eyes, those sad inlets, ebbing
And flowing like breath. The rest
My dear forget about soon,
the wind will be sour, the waves
Strong. We have only
The dark pine left to hide.

Coast
I
Let me take your mind ashore.
I will catch you with a net
Of stars. As if the light
Has no other choice, but
To gather. The hard-shelled pieces
Of your memory. I will lay you
Out upon the sand. Then the
Sun will rise.

II
The old oak with it’s
Many dark places
Felt like a home
When it rained.

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.

Out in the desert there is silence --
The mountains blinding ambivalence  
As white as the bones within.  
Slipping out the rocks, more rocks
Come the unbending tongues of time, satisfying
The antemortem joy once again.
The sun holds the sky, the whitest wing
The earth holds the rest, all of your thoughts
And the rain.

This is the moment near
I leaned over and whispered
In his ear "my dog knows more
About this desert than you"
And even Leopold, oh his bones
Old, poked out from the bed of some
Twisted rock and smiled and cried.

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.

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.

Not far from now, nothingness
Does not rattle on nothingness.
The final mountain trembles
In the blackening rain.  It opens
To close, deceiving perception.
I sleep, I wake and not by decision
Through the woods in the dawn I go because it is not the only option.

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.

I rose as a green fern on a tree
After the passing of the night storm and maximized the time of being present by being quiet
I was as quiet as death, so death
Couldn't hear me. And I drank
The air with a passion so
Crude as if to harness
The lungs to compromise. I rose
Above the rest, for the better part
Of the morning. Deep in the swamp
Hanging like a wrist waving goodbye
In the golden gleaming swamp
Waving goodbye so relentlessly;
Not afraid of when's next, or what.

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.

The slow moving mouths
Of lichen swept like a great army
Across the broken bones of the mountain
And isn't that the way love came too
So quickly and showed its sweeter
Tounge to the iron of our desires?
The better question being though;
Were we born, meant to dig holes
Or fill them in? Even the stars,
In all their vastness, ask
that one.

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.

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.