Her lip stick stained everything,
my only drinking glass
my only toothbrush.

My  only set of sheets
sat rumpled and stained.  ,
My last joint sat marked
with that wicked red
along the edge of the
chipped amber ashtray.

My dry lips held the
blood of her love.
I savored the rusty
taste of her as the need to
write became the
whole of me.

I approached the trusty Number2
with caution.
I carefully
opened the dog eared
spiral notebook she had
brought to me
a life time ago.

Found a blank page between two
emotionally driven poems.
I drained the last of the
***** as I felt the gift
slowly awaken somewhere
in that darkness
deep within me.

The ***** burn
ripped down my insides and
lit that glow that's slowly
killing me.
That sense of dread
and failure took hold.

The guilt I've had
comes with every word
never written.
Every promise never held.
Every thought never shared
and every blood stained
memory I've been
forced to live through.

The moon light rippled
across the sea.
A shine full of
might that burned against the
swells as quiet as dust.

The waves crashed and
Poseidon laughed as I rested
the bottle against
my teeth.

I smiled for
the moment
then drank for
the ages.

Stones shifted with the
tide,gentle and sometimes
as silent as mice.

Shine I said as another
tear tumbled and  my minds
eye flashed a far off memory
that
I came here to try
and forget.

The Pacific came and
went,sometimes
with a fury and
other times in
that silence only something
as deadly as the sea could produce.

I took a pull as
another sin filled
Gull cried his
curses into the wind.

Only I and the Gods
were listening as the
hiss of the receding
sea swirled
between the maze of
stones
that made up the
thriving silent life
filled tide pools.

I looked to the heavens
and realized in that
moving moment beneath the
stars.
That I would
either go completely
crazy here or leave
this place a Saint.

She taught me
about the way of things and
about the gifts that lay all
around us.

Her lessons were taught in
the old way,
through stories and songs.

I learned the most in the winter
months when the deserts clay
colored floor was draped
in thick high desert
snow.

She burned Hickory and Birch logs
in her old cast iron stove
and filled
the small cottage with the
scents of the earth.

I learned many things beside the
warmth of that old stove.
She would sit in her straight
backed wooden chair
and talk for hours while chain
smoking her thin,long,
brown wrapped menthol Mores.
Running her earth toned
hand up and down her mean
cats arching back.

I remember
the way she would pause and stare
at me before breaking out into a smile
full of tobacco stained crooked
teeth.
How she would laugh and call me
Big City while smoking
menthol's and drinking
sweet coffee.

I waited out mean winter storms and sat
through the angriest of monsoons
while listening and learning
within the thin drafty
walls of her tiny
cottage.

She showed me where God
lived.
And assured me that
my path would always
lead me back to here.

I learned how to
carve the soft roots of
the cotton tree.
She taught me
my first  Peyote stitch.

But most of all she taught
me the history of who I was,
who we were.

Her lessons have proved more
useful than any
of the lies I was made
to remember in public school.

The teachings by
firelight,wrapped in a
home spun blanket while
drinking scorching
hot chocolate made with mint
leaves and love.

Her voice I still hear
as clear as the
sirens that pass
outside my window.

The voice that
lives inside my head
is her voice
still teaching me in the
old way.
The only real
way there
is to know.

If I knew
the Truth
was
indeed the
Truth.

Then maybe
I'd be able
to live in the
world
out side
my head.

But until
then
and for now
I've taken
refuge within.

Where
the only lies
are my
own.

I applied my
selfish heart
to search and
seek out
the reason
of things.

When I sought
out the wicked
I did not shutter.

When I stared and
walked with the
mad I did not
stumble.

When I came upon
the woman whose
heart is snares,
I shuttered then
stumbled.

Adding one to the
other I went mad
as I became entwined
within the wicked.