In a world so filled with apathy
Someone has to feel
I'm sorry that you're one of the chosen

Plagued by the weight of the world
It can be hard to deal  
The task of those who live with their eyes open

Your thoughts are your thoughts
Your emotions are just
Nothing could make that less valid

Those who don't understand
May think they have the upper hand
But their lives are the ones that are pallid

I want her to rise up again
like when she lifted her blue
skirt looking at how brown
I am taking off my shirt
and there are somethings
you learn if you were born
on a farm where I watched
her shadow in the middle
of the night overlooking mine
in the dark where we hid
from the light listening
to the wind, that sad poet
of the unknown pulling back
the dead eyes of those singing
sweet songs in the long night.

Father Mckenzie  

Turk’s Head teased my shadow
free last evening along the arroyo

our separation minute yet
edging toward the clement lip

accruing like the thunder eggs
I keep in a jar by the door

God long since departed, drifted
away on the high desert wind

that drew us here long ago
rifled pages of the Book Of Common Prayer.

A sodden breeze from home last night
a tang of salt, a churchyard hush

low plaint of cello’s lurking around
these adobe walls for a way inside

my callow words returned to claim
their hollow sound and mouth

all that was left unsaid
an old man darning socks

in the night when nobody’s there
crossing the room to leave

the door ajar to old sermons
bible black sky pierced with diamonds.

Our function is to question all
To challenge the bitter , the sweet , the very footprints we leave
We lay in Spring primrose valleys requesting the dirge of hard Winter with odd forethought
We pen the macabre , the obscene and the refusal , providing a chart for the self righteous imbecile , the lay and the lost , we are new today but very well called upon tomorrow* ...

My mother was a writer.
I remember her,
papers spread out upon a bed sheet in the sand,
stacked pebbles protecting her work from the wind
as I made drip-castles at the water's edge
and braided crowns from wild poppies.
I would run to her so she could
rub grape sunscreen into my sandy shoulders
and I asked her once,
“Mama,
is that poetry?”
and she said “No little one,
you are poetry,
this only tries to be.”
and I thanked her,
and ran back to the water
to search for flat stones to skip,
and thought no more of poetry.

The ghosts of old raindrops
mock and scold.
Their scorn writ large
on these dusty roads and in these dusty throats.
To tote the barge but not lift the bail
ain't no kind of protest.
Spit in the well and
hope the master draws up that bucket-full.
Wishes.
Still, the giver of life
serpentines through this valley
like the Euphrates did
in that one book, but
it does not matter
since the scythe swings
in such wide circles
this time of year.
We can bring in sheaves until dusk
then fish for men in the morning but
our souls are still corrupted.
Our hearts are rotten like old pears.
I'm so thirsty.