~


When forests cling the atmosphere
and sorrow hits the beach
The moon will bleed a thousand tears
so far beyond our reach

As butterflies remove their wings
to show their heart is true
I know the pain of hurtful words
now cast upon the dew

These whispered foolish sentences
once spoken out of turn
Are thorny vines now clinging tight
this tattered skin to learn

When now I fall like pouring rain
to drown upon my knees
I beg for some forgiveness of
this self induced disease

So when you find the brittle earth,
another comes as brave
It matters not the steps you use
to dance upon my grave

One more chalice of amber
Encrusted with hopes and dreams.
One more sip from the cup of life
To ground what we believe.

One more breath of neon vapor
That lifts us from our knees,
Frees the wrists of shackles
And clears the way to see.

Repeat,

Ad nauseam,

Until the truth is found.
In the depths of depravity
Satori abounds.
A glimpse of nirvana
And all that was lost is found.

For now,

But as the amber nectar turns bitter
The smoke is powdered on our lungs.
The vapor has all gone while
We hiss our words in tongues.
But in the morning when all is said and done
You awake to true satori,
The road to understanding has only just begun.

How this could have
happened I will
never hear again
but it happened
all the same
exactly this way.

I was walking in
Prairie Creek
surrounded by my
soon to become silent
companions
when I noticed
events so
strange.

I dug my feet
into the dirt
they soon dissolved
and roots were
sprung
a nervous system extending into
the soil, oh the sounds the
smells I felt.

Where my skin once was
bark began to emerge
my fingers became tiny
clones of myself
each speaking different
tongues I could not comprehend
I made out these
words "our time has begun. "

I became a Buddha
on the road
a three quarter
smile on my lips
as my body grew
towards the sun
a thousand years
was now mine
and to it I did
succumb.

I watched the
generations pass
Christs come and
go and come again.
It all meant nothing
to me at all
as long as I have
this fog that nourishes
me and creatures living
in the canopy.

I stand at peace
for centuries
a thousand years
and still my life
is a five minute
dream filled with all
possible intensity
and former attachments
as the impermanence
of the illusion of
time was plain
to see
as human lives whirlwinds of
experience
dust devils
blew by me.

Lightening and fires burned me
but I survived.

Now that I stand in
this silence
lost in the meditation
of dreams
a solitary tree
the last standing
a brand new species
born of evolutions breeding
runs on the ground
dancing on my grave

I remember that
first day
the beginning of my
thousand year awakenings
I think it was only
yesterday.

I make a drink.
A few too many you think.
I put a record on.

Let it spin.
Let it play.
Let it sink in.

I fall apart.

I take a drink.
A few too many you think.
I let the record play.

The warm vapor of saturated streets
rise and give chase
While she
(a fading glow of plastic cups
and shady basements)
whispers street names
and grins...breathes
“peddle faster”

Gliding on the thickening wisps
of crushed coffee beans and damp asphalt
We rush to fill this empty house
with the fumbled hush of
clothes and carpet,
Showering the floor in lightning strikes
Until we
(a searing flash of static burst
and fireworks.)
no longer whisper
Crying out through open windows
Our dictum of passions
which run thick through the cracks in the sidewalk
and fast through the arms of the trees
to stroke the highest of their leafy tips
and flee.

And in that careful, breathless morning
there is nothing but the moments before and after
to stand as proof
that the brush of ridges and valleys
on our finger tips
Are not the illusion of dream
but tangible, feathered things
Tracing the seams of those quiet places,
both unspoken and unseen.