Lit this slash pile one week ago,
a small pile as far as slashing and burning goes
Since then it’s melted,
rained, and snowed
Unusual and erratic behavior for January
and February in this country
Country that the Salish would’ve known
to move out of before winter set in.
Shouldn’t be anything other
than frozen and buried in snow
but nothing acts now in the way
it used to, and no one can predict
what’s coming, yet we keep reporting
our guesswork like we know something,
still playing make-believe with our
ideas about control, specifically about
how we’d like to be in it—
maybe because we like the idea of
stability so much and wish we had it
despite our tireless irony.


And here is this little steam-***,
this natural wonder of vitality and perseverance,
issuing one more quiet reminder
of how little we know of our actions
or the cycles they’ve started.

Jar lids pop
snow sheets slide
pitch pockets snap
water kettle groans

First light exposes
crystalline canvases
against frozen glass
the stove’s heat
melts them away
like ice Mandalas

All that is beautiful
is impermanent.

All that is unique
lives only once.

There's a sense in which
I could be anywhere—
everywhere is the same
as here.

Ghosts dance around me
and I am stepping on their toes
they curse me as I walk backwards
tracing old footprints
wishing them to come back into color,
that a familiar hand
and a smile I remember
might reach back out and ask
if I can keep a secret—
if I’d like to dance with them again?

Here is an exercise
to help you learn a little bit
more about where we are
and what acts on us:

Pour yourself a bath,
as luxurious as can be.
Put in the salts, the oils,
the fragrances, the bubbles…

Make sure you pour
it hot, as hot as you can
handle when you dip in that
first cautious toe…

Slide in up to your chin and
soak in quietude while
your muscles untie their knots
and you lose yourself to that dreary
form of half-awake relaxation.

After a time, your tranquil state
will become a quiet form
of discomfort. The body
will begin to simulate a rising fever
as your temperature moves upward
towards equilibrium with the water,
the stomach will start to feel
unsettled and you
will have had enough.

Now, here comes the test:

Remove the drain plug and
remain motionless, unresponsive,
as the water slurps down
around you.

Your body will fall
as the water drains,
folding and bending
gravity packing you down
molding you into cast of the
tub you are laying in.
When the water is fully
drained and your rubbery,
warm muscles are stripped
of their recent buoyant freedoms,
you will feel with full awareness
the immensity of that Universal force
that acts on us without rest.

It’s amazing that we aren’t
all in exceptional shape.

Dear lost brother,
when did you forget
we drink from the same cup?

I got to bathe an elephant,
in Wyoming of all places.
It was not in a zoo
nor captive in any way.
No, this was a free and
autonomous individual,
an elephant all its own.

It rejoiced when I sprayed
it with the hose. The water
bubbled and frothed from
its trunk. It shook and blew,
smiled and stomped, as
the red desert dust ran down
its legs and pooled at its feet.

We experienced joy in
experiencing joy and became
weightless in our own levity.
Never have I felt such
loving gratitude, nor purity
of soul, as I felt emanating
from this great, sentient beast.

We played for hours in the water
and sun, laughing in the middle
of this little western town,
plain for anyone to see.
But when I smiled and looked
around, I had the strangest
feeling that nobody had noticed…
nobody, that is, but me.

****
one's
Self.

Information is weight that holds
down and holds back like a jungle
like so many vines and chutes
mud and rain that keeps
you struggling and straining
towards that place on a map
the high point that once atop
promises an unambiguous view,
the place that looks so close
there's no need to carry a pack
but nine hours later, hacking
through underbrush, pulling
at leeches and swatting mosquitos
finds you crippled by heat
cursing the map that so
grossly misrepresented the
relationship between yourself
and the place you wished to reach,
the map that never mentions, never,
that should you ever achieve
that keystone ridge, that high and
illuminating view, you will look out
to see the impeding silhouette of the
next ridgeline blocking your way.

The longer the view
the further you look past
what it was you were
hoping to see.

Dirt shows through where
there should be snow
mercury is taking the
wind's temperature
as it coughs dust
the firs' grain
pops and splits
like chapped lips
the smell of fire
precedes smoke

Comfort's embrace is
false and choking.
The masses gag in
their sleep, subdued
by its silken constraints.

I must learn
to travel lighter.

Steps from Nowhere
leading to Nothing
cannot be retraced.

The bounding footfalls
of another sentience
echo through labyrinthine
hallways of consciousness
that never lead back
to a common room—
that central location
where one can sit and
saying knowingly,
"Ahh, here I am."

Wild eyes
hands-to-cheeks
mouth wide open—
we know the look
it's so cliché
those ******' marauders
in Hollywood stole it
from the realm of
authentic expression—
yet there she stood
as if rehearsing for
a midday melodrama
patiently awaiting
the studio lighting,
the face powder,
the camera, the action...
but no set crew was coming
there was no show
nor lines to rehearse...
there was only a frozen moment
in which the life she knew
and the life she could not
have foreseen existed at once,
bound together by an
over-played expression of horror.

I was looking into his
eyes and he into mine
yet I couldn't tell if he
was seeing me
He drew in his last
stunted breaths
as his eyes watched
the Universe opening
to receive him
I was with him
yet so far away
I wanted to cry out
I wanted to feel him
feeling me
Then he was gone.

There is life all around us,
seen and unseen.
How much have we been
stepping over,
stepping on,
looking past?
How much life
have we discounted
has gone unnoticed
has been lost
to the ceaseless
treading of our
restless feet?

The greatest mastery of self
is to do nothing.
We are doers
programmed to do,
to solve, to be busy
creating problems
just to solve them
rewarding ourselves
with ever more destructive prizes.
We congratulate ourselves
for our compulsive expenditure
like an addict congratulating
themselves for turning back
to the needle.

We are all addicts.

The true anarchist
does nothing.

Something is coming to **** me.
There is no time.

The day he handed the flowers to her
she was looking ahead
instead of at him.

This is how the body looks now:
    empty, estranged…
its parts arguing their cases
for emancipation,
sovereignty from the system—
each component demanding
overt consent from all others
before further engaging
in vital collaborations.

This is how the body looks now:
    formless, dissociated…
the war for Independence and
Recognition has left us
devastated by the divisions
of definition—disjointed
structures of severed relations
disavowed of the Whole.

Ain't it a shame
that we—
Nature's Human—
can't bring ourselves
to care.
Can't bring ourselves
to care
about our collective actions
nor allowances...
not until they reach us,
as individuals,
not until they
**** with our own
individual day.
Can't bring ourselves
to care,
not until our own
feelings are hurt,
until our own bellies ache,
until we can make it
about ourselves,
until it's too late.
Ain't it a shame.

I sunk my fingers down
into the loam of an ancient
buffalo wallow and the
land that had quietly
prepared for their species
untold millennia before me.

I held the buffalo’s
mourning in my heart,
and felt the Buffalo Nations’
cry rattle against my ribs.

I opened myself to the
Earth and it spoke
sorrowfully to me
of its broken home.

Is it not through the
Buffalo that we know
of ourselves?

Or do you look
to your uniform
to tell you who
you are?

I listened to an Eagle
speak through a body
that personified the land
he hunted over;
a body stressed, defensive—
fragile.
In his eyes I saw Reorder,
the burning furnaces
of Universal energy,
the power of stars,
and a coming heat.

The grains of sand stuck
to the sweat in between my
toes are each as big and
burning as any star stuck
into the spilt Black—
each mass a Giant searing
through skin, bubbling towards
the hollow flues of bone,
kindling a greater burn that
shines out my eyes, reflecting
my own Ancient Chaos back
at those watchful fires
in the sky;
call it an introduction,
a nod in acknowledgement
of our meetings to come.

There is still dust in my eyes
and ringing in my ears;
the serpent coiled in the bottom
of my pack counts coup each
time I reach in.
I've known of its presence
for years now—
ever since I began
my walks with Death—
but I let it have the satisfaction
of its Killer's game. Why not?
It is an easy kindness.

We look so hard
that we fail to See.

We stood and watched,
mesmerized by its brilliance,
pacified by the warmth
that radiated through our bodies.

Our highs flowed up through the heat,
riding the tips of the flames
as they licked at the sky,
incandescent and greedy.

We knew it was burning too hot,
too fast—
but only the crash can humble the high.

The act of not believing;
not believing in one’s actions,
or participation,
in a world that preexists
the conflicted Self.

Collapse;
collapsing force.

Monumental;
monumental pain.

Shifting in the night,
ripping through torrid dreams—
each atrocity screaming its own cry,
existing through its own suffering...
each plea demanding its own recognition...
creating its own world of pain,
its own Reality, encased
in its own experience of torture.

And you...
where do you turn?

They killed John Henry
with a false ideal:
ownership as Realization;
Happiness as being external;
life's vitality as commodity.

They killed John Henry
with a name and a title.

They killed John Henry
with an interested dream.

Let it take me,
those towns I move through,
and those I claim to know.
Let our Institutions fall—
crumble down through the
failed foundations of our
own self-possession.

It's nothing.
It's Nothing.
It is Nothing.
It Is Nothing.

So, why the hesitation?

Lay me open
and watch me bleed
and I’ll watch you too
to help you feel
seen as you take in
this pain
that you so needed
to witness.

Behind the brilliant light
that gifts life to our world
burns a collapsing force
fueled by the remnants
of untold millions of years
of pulverized matter
and dispersed gases,
excited and united by
the catalytic force
of Universal disturbance.

Dive into your veins,
past the deep red color of love,
zoom in until you can see
those entities that exist
within your blood’s flowing warmth,
and you will see Warriors
locked in Lacedaemon wars.

Be Open when you feel.
Be Whole when you act.
Life is no place for ideals:
Justice demands a Judge.

We must step onto our fields of battle
solemn and reverent,
willing to plunge our spearheads
into the chests of others
who will die staring back at us
through our own eyes.

If you cannot feel these truths,
turn yourself around
and break your spear in half
on your walk back home.

Feel the fire’s flame
cutting through our nights,
its burning heat
glowing in our eyes.

Feel the teeth grinding,
lungs heaving,
knuckles cracking,
slides racking…
Fear’s vibrations
colliding—dividing—
and choosing sides.

Stop.

Turn away,
relax your breath,
and adjust your eyes…

Can’t you see the face
hidden in the shadow
cast by its fired night?
Can’t you see its narrowed
eyes, the tight smile
emanating from a twisted soul;
the mind that’s taken Center
while we burn at its poles;
the eyes that know
our fractured factions
keep us weak, in conflict,
unorganized and opposed?

The identities we’ve been served
keep us forever in chains,
ensuring the blood we spill
is spilt in vain…
that change is only a slogan
an old institution
with a new name.

We are not black nor white,
we are not left nor right,
we are neither American
nor un-American:
we stand as souls of no nation.
We are people, we are lives—
lives that have been
distracted,
disenfranchised,
and confused.
We are people
whose attention and energies
have been compromised.
We are lives
who have been divided
by the rhetoric of a power
that wishes to harvest
our spirit,
our vitality,
to serve its interests.

Join your fires,
join your minds.
See yourself
in all who you are not…
for you live within them,
and they within you.

We fight for freedom,
not a flag;
for Being,
not for land.

When this truth is felt,
united we will stand.
Not as numbers in a system—
nor factions divided
by city blocks—
but as Beings,
as lives,
whose chance at
a new future
has been restored.

Her rib cage splayed
and knees felled away
from each other,
she lay as a refuge,
an invitation:

Climb in, stretch my skin
over yours—
it's warm and dark inside,
you need not come out
until you are ready.

I was once One with
what I love
but cannot know
and am now left
yearning
to return to where
I cannot travel
to restore my place
amongst that which
is without form.

The fog's captives
were held
motionless
and entranced—
frozen
in a bearingless
nothing.
There had existed
within them
only a moment
of anticipation
as the grey
encased them—
vacillations
between the loss
of one world
and acceptance
of another.
As its vaporous
cold snaked
through their
clothes and into
their bones,
it whispered
a silent boast
of how quickly
they could be
made to forget
all they thought
they knew
to be certain.

No use in saying
what won’t
be understood.
After all,
how many times
must the experiment
be run?
How many
times must the
confirmation of
vacancy
distrust
misunderstanding
and rejection
be faced
before the soul
learns to stop
speaking,
as a prisoner in
a foreign
land sits silently
within a cell
between walls
built of ears
and eyes
who see and
hear all
and use
all against him?
How long before
the soul is
reduced to giving
only a knowing nod
and a saddened smile?

The illusion of
option,
of freedom,
of choice—
the patronizing
call of the
jailer—
his insidious
hiss through
the cold steel
bars,
“Your time
is your own,
you may do
as you wish.”

To jump and never land—
to breathe in but never out—
to fall asleep and never wake up...
The glass stillness of a pond,
its surface never disturbed—
peace without its pole:
Nothing.

It’s not that
they don’t speak—
it’s that we
won’t listen.
We hear only
with our ears
now—tuned
for only our
own tones.
Their language
is subtle
and comprehensive;
a language of
truths without
motive, born
of a life
we’ve turned
away from.

I was watching Worlds
moving past and through my own.
They returned my intrigue with wariness,
if anything at all.

Why do they view me
with only misgiving
and indifference?

The glass's glare answered the question
before it could be posed,
signaling back to me
the separation it represents.

It was I who had declared myself as Other—
watching, as a spectator,
the Worlds of the Living.

It struck me that
taking life and giving
life represent two perspectives
of a single act.

Pressures,
forces,
twisting levers—
gears ratcheting down
little by
relentless
little
against a box with
no walls
and no way out.

What is waiting for my weight—
for the matter I carry,
for the energies bonded within me?
What is lying dormant—
anticipating the day
when my body lays itself down—
so it may drink from my cisterns
and eat from my stores?
What will come into Being
from my ceasing to Be?

It is a temptation,
isn't it?

We sit and we wonder
volatile thoughts
flowing through tumultuous minds.

It is a temptation,
isn't it?