Rattlesnake*
      or *of zealous sapphire

An era of old and golden skies,
in a desert of silent-film sienna,
ragtime sepiatone and a pyrite sunrise,
pinstriped wiseguys sold the valley sand,
fit in felt fedoras and shaking leather hands
on namesakes ornate with glowing jewels,
a boulevard curbed and paved,
concrete stiles and marble tiles upon
a cosmic palisade of glass, inlaid
and framed in miles and miles
of brass and brightly colored burning gas.
A glamorous new epoch burst forth,
avaricious in its incandescent gloss,
when they raised this monument
of the brightest kind, we gained,
and some gave a dear cost in trade
for the cones inside of our eyes.

I am a chemical reaction
that reels recklessly
between dancing Stardust
and downward spiral.
I am charisma so coy.

We've all slivered shades of silver
and sugar coursing through our veins,
spears poised upon the ancient prairie,
blades of bone, bending bows, and
coursing prey on prehistoric plains.
Mixed in us and inherited still, this thrill -
the chill, the chase and the payoff,
the risk and the waiting, the praying
your scent, your sense, or dollars and cents
aren't fatally spirited away.
Lately, the ferns are thinning
so we've traded them for sins
and felt of the same color,
our hoards of arrowheads and clubs
printed now upon paper cards,
reticulum tuned not for tracking or furs,
but spinning and flashing,
whistling, whirrs, and winning motorcars.

I've a heart that's Horseshoe shaped,
a lucky charm I risk on,
and win and lose on,
and always hope
at least for an even break.

The triumphs of man are the product
of cams and crankshafts, pistons and oil,
plumes of shadow spewing into the sky.
Westward ran the rails, stacking bricks wide,
raising sticks high and uncoiling telegraph wire
into the furious bustle of industrial-grade hustle,
an inchoate flag, perfect suits,
three card monties, and filthy collars
all of zealous sapphire.
Generations admire at the Union's gate
the stately electric minarets pushing skyward,
towering metal tracks ushering light
onto a sphynx of quartz, pitch as pusher breath,
delta at the neon roads,
where chrome locomotives out of Chicago
braked in the glow of this phosphorescent portico
once plated in droptop Eldorados.

My parents are celebrated people,
so I was celebrated in kind
my birthday blazoned
over my hometown Plaza.
A worthy place and worthwhile time.

I drive this canyon oftentimes alone
and watch the sparkle of the valley unfold before me.
It's a sea of glittering scales, hissing "welcome home,"
I'm secure in this coiled-up crotalus that so adores me.

Clocks and Calendars*
     or *seasons, so agelessly


Over frigid water I saw her,
with wisdom aged as ancient granite,
standing fast and fix-gazed on the strand.
Fascinated, I asked how long she had lived there:

"You invented clocks and calendars, dear,
I have just and always been here right now."

On evergreen needles, seated
in the frozen weather beating Zephyr Cove
I pondered that maxim and then I asked her,
how old was she, accordingly?

"I could never say or capture age, this phony ephemeron
that's forever every moment traded for a new one."

Upon an alpine ice sheet
vainglory pinned me to the mountain's mercy
I told her my story of mostly fortune and almost woes
why only then did I think there's no such thing as old?

"The longest lived among you passed as newborns to me,
the best lived ones had learned this, certainly."

Lady of the lake
her timeless patience sees
these curiously metered years
pointless in the joys of savored seasons,

so agelessly, her sophisticated glow
grows only more graceful
and always more gorgeous as days go

Ten and Nothing*
     or *the blades of karma

Lean not against my walls, push through.
I'm the patron patience you've been seeking,
and saint of the secrets keeping you. Scooped
from the ditch out of which you grew
and were cast back into, I found you,
drooped and slinking. I picked you up

and fastened your stinking habits to my brass.
Not for thinking everything I retrieve
from the pits and slicks and sinking eaves
need be carried or repaired,
maybe only spared or made aware
that being sick is far from being buried.

I should know a shifty snitch will only
trench and trudge to see glue used
in lieu of a proper stitch. The bench
was proof, too. My sister's chagrin
as you refused an outstretched clutch,
shillings cinched up, a clenched fist
calculatedly compassionless.

Have you enough tax-deductible tallies
on the slate that hones the blades
of karma's discriminating grate?
Uncurl your ornate petition
and show us all the stones you've sown
for admission through the pearl gate,

The finest few ford fortune's river,
spite shaft, shiver, and devotedly make
a living of giving just to be a giver.

Seraph and Ephedrine*
     or *colliding, and by ash

Blond rain, hot, braising a brunette burn.
The stage was taking turns when she turned up
beneath me; meek petite, turned out to be
a wishing well while I adored the ring-
song of another southern belle. "Fall in,"
our notes implored to me and I, delighted, did.

She astride, we twisted up in splendid
flow, the baby blue's and sultry auburn's
nightly sojourns. Tucked unknown inside
her chest's soft comfort, lazing, I'd wake up
and glow. Two autumn lovers racing spring's
escaping tide, colliding, and by ash besnowed.

Scottsdale found me prey in unbecoming
news of winter crimes. I learned of didoes,
sickening grit, soirees of summer scoring
lines and picking pits and nursing burns
and being crooked all the time. Upside-
downing and dying, still, I bided her decline.

Bushy tailed and bright eyed, I entertained
elides not all bright white inside. I climbed
Sioux Falls and foraged for seduction. Lit up
and afflicted? Fix: a sick and sordid
sort of wickedness, a Pyrrhic forfeit's burnishing
reduction. Spurred, I galvanized, ceased her ringside

and matured. I'd drift immersed in suffering,
so, and surface shown not shore or certain
earthen berm; soon I earned my sideburns,
emerging taciturn, eternally, to her. Beckons
chirped at first, then mewed, then roared, candid
advents went ignored, an epoch couped

with cruel and sober sword. I suppose
the years assuaged the ache enough to wring
my rage awake and tough; seeing the iodide
wraith herself, withered and rough and raked in
such concern, she saw me unperturbed
because I finally wasn't shamed how things had burned.

I was always proud of her suffering; her ruin in bedlam by design,
but burned-up notes and buried bedding didn't seem so tragic at the time.

West Horizon Ridge*
   or *sage and passing lights

I return to where I've always been.

This home will stay remembered
through being turned, closed, and reclothed.
It's silvery smell and glassy echo are well set-in
and still shudder me, thinly, again and again.

A sticky swell of it's air swims in my lungs
as I enjoy this breath of ghosts.
Here, such joy had flashed and dimmed, vivid blue
like paperclip antenna picture tubes.

Ripostes - we're obsessed, an unsynced incessant choir.
I decide I'm flush with ink and should retire.

      Against cushions crush,
      the sway-back boy who raised me
      is phased in the yawning fog of sleep,
      cheek grazed by a dog's red maw,
      breath drawn through this alloy heap
      of buckskin and blush
      and rest employed if only for a moment.

      His troubles flog him, hurried eyes creased with claret
      for want and worry and the weight of ceaseless waylay.
      My perpetual prologue,
      our voices and faces framed as plain analogs
      and I'm never apart from him this way.

      I always want to protect my heroes,
      to be a fount of affection and human home,
      to repay the blown doors closed
      and sores sewn away.

I disembark the departed portrait and dispatch the lights,
the acquainted old entry grieves quietly for life.

Fatigued, I walk down and sink, haunted,
into the faded tracks of our tires,
gray-black and cracked but relieved.
Silently swing the gates, blue-green and gaunt,
my growing-up gradually heaved,

flaunting the old sass of my almost-everythings.
I conspire to return where, or more how, I belong.
The pavement's slick in the rain,
flickering in the sage and passing lights
that say my spirit, sealed there, feels right.

My love for this memory is so honest and hurtfully aged,
how I hope so hard my heart will always break this way.

Natures*
  or *we are as ether

I
Are we as poisons,
sodium and chlorine, that coalesce and nourish?
No. We are as soldiers,
crush and caress, nimble fingers that curl in behemoth fist.

II
Are we as voltage,
joules and amps that force a heart, shocked and croaked, aglow?
No. We are as ether,
breathed and clear, black in the panoramic choke.

III
Are we as accelerants,
hydrogen and oxygen, that transfix and extinguish?
No. We are as isotopes,
radium and tritium that luminesce, blister, and singe.

IV
Are we as snow,
in the dive icing all life that will ripen by the slake of a wet spring?
No, we are as one cell,
measured splits usher all birthing, en masse a cancer trampling everything.

The Elysian*
  or *she will study


This year, the walls here
will ring with the clink of glasses and tap
of plates passed among friends, family, and lovers.
Other times, absorb the shuffle and rustle
of quiet privacy, a solitude to where she can escape and recover.

This year, the air here
will hold a healing silence that bends easily
into and out of echoes of music, roars of laughter, and sighs of relief;
while over and around the flicker of good news,
unwrapping of new shoes, and the comings-true of dreams.

This year, the door here
will barricade against the disingenuous
thresh of the city, repel the selfish and insincere,
only to allow crossing by those with capacity to love,
respect, inspire, assist, uplift, rescue, and protect her.

This year, everything here
will be clean, everything soft save for the towels
which will be coarse, of course. Every function flawless,
every debt paid, every sponge holstered,
and every piece of laundry folded for her.

This year, this home here
will be host to a more than occasional clutter:
equipment of creativity, the surfaces strewn with
materials and things she creates with her hands.
Here, she will be prolific and her projects in demand.

And she will memorize the ceiling. She will study
and examine every texture and crevice, every device,
smudge and shine; so that one day when she leaves,
she will retain it and remember the joy and repose
that occurred here, underneath it, undisrupted, all the time.