I dream of delirious shadows and frantic,
whispering light.
in the doom of an hour my bones
are opened to the sky.
rise from me, mortal pilot.

eyes unseamed to the foot of
a pillar of fire in the void,
screaming truths,
becoming.
vaporize and depart.

adrift in the hysteria of one second,
a rapidly receding horizon.
awash in a thunderous confluence,
mind rent.
I am clay,
transmuted.

He floats
like frizzy cottonwood seeds on a wind that is not really there,
not really.
And light and sound and rain
pass him through-
he is borne on a whim
over the still-living earth
waiting in the wetted hollow
of some behemoth fallen tree,
waiting.

Wistfully wandering
listlessly longing
dogtired daydreamer,
airy apparition,

are you just a moving lucid hallucination,
or is it me who lives in your
imagination?

Obscurity.
Mist.

The roar of the ocean drawing back
miles
and
miles
into the dawn of human existence.

Origin.
Fear.

Giant orbs of light emanating from
streetlights atop
the seaside
cliffs.

Terminus.
Void.

But not an empty void, no,
the dark side of this world
reflected.

Unknowable.
Occult.

Slicing through the murk,
a lighthouse
miles
and
miles
up the shore pings
and is gone.

Vision.
Wonder.

That there could be so
very
much
hiding in the dark.

Reckoning.
Completion.

The haze of a distant fire
flattens the light on the knolls
beyond the sageflats. Their half-tone
silhouettes jagged by tall pines.
The rumble of the engine as I stand beside the truck
with the door open, surveying the
horizon. Locusts crackling.
A patchwork of shadows washes
over the flats. Steel-gray clouds above.
The wind kicks up sparse columns of
dust. A lonely road
and a shot-up gate.
A glimmer in the dirt. Brass.
Nine millimiter. Discharged and forgotten.
The lock on the gate has been grazed by bullets.
Maybe this one.
The shadows wash over outcroppings
of lava rock amid the tall sage.
Nooks and crannies. Places to hide.

A gust of wind and I am standing in the shade
and my eyes relax as a prairie falcon
glides over the road to survey the
far side for something to eat,
close enough I can almost
hear the beating of his
wings and suddenly
zigs up and then
charges toward
the ground
and then
he has
gone.

per aspera, for the love of god
let me down
the oil of the asp,
the bee in my bonnet
in a needle
rolling deep
in the hay,
the raspy cough
from the hayfever on my
cilia,
on the kitchen counter,
in my mind.

Let me off this bottomless ladder
you *******,
you fiends.

Walking out of the bank yesterday
I got blindsided
By the sight of the late-afternoon-early-evening
half-moon floating
in the overhead sea.

It wasn’t that I forgot it was there
and suddenly remembered, it was just so suddenly clear
that it wasn’t an image,
but a large and very real
and simplistic object
suspended
and the angle of the sun in the sky
was apparent by the shadow
cast on its surface.

For a moment I saw the grand order of it-
the scale and distance and relationships
of three orbs-
two dark, one light,
the big false hope machine in the sky,
like impressionist art
like an empty vase
like a blank sheet of paper
with three little circles on it.

Something I have seen every day
for my entire life,
as though anew.

And then I got in the truck
and I got on the highway
and I turned the radio on
to a commercial about a transmission shop in town
as someone cut me off in traffic.

Somewhere in the South Pacific
a human-shaped speck casts a bottle
from the shore of a tiny island
into the interminable sea.
The bottle contains a note
which bears:
a name
an approximate location
and a desperate plea.

The bottle drifts slowly away
flashing in and out of view
on the crests of passing swells.
It glides on mysterious currents
and a quiet modicum of hope.

Simultaneously,
Above a particular point in the Northern Hemisphere,
a ball of tin foil
labeled Voyager I
is crossing the threshold
into the world outside
the solar system.

On board are a pair of golden discs
engraved with:
images and voices of human beings
the relative location of the Sun to fourteen nearby pulsars
and a plea,
      naively disguised to look like a proud declaration of identity
                             but what proud and accomplished
                                       race of beings
                         would need to search for
                                 companionship
                            among the stars?

                         The little metal ball floats away
                                        blinking bits of data back to Earth
                                                              each grainier than
                                                                 the last

                                     tugged by the gravity of distant bodies
                                                               and a quiet modicum of
                                                              ­                                  hope.

Dusk.
The black of undermaintained asphalt
in a ribbon rolling over
the volcanic hills,
the yellow of the centerline
flashing into view and passing beneath
in a rhythm,
like a heartbeat.

Jackrabbit on the shoulder
***** his head and springs
away from something in his imagination,
following the yellow dashes
in an awkward gait,
a single bold jump
followed by twenty yards of
dead sprint.

Not eight feet overhead
a pair of nighthawks bob and flutter
erratically
but following one another in
pursuit

of something I cannot see.

Silken stone
dewed damp
tipping to topple
over outcropping-

balanced buttress
feigning flightlessness
until, unexpected, uphill
avalanche advances
rushing, racing
poised to push-

rock rolls
sailing slow
slow
slow
slow-

explosion echoes
crisscross canyon.
Sheep stop,
listen long,
lingering

Scrubjay alights on dewdamp juniper
Jree?
he asks
Jreee?

There is no one around to answer.

Brook trout leaps to catch a bug on the wing
and for one moment
she is suspended between the stars
and their reflection

but this does not occur to her.

Ponderosa’s limbs and roots
streeeetch
into the soil and the air
it has been alive for one hundred
and ninety years

but it is not counting,
are you?

I saw visions of tortured souls
ripped apart by machinery
in the bowels of a concrete prison
and reassembled
like patchwork quilts
and I was awestruck with horror
at what I saw
and then I woke up.

Relief gave way,
after a few minutes,
to a deeper dread
because what I had seen was not
something I had been forced to watch,
it was something that came out of me

I had given those feverish images
of inhuman evil and suffering
life.

I spend so much time
gripped by the fear of the world outside
my home, outside
my bed, outside
my body
and now I feel like
nowhere
is safe.

It is three o’clock in the morning.
The streets are quiet.
There are no car alarms.
There are no dogs barking.

And I am too afraid to sleep.

Pale figure
softness laid bare
to the maw of the earth-
those gnawing rocks
sharpened by the rain.
They do not frighten you.

Even still I picture the cold dawn
of spring painting the snowdrifts
and you
in a silent snapshot.

Would that I could join you there
to hear your breath mix with the wind
to feel the heat of the stones where you sit.
They cannot defeat you-
they envy you,
for you are so unlike them.

You are the ghost
of these limestone hills
and you haunt me.

Clench the disembodied tooth of your
solipsism in the womb of your fist
with your eyes closed
and let it bite your flesh.

In that eyes-closed world
you can feel the roots and ridges
pressing back
like a kicking fetus
that can't understand its own
existence,
much less the existence of anything
  else.

The blood of the world you don't
believe in is trickling
from between your fingers

your pain is leaching out
onto the living room carpet
into the stratosphere. And
as you and the tooth become
one in the dark
you can feel the fist of something larger
closing around you.

My whole life I have been looking West
from the apron of the Wasatch
into the countless spines and valleys
of The Great Basin.
The Big Nothing.
The living room floor of America.
And then on a whim I got in the truck
and I drove the ten hours
across the amber plains of Idaho
and the knolls of Oregon
to the east ***** of the Cascades.

From this side it looks pretty much the same.
The ponderosas suddenly end
and there is this massive, untamed
space.

And while I will grant that most everything here
is both the same
and completely different-
desert (but without cacti)
mountains (all volcanoes)
forests (but sparse and flat)
there is nothing foreign
about the carpet of sagebrush
in the lowlands of the west,
regardless of which edge you are standing on.

For the first time it does not scare me,
the immensity of it,
the emptiness of it,
the quiet of it,
and for the first time I feel I am not looking out
toward the opposite end of it.
For the first time,
it feels like home.

The condensation on cold exhalation
drifts, lifts
to the ceiling
where it collects
droplets drip
drop
plop
on slick soil floor.

I am a bat in a crack
watching the fluorescent reflection
of blue light from outside glint
on lavarock ice
selfsame as the light the cave swallows
dance and titter in.

There is simply too much heat
and light
and noise
out there.
Within the world is stable and cool and
safe. The ceiling is my
shelter.
Give me some crevice to crawl in.
I want to feel the embrace of the earth.
To live in a place that no one can see-

not even me.

The reflection of grey light from the sun above the clouds reveals a greasy film on my arm.
A mess I made.
I can smell my stink and it turns my stomach.
You probably still have grains of my dandruff under your fingernails
despite how much you’ve tried to wash them off by now.

I clenched my fists in the chocolate cake loam trying to cover the smell of me
in something forgiveable. But
it didn’t work, and now the soil reeks
of my wretched sweat.

I picture the rings of Saturn.
Concentric circles in the silent dark.
They are perfect and I am filthy.

I picture the umber canyons just before dawn. I picture
cacti living on cliffsides beneath the infinite stars.
They are perfect. And I
am filthy.
Just by living I am filthy.
Every breath I take carries the noxious odor of me.
Diluting the perfect blue sky.

Purifying fire unmake me. Break the lattice of my flesh. Swallow me up.
Make me clean.

The light is yellow without
  and blue within
as I putter back and forth
around the house trying to
remember the name of the substance
I am craving.
It’s not coming to me.
But it feels like a hole in me
with definite properties-
shape and volume
and weight.

The problem is none of the vices in this tiny apartment
quite match that space
or have the same volume
or weigh enough

so here I am
with the windows open
in my underwear
as the first real black of night falls-

trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

and one day I get tired of walking
so I climb to the top of a very tall ridge
no bigger than the contours on your fingertips
and I jump

The ground spins away from me
and it falls into the distance
I get lost in orbit
around the technicolor island of shiny garbage we’ve all left in space
pincushioned with guidons
it spins out of my field of view

I scream at the stars
tell me why, tell me why
but they’re silent
they’ve always been silent

But even silence is an answer
and I’ve grown to know the voice of the void
without, within
the shape and color of that silence
has hardly ever stopped me from shouting
and somehow it never fails to surprise me when it shouts back

The self-portrait you printed on a rectangular piece of cloth
waving in the wind of the atmosphere of aerosolized liquids we've all sprayed
hairsprays and bug repellents
at the end of a metal pole
I see it
and even though I am too far away to do anything
I call out
and the answer comes in silence

And then it spins out of view
so I close my eyes

The tether of gravity hauls me back down
and I splash in the plastic ocean
the flecks of confetti that used to be styrofoam containers and disposable straws we've all used and disposed
dance in the light amid the baby blue

I sink
faster and faster as the bubbles rush out of my pores
the baby blue turns navy
the red and orange flecks blink out
and then the green
and the rest

The sun drifting farther and farther
even as I watch it go
then the blue goes too
and the cold of space is holding me again
I’m spinning out

The prehistoric things down there giving off their lights
make streaks of ultraviolet beyond my comprehension
they float around me
so alive and so alien
I watch them through my unblinking windows
undulating back and forth from one food source to the next
pushing against the silence down there
swimming stars in the night
they rotate out of my view and away
into the vacuum

And then the void takes me in
why, why I ask in the loudest whisper I can muster
water rushing over my vocal cords
and the answer comes

And I cannot see it
but I can feel the eventual dirt of the bottom rise up
to catch me
it consumes me like an amoeba taking in nutrients
I close my eyes
and I understand.

It's 11:57 PM
on a thursday.
I just rolled out of bed
and took a few hits off a roach I had
lying around.
What city lights there are outside are centered in the one block
around my window.
It was supposed to snow
but it's just gray
and damp outside.
Nothing moves but a column of steam from a mill(?)
a few blocks south/southwest.
Rising inbetween blue and yellow streetlights.
Water billowing up from who knows what body of water
and freezing again on the frigid air.
As if it were feeding the oppressive mist
over everything.
As though the sky were drinking from the Bear River
and sitting, fat and content
on top of us all.
Not snowing,
just icy and motionless
and gray.

I opened the window just now
The metronome of the leaky bathtub
dip
dop
in the next room
Disembodied evidence
of a world outside.
I reset the margins on this old typer
The sputter of the leaky radiator
as familiar as the cars on the street
as the 6 am garbage trucks-
the cacophony of morning,
the wheel of time.
Keep your past lives.
I know nothing about
the world outside my skull
save the leaky bathtub.

But I know those trucks-
and they are older than me,
older than death,
older than the garbage they carry.

I hear them every morning
but they have never heard me.

Tell Shiva to stop dancing.
I'm trying to get some rest.

The coffee in the waiting room
at the mechanic
is terrible.
They've got this old *** of folgers
with powder creamer.
But with four inches of fresh snow on the ground
on a saturday morning
waiting for nothing special
with nowhere in particular to be
it is very nice and in fact
even refreshing.

Fog lays like a pale figure in an uncomfortable chair
languishing
and I lay too
with a full heart
under a duvet
yet awake in the dark
as the electric fan ticks away in the corner
and on the street there is no one
not delinquent teenagers
not stupefied drunks
not star-crossed lovers in the cold

just the vapor in the air
too lukewarm to form hoarfrost
too cool to disperse

the streetlights are refracted into orbs of blue light
hanging with a soft buzz
over wet asphalt,
beacons for no one,
no thing.

I spied three figures, ebbing in fixed positions on the lake.
Like the freckles on your cheeks when you squint at something distant.
I noticed them only because
as the waves moved beneath them,
as the clouds in the sky passed above them,
as the heavens themselves turned about them,
they sat still
as though their liquid perch
were hard and fast as granite.
They hardly even bobbed, resisting the jostling of the waves.
I watched them a while and decided they were herons at rest.
And then I remembered what I was doing before I stopped to watch them

I turned to leave,
and still they had not moved.

Split the sun
with an ax like velvet.
The braincase open,
the soul drips-
like egg yolk
onto the sandflats
the old blood ants march out
and pile up
into a monolith
sharp enough to scratch the azure off the sky
tall enough to disrupt the horizon
like a blip on your ancient EKG
that peaks like a drop in a pool
then crashes like a kettle drum.

No birds.
Empurpled sand towers darken silently
junipers twitch imperceptably
rattlesnake retreats beneath the dust.
A billion years of breath and tears
grinding the sediment down
a dramatic pull toward the distant sea.

Make sediment of me.

I imagine you
in the slot canyons of valhalla
among rattlesnakes and bighorns
at twilight

I imagine you
running through knee-deep snowdrifts
with icecicles forming on your beard
under a full moon

I imagine you
living after dying,
and it's so hard
to imagine anything else

But you can't move anymore
and if there is a valhalla
no one ever deserved a place in it
like you did-
but that's a fiction

it's my imagination

it's my cowardice
and my inability to accept that anyone
as alive as you could be dead.

You're a nothing now
and the truth is I imagine you alive
because it is so much better
to be a something than a nothing-

which I think you knew all along.

I can feel the quietude of an entire ice age
breaking in upon my weary mind
in this, the witching hour of my life-
where topsy-turvy seconds spill
from mislabeled vases in a haste that bursts spinning, smoking tires,
where treaded water boils,
where the pale face of ignorance smokes a skinny cigarette beneath a naked lightbulb on a bare matress in a quiet studio
in a deafening city-

I can feel my cells collapsing
under the weight of the metal in my blood,
the smog in my lungs,
the grease in the hair on my heavy head-
the fear...
fear of icebergs descending into unimaginable depths
fear like a kite at the end of a piece of taut red yarn
fear that steals my breath from me
that crushes the soul into soundless, whitewashed rooms.

Some caged birds sing.
Some freed birds don't.

Gimme the dregs
the sludge
at the bottom of the coffee ***
in a twelve-ounce paper cup
Give me snowmelt
Give me the bile in the belly of the earth
Give me good, clean american dirt
and half-remembered dreams
and I'll show you what it means
to live honestly.

Gimme the sun
up on high
on the other side of nightfall
to tighten the bags under my eyes
Give me dandelions
Give me a candle for warmth and light
Give me the mist in the sky
and a spoonful of rice
and I'll show you what it feels like
to move a molehill.

Conifer-covered hillside
in the hinterlands
of this sleepy town
on a warm day
in this mid-June

The unspoilt soil
neither grieves
nor revels
and there's no revelation in that-
just what you see.

It's just what you see.

The quivering quakeys
can't hack it even when they cackle-
an attempt to unravel the shackles of
their incomplete alchemy-
cause it's never enough

one laugh is never enough.

The high's always flanked
by a sunrise so rank
as to wrinkle the brows
of the loudest and proudest-
the laughers and criers, or livers and die-rs

Just give me the bliss of the birds
and a big lidless urn to retire my fire
when the work week expires
when I finally can see even truth holds some lies
and when the sun sets too low to appraise the horizon,
I'll fly.

I'll just fly.

The rain hammers on the whistlepigs outside
like an organic xylophone
they fiddle with bits of grass in the dark

It's night and the chorus frogs
back it all up,
the humming of the refridgerator
the whistlepigs
the water in the pipes,
the rain.

I've been in this cabin in the woods
**** near a month already
and the incessant buzz of electricity trying hopelessly
to ground through the faulty wiring
in ten million appliances
still cannot be escaped.

Better to be a whistlepig
living beneath the floorboards in the damp
than a mouse in the walls-

but I guess I've never
been either.

She's leaving in the morning
and she knows this
and I know this
and there's little-to-nothing she can do about it
and there's little-to-nothing I can do about it

and she knows this
and I know this.

She walks into the room
with her hair in a towel
and nothing else on
her ******* sway a little as she looks for the ***** shirt
she wears to bed

I'm lying on that bed
in my underwear
by the window listening
to the frogs chirp outside
and I watch her
move around out of the corner
of my eye
so she doesn't notice how
I watch her move.

Don't get all sentimental, I think,
it's too late for that now.

There's little-to-nothing she can do
and there's little-to-nothing I can do

and we know this-

Don't get all sentimental, ******* you,
I think,

but she's there now,
where I can see her
and my idle mind gets rolling

and there's little-to-nothing I can do.

The night closes in
and we're naked
to each other in the dark in that bed.
Close.
There's a storm raging outside
and she's leaving in the morning

and that's the end of it.

I've tried portaiture,
but for some old reason
I find it hard
to eulogize the living.

And when I do try,
the details just never seem
to fit right,
it's too much
or not enough
or just plain inaccurate,
from a few steps back.

I'll paint your actions, alright
'cause I can watch those happen
start to finish,
but I wouldn't pretend to be good enough
to encapsulate a whole person
-all that transient multicolor light under your halo-
with my petty vain jabber,
my incomplete vocabulary
of unflattering grunts-

take it as a compliment.

Wet slush on serrated mountain crest
glimmers like a pearlescent gemstone
untouched by even the brave ones-
sword-wavers, chest-beaters, ski-maniacs,
gemhounds and bloodhounds
and even father sun
has stayed his hand
to drag a finger through that heavenly
mirror-tile's topcoat
for its unmarked face, streakless
and unpocked by avalanche
reveals no disturbance.

They say these are the steepest mountains on earth,
and it would be hard to disagree while looking at them
their upper edge against the equally spotless sky
is a perfect, continuous line
and the slopes, appearing near-vertical
create the illusion
that this miles-long ridge could split hairs like a hand-sharpened razor-
like a colossal, snowy
bowie knife.

Sunday afternoon under sleepy film of cloudcover
in this, the most well-policed
(safe, they say)
town in these Unitedly Individuist States of
Solitude-
cry out for something to do,
give me something to DO,
i say
but even the bars and singular coffee shop are closed on the lord's day
here
and so a lazy afternoon on the back porch with the weekend wine leftovers in glass, in hand
watching the cats dream,
themselves even too lazy to chase the busy squirrels
who alone are energized
and chat their politics of nut-gathering
to the bluejays who nod kindly,
(nobility obliges)
but silently know all the tricks
'cause they're expert buriers of peanuts
themselves and have got nothin' to learn,
but nothing to do either,
'cept listen.

I hear the music of their conversation
and assure you, friends,
that this poem is garbage
by comparison.

splayed
with a deathmask as gaunt
as in life

metacarpals and phalanges,
liberated (in vain) of rubbery
connective tissues

ribs and spine,
so surprisingly human,
sunbleached

bones that may as well have been mine
but weren’t for whatever reason
(or no reason at all)

what karmic debt
could this poor specimen have possibly incurred
to be pinned, naked and fleshless, in a glass-paned box for all to see for all foreseeable eternity?

mayhap beauty is, itself
criminal
when it goes without a price tag.

The poetry’s gone to **** lately.
Mostly I mean there isn’t much,
but what there is isn’t that good.
Maybe, *******, life’s just
not awful these days.

Maybe my eye for the magic in the monotony’s just gotten
lazy.

I feel too good to even resent whatever it is
making me limp-dicked.

“coward,” I think.
“******* coward.”

And in a minute,
the coward I am,
I’ll probably set this page down,
unfinished
walk to the television,
turn it on
and submit
like a coward

like a corpse
belly-up
under a sky of infinitely small pixels
flashing on
and off
on
and off.

And then one day in mid-february,
itll rain, sez I.
And youll be thankful for the eleven hours
o' day-light.
And a good lot of the street-grease-****-slush'll
wash down the storm drains.
Hell, you may even be able to call it "warm".
And obviously you wont be done
(its still february after all)
quite yet.
But itll feel like mornin'
which has its own perks.

Flowers smell just like stale wet snow,
sez I.

The window's cracked a bit
some cat had given out a lonely mewl
                   and I decided to hear his
                        swan-song

                      I figure he's probably just teary-eyed
                                            bout some girl
                                                        stood him up.

                                  We're both creatures of the night,
                                        things dracula turns into
                                                        when he gets tired of people
                                            calling him a monster
                                                                                 which I suppose he is, really.

                                 There's an owl in the spruce tree across the street.
                                         I can hear him belt the blues
                                                      if I quit fidgeting long enough
                                                 I wonder if they're listening to me too
                                                             while I click-clack
                                                                       out the window

                       trying to find some rhythm in the madness

                sing on, boys.
                            I'll be the percussionist
                            and you can riff all you want
                                  nevermind the errors,
                                        we'll just tell the naysayers
                                                   that jazz
                                             isn't supposed to have rules.

Light killed night so I rose and rolled over
shaved and showered
then stood before the blinds-drawn-back
freshly foggy glass
I traced the outline of the ridgeline
of the mountains outside with my finger
in the condensation,
sat and watched the light bounce off the snow
til the misty glass dried
and suddenly all the details were clear
tufts of green
tusks of brown
standing up through the crusted-over ice
and crystalline facets of cliff-face
bits and bobs, anyway, of color on a fresh canvas
and all still
til I spied a couple specks
-and squinted-
not just spots now, but bodies on stilts
(four apiece)
and a ***** crown on the one.
Goats!
yes, mountain goats,
male and female,
traversing the treachery
in spite of it all-
though I could feel they had none,
not an ounce of spite between them
no!
not in spite, but in tandem
with the elements,
the terrain,
with each other.
The conditions aren't adverse,
I realized,
they're ideal.

here is here,
now is now,
and you're a little speck,
just like me,
just like mountain goats,
just swimming through it all
with grace
and tact
and majesty.

light leaps lengthwise
purging this promontory prismatically
awakening all us awestruck
shameless sleepyheads, spying
delicious daylight drowning
out obscurity and occlusion,
frameless fixtures focused,
beams bouncing back between
emphatic eyelids,
leaving lenses lacerated,
despair defeated,
darkness destroyed.

someone wiser than me once said something
about how all things come in their
proper season

Well summer's gone away,
long since.
It was hot
and we bore our chests
and hiked the hills
but the season is past now.

The snow is plummeting gently,
whispering loudly,
shadowy white.

someone wiser and younger and purer than I once said something
about learning to enjoy the comedown
rather than submitting to resentment,
and so I am.
The wave crests and falls
and rises again
simultaneously
and I'm embracing sleeplessness
like a bat on the wing
and listening to the silent symphony
of translucent crystalline ice

plummeting gently,
whispering loudly,
shadowy white.

Enough of summer!
Bring on the blankets of frigidity!
Bring on coldness!
Bring on the night!
Give me death so that I might live!

Let sleeplessness comfort the lonely,
let sobriety **** drunkenness,
let hunger feed me.

Let death give me life.

Sometimes,
in spite of every moral,
healthful,
or social scruple I may have,
I crave the taste of
monosodium glutamate,
of fried red meat,
of watered-down grocery store pilsner.

Sometimes I even sit,
a cheap beer in one had,
an even cheaper cheeseburger in the other,
and watch snowflakes drift on the wind
out my window,
with no shame, no guilt,
no thoughts even.
Just cheap beer, fast food,
and my humanity.

A seat by a window is all I ask
where I can see beyond the walls
of captivity
and watch clouds
like whispered truths,
hiding in plain sight
roll and collide
and contradict
and disappate.

A seat by a window
so I can see beyond what I know
so I can grasp hope
so I can chance to witness something
beautiful.

But all I see is a group of kids
with their hands on their *****
playing dice
and shouting at mothers
pushing babies in strollers
and spitting.

Contrails, like brushstrokes
made with measured and elegant
exactitude
wash over the halo of white light
worn by mother moon-
the persimmons of night cut through
the vaporous blanket of winter,
swaddling the earth below in mellow
reflected light,
saying "carry on, my sons
and my daughters,
the night shall pass,
but until then I give what comfort
I can."

The sun
is in
your eyes.

If you live your life with your teeth gritted,
with your jaw clenched,
with your upper lip pinned back
to reveal your pearly white fangs,
don't be surprised
when your they start to loosen,
bleed,
and fall out of your head-

leaving you with an unconvincing smile
and an even less convincing
sneer.

You look tired, girl.

The lines on your face
from annual frost wedging
sprout tiny trees and assemblies of
lichens
that blot the pages of your book
like carelessly spilt ink,

but it's not worth crying over.

I spent my time trying to read those
pages,
those hieroglyphs
penned in a foreign
and dead tongue.

I tried to read the landscape of you.

Where split rocks harbor still-breathing mammals
at the base of your collar bone.
Where the aspens quake
and make homes for hawks
on the crest of your bony hip.
Where the trickles of water babble
softly,
but not unheard
and the trout jump like living jokes
in the cracks on your tongue.

Really, I tried.
And the closer I looked the more I realized
that you are not my native land.
I was an invasive species there
and I could feel the god in you
crying out
to abolish the man in me.

So I tore down the shack I had built
at the border between you and I
and I watched as the trees regrew
where I used to harvest my firewood
and I saw the deer
bed down
as the sun set
behind the
cold and silent mountain range
that fringes your hairline-

those mighty castle walls
that I could never truly breach.

Millions of years ago a glacier
-like the pinpoint tip of a paintbrush
in some celestial architect's hand-
carved off the ridges
and peaks
and rough edges
off this valley,
like a frigid finish sander;
leaving sparse patches of
smoothed-out, tiger-striped gneiss
that permeate a background of
grass and scattered boulders.
Picturing the area's native peoples
-humans, deer, rabbits and porcupines-
meander across it is too easy-
but what is even easier is moving across it.
The word "running" doesn't really
fit-
it's more of a fast-motion jig
crossing feet one over the other
and tiptoeing
from rock to rock to rock
five feet at a time
until, at a pause for fresh air,
you realize you've crossed a whole valley
under sun's watchful gaze.

We spent the day here,
just across the border between the man-made
and that which made man,
whooping like madmen
under sun's embrace.
Emerging,
some indeterminate moment later,
burnt,
but enlightened
in the truest sense
of that word.

Inspire.

Expire.

Standing out here
in the cold
in front of this bar,
freshly laden rain over all the sidewalks and asphalt,
wrapped in the
comfort of fuzzy woven cotton
and the comfort of a comfortably
easy drunk
in the company of these (borderline)
obnoxiously drunken
bar-patrons
under the citystarlight-

and I smile,
contented,
for now.

Streetlamp's effusions,
uncaring,
rain down on
milky flesh clad in
shapeless polyester
and pockmarked asphalt
under abstruse night,
with unfaltering
honesty

like the nonsense soliloquies of drunken idiots.

"thank you,"
I offer.

"Just doing my job."