I drove while she slept.

We were both tired,
******,
maybe a little drunk still.
I had the music turned up
to try and convince myself I was awake enough
to manage a ton of galvanized steel on fire
down the highway.
Somehow she still managed
to wrap herself around my arm
and breathe easy.

We got back to my place at the other end of town
and she curled up in my bed
and might as well have been comatose.
I lay there for a few minutes contemplating how warm she was
next to me.
I think I fell asleep smiling.

We made hurried love for the first time
just after dawn.
In honesty, I could have been better.
I should have been better-
but I have a tendency to **** these things up
when they go right.

I cooked breakfast while she sat
and told me about her family-
hash browns and eggs.
Butter in the pan, flame at medium,
stir occasionally.
Simple.
I must have been distracted,
kissing her cheek
because all the same I burnt them.

It felt like an omen.

We ate what we could salvage
and then I drove her home.

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.

A chasm stretches itself before me.
And I will cross it
But it is not so simple as that even
I will make it so that no-one will have to cross it ever again.
Casting a chain from my side, I find a hold on the other
I swing to it
Then I begin to dig
Digging deep into the earth I pull the chain behind me
Together, we emerge from the side of the cliff I just clambered across
I pull at the knots I have tied for handholds
I pull with all the force I can bear
The ground shakes and I have slack
I toss the remainder of what I have to the top of the opposing cliff
And shimmy across it.
Reaching the fallen end, I begin digging anew
I emerge after tunneling once again
And
Heave
With everything I was born with
With all of the matter that comprises my feeble,
Fragile
Human
Frame;
Nay, with
All
That I am.
The opposing side of the chasm shakes
It groans in the protest of a thousand-year sleep
It presses even against me
But I pull it all the same
Inches
Closer
And with it a length of chain
Which I use to throw to the opposing side
Which I use to climb
Which I use to pull
Which I use to throw
Which I use to climb
Which I use to pull
Which I use to stitch this colossal divide back together
With all that I am I am pulling these two opposing forces
And there is
NOTHING
That will stop me
From burrowing into the ground
And pulling these earthen demons
This great sleeping wound
Together
I will mend this
Or I will
die
trying.

The dark of my night is without contrast.
It is impending,
Heavy,
And it blankets and submerges
Like dreamless sleep.

The dark of my night is all-encompassing.
It wants to make me like it.
To fade me into static
And overwhelm me.

The dark of my night is without answer
Resonating echoes breaking like waves along my rib bones
Reverberating in the hollow cavity of my skull
Rattling the rice-grain small bones of my inner ear.

The dark of my night is haunting.
It sleeps and dreams of me,
Awake,
And pawing my way through it
With eyes closed.
It hides in still pools underground
In swaths of twilight fog
In places still untouched by the human gaze.

The dark of my night is motionless
And mute
And numb.

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.

I want to build an obelisk
A tower high enough to touch water vapor in the sky
With no light at the top for guiding ships
And no crows nest for stationing snipers
Too thin and narrow to house people or goods.
It will not be a monument to god.
It will not symbolize the rays of the sun.
It will stand alone.
and it will shout with a voice of thunder,
With the roar of lions,
In a voice that is my own,
"I AM HERE!"
To the cold darkness above.
I want to build an obelisk
To make my presence known to no-one in particular.
I will build it of ink bricks and paper mortar
On the terrain contained in this journal.
And when it is complete I will do as men have done since we first mixed clay with water and painted our own image on walls and shout my existence to the universe.

I.
Am.
Here.

Yes, I want to build an obelisk.

And when it is done I will build another.

This is home.
A home full of life.
A home full of music.
The song of voices and laughter fills the walls and floors.
A home full of light.
And this light pours through the windows and drenches the rooms in warm yellows
And passes through the leaves of the trees without and the plants within
And soaks deep into my skin and warms my face
And wakes us in the morning.
Yes, this is home.
Not a house, not a domicile.
Not so simple as a structure to provide shelter from the rain.
It is made of wood and nails,
the floorboards are uneven,
And the silverware in the drawers are all different and span decades of use.
In the summer it is hot,
In the winter it is cold,
And it is old,
But
It is not dead.
For we live here
And we give it life by living in it.
And it gives back by being light.
It is our fortress.
And these walls can keep out exactly as much of the world outside as we want.
Or we can open the doors and windows and let the wind and the leaves and the world rush in.
This is our home.
And it lives;
because we live too.

I used to make believe
In the stability of unity
And unified individually

Until the knot came undone
And I hung a hairsbreadth
Above oblivion

We built up Rome in a day
And for a while it was great
But I should have known
Easy come, easy go
You're gilded and I was sold
So we glimmered like fool's gold

Just Like fool's gold

I used to make believe
You and I were lost
interchangeably and there
Was a surety in security
But gold's just rust in training
And all time's wasted waiting

But you're not waiting any more

We built up Rome in a day
And for a while it was great
But I should have known,
Easy come, easy go
You were gilded, I was sold
And we glittered like fool's gold
So it's no surprise I find
That I'm better off alone

Should have known from the start
You cried easy and came hard
You were gilded, I was sold
It was nothing but fool's gold

The clouds are on fire-
puffs of vapor burning umber, leaving dark trails of ash in the east.

The watery sky takes no notice.

To ride these rivers of light onward forever, screaming infinite curses to destinations and endings-
We shall never die-
Until the undertow finally ***** us, resisting with all our might, into the abyss of aeons and darkness-
That darkness is unknown, but not necessarily black,
As much as I know, at least.

To run on forever until my legs are ground down to pulp beneath me, and then drag myself on with ****** fingers mangled against the world's mottled asphalt
Until old age or blood loss takes me
And removes the "I"
From my existence.

To forge forward immortal
'til proven otherwise.

The best part
Of wakeful life now
Is the hazy
Twenty seconds of consciousness
On either end of sleep
(When I may as well not exist).
Because in that diluted fog

I don't feel anything.

I don't feel sick
To my stomach
I don't feel
The crushing weight of reality
I don't feel good
About the good times
Or bad
About right now
I don't feel

Anything at all.

And it's wonderful.

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 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.

Gilded, sickly yellow
glowing from a smattering of phosphorescent streetlamps
under homogenous grey skies,
which have finally started to sprinkle rain, after a day's worth of deliberation.
A late night songbird gives one feeble attempt at melody in the distance
and then is silent.
Tip-taps
of droplets
sent from heaven above
as they clatter against plastic car hoods-

to have travelled so many miles, just to terminate there. What grief.

the faint whoosh of engines still on the highway.
People running home,
or running from home,

I can only imagine.

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.

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.

Remember the old days?
when, back when
the good days
we drove and rolled joints
and laughed

in your white sedan
in my backyard
everywhere we went you and i

It's not I don't care
it's not I let go
I just want to help
It's just you need your help

When we were kids
when, back when
glory days
Nothing hard
no tree to tall to rest beneath

in your aging eyes
in my foggy mind
mistakes we made
you and i

It's not I don't see
it's not I let go
Yo need to help me pull
or we'll both fall behind

Not so different
distant image X2
restart, relapse, revise

It's not I
It's not I
It's not I
want to fix you
It's not I     X3
Never knew you
It's not I     X3
It's not I don't care
Cause I just want you to help you

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.

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.

Sometimes it doesn't come. And you'll slam your head against the typewriter or notebook begging god and satan and the powers that be to just let it, but it won't.
But other times, it does.
And when it rains out of your fingertips, believe me, it pours.
With the fury of a hurricane it will come cascading out of you, doing everything it can to be born into the world.
And on those days you'll feel like a genius and you'll hold what you made up to the light and wave it in god's face and you’ll smile.

Those are the days worth living for.

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.

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.

No streetlight penetrating the double-paned glass from the outside tonight,
just a faint flicker, faltering
in the hollow of my chest
to illuminate the room.

Dim shadows cast are drawn with
menacing cartoon faces-
they laugh animatedly.

There is
so little light
when you are alone-
sometimes.

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.

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.

Hand reached up
out of hell today
grabbed me by the soul
the devil whispered
come with me
show you the way back home

In my mind
I see my past
In your eyes
I see my future
In my dreams
I see my own demise
By my fearful weakened nature

Hand reached up
for me today
showed me where to go
the devil whispered
in my ear
what he said, lord only knows

In my lungs
I feel a quart of blood
In my heart
I feel a leak
In my soul
I fear a worse tomorrow
I'm afraid to rise and see


The devil boxed my ear today
I reeled and hit the mat
Then fell into a lake of ice
And felt alive at last

Revitalized I rose again
And threw the final blow
I sent him back from where he came
now they know my name back home

In my head, I hear a sea of voices
In my ear
I hear just yours
In my dreams
I see a golden future
If it's real, lord only knows.

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.

I open all the windows at night
and let the frigid canyon wind wrap me
like a sheet

It's never cold enough,
truthfully

There's never enough justification
to sleep next to some(one)thing
warm

It lets in all the mosquitoes
and the ******* squirrels
wake me up with their
idle chatter
each and every morning
but I like it.

The comedown's most always
(never)
worth the high
(So I'm quitting stimulants
and other people)

But then I remember
that when the music
resolves
it's almost always
worth the wait

so I think
"Just one more day,
then,
just one more beer,
just one more roll of the dice-
they're bound to come up
sixes
sometime"

I could sit
here naked in front
of this typewriter
and tell you
about how I'm the wind
about how I'm a good guy (no really)
about how I'm a ******* (really)
about how i am                            (an artist)
i am                                                                              (a martyr)
i am                                                                                                           (a fool)

But frankly I can't think of anything I am
that I really believe any more.

Tonight I looked into the cold dark sky
Empty save the full moon,
Godless and lonely,
And I wondered how it must feel?
To be the brightest object in an otherwise empty abyss?
and then I considered earth
Full of life, yet alone with the knowledge
of its own greatness.
And suddenly,
The thought of the moon didn't seem so foreign.

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.

When a lack thereof
is all my inspiration
I begin to wonder what on
earth
I would write about
if I simply
had
what I want.
maybe we're just doomed
to write about sadness
and to be sad when we can't write.
maybe I should just figure a way
to be happy
when everything around me
dies.

Maybe it's just the drugs fading,
but tonight I feel hollow.
And maybe it's just the feeling of coming home,
but right now I feel stuck.

Stuck on the simple sensation
of a warm body adjacent
as the night is erased and
a new dawn awakes us.

I laugh often, but I'm hardly ever
amused
mostly I just like to make people feel funny
when they are.
I sigh often because I'm hardly ever not tired,
tired of waking with hopes floating on hot air balloons
only to be set back down with the dipping of the evening sun.

And maybe it's just the ringing in my ears,
but everything is much too quiet right now.
Maybe it's just that the blinds are drawn,
but it is
so dark
in this room.

I live alone here.
here is my island
where no man has set foot
but me
and if you’re reading this it means
you found a bottle
and this was inside it.
You see, I have what I
need,
water, fish, and coconuts
the weather is fine,
I lie naked in the sun each and every day,
but I am alone, and dead to all the world.
The only comfort in which I can partake
is these notes-
some of them letters to family and friends whom I’ll never see again
some are descriptions of faces or trees or sunsets I’ve seen
some are just thoughts I want to give to the world
before I eventually die here.
I hope you’re reading this-
because if you are,
it means I didn’t wither in silence
to be washed over by waves
or blown away
in a storm.
You, the reader of this note,
have validated my existence
by confirming that I ever existed at all

and for that I thank you.

The sun
is in
your eyes.

"poetry's dead,"
he wrote.

It's grey, but it's
warm
and the people almost all smile and
wave
as you pass, even the
kids.

Early afternoon,
and the street's still dry,
the clouds are too lazy to drop
their payloads down on your head.

It's a bad part of town,
or at least it looks that way.
*****,
a little worn-down
rubbed smooth about the edges
and rusting at the seams.
But you're an outsider,
you don't live here
and maybe this part of town isn't bad-
not worse than any other part anyway.

The clouds are grey overhead-
but it's warm-
and the people are nice-
and they almost always
smile and
wave
as you walk by.

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

Inspire.

Expire.

At the end of the day
when even the dogs guarding beloved families
sleep soundly in the cool grass-
When the hurly-burly's done,
when the battle's lost
and won,
and the parks fill up with long shadows
the cars roll into the drives-
When the dinner bells chime
and the homeless
and ragged
look up to the stars-
for hope?
for clarity?
for something to do?

When the work can wait til morning
and the sleeping dogs lie still-
and the children play games
and chase fireflies-
When the lights come on
and the sun goes out-

When we finally accept
that nothing lasts
and tomorrow will come.

Up early today.























Got the worm.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.