In the deep of time indigenous tribes
surfaced a red earth with protruding plateaus
and burnt canyons along the Cimarron River.
The ancient Anasazi settled
at the core of this mesa.
Scattered ponderosa pine.
Yet, their sudden demise echoed curiosity.

Navajo sensed a struggle of two infinite worlds,
a quivering inundation.
Circling its haunted ominous shape,
a skull with one eye, the apparition of light
rose into a blue desert sky.

Violent storms crackle hot lightning
strikes in a sulfurous summer-
an oracular hothouse.
Navajo talk of spirits or the gateway
to fire. Heaps of iron and lodestone
lodged in the cap. Only two
brazen, cat totem poles guarding its passage.

Standing among the mesa
to feel the verve of the earth.
A New Mexico sun beats down
burning the drowsed terrain.
To see the legendary shaman glow
in his ephemeral blue nimbus.
Bathed in gaudy turquoise.

Sensing the dark encroachment
of a ghost. Near the bony hills, soared
a turbulent black bird in full flight,
upward.

You want to go back
to where the sky was inside of us.
I walked in the white silences
of your mind and saw fear
multiply while summer
crackled beneath wet suns.

-

Inside is this rolling energy
tugging at the walls of body.
I do not know how to pull it apart
and separate it from myself.
A vulturous animal sleeps
inside of me, and all I want
is to close my eyes
and rest this feeble frame.

Wallowing inside the blackest sleep
I see images grow large and transform
into what feels like reality. Each night
my brain is transfixed on tragedy
and the loss of a loved one, as though
my soul is craving tears, lucid dreaming,
a haunted atmosphere.
These moments remind my body
that is alive, full of breath, a moving
corporeal skeleton. The wilderness
of my bones hear the dark silted thoughts.
Each wave comes with white spinning stars
as a granular moon sinks into my spine.

A blackening morning bleeds and deepens
the opening of iron lungs. Paperweight
bones threaten gaiety and the smell of sleep.

Such sadness pours inward, it has chosen
the wrong body as cold folds over the world,
so it feels real, stained frost in vacuous black.

The pure leap of malignity agitates
the interior of a woman's red heart,
melting like embers.

In the sulphur, words dry while water
slides down. Drips and thickens.
Gaping hole exposed- too early for the dawn.

There are too many people here.
Streets are crowded with vendors
and an indelible smell thickens.
Buildings are painted a faint blue, or pink;
they rise upwards, lofty and erratic.
On the balcony of my hotel their roofs are speckled;
one of every color.

Outlandish art fills sun-glazed shops.
Some are only twenty feet wide. Motorbikes
wiz down the cracked roads with intimidating speed.
I look up to the knotted powerlines strung above
cluttering the backdrop of twine green trees.

In the humidity, there is no fresh air.
I can scarcely breathe. Here is a city
impractically shaped, a different world,
but the tender is coming as I descend further.

In the interior is Birla Orphanage
where laughter spreads.
The children wade gigantic waves
on the shore of Do Son Beach.
Mucky water sticks to the sand on our skin.

A boy, three feet tall, beautiful bright brown eyes
peers into my life. I do not know his language,
the most we can do is share gaping smiles
as this city unfolds its secrets to me.

I met a girl under the quivering black water
washed by the icy sharpness of drowning.
She looked up at me, silent, faceless,
without identity. Breathing salt
from the river with a frozen voice.

Tiny electric eyes scanned
the colossal reservoir with a desire
to escape the surface of watery
dark weeds and coral twig.

The prickling ache of sleepless
blood stuck inside me as I stared
into the maelstrom of identity
swimming in warped silence.

Now I sit, spiderlike, waiting.
The cauldron of night dragging in my veins.

Your eyes mirrored pools of black
ink and I never knew that the flask
in your pocket would keep me wide
awake into the morning.

The olivine porch outside your country
home was shaped with darker thoughts
and milkweed seed that left me
wondering how you wake in winter.

You lived as a sleeper in the valley
with a zirconium smile and when light
rained down the glass of your hanging lanterns
would break across the sky.

The smoothness of smoke that wrapped
around my lungs kept me lurking
in the corners of drowsy living
and drunken rainbow fires.

You could never offer me more
than what I already had.
So as with everything, the end came
and now the wind is blowing prismatic stars.