When you die
you walk on, shoeless,

your only light a nightlight,

and beneath your feet,
the carpet--

it’s so soft, it feels
like heaven.

Wild eyed, dark faced boys.

The kind of children not born,
but pressed from murmurs.

Every morning
on the way to school

I saw them,

just beyond the play yard,
in the woods, smearing

in and out of trees,

slowly, loyally,
collecting the sap

of desire.

What did your face look like
before your parents were  born?*
-zen koan

When I was a seven I wore a mask for the first time,
the head of a lion, hand-painted,

whiskered and grinning.

That night I prowled my childhood  
neighborhood, clawed at doors,

took candy from strangers.

The world was small then, my face
encased in cardboard, thin slits for eyes,

and still I remember, even at seven,
sailing inwards, watching the dance of a candle

flickering in the belly of a gourd.

I watched it shift shape, twitch
to reinvent itself again and again,

capable in that green dim night
of blooming into anything--

cliff birds rising on warm
volcanic swells,

a fox in the forest, cackling
on its back in the ferns.

I grew light,
knew that I too was ember,

flickering mystery,

neither boy nor lion.

This is the Southern Range.

Roads up here,
they want you thrown.

They coil, uncoil,

black snakes
hugging the rock.

There are signs of course,
always are,

crude symbols, bee colored,
lining the road.

Their message is plain:

Up here, so near
heaven,

danger falls.

Cars get crushed.

And in the morning
there's steam, it's everywhere,

rising like crazy.

The white mist is miserable,
low hung, slumped in the fields.

Dark arrives
like a tide from the forest.

The sound of the whole
world dripping--

It's incredible.

I look up, and your there.

A red beast, mud-made,
a devil for sure.

You're shaking.
I pretend not to notice.

Instead, I dwell
on the story.

It seeps from my hands,
pours from thorn ******.

Water and Wine.
Water and Wine.

Scrolls of it.

I'm not sure what's next,
Something about a stone?

Anyways, I'm sorry.

I shouldn't have made you
do it.

                                                            ­                  -km

Skeleton kids scurry over rocks,

keys bounce behind them, tinkling,
twine-tied to their ankles.

The sound they make, small
metal on stone, it reminds
me of a room service cart

passing in the hallway at night.

Inside its patter,
I hear words:

Tiny, Timeworn, Shackles

This is the desert.
Out here, sins don't hide.

They burn.