My year of Burning Man
began
with butterfly wings
flapping out on the playa
in a high desert black
moonless sky
speeding up the relentless winds
just enough for me
to hear it call my name
and
make this change
where life
becomes a vast array
of
giant machines
Las Vegas style
in this black rock desert.

I have lived among in my days
of sustained isolation
before the people came
to construct this
city of lights
and community
where we all belong
and participate
in this life art project
free from the rules
that restrict us
as the giant sweat lodge
of the desert
alters our consciousness
frees us.

In my year of Burning Man
the relentless winds
blows the mundane into the insane
and
before entering that last gate
I kiss myself goodbye
knowing
I'll never see myself again.

My  time
becomes an art project
and the very nature of reality
heaves and sighs
like Pyramid Lake,
the spiritual center of the Paiute people,
which you pass on by
on your way to Burning Man skies,
my internal waters
turn over,
as does the Lake
as the top goes to the bottom
the bottom to the top
and the creative residue
which had drifted
on down
begins to arise anew.

In my year of the Burning Man
I never have to go to the circus
the circus is me
a universe inside
a universe tall
a universe wide
at Burning Man
nothing is small.

The costumes come alive
behind thousands of eyes
the lights in the desert come alive
while the thumping bass
shakes
rattles you inside.

It's a masked costume party
where the masks don't hide
but reveal all that you are inside,
inside out.

My revolution comes
in a tanker truck
of gasoline
on a Saturday summer-fall
night
and my flames
climb
a thousand feet high
into
the Black Rock
desert sky
in unity
one cosmic cry.

The dust's breath
sticks to everything,
every one
every masked body.

In my days
in my Burning Man year
my eyes are now
perpetually wide and amazed
within this vastness
that for this moment
and all my days
from my birth
to my death
that
I have been alive.

I began as a spot
of mud
flipping off a comets
rushing tail
frozen in ice
I survived the fall
a few moments of
organic molecules
landing on one
vast continent
integrated
into a minuscule
whole
I became alive
alive for this time
and
all time.

But

There were forces
moving inside of
me
call it what you will
continental drift
tectonic plates
powerful forces
which fragment me
over time.

I come together
I divide
but the cycles
don't stop there
like our love
as all these
parts and particles
slam back together
in a single mind.

Pangaea!  I once
called you home
it was the only place to be
I knew who
and what I
was
but I have become
divided and split
even my dreams are
fragments of scattered
lands.
My center can not
hold for long
as competing desires
beg to be known.

As eternity picks
me up and sends
me on my way
as I scatter back
to those solar
winds
disintegrate to
a spot of DNA
whisked off this
planet
and arrive on
the back of a
sailing comet
frozen for eons
long
to once again
through happenstance
fall
onto a foreign
planet -
home again to
my private
Pangaea
unity
begins the
cycle
all over
again.

~

Clouded scarves of winter skies
Woolen wings on tempered sighs
Nature wears her white disguise
Mounting on the field

Laced along the bitter cold
Futures that have been foretold
Endless phrases painted bold
And our lips are sealed

Frozen links of glistened feel
Piled deep as to conceal
Left alone in what is real
Bracing for the storm

Though inside a fire roars
With the one that I adore
Let it snow forever more
Love shall keep us warm
