[night]
The moon has a light,
tonight it's bright.
But don't it feel dark, my friend?
The moon is a mirror,
gets the sunshine here.
Don't it feel like moon'll never end?
The night's never been this young,
don't want it to get away from me.
Been drinking malt too long, now
my belly's gotten away from me.

[passing out in the car]
Making my knees buckle,
like a newly born calf or
kids trippin' in the desert:
stepped on a cactus
and bit the bristles out.
I commune with the moon,
ask whence, wherefore the doubt?
What sorta secret have I got
that shows in my eyes, my hands, my locks?

[asleep]
It's the moonlit kind of blues.
I can't—I won't choose.
The moonlit kind of blues.
Nothing left to loose.

[morning awakening]
I was nothing but lies last night,
and now in the morning light
don't it don't feel right, my sweet?
I swept all my prints,
I haven't gone there since.
I don't even know which way to creep.
This too shall pass
but want to feel bad lil' less.
The lapses come so fleeting.
**** it, save yourself, ride the feeling.

[back in dreams]
Lou Reed died today
while we made okay.
Boy, he sure knew alot of ladies,
and they sure all had alot to say.
I commune with the moon,
ask will I be alright?
What sort of song must I write
to get pieced the pie, to make it out alive?

Moonlit blues...

[awakened, spiritful]
California drought!
Suddenly I'm running out.
Try to cry or laugh
and lose yourself in cold, cold draft.
California dream!
Born with it, it stays it seems.
I try to explain,
not much to say anyway.

California drought!
How did I get out!
California's south!
And with it my running mouth!

All I've done this past year
is relive, relearn, rethink it here,
everything I've ever known.
So far so free it's shown.
So free as to be any path path bar none.
So freely came to be I'll ask for none.

slow formation of thoughts
the crystallization of metaphor
like smoke
like making rainbows
into everything

breaking white light
into color
in the
black

free-floating subjective
realities
convect around and through
an empty space

the objective objective
purpose pole-star
centering concentric
star flung
peoples
all watching
the light that seems to shine
from the void-hole in the
galactic middle

great bending
spectral lender of
experience

Ram Das
wrote the book
years ago
and then some.

What train am I sweating to catch?

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love:  it was here I trow
I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,—
It shall be, I said, for eternity
‘Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done;
Love’s web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,—
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the ******* of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,—you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you.

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

Do you ever wish you could leave and never come back
just disappear for a while and be separate
think
feel

every time I peel back a layer it regrows
every time you pick up the newspaper I see though your bathrobe
not everything is intentional.

Words have changed with time
I haven’t
beneath the blankets is the same body with the same fingernails
beneath the skin is the same heart pumping the same blood.

I need someone to notice the tears in my eyes
the way he always did
or understand the reason I can’t shut my mouth
is because I never truly have anything to say
and I’m waiting for someone to notice
that I need a real conversation to keep me going.

There’s something familiar about the past and future molding together
as if one is the same as the other
and it’s the worst part that’s kept under lock and key, but still
Kept

I miss when I could lay down and feel something deeper than myself
without questions
without needing to find the right person to listen
where did all the metaphors go?
when we spoke in tongues we understood
and we listened because it felt good, but it never mattered if we didn’t hear.
You would light a match and it would excite me
and now I have to wait until I’m alone
to feel what I really feel
to peak through the blinds and voice my questions.

I still have old fears
things like that don’t just disappear.

So, let me come here, buddy,
you know you're the best,
live n' die by you!
I need to tell you before
I anything else before
I ******* explode
(a moon-strewn comet-collision).

I love her. I've loved her cruelly or generously,
dispassionate or desperate,
I would ******* offer my soul still
in place of hers in some ******* hell.
I miss the focus she gave me,
the nights of swirling, slippery purpose.
I love how she couldn't stand me anymore,

that she was so consumed by herself
as to break my heart.
I wish I'd cried in her arms and said,
"Don't leave me, darling"
instead of just crying in her arms.
They say if you step on only cracks
you can break a curse.
Do they, Jay? do they, really, eh?

I've made my peace, I think,
with Pride, Pain, and Providence
and what I wouldn't do
for dark-haired smart who
skylight ignites chooses to--
the usual beauty she unearths.

All very scary but
I feel so strong
Maybe couldn't reason
but squirm my way
out of anything.
So strong I could give you a gift,
not old something-hand jackets or coupons
but the gift of my pride for you to prize.

Men do not live on bread and pride alone.
I want she & I to show each
other the world, share life,
and I love her, too.
Come join me on a mountain.

And, now, can you guess who called?

Nature doesn't end at cement.
It is
a pour
            i
              n
                  g
          ­            over into

                                                  space

  ­           of the Manifest,
in all its twisting,
reaching ways.
It finds a hallow and calls it home.

Nature is               lonely
but never alone.
Mesh of living weave,
water altered
in the shape of its dwelling,
looking out over      horizons
wrapped around
its e x p a n s e .

Alive and s w e l l i n g ,
in dance and song,
beckoning.

Snake makes a feast of his tail.

One Mother is hungry.

1712

A Pit—but Heaven over it—
And Heaven beside, and Heaven abroad,
And yet a Pit—
With Heaven over it.

To stir would be to slip—
To look would be to drop—
To dream—to sap the Prop
That holds my chances up.
Ah! Pit! With Heaven over it!

The depth is all my thought—
I dare not ask my feet—
’Twould start us where we sit
So straight you’d scarce suspect
It was a Pit—with fathoms under it—
Its Circuit just the same.
Seed—summer—tomb—
Whose Doom to whom?