A handpicked lemon from Saturday’s market
Plump, juicy, and golden.
Tear its skin off,
Throw the rinds in the green grass,
And chuck the good stuff in the twilight.

It sticks.

I don’t have eyes
But I can still feel

My brothers and sisters burrowing
Beside me. I can hear

Seagulls squawking disregarded songs
Children howling shrieks of delight… and of fear
As their tiny toes greet the vast emerald waters.

It is morning and I sit,
Amid my cold, silent siblings
Listening to the whine of the ocean that waxes and wanes,
Listening and waiting.

I don’t take notice when I fall asleep
Heavily dreaming in colors,
Imagining being swept up in a towel and carried away—
Would this be an accident? … Where would I go?
Would it be eternal punishment, or an endless vacation?

And all of a sudden, I feel the waters wash me clean,
Viciously, they throw me around like a lion catching prey.
High tide.

I now bask in the Sun.
And hear feet running near—
They stop; my surrounding siblings yell,
“This is it!!”

What is it? I think, as a group of us
Are lifted higher, hallowed hands place us
So close that we are one with each other,
Above the earth.

A deep voice from above cries,
“We made the perfect kingdom!”

And for a moment,

five pm, mid-winter

i thank Sky for taking sweet time.
Sky sets her thumb on the light-switch of the land.
she stands still, she waits.
for the hour, she meditates
on her day.
Sky hopes her skin
becomes verdigris the next day, not grey, but
verdigris to clothe **** trees. Or perhaps she will
hurt soon— Sky scars in
rainbows. Her change of thought: the small folks who have traveled
through her this day. She wonders where
they all
        go.

Open your eyes,
do you hear Sky’s mute call?
in her meditation, hour of magic, all
wakes.

on the earth, photographers peer from their windows,
then rush through their doors to catch Sky’s dancing gleams,
beams flash through the tip-top’s of the Sugar Maple family,
their shadows splatter onto ***-hole streets.
Sky brushes her grass and her roads with paint of a gold hue,
fresh Rorschach tests while her thoughts try to rest.

i spot a leaf sleeping in the street, deep wine and apricot,
twisted from months away from its Mother
the wind levitates the leaf—lightly—and the sun
creates a squirrel of it, he climbs the tree, and scrambles over
to me. in short squeaks, he explains his political theory,
“why do you let your peep el let a few rich folks control
all others? why don’t you follow me
into the woods?”

he grabs my skirt with his sweet little paws
but i look up and notice the darkness,
i look down and see only a leaf again.
Sky’s savasana has ended,
candles ignite in the houses, Sky and Sun crawl into bed.

i’ll wait now for the selenian Sun, but i can’t rest my eyes. soon
i will escape with my new friend.
bittersweet magic: “the moment” lost in the sock drawer.

five pm, midwinter


the afternoon is reaching an end,
Lady Sky decides when she wants to change for us.
as the sun sets, she meditates.

some call it the “magic hour”
but how can you truly tell magic from reality?
go outside and see.

radiant beams do the tango on the trees
(a leaf in the street becomes a squirrel as my eye blinks)
a squirrel who runs straight up to me.

“get outta the system while you can!”
he squeaks, then nods at me to follow his path, another blink



the sky darkens, the squirrel disappears.

“Caught a glance in your eyes
       And fell through the skies”
                          -- Alex Chilton



I shut my eyelids and
Before I knew it, we were climbing into a basket swing,
Pulling down the bar to our waists, and
Voyaging higher and higher into the sky—
I gazed up at the balloon carrying us
Then peaked down to see villages turn to squares,
Everything vanished swiftly with the wind
Carrying him and me to our final destination.
Visions of chestnut, scarlet rooftops, avocado treetops.
Spiraled together into one;
Streamed through my pupils and punched my retinas.
Smiling, I inhaled the miasmatic mixture of the air.
The boy beside me grabbed my hand,
Gazed in my eyes
And

up the water hole


Ledbetters:
the waterfall which we yearned to
explore on our days
off. like a fresh romance, we wanted to know
each rock on her body and how it got there.
the raft guides and myself,
the master of whitewater reservations, most days
working (trapped) in an old stone house
grabbing phones, calls from pockets-full-of-cash families, boy scouts,  
seeking gorge thrills on full days of
sun and moody thunderstorms.

Ledbetters:
she sits down the railroad tracks which ran
through our cabin homes (and my little shack-barn)
traintracks that kept running next to its river friend, heading into
the town as a timid tourist train jaunt.

we’d creep on top of the rails, while sparrows sang their high-pitched
refrains, river rafters’ shrieks faded,
(i’d pretend not to hear the rattlesnake’s jingle).
the sun beat down ******* our shoulders,
but stopped its punches when we snuck off the tracks,
onto the trail, into the woods.
(then, the spots of sun shone only where trees told them to)

down the path,
past the wooden bridge where we played Pooh Sticks,
past the old campfire spots, the towers of rocks we crafted so carefully,
to get to Ledbetter’s legs: her huge rocks, the heavy flow of water, her blood.

i always slipped and fell as i jumped from rock to rock,
up and over cliffed streams. higher and higher we would climb,
until we reached her narrow water hole:
Birth Canal.

i’ve been afraid to climb up Birth Canal—
shimmy up and clench its slippery rocks with gravity’s water
working against me. i’m almost certain she would wash me away,
i’d tumble down all her rocks, crack my skull on wet rock,
more of a Death Canal.
when you can overcome your mind,
are you truly reborn?

The Dead Man’s Waltz


Put down my suitcase and strap my arm in that chain.
I’ll grab the spoon of cooked candy,
Whose juices run from the silver
to the syringe
into my Red Sea.
       Moses isn’t here to part the waters.

Candy stands tall, her toes lining the prickly end
She’s about to plunge, dive into the stream.
I give her a push, let her in

Familiarity. Relief. Euphoria.
Ah—

             My head weighs me down, it
Falls slowly, magnetized to the white rug.
The room spins and my vision
Spins back.
             I see blurs of faded faces I don’t even care about
Don’t care about anything, really
Except how **** great my mind and body feel, tingling.

             Words can never really describe this feeling.
Oh, but they try
They do try
I try.
And yet—
             I’m speechless.
Utterly speechless,
Unconscious on this ***** excuse of a carpet.

How did I get here?
Rather, why can’t I live up to known callings?
Now I only dream of past roles,
             Roles once pure that are now washed away.
I fear.
The let-down leader shouldn’t be left questioning what’s right.
But here I lay. A troubled sheep
Who knows the way
And yet—

Where is the gatekeeper of truth?
Because I’d like a word.
With that, the Earth brings me a
thin gold stream, radiating from the ceiling
so bright, so pulling, surreal.
             Reach out my hand and feel it shaking
Its droning siren sounds louder and louder, the light  
Reels me in from inside,
             I squeeze my eyes shut, turn and retreat
Back to the pillow.
I’m not ready to confront it.

             Like a false light, trick candle,
It might not have taken me then—
Bad spirit’ll seize me one day,
And I still don’t know if I’ll be ready.

I digest the bedroom happenings—
Turn to the bedside, whip out my suitcase.
Go back to what feels good,
Let’s take another swim.
Skinny-dipping. I go through the known drill

No wonder so many people get caught up in this,
Abusive love affairs with Candy.
         My last dance with dope.