Last night a young poet’s voice
tore so deep within
that it ripped my soul apart.....

Her words of birds and cages and gravity
and what human does to human
brought me back to wind swept hills
where the was sky blue enough to drown in
and vast enough to blanket all corners of the earth
where I, as a boy, worked and wandered
wandered through words
words spoken in telling
and words raged in rage

As I pulled the implements of grain through the soil
I learned to think
the dust I raised drifted across the land
bringing with it my thoughts
passed horizons, passed the hills
to distant lands
torn by the pains of love, of war, of loss
and
of what human does to human

His rage was the desperation of a soul shredded
by war
by what human does to human
he was caged
between what he had seen
and that he should still posses some hope
between witnessing the destruction of a world
and believing in a world

But deep within him I had always heard a voice
a voice buried deep beneath his rage
a voice..... he could no longer hear
but I
could always hear
“no matter how long I am caged
no matter how long the gravity of ignorance and hate,
the gravity of hubris and destruction binds and
holds down my soul,
I was alway meant to fly,
we were all....meant to fly....”

she said she was born on the edges
of paintings someone had always forgotten to finish
she said she lived on the banks of rivers that never reach the sea
her voice trailed off at every juncture
giving the afternoon a song
that only the heart could hear
“and do you feel this as I do?”
gazing softly into nowhere

She paused
and let a sigh that vaulted a chorus to her presence
it heralded above all the things we could never see
it wrapped it’s arms around the world
and gave birth
to what she had always yearned to say
but language had always failed

from the fragrance of the river
she shed her outer most layer of mistrust
“we are”, she said “incapable of deserting ourselves here"
“it is this naked hollow that
bestows the paths
from which we will approach"

“by looking
into you I have already been laid bare,
let us reach under this skin,
touch the untouchable
and finish the edges of a painting
long forgotten
and stained with the graffiti
of your past”

the tides that leave us here
crawl back to us in time
and by the shifting rays of sunlight
they hold us up to a discerning god
marking our segments of maturation
as we fold into the fragments
of what we have become
what life washes away
leaves us sculpted in the sands
we stand facing a wind
that has called out to us
since before the tides
or even time

Some hearts are deserts

I’m not living for the obituary
I’m living for the life….

her fleeting smile held a longing
as she sat next to me
on the last empty seat

we embrace the comfort of silence
between strangers
and mark time with distance

the bus sways to the left
and we realize that we were touching
the eternity long fraction of a moment
we linger

it is a strange universe
how we can live moments
that can never be lived

somewhere it is reflected
perhaps it is your shadow
that bounces off the moon
and comes back to you
as wisdom dredged from the depths
of the unassuaged moments of need
that stretched you from one point
to the next
from one lover
to the next
from one room
to the next
from one dream
to the next

we spend our heartbeats freely
the infinite supply of youth
they become more precious
as the grave slowly deepens
what wisdoms do we stuff in our pockets
as we step into the grave
and move on from this life
to the next

Our ruins
are our beauty
the dust within our souls
feed the day

The page craves
the words
that give it voice
beautiful voice....

Last night a young poet’s voice
tore so deep within
that it ripped my soul apart.....

Her words of birds and cages and gravity
and what human does to human
brought me back to wind swept hills
where the was sky blue enough to drown in
and vast enough to blanket all corners of the earth
where I, as a boy, worked and wandered
wandered through words
words spoken in telling
and words raged in rage

As I pulled the implements of grain through the soil
I learned to think
the dust I raised drifted across the land
bringing with it my thoughts
passed horizons, passed the hills
to distant lands
torn by the pains of love, of war, of loss
and
of what human does to human

His rage was the desperation of a soul shredded
by war
by what human does to human
he was caged
between what he had seen
and that he should still posses some hope
between witnessing the destruction of a world
and believing in a world

But deep within him I had always heard a voice
a voice buried deep beneath his rage
a voice..... he could no longer hear
but I
could always hear
“no matter how long I am caged
no matter how long the gravity of ignorance and hate,
the gravity of hubris and destruction binds and
holds down my soul,
I was alway meant to fly,
we were all....meant to fly....”

I’ll put another thousand years
On our plate
And as we stand back
To watch it’s resolve
Can I say that I still love you

Falling through the tethers
I’ve severed so much
Of what we were
But I can still weep
When I think of us

Brutal supplications to what is not
Feed an empty scheme
How we arrange it’s contents
Only prays to the Gods of futility
The heart learns to no longer yearn

In this beautiful nothingness
I place one step before the next
And each heartbeat is mine
But I can still weep
When I think of us

We are entrusted with a brutal existence
Left to reconfigure realty
In a way
That allow a few hours sleep….

Synapse finds it’s path
The page pulls words from the pen
The poet hungers

if we are alone
then live alone
what of you believes
what myth tethers you
to the hunt
is the kiss that deep
what do we betray
when we lay in beds
with lovers we do not know
or can ever know

the voices too thick
the heart too pure
for the war between
alone or not alone
and some cold winds
remind us
that we were all born alone

And when the flush
hearts orbit each other
until gravity collapses the barriers
and you the fall
with strands of passion and sinew
writhing twisting pulsing
your desires out of you
….into you
alive in the fire of the flesh
the soul and the corporeal
a unison offering sense of the two
oh…. but for the trespass
of the heart

disjointed

the heart thuds in a distance
that keeps this unreal
the pain and doubt
are too real to breath
to feel

what lays on the other side
is this whole again
a soul that breathes
in morning and night

shed the skin
shed the touch
shed the tears
shed the dreams
shed the fight

Reliving the path your blood has taken
and gathering up
all of time that has past
since it uttered its first beat
it hangs suspended somewhere
for the broken to harbor

but time is always reaching out
tethering itself to what will be
it is painless and pure
freely offering the sutures
that draw our wounds closed....

halfway to existence
someone says
here you go….

Intense pulse
Heart flooded
With
(it is more than blood)

Gathering the fibers
Of her desire
In my mouth
I find her....

She said
“We’re never more alive
than when our flesh
touches this fire”
She has such beautiful contemplative desires....

the smallness of the soul
nurturing a vacant abscess
darker than darkness
your words
the severing edges
that rips human from human
that arrogates spirit
and quiets beauty

the hunter
stalking innocence
the quarry a feeble sick reign
over a precious soul
to make it breath fear
and draw the blinds of life
darker than darkness
the smallest of men

Coffee grounds
Grounds for divorce
Ground up bits of your soul
Offered up in trade
For your freedom

to make oneself the king
of all us lesser gods
I cast the shadow of my soul
on your indifference
the thin razor edge of your words
drip from edges eroded by these eons
of ignorance

As I waddle through the heat
I wish for knees from which to pray
The sun, the progenitor of this fruition
Golden we harvest

The hills whisper an ancient call
I grasp the earth between my fingers
Here the dirt and I are one
I cannot let go of her

The sheaves surrender to the sickle
The soul is sown
The soul is harvested
Ancient mouths rejoice

as skies open up
they stretch their hands to the sun
verdant life returns

love can cut a wide swath
through one’s heart

the pages of your soul
turn tattered and dusty
in the epic that bleeds
through the vessel that contains
only you

Heart full of rags
And a pocket full of lies
He said there’s not enough here
To save all those lives

On the corner stands that old man
Selling off your dreams
When you look to the future
Just how does she seem

Well we all got something
Something inside
Yeah we all got a reason
To be alive

Of Lies and a man
And his reckless din
As he stands there screaming
At the coming wind

And what he squandered
Is what we lose
As he stands there screaming
Screaming at the truth

Well we all got something
Something inside
Yeah we all got a reason
To be alive

Shriveled up heart
Shriveled up soul
The king has spoken
The words so cold

And the minions that follow
Well they’re digging our graves
It helps not to care
What more can you say

Well we all got something
Something inside
Yeah we all got a reason
To stay alive

refuge my heart
the storm drives me
piercing
this world of love and pain
am I hungry enough
to thirst for truth
do her heartbeats still
reverberate within the walls of my soul
am I desiccated enough to
forget her
refuge my heart

my heart pours out like water
I am frozen in the time we had
and shattered by what we no longer have
my heart is melted
by the tears in your voice
I gave birth to your pain
Nothing I am…. can heal
I am the dust that the winds are blowing from your life

goodbye

Magnificent she stood
reaching deeper into the sky
the years upon years she pulled from the earth
the strands she used to weave her fibers
into the towering creature
that gently reigned over all those below

Perhaps she tired of ******
pushing his will across the land
relentless he was through the night
perhaps she was glad to lay down
eager to fade back into earth
to start all over again

Part I

This the divinity of wordless gods
Grasping the sun
Reaching into the earth
Braiding the two
in symphony
Each leaf, each fiber, each vine
Provide the score
The rays of sunlight the bow
That in the pause
Sing the beautiful music of silence....

The comfort of understanding
That you’ll never be understood

Humans




are too separated from their




souls

perhaps more a tempest at heart
raging against the shapes
I have become
whittled away to something
I am not

This jungle is more dessert like these days
it is merely waiting
for the rains to wash these days away
the dust rises each morn
although it never sleeps
and fills these spaces between our breaths
the roads are choked with the scurrying
of a frightening pace
what color are the dreams made of money
for out there the war rages
the have and have not
whom god loves
and whom she does not

the days approach me
from my simple perch
surfer green walls and railings
June liked the color
but it’s been over four years since
I found her dead on the floor
it is a poorly done painting now
the surfer green hue
spread across a canvas of my wanderings
and the pulsing language of the conqueror
(it screams at me in the night)
I cannot wait as the jungle does
too much flesh and blood
we outcasts used to be left alone here
but the money is calling us out
we are dissolving
waiting for the rain to wash this all away

they said he never wore gloves
even on the coldest days of winter
that he worked the reins of his team
in sub below weather
back and forth with loads of grain
they swore that it was true

they said that he always won the competition
of carrying grain sacks up a set of stairs
and that afterwards everyone wanted to fight him
he would drink for days
leaving my father to sleep under the wagon
they said he never lost a fight

they said he never trusted banks
and he kept his money hidden in his mattress
and when the banks failed
he had the cash to buy up all the homesteads
that had become broken dreams

they said he was a tough old Frenchman
who harnessed the hills
and built a small empire
he fathered thirteen children
and built a modern home in town
when he could no longer bend the land
to his will

I just know that he cut deep wounds
into my father’s heart
and my father in turn
cut them in me

perhaps it is why I never had children

Shattering the sounds of the silence
Buried deeper than we know
Laid upon the layers
We have laid to rest

Breaking the seal
The voices fill their lungs
And sing
And speak
And scream
Shattering the silence ....

maybe he noticed me
when my eyes were reaching
out across the hills
trying to find the edges of the world
maybe he did look inside me
and saw what was once himself

I was most often quiet
a juxtaposition to the rage
I was always trying to sew back together
the hearts
and push the tears back into
their eyes
(his too)

I spent almost every waking moment
with a man
who both loved and hated me
knowing those ragged edges
was a gift
because the world is a broken place
and I am alive in it....

Praying for the forgiveness
For being born

What is this surrender
That betrays the heart
Love too often uttered
By mere dreams
Only dreams

Does this jester soul
Cut the shape of you
Into this touchless entropic
Landscape

A single barren tree
A single winding road
A single barren heart

Praying for the forgiveness
For being born

the edges are the most honest

blackened swaggering heart
indifferent to pendulum of desire
mad with mud caked memories
and a cross threaded heart
we pull light from the dimmest of stars
and name them after the ones we have lost
we sink our fingers into muck and mire
of what we have been
we swallow deep the semens of lust
and spit out the bitter taste of self betrayal
whiskey neat and ******* in the alley
the gleam deep in your drunken eye
unsuffering someone’s soul

then reaching over that edge

touching the fingertips
of the purest angels of light
wrapped in folds of forgiveness and love
pulling purpose from our existence
offering up a joy of being given life
standing alone but not left alone
laying down the weapons of self derision
breathing in the softer breezes of truth
where the soul dances with the soul
and something smiles
deep within your eyes

in between

we are held in equipoise
there at the edge
we peel away to the truth
that the entirety
is both entropic and beautiful  
both pain and joy....

The life blood of pain
Coursing through the engines
Of pain
The recapitulation
Of the beginning and the end
and
“those last words she spoke”

Tears never reconstruct
What was
Do they not only water
the fields of grief?
Oh how love can be the desiccant
Of the heart


Once
Somewhere on a dry desolate dust covered
river of a road
A girl, naked
Laying in the back seat
Trying to match the color of the moon
Said
“maybe”
“tears are there to sooth the sutures
that join
what was.... with what will be”
“I don’t know”

Loneliness is a self contained world
Yet we arrogate it’s walls
With the need
That spawned the loneliness
.....Vicious....
Or just simply being human

Filling the void with yourself
Only works some of the time
Knowing thy self is to know the void
But after all
We are just creatures in need
of the human touch

the blood of his poems
lay desiccated and alone

the stars are the refuge
as futile as they are

the misanthrope laughs at something
he no longer cares for

another shot of ***
and another book of self told lies

still laughter is so cheap
so he turns his head to the stars

and laughs until he cries

A gentle rain
In dry season
Liberating dust from leaf
Set free
Washed clean
Back to earth

desperate fragments
stanching some belief
in existence
how many times do we speak
some vestige of a faith
childlike and vacant
am I broken enough now
am I broken enough now
to turn this mold to dust
crushing the structures
of false interpretations
falling to nothing
such comfort in zero
words crawl through the veins
of what we want to be
not what we are....

the tempest drawn backwards
sketches the face of the progenitor
left surrendered...truth waits
in the shadows of preservation
we are carved into these shapes
by the winds and words
of those we have passed by
and those
we stood close to

I…. the dichotomy
the brutal staggering darkened scarred poet
who cannot love that songbird enough

What it is that derives from us
Remains small
Stashed in dusty corners that are cluttered
with history and unread poems
We call on something within ourselves
To weave the entropy into a fabric
that we can wear throughout our existence,
colored it would be, but neutral in what it would evoke,
keeping us warm when the vicious winds
of love and hate rage through our village.
And yet…. allowing the coolness of joy to permeate into our souls
when such is laid before us.

Tender we are in these moments
Less than something
The sum of which is incongruent to truth
And our beauty
On that last page where we traded away our child heart
For the recognition of being something
We never wanted to be
Why did we ever cut our hair
The dirt at the bottom of our feet
Were prayers of acknowledgment
Grateful for how the gods assembled us
Tender and beautiful we are


The stars cross the sky to get a glimpse
Of this creation of duality
Flesh and soul
The spirit sings while the corporeal begs for its fodder
We are juxtaposed against harsh sky
Lifetimes ago we came to understand
The gods must remain indifferent to their creation
For the two must become one
They say the sun has a drumbeat in her heart
This is how the two learn to dance
Shedding the skins assigned to us
We are tender children here

This rational disordering
Pulls from the hollow
And makes love to these words
As we sacrifice ourselves
On alters hewn from
The roots and branches of our dreams
And yet the ashes are rejected by both the heavens and the hells
Could we not sip from this life ….the ambrosia
Equally ours as theirs
Did you know that a billion trillion stars love you
We are a precious gift that they gave themselves
For it is the soul, the soul, the soul…..oh precious soul

The sand washes away when the ocean touches me
But nothing really washes away
I walk distances from something
It is you, but I didn’t want it to be you
There is a moon somewhere that we carved our initials on
If I looked for it
It would only put me in the docket of fools
Nothing really washes away
I’ve learned ******* memory before
But this heart is too worn out now
I will construct a point that holds all things still
And reference it when I start to fall
Nothing really washes away

I tug at the edges of my reality
Just to make sure I am alive
Braking apart all the constituent elements
Of what it is to be human
That core mix
Of passion and reason
That yields and taxes
That starves and surfeits
What is more the soul
Than the flesh

Blackened skies yield truths
The way the winds drive your heart
In every direction
A poets vein hungers
For the needle of perception
That paints the picture
That may someday cure
The poet from being the poet

I’d spread myself across your canvas
If there was a certain amount
Of indifference agreed upon
At the outset
To start from zero
Releases us from the assuagement of resolve
Does anything need be more than zero

And I would open up all of I
If it were not for
That it has gotten old
And knowledge knows no religion
And I have no god
So the colors would run
The canvas more used than used
It would become faded and forgotten
Hung in repose
In the halls of a gallery that only admits
The sightless

But I would fall from grace here
Espousing such false and grandiose reflections
Silence begets silence
Words beget that…. resolve
For
It is the poets job is to kick indifference in the head
Until it bleeds some semblance of compassion

And so
As to not to end up praying to some small statue of myself
I will drip what I am across your canvas
Letting the colors bleed into the fabric of what we are
And if hung in repose
Then hung in that fragment of time
Where the poet grabs at some infinitesimal aspect of life
And breathes something
And breathes something
Into this…..