the bitter accompaniment
holds night in your heart
busted pieces of a soul
breathing.... still tender
reach for a dawn fearless and forgiving

self wrapped within self
sleeping with the edges
sharp yet dulled
by the cutting remorse of love

heart stumbles through heart
braced against a wind of your own creation
as you toss another desiccated dream to the side
you stare at the moon

in the depths of you
you find
that love
that loves only you
so you return

Listening for the echoes
Of distant songs
That erode the canyon walls
Wandered in search of self

Rhythms and dances
To the rising
Held high in light
To celebrate one’s self

Words and chants
Drumming up the call
An ancient summons
Bringing back.... self

if someone were to hold me open
to that last page
where I stood alone
on the precipice of
love and its pain
then a story could be told
or a poem could be written
if someone were to hold me open

the edges are beautiful
once you peel away the pain
the soul you become
is mirrored by the rain
oh how I love the rain….

the banister was the barrier
looking down on my world dissolving

my progenitors
at war with themselves
and the entropy of the world

but then
the rising sun offered some promise
mistrust becomes a drug
repudiation sustains

was it arrogated
or torn

a thousand thousand years from now
will the pain exist
and ten trillion years from now
will existence still exist

The rains wash the limbs
Dripping from fingers
I feel it seep into your souls
The sky gods love you
Even more this morning

You waste not one drop
That which you do not need
You share with the soil
With the children
With mother

There is such peace
Watching as you bathe
This unison of elements
And so I cleanse myself
Into all of this....

unearthed from the wood
witnessing the light the bleeds into the soul of man

in the fragrance of earth and bone
I tasted the distilled essence of we

bitter and alone the blood wine stood
the tongue shuddered at the knowing

distant heartbeats roared
the fallen still laying there

at every crest
at every nightfall

and we
both abhorrent and beautiful
grew calluses and moss
crawling back amongst the wood

This whisper of a voice
swirling through the jungle
entwined in symbiosis
her veins and skin
create a grand house
of a verdant refuge
silence is such a sweet song
I sing within
letting these creatures
chorus the day
pushing a distance
from the entropic din of survival

Thoughts drip from the edges
splattering across the morning
swaying in a breeze I cull
those who feed
from those who eat
my soul

blast furnace wind rolling off the prairie
the kind of wind that makes you realize
we were all born alone
I hugged the river hoping to find
some untouched ****** breath of cool
but ****** the **** for indifference he is
offered nothing
I headed up Hawthorne
wading through the souls
of the beautiful desperate
and the wicked surfeit

looking up I caught her eyes
hanging out her window
stretched out between
where love lives
and love dies
she looked down
peeling away the layers of her soul
offering a shade
that harbors the most twisted and distorted
remanents of love

later
on the outskirts
we watched Orion’s futility
our hearts gasped
as we touched
(which was the hunter
and which was the prey)
trembling
we fell into love
as the wind softened to a cool breeze

blank
thoughts
contradicting
concepts
blood
coursing
furthering
days
clouds
hanging
blanketing
us
tears
yearning
blank
thoughts

when madness folds into madness
the entropy of thoughts too random and fleeting
to tether anyone to anything
the tideless oceans inside
waits
desiccated by a sun
that draws the spirit
from the day

somewhere between Winnett and Jordan
I realized my mind was as random
as the sage scattered across that prairie
how long had it been
since any thought had settled in reflection
exhausted from the battle
of the incessant capitulation
of I
I drove on

in the fields
the wheat whispered softly
I sat clutching the dirt in my hands
it was cool and comforting
looking across the golden grain
to an infinite horizon....
planted there in the hills
I watched a Meadowlark dance in the air
with a long deep sigh
I let fall the struggle....

The meat grinder component of loving someone….
Good thing there’s still *** in my glass….

I never drink *** inland
something about the salty air
and a pirates’ soul
swaying in the night breeze
I can hear the waves crashing down
as the seven sisters entice my senses
I am alone enough to part with myself
and let the word farmer
slur his images across the night’s canvas
I leave off a lesser crime
as poetry is left dripping off the page

emily tore herself
from a grace
reserved for all things of beauty
sorrowful spirits
garbed in vestments of the
deeper wisdoms
gathered on a plain
of redemption
pleading for her return

she plucked from her heart
the pedals
that had worshiped the sun
looking back
she expelled a breath
that once spoke of love
wrapping herself in her arms
she stepped into a river
that meandered alone

from on up high
the loneliness of her absence
turned the firmament gray
and the gods begged
for the cup of hemlock
that would rid them of their creations
how these humans
refuse to live
with love and kindness

the edges quiver
as surfeit suffices the small
and the bitter sing dances
that barren body and soul
am I the child of a poor god
the mouth
the hand
and I

She reaches
In her dance with the breezes
Gathering, gathering, gathering
The life of light and breath
Letting it descend
Through her
Past what she had been
Flowing back into
The earth

She pulls me away
To the blessed simple
Where time and the mechanisms of human
Are cast away
Life.... is descending through me
I feel myself flowing
Back
Into the earth

I had been tearing off little pieces of  my heart
And leaving them on the ground
Like a breadcrumb trail
That I hoped she would find someday

I had been whispering out into the space left between us
Simple words that rose from the void
Left by my leaving her
Hoping that a lite cool breeze
Would carry them to her

I had lain awake at night yearning for your her presence
Wrapping the imaginary her in my arms
And breathing our memories into the night
Hoping somehow, in her night
There was still some part of me there

There are some words that splash up against your heart
They gather up all the threads and fibers of the universe
They weave love back into the shapes that
Are once again recognizable

Sitting on the bed, her legs tucked up to her chin
Looking down through her heart
She said, “can we talk”
I said, “yes, what about”
And with all the gravity and weight of
Every word spoken anywhere, ever
She said “Us”

My hands are now my father’s hands
baked and beaten by a life
the scars of toil and weather
mark passages

knuckle busting bolts
sun wind cold
and misguided hammers
sculpted these derma landscapes

I hold them under the water
as the ocean and I return
they become distant and diffused
as they gently float away

she tore the stars from the sky
and read their furtive message
softly she spoke
“time only supplants what we really are”
“for really….we are going nowhere
we are always here
we have always been here”
"coffee"?… I suggested
“on one condition” she said
“at the completion of such,
our souls should be torn to shreds”
“it is how the naked see truth”

I yearn for a dry pine forest
on a trail of my own making
to find a tree or a rock
that no one has ever seen

one day I stumbled upon a query….
does the dark keep your soul tucked away
from your tenderness
so ubiquitous and clean?  
she said no….. the dark keeps the light from dying
I thought you knew
I was born an angel of light
but my soul was arrogated by a gang of ******
“I think they refer to themselves as men”

Her light travels into me
what gods arranged our intersection
I am the blood of myth
gathered tales that justify
more the seeking
than fruition
ignorant authors
casting our will into the heavens
we paint our stories in the skies
but as her light falls through my flesh
she whispers
“I can never be possessed”

I know *** isn’t going to solve this
but some nights it helps
how do pull yourself out of ten years of caring
for a human whom is now killing you
I think they write books about this ****
but I know it is just up to me
I’m sure that at the bottom of this bottle
I will do what I must
and call this a poem…

a word farmer drinking ***
in a jungle
smiling back at his pain

the ocean pounds the shore
his heart feels her power
and beauty

the trees sway in rhythm
with the hammock
he takes another sip

perhaps a heart desolate
is a gift
i’ve grown weary
of the concept of love

Heartfelt indifference
The vagabonds search the skies
In the nexus no one speaks
Nostrums pushed into veins
Sledgehammer heartbeats
Taking a run at the thunder in the distance
If either were to quiver
The world would unravel itself
Back out into the cosmos

Truth is a lonely soul out here
She is devastated as the ravaged womb
That she is
All the little boys gathered around
And told all the lies that tore all the girls down
It was always the young girls on the street
That told the tale of humanity
In their eyes

I was gentle in my dust trodden world
but the echos of the treachery of living
filled the unheard
both gravedigger and poet held a tether
suspending me in the aether
between my flesh and my spirit

calmer when winds blew
and echos were pushed across the hills
to a distant chamber
the taste of the dust was truth to me
I played with the poet
and set my spirit free

If the raging wind
calls a name
tossing aside a crumpled
weathered version of a child
then the bonds that meet heart
with its insufferable dreams
and the reach of the piercing stars
pretend a life
we lay bare and unbelievable

love torn from the arms of the heart
by the vicious rule of the ******
ripping voice from voice
ripping heart from heart
and set against the cruelest numbers
of ancient standards
touch becomes dust
and love lays choking in ash
pretending a life
we lay bare and unbelievable

watching the attrition
the insatiable hunger of life
that consumes
the beautiful ones you planted in your heart
the angels worn down by
loving too much
by being too much
and the ones taken
by split the second timing of fate
casting reason into a tattered realm
of emptiness
we pretend at life
that lays bare and unbelievable

and so
cutting deep into the soul
bleeding out the sum of yourself
grasping that cold cutting jagged edge of existence
lays something to rest
movement anywhere across the compass
is knowing a love for the pain
for it is the entirety
of
you

Heart pulls the lever
The cables run through the senses
And back out again
We are awkward in this restless repose
The cable cutting nature of people
Ever at the ready

She stood there, placed
Severed and alone
Her thoughts refused to grace the past
She wrapped her arms around her heart
“please don’t drift away”
“I may need you again someday”

girl…. you and I always knew the edge was close
we always teetered
gasping our breath at every breeze
this was no common **** story
frayed fragmented fear found us frothing
for this entangled mass
of passion and sweat
driving ourselves deeper with each
stroke of this swollen brush
reaching into the drip wet nights
and afternoons
living and dying all in one hard driving ******
of an existential existence
thus laying fertile the fodders of
of beauty and its pain

for how could one grasp so much
as their own
the vastness would beg to differ
as to our meager needs
of love
perhaps…. she said
it is simply getting ******
that is real
for our love
betrays everything the soul
hungers for

except……(the moon softly whispered)
for the one deeply harbored truth….
you see…. the constituent element of the soul is
love

in a flash she came back to me
that day
gray with heavy dark clouds
the scent of fallen rain
separated from time

the explorer child
balancing on high
drawing in the view
carving off pieces of his new world
alone and brave

when his foot lost its ability
the fall
descending back to earth
but head met earth transformed
hardened steel hidden in the grass

then I died
my body floated back into sky
I remember passing through layers
of my ephebic existence
still alone and brave

I felt nothing but saturated calm
laying on brilliant blue pedestal
in a dark void
I started to become peace
then..... a voice

her arms gathered me up
placing her hand on my head
she spoke firmly
“you do not belong here”
“you must go back”

instantly I knew it was all wrong
and somehow I chose to return
pulling myself off the ground
I ran to the adults
but the child could not articulate

A number
A segment
Meaningless
For it is tethered
to both ends of infinity
And yet....

Two thousand and twenty

In winter
He could never get far enough away
From the rage
In the back corner of the closet
He would cower
The soul shredding voice
With sledgehammer words
Roared below
Like thunder on those dark stormy nights
Never knowing if it was getting closer
Never knowing where it would strike next
Each heartbeat fed that fear
That the door would be ripped open
And the monster would be standing there
Ready to devour
The remanants of his soul

In summer
He could run out the door
And hide in the tall grasses
Alone in his forest of refuge
The rage could not stop the grasses
From growing
Nature held his soul
It was all he had
But it was his....

I was born the product of two broken souls
my mother held the beauty of living alive
yet she only pushed away the pain
my father, too injured by humanity
cut me to the pieces
so
what is good about me came from my mother
what is strong about me comes from my father
I have no complaints….

The split feather tatoo
I got in Chicago back in 97
I knew the artist from Sturgis
The year James forgot the “R” in Sturgis
And the guy went home with a “Stugis 95” tattoo
After she finished pounding the ink into my skin
It was well after midnight
And the endorphins were all played out
We went out for breakfast

A diner that the cabies used
Along with all the rags of people
who wandered through the night
Life tore off the edges
And replaced it with another at the center
Every few seconds
The hackneyed threadbare sullen
Surfeit in their staggering surrender
To an existence metered in minutes or millennia
All those souls falling into each other
Filling the poets veins

For the Lakota a split feather signifies
“Many Battles “
I had died enough but never died
I was no longer pretty
Or whole
To assuage that what kills
Just to stay alive
Sipping my coffee
Looking through the windows
Out into the collage of  concrete and humanity
It all made sense

Back out on the plains
I spit out the residue of my journey
The sun was setting
And my dust softly settled back to earth
I rubbed my new tatoo and smiled
As I sewed another page into my heart
A coyote sang his lonesome song
Somewhere behind me.....

Bob Carrey drank his coffee
out of an old tin can
the faded label said sweet corn
it was a mystery to me
he had this way of acknowledging
and dismissing you at the same time

he lived with Gloria and Richard Hier
all part of the mystery
but young people
needed guidance
I suppose

he listened to the Twins games
on an old transistor radio
he tucked it in his breast pocket
with the cord strung out ahead of him

when I get up to mix another drink
I put my iPhone in my breast pocket
keeping Spotify alive
the cord of my earbuds protrude out before me
I become Bob Carrey
I could give a **** about the Twins score
but Lucinda Williams
well …you know

Light
Has no equal
Light will conquer dark
Always

Love
Has no equal
Love will conquer hate
Always

Keep
Light and Love
In your heart
Always....

I used to sit and watch them drink
the prairie had sculpted lines in their faces
that told tales of time and its erosion
and how every dry wind
became the sculptors chisel
their dirt stories resurfaced as a
prelude to old scars and pain
and some of the things I heard… hurt
they kept pushing money across the bar
and drank more than whiskey back
I order another for my old friend and I
he drinks his quickly as if it were something precious
then he tells me an old ***** thirties story
he heard in the old bar
the one that stood here before this one
he talked until the wind outside made him mad again

Harbors

blast furnace wind rolling off the prairie
the kind of wind that makes you realize
we were all born alone
I hugged the river hoping to find
some untouched ****** breath of cool
but ****** the **** for indifference he is
offered nothing
I headed up Hawthorne
wading through the souls
of the beautiful desperate
and the wicked surfeit

looking up I caught her eyes
hanging out her window
stretched out between
where love lives
and love dies
she looked down
peeling away the layers of her soul
offering a shade
that harbors the most twisted and distorted
remnants of love

later
on the outskirts
we watched Orion’s futility
our hearts gasped
as we touched
which was the hunter
and which was the prey
trembling
we fell into love
as the wind softened to a cool breeze

She loved onions
I would mix them
with the grass salad
I picked for her in the early spring
Then
Laying under a sky
So deep and so blue
It soothed the aching soul
It was too vast to have borders
She blanketed existence
Tierra and all
her servants
Under the kingdom of the gods
We were more sky
Than earth
Lifted above the dirt and din
Given purity sanctum entwined
We exposed our souls
To each other
And when I tasted her
She bled
The sacred taste of onions....

the price of poorly written dreams
gets lost in the cost
of what we will never be

Searching for the quiet
a silence that roars with respite
breath and blood
lay in a bed of silken calm
listening to the song of emptiness
that brims
the soul....

the social skills of indifference
are difficult
self generated algorithms
tend to fail
if one is be true to thy owns self
it does not take away from the beauty of these poets
and this site
however….

The man with a thousand hearts
Smiles slip through the fingers
Of the menial
Burdened the faults of the species
Peeling away more and more
Hearts buried in hearts
The thunderous waves of man
Crash down upon the shores of the soul
If be tatters     then be tatters
Reach down
And pull out another heart

The tempest raged back then
I was still trying to ****
the pain of her

Dylan was singing
Blind Willie Mctell
in a sullen and lonely room
where
the vein could not hold enough
to sway the darkness
from comforting in me

I was just trying to find a way
to forgive myself
for being that much alive….

so the poet walked
for years
through a thousand shades
of light and hunger

driven empty
he laid his head upon the ***** of humanity
and so
the soul
fell upon the crest
of beauty and its pain
the forgiveness was tenuous
but alive

Across the canyons and rivers
Of your existence
Past the heartbeats suspended
The nights stretched out
Into insufferable dawns
The etchings that trace out the scars
Of what left you what you are
All those faces and hearts
That you were
Crossing those landscapes
Of love twisted into shapes
That bound your heart
Unable to breath
Or see

In cavernous darkness
The needle finds its way
Through the fibers stretched out from birth
Until
That falling crumbled moment
Pushing in a temporary evisceration of a reality
Arrogated by the coldness
Of what human does to human
Torn shreds of something as simple and pure
As love
But, as the needle withdraws
Its tennicles and barbs
Pull along with it
Your soul

Out of cavernous darkness
Gathering up self
Pushing back the days
Pulling in the light
The fragments lay across my landscape
Perhaps they were the sculptures tools
Shaping me as I am today
It matters not
It is only the light
That matters now....

rack up your heart
against a western sky
as I drip off the edges of these hills
I roll in the dust with the coyote
and stand shadowed by a world
the thunder beckons from a distance
somewhere in between the moon and I
I am so small
so small
so beautifully small

Some souls are looking for love
Some souls are looking for peace
Some souls are looking for nothingness
Some souls are looking for their gods
Perhaps there is a soul that is still looking for me….

The crystal forms slowly building sequential
Pace the turning of the heart
Stagnant or swollen
What divinity lays entwined
In a sunlight
And the pulsing of your dream
Pounding away at your reality
The crystalline heart
Segmented refining it’s beauty
Lips caress the lip
Drowning in love the segments define
The table set for starving lovers
Pierce me and I will bleed
this….