Godot set his lips
Pagemaker set a tone
Oh how long Penelope had waited
They were milling amongst
Their intrepid histories
Pulling scenes and constructs from the past
Patching together justifications
On the edges somber souls danced
Repetitive steps that bound them to the master
Godot smiled bitterly
Holding firmly the blade
If only the script allowed
Someone to sever every tether
From now to eternity
Oh how long Penelope had waited

the betrayal of soul
it comes with being human
dying in a loop
“deficiency” echoes
if you listen too close
you lose

we are spread thin enough
to survive
it is only the bleeding inside
that gathers you up
for some sacrifice
that you burn
to your false gods of fear

but some nights I set myself free
mixing the blood of all my lives
with cool night air
and the music of my soul
I dance into myself
as this becomes nothing
how I love wind....

truth lays in the vein of the branch
and in the watery red eyes of the drunk
it lays in the hottest sweats of summer
and in that heartbeat that just reverberated through
your entire universe
it lays in the soft cry of an infant
and in the death rattle of the last soldier
in the last of all wars
truth lays in the caress of a lovers touch
and it lays in a widow’s graveside tear
it lays in the wind that carries the seed
and in the soil that hungers for fruition
it lays embedded in a heart betrayed  
and it lays in both the pain and the forgiveness
it lays in at the center of all we know
it lays at the center of you
and I

the birds were all gone
cats and chemicals
the silence was lonely
in the mornings
the dirtworker
new to the streets
looked to the sky
only grey
no yellows or blues
and the hunkered
fought the cold and the damp
minute by minute

it was not the land
where thy unto thy self
lay within the womb
each day one could be born
the treaty between
the sky the dirt and you
was simple
each could only take so much
and only give so much
we were ancient out there

the patches of green
scattered amongst the cement
seemed too fragile
so he refused to tread
his breathing became shallow
less became more
watching himself fall
from his own grace
for
the souls were as vacant
as the poets had portrayed

Borrowing into our hearts
until we reach our souls
from the cuttings
we glean truths
and poetry
and self....

Was there something I was not supposed to be
Standing tattered against an abrasive wind
The sandblast nature of living that shapes
the sculpted figure that stands within our mind
Which tears washed away the cuttings
and which cut the structure of my soul
Tethered as much to a past as we are to a future
Perhaps what is strewn behind us
is also strewn out ahead of us
This imperfect assemblage of matter and ethos
The pains and the joys woven together as strands
of a web that truss both heart and soul
Was there something I was not supposed to be....

I fragment thee….less a cloud than the rain
the portions we partition ourselves from
remain un-sketched
we are merely grasping the edges of an existence
we struggle to know
but in dreams the murals are painted vast
and there
we are whole
I fragment thee….less a cloud than the rain

A waking
From the repast of rest
Where we fall into worlds
Where we walk into rooms
Lives lived unknowingly

Her kiss was sweet
Gentle but with edges of abandon
Perhaps taboo was the bond
Or the purpose
My mind raced at what we were doing

As she dressed
She smiled
Nothing more beautiful
Than a woman confident in her desires
I reached out to touch her
As she diffused

The waking....

Angels chorus the call
looking down through shredded clouds
there in the heart the tempest stirs
as the moon pours another cup of desire

the winds are calling out
thoughts that bleed through
vanishing armor
the waves of your tempest are crashing down

upon a knee the supplicant sighs
of what color you will make of me
I call to the night to make me lonely again
but love pierces gentle at first

dessert hearts by now
do we pray for this rain
some silent entreaties
stir the angel’s choir

The shovel pierces the ground
The sweat drips from my face
Darkness is closing in
The prying away, the lifting
I dig in silence
The grave deepens
Strange ritual
Why don’t we build pyres
for cats....

I am drenched in sweat
The dirt under my nails irks me
My knees are caked
I lay in my hammock
And message my friend
“Bob is in a better place now”
We say this in a few different ways
Until she goes silent

She is three thousand miles away
Receiving cancer treatments
And her cat Bob just died
I cannot fix this world
I can only dig graves

The soul shudders
In the corridors
That connect
Love with hate....

inside the bus
the heat is oppressive
it is a stagnant force
that holds you still
bound by air
that was sent by the sun
to remind us of how small
we all really are

time slows to a trickle
the body aches
for the bus to begin it’s journey
and for air
moving air
the salvation of us all
the hourglass sweat
rolls down my neck

my tears have shaped me
they have cut the edges of my heart
that finds beauty rattling around
in the places deemed
too broken to know

my tears have cut the canyons
that echo
the songs and screams
of my knowing how deep this life
can cut

my tears have watered the gardens
where someone still plants hope
even though hope is something I avoid
but offering it drought
would be the shape of something cruel

tears the blood of soul
running from my eyes
across the landscape that is I
washing the wounds suffered
and the scars I have won

The rain has washed us
And it has taken some of us
It has traded us furnishings for mud
And the bridge at San Fernando
Is heading out to sea

I was the tender shoot of grass that spring
Brought from the darkened earth
I reached for the sun as if it were
The wellspring of love
Too young to know what
The crime of wanting to be loved would be

The seeds scatter in the wind
The segments of dreams torn from dreams
Fruition is callused and naked
Winter drives us back into the earth
Yet with each heartbeat
We wait for what hope is found in the spring….

I spent my last hundred dollars
On a really nice leather wallet

………..

Nestling your heart within your heart
For the two are separate
The heart you offer
The heart you reach out with
The heart you give

And the heart that is yours
The heart that breathes aloneness
The heart that lives alone
The heart that needs nothing
But you…

Weathered soul of wood
Grayed frame leaning downwind
Emptied of purpose
By dreams torn from dreamers

The sky’s palette of grays and more grays
Hang you in a portrait
Themed in the abandoned
And the cruelty of time

Yet my presence holds her un abandoned
I brush what she was and what she is
In a portrait that I hang in my mind
In these moments.... that castrates time

Sunlight, wind, music, coffee, poetry....

they stand bold
against the bold
neither the subject of either
this ballet reaches within
each wave a grating caress
moving the unmovable
the increments
in a quantity that thwarts perception

had those waves
ever touched them before
are they lovers
each longing to return
touching what they once were
are we not all
old lovers  

as they rise against
and above
some quantity of breath
is drawn
what pulls from within
the eye tethered to the soul
the majesty
watching time unfold

naked to touch
blue draws the deepest
pulsed words
in common refrain
she bites her lip
“falling is flying”
trace the outlines of desire
on something blue
make it naked
it is more honest that way
she is a river tonight
“who defines up”
a gesture of indifference
“who defines down”
the hint of a smile
“falling is flying away”

The jungle quiets
Eyes of the sky looking down
Her tears start to fall

Quiet sunlight falls through this mosaic ceiling
The tendrils of life dance slowly
With grace they kiss the underworld
Nothing is forgotten here

My breath is cautious
My heart whispers
Quieter yet quieter we become
Listening to the music of such silence....

La tierra está triste
ella está llorando

The bleeding earth asked
In solemn prayer
Embracing the knees of existence
“the human knows not of what feeds,
my wounds are deep
and my life is quickly bleeding away
can you send a gift of knowledge”
So existence bowed its head
And

Humans were sent a message
That a crowned invader
Could touch every human breath
A tie that binds a reality
Of life or death to every drawn breath
That if humans came together
If they learned that they only needed so much
That Brother was Brother
And Sister was Sister
That love is the blood of life
That they share that same blood
That earth and human are a whole
That we could reset this whole madness

Where rivers choke in the excess
Where oceans drown in the excess
Where the land is ***** by the excess
Where the mind is distorted by the excess
Where the human starves in excess
Where love is lost in the excess

And for a brief moment
The madness quieted
One single breath was shared
Brother was Brother
Sister was Sister


And earth said
“now can you see
that we are one”
But the human said
No it is a plot
To rob me of my freedom
I am entitled  
I am the greater god
I love the excess
More than you....

For Bukowski

rough ragged creviced whiskey soaked
smoke inundated telling
wrapping his arms around the world
laughing with the wicked and the pure
ragged edges
bold enough to split you open
revealing how beauty is best viewed
from within the shadows

Beneath her skin
Striated lines of time
The the calm resolve
Of fiber reaching fiber
I kneel at her roots

Tossed distant
To a beckoning wind
Where we collide
Will against grace
And the molten heart

The scent of reflection
Turning the pages
Hieroglyphic languages
Untether a soul
I breath

The furrow aches
The breezes grasp
Peeling away thought
Seeding fruition into the fold
I calm

Pulling out and sorting out
The memories embedded in this flesh
What I was and what I was not
Peel away to an essence
Equal in measure
To a past and to a future

We are not clocks
Ticking measured segments away
The scales and rulers
That we portion our lives with
Fail at the feet of Infinity
The god of all time

I will cast myself
Out into this day
Holding open time
Pulling from my sea
Less what is measured
Than what is

I used to drill holes into the earth
Miles deep
Piercing into the womb of my mother
And drawing out death
Iron and might and the amazing techniques
Of the ******

On cold clear nights
Working morning tour
I’d go out to the shaker
And watch the cuttings roll of the edge
Millions of years at repose
Until the bit broke her lose
And I would wonder
At time

Then I would lean back
And stare at the stars
Watching light that had left
Millions of years ago
I was small.... a slip of a being
Just star dust
One day to be laid down
At repose for someone’s eternity

Betrayal

At what decibel does the scream
Awaken the sleepless soul
Betrayed beyond any justice
The millions who’s blood
Drained from their lives
As the world changed
For the better

I am sick at heart
For the sleepless soul
Ignorance the most lethal drug
Offered at despotic discounts
A hundred thousand years from now
Will I finally dance on the grave
Of injustice

What color will I paint my soul
Walking into this room of rooms
Bitter biting brusk belittling beggars
Hold you taught
Between yourself and a faux image
of you
Such redemption in condemnation
Drives you to a center
Where
All you got..... is you
Severe the soul from the image of a soul
And paint
with the purest
Colors

It is a pause that allows a summation of
All that you have been and all that you will be
Drawing together every breath and dream
Only at the fingertips of your existence
Not in grasp... but to touch
A knowing
Be this beauty

sometimes
i wish there was a way to
not love someone

It was never clear
how a poor farm boy
could pull his roots from the soil
and
fly away

Someone in Paris could not have known
that someone dreams
why
do poets cry
and life seems so sweet
somewhere

The turning of the soil
like the folding of a soul
within the cry of hungers scream
he could always hear
them
scream

And dream....dream
of some life somewhere
where beautify was so seldom
crucified
and fathers loved their sons

was it there in the streets of Paris
where they danced to beauty
and held on tight
to sons
was it somewhere beyond
where that sun went
every night

with the dust of the land covering his face
he would wonder
and dream.....

Words are the cheapest ******* thing on the planet
Yet within the pen of a poet
They offer riches to the heart, mind and soul
The give and take of a poem
Perspective of angles and of voice
What echos inside, sometimes with force
Flows through the pen and bleeds out onto the pages of life....

The edge
Where this
Meets that
This is where you stand
And it cannot feed any longer
That is only a step away
But in that one step
There are a thousand increments
The car, the cats, the money, the apartment, the friends, the families, the pain, the selfishness, the tears, the doubt, the time, the love....

World swaying in time
Breezes push and pull the cool
Hammock set adrift

right before my eyes, I disassemble
passing from door to door
scene to scene
never a meter or a rest
nothing dwells on nothing

time becomes an illuminating enemy
the knowledge of how much…. of this…. you make idle
justified it can wreck......This
that tricky ****** up nasty sharp edge….
on which side shall you fall?

A child beggar sitting in the dirt of Guatemala
once asked me for a meal
and for salvation
and still the rain poured down
I split myself
widening the distance
between the warm and the cold

Some people don’t want the sun

Anger
Is a drug
That rushes through their veins
Coursing into the mind
Crowding out the space
Between perception and reality

Fear
Creates the despot
Of entitlement
Staking a claim
That disavows
Thy neighbor

I love the sun....

I imagine poets drinking coffee
In the morning
Maybe tea, or whiskey, or ***
I imagine paper curled on edges
A pen laying at angle
The dust of the page’s fibers floating
Through the shaft of sunlight that
Traveled ninety three million miles
To pause a poets thoughts
And to reveal that dust
Is a poem

It is dark out here
More alone here
Hidden
The rain has left her scent
You are folded back into the earth
Listening to your life... exist
Breathe
Feeling blood’s endless journey
Returning and returning
Sacred silence of self
Alone
In the dark....

Part II

Standing under
Knitted strands of perfection
The umbrella tapestry blankets
A breeze winds through to touch my skin
I let go myself
And she returns....I
Tears flow across the valleys of my face
Running down the valleys of my soul
Knowing that I am
Allowed to be the this supplicant

Beat rhythm heart
Tender tethers taught
Spanning the breadth
Pulling ancient dust
From the heart of your soul
Dance dance
Abandon random pounding
Breathing breathing
Alive in rhythm
Body soul heart
Dances with Gaia
Dances within Gaia
Beat rhythm heart....

Cigarette Burns On An Old Bar

the bubbles rising to a horizon
of aspirations
the air rehearsed
as too the dialogue

each burn dragged across the bar
what instant the cigarette lit
what was it
they were pushing away

Walking through the soul of humanity
I weep tears
“the tears of the world are a constant quantity”
and so that endless river flows
never to kiss a forgiving sea

The arrows of time
sometimes turn back
and tear through the flesh of your past
and you are left there bleeding
alone

I split open this
what floods in
is this world
how human twists beauty into the shapes
distorted and damaged

Failing is the I
love and kisses and embraces
never even find
the deepest part of the cuts

Screaming at the worthless I
incapable of sewing back together
the legs and arms and hearts
and dreams and lips and hopes and lives

Walking through the soul of humanity
I weep tears
“the tears of the world are of constant quantity”
and so that endless river flows
never to kiss a healing sea

The arrows of time
sometimes turn back
and tear through the flesh of the past
and they are left there bleeding
alone

I imagine poets sitting in bed
Crumpled blankets and flannel
Untidy hair and untidy thoughts
I imagine poets laying in bed
Knowing that foot to floor
Is the surrender, again
The rush of the world
That rips away the poet’s palette
I imagine poets refusing to surrender
Writing poems
On how the blankets lay in repose....

Crushing weight combines
Product races to blue dot
Sun caresses leaf

The fragments of the deep
That which is tucked away
In the recesses of your being
Still have wings

For they can lift above you
And the tethers that bind
Draw you into the light
Bathing fragments
In life
And their voices are heard again
Crying out
Yes....we are alive

As the tree sheds the leaf
The tree remains
As life sheds the lovers
Love remains

What winds stretched you to your height
Your fibers calling down to roots
Such nurturing in tireless unison
The beauty of simply... being
Revealing the frailty of human

Your skin speaks of patience
No armor posses such wisdom
You hold your face eternal
Unbending to any juxtaposition
The human bleeds vanity

And through your sprawling limbs and fingers
Time only is, it does not measure
You fear not the cycle that gives life
When earth you again become you give freely
Human expend life, fearing the grave

Your leaves dance a dance
None can ever match
Grace as you draw to and fro
Brushing the sky clean
This human trembles in wonder....