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

We are driven harshly
Through the storms of our love
The rains pierce the skin
That covers our hearts
The rains
Wash away the blood of our dreams

Those tattered edges bleed  
The regrets of passion and its fictions
Are we that much alive
What is laid before us
To feel….to grasp
The thorn ****** to bleed

Scales falter
When in nights we clutch ourselves
In both disdain and in desire
Which blamed which
Self or fate
Or the simple fool

But blame need lay fallow
We must compromise ourselves
Letting those parts of our soul
Know the flesh
And the fire
Until the rains come again

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....

A city cries when it rains. Nature pushes it back inside itself. Left naked to truth we can only hide under the blankets of guilt and derision. For it we who have built this beast called city. On cold rainy nights I would ride the trains. Back then you could buy a day pass for two bucks, but some nights I didn’t have the money, so you just crossed your fingers that the fare inspectors wouldn’t catch you. I would ride for hours, watching people, and watching the movie that ran by outside the window. Humanity stretches on forever in the frame by frame awareness of how the earth has been conquered, reshaped, distorted into shapes that allow profits to become gods.
But we who were left alone to wander through the heap piles of profit and gain, speak in the tongues reserved for starving souls. The only thing you can bleed out is a truth that is tethered to a truth that not even Plato could conjure up. But in the hollow of that emptiness we come to understand who are the fortunate, and who are the slaves. Spit bitter and smile at the face of nothingness. For we are the ones who are free….

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....

I built a tiny altar
Of sticks, leaves, sage and prairie anisé
It was out East of the house
Not far from Crawford’s old homestead
Where the ghosts of broken dreams
Hung in the breezes
I did not know why I had wandered there
Ñor why I had arranged
The articles of earth
For her

She had come to me
As I was walking
Her presence descending
Warming the day’s chill
I saw her smile
Then I knew
The men who had taken her
Back through the door with the round window
Were not going to bring her back
They could not bring her back

Her smile was the softest thing
I had ever witnessed in the world
Her voice moved through my soul
The world stopped turning
The wind hushed
The prairie turned up her edges
to hold us alone together
“Oh my dear brother,
I’m still with you,
“You know....It’s beautiful here”

Crushing weight combines
Product races to blue dot
Sun caresses leaf

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....

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

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?

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

Dragged out of yourself
Blatantly confronted with existence
What be the soul
Wether it be day or night
What taste is the virtue
or the bitter
From whom do we entreat our joy

Tumbled off the tips of my thoughts
The joinery of words at the fall
Lay it bare wanton one
fragile are the trusses of your soul
And the scales…. cruel
For who does god loves and who god does not love
Unless it is you….whom you ask…. for your joy

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

Leaves bold against Sol
Breezes wander through softly
Head rests against bark

Heart drips it’s
sweat stained dream
on the parchments of desire
entreating a delusional self
braggart of a heart
selfish to own
what is never owned

mired in the slit trench
of this war of attrition
peeling away each layer
of what love isn’t
and never could be

she looked up with the eyes of her soul
pools with the depth of every broken dust riddled desire
her will stretched out
between where love lives
and where love dies

she softly uttered
if lust be the nucleus of all passion
then is not love the desiccant of the soul
do we not all fail
by
believing love to be a possession…..

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

What were the whispers
Before the rage
Crested their horizons

What siren called
What portents screamed
Before the blood ran

What seed
What progenitor
Poisoned truth

What tore
What separated
Human from human

What
What replaced
Love with hate

The moon reached down
through the canopy
Her silver soft voice whispered
As she bathed us in
The light she borrows from the sun
To eliminate us our souls

The soul walks naked
Away
From the relentless and futile graspings of human
White gold light dances on my skin
Her caressings lead me
Deeper into solitude
I peel away this skin
And surrender to being mere elements

And still her silver soft voice whispers
“I will hold you in light “
“Just be”

It has been raining for hours now
It comes as the waves do on the shore
The crescendos and lulls
Unpredictable the rhythm
Of this symphony
The conductor is Gaia’s will

I stare out the kitchen window
A pause watching the drops hitting the earth
Infinity dances and reigns
More than a hundred million gallons
For every square mile so far

I sense the rivers swelling
Will Saul’s house be ok?
My driveway is too slick to climb
I cannot leave
To help lift his refrigerator up into the loft
He will smile when he tells me about it later

We are driven into our own makings
I love this force of nature
Yet I fear this force of nature
Making us nothing against her will
The metal roof reverberates
Her mantra

We hunker
Watching the show
Even the cats surrender
Two on the fridge
One in the basket on microwave
I sip my coffee....

fragments of letters
written in the clutch
of being being stranded
between the human
and love

she called him darling

what is laid to rest
with each fiction
for we preface our heart
with every fiction

she called him darling

lines on a page, lines on a face
time turns relentless
and singular of purpose
to push us back behind us

she called him darling

what is acquiesced in the clutch
being born a mere portion
an unbelief in the entirety of self
Completion... the requisite function of another
So, the discarded beauty of aloneness

she called him darling

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....

Loaves
(the last harvest)

Dust and poems
Philosophy and the buzz of grasshoppers
Grease
14mm on the sickle guards
Hawks diving on snakes
Blast furnace winds
Dreading and craving rain
And double pumping to facilitate finding third gear

Old Red and I
A 1972 Dodge C600
Pulled those hills for years
Three hundred bushels a load
I loved her eight cylinders and glass packs
She was a throat-y *****
No AC…No radio
Just combustion, torque and a five speed transmission
Zen and the art of hauling grain

@Twenty eight million five hundred and sixty loaves….

If I lay you to the carnage
And you weep the tears of redemption
Would we stand together
Hands entwined
Bowed to the constructs of belief
Begging for the life we do not breath
And if I pulled all the gold from my heart
And laid it before all existence
Would they sell us back all those pieces
We have left behind….

To fall into the powerless
As the rain falls through you
The storm sets you aside  
And rages
And speaks
And sings
And lives
The earth is hers
---

The lightening is distant now
Still she reveals
How small you are
Perception the extent
Of your being
You are nothing more

Afternoon light dims
Pregnant clouds cover
Raindrops chatter in my dreams

Stating the day
A broken once starved
Soul
Walking now
The joy from the sun and earth
the strength
Wisdom walking now
To cast off the imperfections
That human
****** upon you.....

the heat seeps in
through the skin,
pumped by blood throughout
it drips deep
soul bathed
trodding through inundated ecstasy
pounding deeper and deeper
until
I surrender
my
existence

A madness
to harness the hills
the sky stretched blue forever
the nano particle self
drawing lines in crust
the shoulder is pressed hard against
existence
a madness

Soul, Husk, Self, Mouth
dirt scraped from beneath the nail
aside a fire burning warm
the recapitulation of the day
the deed
the gift

sometimes in tatter worn clothing
beneath a ceiling in need of repair
it is an odd cold
timeless
because it is unknown

the dreams
perhaps
the fruition
from the hottest sweats of summer
to untie oneself from the earth
and fly away and......
and kiss but one of those mouths you fed

Once I tried to fix the world
By helping an old man
Carry sea water up the a hill
I had watched his toil
From my throne of plenty
Breakfast for dimes
in impoverished Guatemala

I did not know what he used the saltwater for
Nor did it matter
Watching his fragile worn frame
Grasping the ropes with his sun baked hands
The arc of his spine
The weight of the world
In those two buckets

I wanted to pull all of humanity
Over to him
And lift the ocean to his needs
And when he stood in respite
I grabbed the ropes
He looked through me...past me
His bitter eyes told of his Ubiquitous story

“You come.... and then you go”
(Because “you” can)
“What weight have you forever lifted”
He suffered me
As he walked
With the fool who thought
He could fix the world

Sunlight reaches  
Empty rocking chair rocks
A cat stretches

What fodder am I
grist for some God’s wrath
or
pleasure
some quantum reaction
held and,
not held
in
the false forces of life
This stage of perception
something must fill the senses
something must need growth a purpose
What fodder am I....

What tempest lays here
within these hearts
rising up to crash down upon
the separations
of justice from justice
of sustenance from mouth
of shelter from skin
of truth from knowledge
of
I from you....

Would a touch
Release
The heart to roam with the soul
Would a touch, a word, a tasted tear
Release
The heart to roam with another
Heart

What was wrong
I for dreaming
Then believing
or
Is it love that is wrong
What failed what….

The nights darker and colder
The shadows of my world
Closing away the light
Pitiful creatures we become
Not loved

I don’t crawl back to that night anymore
That night under that grand old tree
When the stars reached down with their smiles
And loved us
And the breezes sang the most beautiful song
For us
When my soul reached into hers
And I felt her embrace
As a truth
That justified all my desires to love
I tasted her tears
To let her know
That every fiber…
was there with her

Could the interval between heartbeats
Encompass the summation
Of all you have been
And all that you will ever be

Sometimes
At night
When I am alone
I laugh at the concept of time....

I visit my their graves after harvest is done
each year the orphan
stands in an August heated wind
braced against the knowledge
that we are all born alone
and so….

I speak to them
but all I can acknowledge
is that they are gone
Then I pretend that I had not
said anything at all

I board a plane
that carries me farther away each year
the orphan looks down at the receding landscape
as his tears fall from the wings
they rain down on the parched flora
of souls

beneath your blood coursing
silent words well up
from the moments
you were born
and the moments that you will die
what is this
which lays between

It is a big swell tonight
She is dancing with the edges
Reckless and abandoned

The thunder answers her liquid voice
The night is alive
With their conversation

And I love being this small
They don’t need me….

The sway, the breeze, the knots
Suspended above the earth
The rhythmic stretching  of the hammock

we knew we were both broken….
as we staggered out of souls
and into an embrace that allowed
only us
dreaming that the edges
could somehow be sewn together
and made into something beautiful

—-

I thought I saw her walking one day
an obscure soul turning an obscure corner
an undefined moment in an undefined universe
if there were pieces of me trailing behind her
I could not see
but by then I had sculpted my soul
into a shape that allowed my survival
of her and I…

He came there to **** him
The setting sun made the scene tranquil
Bathed in light unguarded
We were festive… and simple

The shots rang out
The shots tore into his chest
The shots tore through the village, through the hearts of all who knew him
The shots tore away what we were

The rain has washed away the blood
But can the rain drown out his wife’s mournful cries
Can the rain fall through us
Can the rain wash away what we are now

Outside train window
World rushes by
The endless movie of life

Once
In an old abandoned house
Leaning on an edgeless prairie
Where the wind played
At the velocities of it’s will
I climbed up into the desiccated dusted attic
And opened a wooden box

Time faded letters
Trinkets that tethered moments
Fountain pen etched words
Written on oceans torn apart
He took care not to nurture her fears
But between every word
A truth could not be ignored
That he was both the hunted
And the hunter
The wind sang mournful
Through the weathered old home


What hopes and dreams
Are woven into days yet lived
Only to be
Tucked away in abandoned boxes
and hearts
And what war does to love
We should never forgive....

the gray dark matter of your existence
young man, with his life drawn out ahead of him far too early
asking Aphrodite if she had ever hollowed out her heart for love
the gods offer little to the flesh…. or the muse
The coverings thin against their will

with each tick of existence within this midst
your heart shudders becoming more naked
perhaps it is in the hot sweat twisted fabrics of desire
bleeding out a tempest that drags your dreams across soul
that then…. we wish are hearts to be somehow be more naked

The desperate voices of whiskey and refrain
rags for words
pulling from the tattered edges of the gutter
poetry that surrenders to a poem
no less naked than truth

I once knew this ole rag doll

one night standing in a river of truth
she said
“you know”.... “they make us hollow”

broken held in hands
her edges
sharp to an exactness
so as to not allow her
a belief in I

so stumbling I staggered
through myself
drunk on disdain and passion
til weary
sufficient be the god
love the pain
as you love the beauty

the poet sips from the glass
a trail of scattered words
ordered
from the taste relished on tongues
feeding the need


eighteen year ***
tender to the senses
pushing against a harsher world
the belly warmed enough
to proffer portrayal


and the tear
falls to the paper
birth to death this saline catharsis
the ocean still flows in our blood
I am alone enough now


the long dead Japanese poet
sits next to me
we toast that we can see
even in this blindness
loving each other…. deeply

Of will and of dreams
The hand, the heart
The gentle pulse in the night
And a tear we’ve held within
Since birth

Of pace and of silence
The price and the need
The givers and the chosen
The hunger and surfeit
Walking the same street

Of time and of space
The path and the distance
The mountain and the valley
The joy and the pain
For traveling as we do

Of fear and loss
The lie and the lies
The truth and her killer
The blinder and the cold
Casting the net of indifference

Of breath and thought
The sun and the stars
The earth beneath your nails
The sweat on the brow
Tasted at the pause

Of the moon and of the myth
The ask and the construct
The cradle and the grave
The bard and the poet
Dripping words into the soul....

I hope that it rains
My garden is dry
The air is dry
The world is dry
My soul is dry
I hope that it rains....

For
Pablo Neruda

I spent the first parts of my life jostled by the entropy
left here by the struggle that is man to be man
Stranded by the ignorance of seclusion driven mad by
a relentless earth that gave nothing freely
past a discovery of the immaculate human, and his machine
Love was drawn as a wisp that we do not pray to linger
and the hard cut of the whip, for what was, is

laden uneven I stepped into myself
boldness slept as I watched this from shallows
constantly banging against incongruity and
a modern world jaded and uncaring
Screaming at me at night, these lines that soothe the wanderer
in a land of some truth and admission
Screaming in me, these ways
No one, no one

always in the middle the strength of body and will to vex the world
out of food and a place to sleep and a method in which to survive
taught too well and yet at night
the screaming, I raise my hands to heavens
for my sins, the beast in I
Love was strewn from a point deep within myself
to some eternal eternity where promises were simply lies
scream poet, scream

If the page is stained
We can circumvent the words
That soil the soul
I will then continue on
And you can dispose of me
As you wish ....

Porch light casts false day on flora
Insects locked in entropic flights
I breath in the cool evening air