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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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....

His hands broken by the sun
How much life has he pulled
From these hills
His companion is solitude
They get along well

His life spent in this dirt
He has folded himself
Into these hills
The sun, the winds, the rain
Are his family now....

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....

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....

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....

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

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....

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....

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....

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”

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

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....

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

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

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…

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

Two thousand and twenty

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

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

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

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

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”

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

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

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

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....

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….

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

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

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

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