You have time and I have ink.
We both, use each other
until we completely run out,
then somebody throws us away,
and on the same day
the next one is made
to fulfill the purpose.
You think you are so unique.

We had to camp out in the woods
my deputy and I, on duty
at the last Town Music Festival
and as we lay down
I said to my deputy:
"Deputy, tell me what you see"

And my deputy described the stars
and the moon and the heavens
with infectious passion and poetic intensity;
and the deputy spoke with feeling
of soaring heights and sublime elation -
and then with a triumphant air
he turned to me: "Now it's your turn,
Sheriff - tell me what you see"

And I said: *"Someone, deputy,
has stolen our tent..."

All of us, when young, gaze onto this field
Anxiously. At twenty-four-years old
We stand here feeling unbearably cold,
Unsure of everything, not quite steeled.
No man knows whence this vision descends;
Still, it shepherds us mysteriously
Toward glum perplexion. Now the one tree
That's always here presumably bends;

And with that, it's gone. Then begins our work:
Featherbrained nonsense we wish to shirk;
Then our duties: obligatory crap
Surveilling like a wiretap.
Then it's back, and it's sharp— almost a knife!— 
And it's familiar...it's...it's life.

1.
Before I knew he had.
His flight trailed off into a Utah
Sunrise. He left behind a little strand
Of thought, and, in a cramped, amber room that saw
Long talks of topics that soon thinned grey,
A set of dog-eared books has been put down.
Books that brought nearer to my thought his own,
While Interstate-5 grated the ground.

2.
He must have, as the plane touched the runway,
Felt the dawn’s shudder fracture his young bones,
His thoughts turning to those dog-eared days;
The seemingly endless months full of groans,
As they should have been, being spent alone;
And that set of books, at least it would seem,
Ignited the wick on which our passions gleam.

3.
These six years past since they took him away
Held minutes like a needle in plied dust.
There’s something in the spring that brings decay:
The outward beauty of the world just
Clouds the mind’s loss within the spinning gust
That all the blooming flowers usher in.
Then the rain comes...

4.
As the 5’s scratch cracks up the drying earth,
I recall Nietzsche, Guevara, Burgess:
Men who’d not anticipated births
Inside my brother and I like cypress
Trees, evergreen and coniferous, we
Drop seeds year-round. The setting Utah sun,
Barely audible, gasps in the copse.
He’s with me now. What’s done is done.

I am
A fraction of a bang
a jagged little piece of time
a string blowing in the wind
floating
through the cosmos
with just a little bit
I make the most
from stardust formed
from stardust one day
returned
mostly
mud
but breathed on by God


x

Deafening
        
                 Cracks of

s i l e n c e
     Shoot across my brain
all     at     once
I register
                    The pain
Of a world without the sound of your


**name

Feed me (your soul)
Watch me (control you)
I'll bring you everything
Bring you the new and improved
25% more (in the same 12oz. can)
Spill the cleaner
Stain the wipe
It's OK
Believe the hype
Imitation light
Artificial life
Heart break
Heart ache
Let me make the big mistakes

If I only had the time, I would fall in love with you
I would bend down the night and steal you the moon
And weave a blanket made from all the stars
I would peel a rainbow off a blue sky and fold it
  into a flower and place it in your hair
I would dip the quill of a feather into the ghost of
  Shakespeare's heart and write you a play
If I only had the time