It's supposed to be
98 and cloudless today.

By the time I roll in,
and park my car,
Roman's walking up to me,
his gold tooth a
full yellow smile in the sun.

“Hey meyer,
I need you to
Pull the box truck around,
We’ve got some plants we’ve gotta load,
Then we’ve got a landscape job
About an hour from here.”

“Are we gonna be back here
Today?”

“Probably not
until
late.”

The box truck
Is a holdover from the old owners
Of Ken’s Nursery,
It’s still got
Ken’s Nursery in large comic sans
On it’s rust-streaked sides.

The wheel wells are rusted
brown as salt deposits
On the shores of sulfuric oceans,
and little ringlets of decay
rock as the truck bounces;
It’s old springs
Giving back after all these years.

Today we have:
Forty-two veriagated ferns.
Ten dragon lilies.
10 cannas,
But cannas have to have a male and female to flower,
So 20 cannas collectively,
And we’ve gotta mulch.

By the time we’ve loaded all the plants;
stuffed the mulch in with the Bobcat,
And thrown in our picks and shovels,
My shirt is soaked through.

98 degrees and cloudless.

Roman walks to his car
and takes off his shirt
To reveal a pink belly
full of folding skin
and matted black upwelling *****
Singing with sweat-diamonds
In the unperturbed vision of the sun.

My shirt is soaked already too.

But even as I loaded the truck,
I thought about Melissa.

When I get home,
She probably won’t be there.

When the female is separated from the male canna,
Nothing dies, the two live happily ever after.

But the canna does not flower,
And doesn’t remember enough
To miss it.

Just continues quietly with a black bulb
The color of a skink’s underbelly.

A dark shadow glides across the burning asphalt
    and stops while I fly past
    one foot in front of the other

A spider, I thought
     no, couldn't be
     too long to be one, and slow

Scorpion was the next thought
      no, couldn't be
      they do not call this area home

I had to stop my stride and turn
      sneak to where that dark blur rested

A long blue streaked tail
               fading into lightning strikes

A baby, or perhaps a toddler

All I know is that it's
  tiny
  and fast.
  like me.

It made the grueling heat on these back streets
   worth the suffering.

Is it suffering if it is what I crave?

Crawling thing with six legs,
I'll keep you in mind...

Flying thing with big eyes,
I ate you just in time,

Now crawly-bug I eat you too,
I lap my face to clean off your goo,

Screams from heaven, I must hide!
Yesterday my brother died...

I slither into pile of leaves,
I hope the screamer didn't see,

Stay still, prepare and lick the air,
I smell more crawlies over there...

I get too cool and run for rock,
To sun myself,
And in my sluggish state I lie on rock...

                                                        ­            “Ahhhh!”

I'm grabbed and now I'm in the blue!
The Screamer eats me and my last crawly too!

I hold you in my arms, your frail
frame twitching and turning in pain.
Open cuts consume your body,
like a can of paint thrown against
an empty canvas. The once smooth
surface of your form is now torn
and bloodied. Tears roll from your eyes,
shimmering as the salt burns deeper into your flesh.
All I can do is take your tiny paw in my hand,
and wait for the pain to pass.

I remember when I got you. My first
day on my own, I stopped by Sam’s
house before I left. He brought you out,
wrapped in a little red and white blanket,
and handed you to me. Young and scared,
you mirrored all of my insecurities. He
told me to take you, so neither of us
would have to be alone.

Do you remember our time in the mountains,
when night would come and the
temperature dropped like an over-ripened
apple from a macintosh tree?
On those autumn nights,
when the sky was set ablaze by lonely
atoms clinging to one another, you
were the only thing that kept the chilled
wind from stealing my toes.

No matter how horrible things seemed
to get, you always found a way to
make me smile. You were like a chameleon
of attitudes, able to alter my mood,
almost instinctively, at the slightest
inclination of sorrow. Now you are nothing
more than a skink, smashed on the side
of the road by an idiot running by, and
I am the fool that didn’t look before he stepped.
I remember the fight, the insult,
your eagerness to defend me.
Swift slashes, cuts and scratches,
growls, bites, body slams. His agility,
your confusion, a flash of pain. You lick
your wounds, trying to recover, and I can
see his rage. He attacks quickly,
you try to reflect, but he thrashes forward,
taking you down as your tail whips helplessly.
I see his teeth clench down on you like a vice grip,
and the gusts from the vultures above
stomp out any embers of hope.

Your body lies on a casket of cold coals,
smoldering as your flame flickers slowly
in the gentle wind. I stroke your head, softly
scratching the back of your neck like you
always liked, and watch as your eyes
start to shut, sleep taking over. Soon
this will be over, and you’ll be safe again,
your body no longer bruised and beaten,
****** and broken. I try to catch my breath
as tears attempt to escape, but I won’t
let them. If this is the last moment
we have, I will not spend it crying.

The fire dies, snuffed out
by the cooling breath of dusk.
Eventually, the rain comes, covering
my cheeks with salt and sorrow.
Through misty eyes, I watch as the
sun sets, amazed that such beauty can
come in the midst of unimaginable despair.
The yellows and oranges fade to red, then
purple, and the sky fills slowly with darkness.
Although there’s been many miles since,
I feel as if I’m back in the mountains,
shivering in the frigid wind, but this time,
you’re not here to keep me warm.

An observer of life
You notice
The small native flowers
Sprouting by the roadside
The skink sun baking on the rock
At parties
You find a group in animated conversation
Hover at its edges
Nod, smile
Appearing to join in
No keeper of small talk
Watching
Taking it all in
Making a mental note
Of snippets worth bottling
A discoverer of ideas
For words to come together
Later
In a dance
Within the privacy of your own pen
Silently you turn them into
A melody
Into poetry

the argent sun,
has chased away
the piccaninny dawn
and is now lazily,
racing the clouds
to the apex of
the bright blue sky.

the dew is drying
on the grass
and the blucat
is seeking his first
triumph over his
lizard foes.

we sit on the back deck
eating a simple breakfast
cereal and toast.
while surveying
the burgeoning wealth
of our vegie garden.
tall shoots of corn,
and tomato vines,
laden with fruit,
just begining to blush red.
lettuce protected,
within their plastic tube forts
and carrots with their wavy
heads....
and overlaying all,
the smell of citrus,
both lemon and lime.
then, the heady fragrance
of the papaya trees
and the passion fruit vines...

we acknowledge,
with thankful hearts,
we  live in a little corner
of eden....
borrowed for a time....

then to break our reverie, the blucat,
drops a squirming skink, tailess,
on the top step
a murps his triumph...
and the kookaburras laugh
.......long and loud

raincloud absenteeism
the scorched earth tendrils heat
mirages of Arabian oasis melt
two tiny quail chicks
seemingly spontaneously combust

skink tongue stretches to the horizon
flowing outward along the contour
rising and falling
fading only to reappear

figment transforms
as silver edges harden
speeding Plymouth breaks the spell

seeing a chrome ******
float off to the east
my plight becomes tangible
red arm stretches out
awaiting the next passing chance

Too Many Smiling People Blues

Before I was a nobody slinking by,
a real skink-body nobody.
Now they give me handfulls
of money and call me a genius.

Thanks, thanks very much, I’ll take this.
I’ll take your money that slithers to no ends
but wait… my friends, where are my precious friends?
There’s nothing but pink smiles all around….

I used to sing songs in the dark.
Now they put a shiny guitar in my hands,
and I make music to shiny coins, crank it out, and when
it’s all over they say, “that’s good, now can you stand

on your hands?” And there’s not even
enough energy to frown. O’ ain’t it a bringdown,
when everybody’s got a piece of you
and there’s nothing but smiles all around.

And it used to be the only one
I could get to listen was you, baby blue…..
You and me alone all those windy, sleepy years,
and when I sang a tune you were the only one that got it.

Now I look through the screaming crowd,
who eat my energy, shouting, “We get it! We get it!”
But your smile is nowhere to be found, and O’
ain’t it a bringdown when everybody’s got a piece of you

and there’s nothing
          but smiles all around….

There the floating scholar of green lines read,
There the shading peasant of sun-fields plowed,
There the fleeing empress of coral red gowns,
There the graying knight of frost-broken vows.
A tree is a haunted ruin of bare limbs and rooms.

But thought scurries around like a five-lined skink
With its tail shimmering blue as oil floating on water.

They sought to invoke the midas Chassidus
(striving for the most pious behavior possible)
-------------
So, beyond the beanie,
we put loyalty to those who wear it,
holding rude pen from local feathers
or reedy grass,
feel the reason
writing
calls readers, you
can do this, causally becoming aitia,
the blamed doer,
amen,
I said that, so… I suffer… what, waiting
is, suffering only means, wait, or

put up with it. Art intuits recollection
of functional whole systems, means
for prying flat stone, sand stone,
ready to be made ready for use,

usual duty, any
given day, wake up, measure up,
make day mean all of it, as it occurs

around,
bubblewise,
along, riverwise path, ruts
made from graves, with their ends
kicked out.

Ghosts of all we ever wished we knew,
we all, stretch, and taste our teeth,
sniff and scratch,
listen for wind, look for shadows dancing,
seeing the moss gone dark again,
after these past few rainy days
----------------

From inside, within-
without walls, bubblewise,
imperfectly spherical,
no sharp edges,

-in being, not out, not ex-cluded
in-cluded, clouds or clues, referentially?
You know what I mean? Clusion closure.

Boxed-in, floor and roof and walled, inclosed.

Flaw, there
in the gem, a bubble, yes, in the lens.
A blind spot…
minor blemish, or, reaching back to magic,
allowing magical thinking, distant causal agencies,
words intuned to old rythms,

the ump ump song, or the umph umph song,
pigeon strut, or the ****'s walk,

old hawk, old crow, eeee-haw! We saw
we saw, we knew,
we saw clear through, to another side of everything.

Measures demanding means of making them,
seeing things in perspective…
from any perch.

Land and look around, listen to the locals singing.
I could live here,
if I found water and recognized food, waiting,
watching other things eat,

thinking, tongue-wise former of signals, seeing
through my eyes, feels no flow, signaling
that looks good,

witness the little skink nibbling, fugaciously,

THAT is a word, as sudden as she knew, she saw,
that looks good
to eat, for food.

As suddenly as ever, ever dawned on her, of course,
root, branch, seed, harvest, birds, bees, boy oh boy,

what you never learned, all that time,
you and the
{Idea of all we see, and may call, as I call this,
this it is. My highest intuition, top of the reactionary
stack,
vertical order in a linear mind set with neuron-axon,
tactile response teams, responsible for being good,
doing some life-support-level good.

Not to steal and **** and destroy the functionally good
enough, but to steal back stolen idols used to divine.
Put some ****** good ideas to work again.
The ladder has not been needed.
Need being, nothing where some defined thing,
definitely could be put to good use,

we could do with a Babble-undoer. A clear-ifying agent.

If I do not this thing, this thing is never done, aborted
at first kiss, no taste, nothing sweeter than wine,
wine, I spat, at first taste, too,
nasty, not sweet, unless,
due to time and chance,
your first taste of wine comes right from the vine,
where the little foxes play at being little foxes,
as seen from a happy father/mother pair,

there in the vineyard, since sunrise, in the valley.


----------------

From the valley floor, we contain ourselves,
we content ourselves with shorter days
than flatlanders use, our shorter days,
come on slow, so slow, old men,
like me, we can walk to the top,
of this next little trough, and
see, out across the flat bottom,
where the ocean was in mastodon days.

--------------
If you will, some days this trail calls
for more stops to think, than when I ran
with my dogs,
I can not do that now, partly due to
too many people,
and no eating of dogs.

I, yes, if I try, I laugh now, with a fiftyish
riverside family man, laughing as he skinned
some shorthaired pointy muzzle kinda dog,
coulda been a rabbit,
or a pet chicken, or duck. Hand raised for 4-H.