Ethereal and Base a harmony so diametric a solid.
Wisdom's forgiveness lands to the unyielding new,
white spray on black lava, merging
elemental minerals in salt water.
Life the mediator, yearns for compromise
algea harvests sunlight at the hard shore, grows into plants
fish munch coral creating sand washing up, a tree's foothold creating soil...  
can rock become Earth any other way?

Mother's beauty, an unknowable generous smile
and confident grace from the sun.
Ages
sitting wrinkled and depleted to her waist,
beauty transforms
into unknowable generous laughter alighting graciously from wise eyes,
like a flock of Heaven's doves so close to home
stirred by her running children: daughter and son.
All the while all the yearning is unrequited.

For her children, Beauty is vertigo,
painful reality rooted to the shore.
Eyes long for the horizon, Vision Country
between sky holding its breath and water measuring out patience,
The heart spills out futile on the crystalline sea,
but Sadness, belonging to clear water,
lightly buoys lonely Ecstasy,
Completes the voyage.

The Vision pairs selfless love with unmet desire,
opposites' harmony the firmament,
but the sound breaks from tension and the echoes fade,
and the senses footing gives way;
vertigo with dove's wings tied shut.
Descending minuscule between dissipation
falling through molecules of bliss,
and diffusing atoms of despair,
to the last remaining positive and negative
and the tension's silver thin wire between.

It cuts tied wings free,
slingshots the dove's soul back up,
at the last second, the tension's iridescent thread tangles loosely on her foot.
She hurtles back up through the scales of size:
Microns, amoeba, minnows, birds, primates, people,
over trees, looking down at cities, mountains, yet higher
borderless nations, green and sand continents,
and again all the crystalline blue seas.
The silver filament draws taut, holds the dove's ascent,
wings slowing in awe as she views Mother Gaea
her intensely brilliant sphere accompanied by vivid tiny stars.
in a cold cold soundless night...
Grandmother teaching her children to fly;
Beauty's yearning realized complete.

It's those deep-thought induced conversations that bring forth realizations
As to what we're about. and why we're here.  
There can be clarity for some, while many have yet to see it clear-ly.
What's charity for some, in others may produce fear.
If you can hear me, you may know that I've been embedded in a web of silk thread.  
We all are, just labeled differently, accustomed to the various personalities under which we're bred.  
Don't let it mess with your head, but we've been mislead, about what is the vital pulse of this existence.  
You can realize what's toxic, and what's pure in the matter of an instance.  

Before you spew out your sentence,
Make sure you thought it through, and drew out a map of where you intend it to lead.  
No one single person walks into a fight expecting to bleed. 
They've been deceived by a culture based on immediate reaction,
Forming a faction of those who never grow to fully develop their souls to gain full control,
Over their lives.  
Simple words, some that should be left unheard, can hurt worse than knives.  
Thoughtlessly responding to actions is just like ingesting an unknown, and jagged little pill.  
You know nothing of the repercussions, but as the grains of sand pile up, you soon will.  
Believe it or not you can get to your mental destination faster once you learn to sit still.  
So, respond by applying conscious thought to your will,
Ultimately creating a new canvas in which your creativity can spill.  

Perfection is an eyedea,
And forever happened yesterday.
We're the perceived seeds of Gaea,
Equal composers of this magnificent screenplay.

This plane gives us no manual, and no time to rehearse.  
I spent a long time in the lions den, only to find that I must tame me first.  
When I would sting everything, it poisoned my own insides.  
Held on too tight with my claws when I should've just paused, to gain some insight.  
Instinctively we have adopted the means of fight or flight.  
Just make sure actions taken will be those that lead away from spite.  

In your beating *****, the tempo will eventually cease.  
Listen to it's wisdom in order to unwind, release,
Be at peace and defeat the foolish person that sometimes controls your mind.  
It's in this moment that we take off the shades that have kept us blind.  
When your days grow into night, you alone can be the light that shines,
And reminds the world that there are things far more important.
Even measuring the probability of being alive leaves us more than fortunate.  

Warming yourself radiates across what can be known as a cold planet.  
Every single moment I believe, happens for a reason,
Even though it may not be as you planned it.  
A person's karma is what you're presented with, while yours is your response.  
Slowly we're intertwining and aligning; now let's raise a new-age renaissance!
It's up to us to detox ourselves of all of the mind's pollution.  
Close your eyes and ascend to the skies for the Consciousness Revolution.

I watched the water rise. Creeping down the muddy street. As if a divine force was attempting a stealthy act of insurrection. I didn't have the heart to fight it. Had I only known.

I watched Hell's Half Acre silently succumb to the whimsical (however so pleasantly devastating) path of Gaea. Through this empowering incident I felt redemption like I never had before.

I jumped down from the platform of the livestock pen to personally welcome the satisfying force of nature's purification. The water lashed out and grabbed my leg. At that moment my jubilate spirit spoiled to uncontaminated terror. It was not a redemptive Spirit winding its way through the rail tracks but the serpent Lucifer. Had I only known.

And so in the West Bottoms Tavern I found myself under the ***** shoe of The Machine. A wayward phantom rising from our precarious Kansas River. It drifts through the sweet Midwest like the coal black locomotive smoke that paints a suffocating thick haze above the Stockyards.

A welcome slate of provision. A shelter covering us from the racial tension and poverty smothering the outside world. To those in the Bottoms with unruly desires, a saviour. To those at City Hall with loose morals, the messiah.

And it was at 1908, I nervously pulled the covers over my vulnerable body and sealed Satan's foul kiss with a diabolical red scrawl. We skipped hand in hand through the freshly paved streets of our "wide open" town. I always tried my best to look the other way but I knew full well that I travelled with a gang of thieves.

Nonetheless, everyone votes in our town. A brutal party whip keeps the Jackson County Democrats in line and "Charlie the ***" prevents any Rabbits from multiplying.

But I've been working from within the belly of a "whale" for years and I fear we've now run out of ocean. Our arranged marriage has robbed my capacity for faithful navigation. I'm seeking a radical divorce from The Beast, the cost has become inconsequential to me.

So I found genuine redemption. Finally. I closed the driver side door to my sedan and walked out to the edge of the bridge. The water below seemed whimsical (and so pleasantly devastating) in nature, much the same as it had 36 years ago. I pinned this note to the window, and with a Ready-Mixed Concrete block tied around my waist I watched the water rise.

Home.
Three.
Two.
One.
Ignition;
We ascend.
Faster now;
Ground control:
Are you there?
Systems functional.
Slip past gravity,
Escape velocity;
Break Gaea's bonds.
Fuel tanks go.
One.
Two.
Past Luna,
Towards Zeus.
Aphrodite's horizon.
Sol's pull,
Too close,
My wings burn.
Faster now;
Cronos looms;
Rings shimmering.
Faster still.
To Caelus,
Beyond the sky.
To Poseidon,
Past sea's shore.
With Hermes,
The gates of Hades.
Edge of home,
Losing touch.
No longer domestic.
Three.
Two.
One.
Gone.

The yucca plant from my mother’s garden sits
unattended and on the verge of death next to her
eldest rose bush, now wildly overgrown and lightly
blushing in the cosset of the midmourning sun.  Its
withered rosettes droop down to its bed of maroon-stained stones
in crisp, harum-scarum patterns as if the plant is spending its life
like currency trying to touch its toes.  I oftentimes
find myself wondering if the reason behind this
slow rotting of mother dearest’s garden is hidden within her
five-year absence.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say
her nursery missed the d
                                              i
               ­                                  g
                                                     g
                                                        i
     ­                                                       n
        ­                                                        g
of her weathered hands.

She was the biosphere of my world; I suppose that
it only makes sense for the earth to match my thirst.  We
sit side by side, that yucca plant and I, as we struggle to
nod our heads towards daylight while we rise on
the side of the house that is more or less
cloaked in shadow; the side that she would sunbathe
on during scorching late afternoons.  Perhaps without her
body giving shelter, all her garden is doomed to
atrophy like muscle in the sunlight.

I find irony in the way that my mother’s favored plant
was the “ghost in the graveyard;” a perverted parallel
to the game that she never wanted us to play.  I think it to be
sort of sardonic that her pride swallowed the possibility of
a cure being found within that ****** plant’s roots. She,
a third generation American girl,
had blood as muddled as the mud
that buried that yucca’s heart.
The boundary line between Mother and
nature coalesces into one:
                                               Gaea
                                               six feet under
                                               melting into soil
                                               I hope she becomes seawater.

your skyscrapers are just overgrown hairs
gaea has neglected to shave.

Like morning dew set like a duvet over the frail grass

mist laying thick but yet frail and thin like glass


stars still glooming on Gaea's black arch far above

pines resting deep until dawn calm thereof


the silence only broken by a mourning dove

not breaking, being of the serenity one of


only at times as these I can feel at bay

my own doubts can not even make me sway


for once I feel whole...

Oh, to sail upon the sea.
To brave that which so scares me,
To leave land and life behind,
To sever those ties that bind.

To experiance all those amazing places that I so want to SEE!
That will be something that will forever impact me.
But oh,
Can it happen?
I don't know!

I'm really sick in my body,
Even though I have never said,
It is true that at times I,
Who so loves life,
And beauty.
Have wished to be dead.

Sometimes it is hard to continue on,
But I CAN be strong.

Because I want to experiance those places,
To see,
The world,
The tropics,
Those places,
That make me hope and dream,
The sea and its steams,
There is so much to see!

Dear God,
My lord,
heal me,
Let me be healthy,
So that I can live my dreams,
And photograph,
And experiance,
All that is in my heart,
All that is me.

I want to feel hot white sand beneath my feat,
To stand underneath the Saharan sun,
to feel that great heat,
To Stand upon Rapau Nui,  
To FEEL that island beat,
I want to gaze upon the pyramids,
That are ages old,
To gaze upon greek statues of Zeus,
Marble and Gold.
To see forests,
Forever untouched by man,
To visit places,
Unique upon all the lands.

Seattle is my home,
From Father Mountains,
And Mother sea,
But I want to see those places that I always dream of.
Lord,
God,
Let me be free,
Let me healthy.

Or,
To hell with that,
Let me,
Be,
Tenacious enough,
To do what I dream of,
Anyway,
Good God,
Just let my spirit soar,
Let me see,
Let me Photograph,
Just,
LET ME BE FREE,
Just let me open my eyes to beauty,
and let me see.
(with camera in hand)
Long I stand,
Healthy or not,
Let it be known,
Life's,
God's,
Gaea's,
Great beauty,
I have sought.

Gone on too long,
This poem has rambled.
Dear lord,
Let me,
See.  

At the end of my days,
Be it months or years,
Let me see those mountains,
Seas,
Shores and streams,
Let me see those places,
that constantly show up,
That shine through my dreams.

Let me see,
With camera in hand.
Sick or healthy.
Every part of me,
Will do my damndest,
to fight,
To take pictures,
and to stand,

Upon those shores,
sands and streams,
that beckon me,
through my dreams.