I find myself again
performing the ritual of changes
at the clotting edge of sunset,
where shadows slip silent through reeds
and brackish waters, thick with primordial mist.

The sky blazes indigo,
fades to ochre,
to umber—
and then to that dreamless, colorless hue
nightfall stretches across the horizon,
serene as a young god in asana.

A delta of sandhill cranes rises overhead,
their bugling, sharp, piercing the rugged dusk—
autumnal, deep,
woven from ten thousand shades of mauve, gunmetal, plum.

One older bird lingers behind the flock,
his scarlet brow an open wound
glimmering against the vermilion cut of sky.
He glides, unhurried, in perfect silence.

Listening to their ragged calls,
I feel my body dissolve into the trembling stillness,
brilliant, vast,
time herself, exhales.

My face reflected
in her scratched sunglasses.
Her crooked teeth,
floral scent tattooed
on my brain stem,
wrestling with the ripe
blush
pink skin stretched
over a naked clavicle.

I am calm
as she unspools,
   inching
     ever
       closer
through sun-warmed grasses,
asking—

Barefoot & electric,
ponytail tight,
blue eyes pinned to
Saffron lips tracing circuits,
playing damage control
with my structure-fire wiring.

She climbs naked through
My razor wired nervous system.
A deep soul cavern spark—
two embers flaring,
momentary,
through the darkened
dazzle,
leaping
Through the cinders
blooming in our ribcages.

I still feel like a boy sometimes,  
tempted to roll out  
toward the edge of things,  
where the Earth falls away  
into silence,  
and the warm dark swallows me whole.

I lie here,  
stillness itself,  
lost in the scent-memory  
of my mother’s dying breath.

I am there, fully—  
with her agonal breathing,  
cold pale limbs,  
and I am outside,  
in the palm’s slow sway  
under the warm subtropic night,  
undifferentiated.

With her final burgundy heartbeats  
fading,  
I am singing  
in the last chorus  
of ten thousand cicadas.

Drenched horse sweat kerosene spill
Hands splintered & suntanned
Watching cobalt blue dragonfly
Land on barbed wire
Carefully

This next instant is creating you,
You—
The core of the naked core,
The primal Verb of existence.

This very moment—
You are the screaming newborn,
Torn from the warm placenta of certainty,
Into the raw, bloodfeast of instinct
Yet intuitive and sage like beneath the
Turgid surface

I know you deserve better,
We all do.
We deserve more than
The old midwife’s cold clutch—
But here you are.

And still, you shimmer,
You are catching fire.
I can smell it on you,
I see it deep within your star-flecked eyes.


Allow me to show you.
Remember how
You are weightless—
Even a raindrop could outweigh you,
You are free—
No-thing-ness colliding with a scintillating glare,
A misplaced sunbeam
Broken through the deep jungle canopy  
Shimmering
Shimmering, naked,
Sacredness itself,
Out for a skinless breathless
dance in the rain.

And that—
That must be enough.

Before reading the poem I would like to note that this and most of my letters are meant to be read aloud as in a spoken word format.

Unfortunately this, our online format dilutes much of the raw force and energy of the words and the presentation, also I would temper this piece with this short excerpt by the mystic poet and Sufi master Rumi:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.” Enjoy.




Initiate, embodied—
Flesh-bound,
I am sheer transience.
A fatherless, sun-draped god,
An apple, fallen not far
From the old knotted roots.

Blank,
The disintegrate ego
Death grasp
On the Emergent
Now Condensed everywhere,
Yet untainted,
Yet Rare, authentic & self-contained,
The firstborn, unyielding, no-one.

The ragesmile cracks my lips and
Spins loosely in the countercurrent of my inner compass.

Ah, Passion—
Here you are again
On the tip of my tongue.
I remember well your taste—
Your metallic, rusted bloodstreamedge
Sharpened by long solitude,
Ferocity woven tightly with
Pristine attention.

My philosophical system
My metaphysical structure:
raindrops trickling from dying leaves.

My song
Is that of a mouthless ghost lost
In the temple complex of a ruthless intellect.

A sci-fi Christ,
Without home,
Without birthplace,
Without rest—
Look at me:
A lone, faceless dream.

I conform to no system,
Cannot.
A nihilist monk,
Spurred on by what cannot be named—
No frame of reference,
No reference to frame,
Wandering onward
Toward the never horizon.

A born deaf-mute ventriloquist,
Profane artisan,
Thrashing the poor narcissist at his own games—
I am that seductive emptiness whispering
LUST
Into each stringless puppet’s ear.

The unfiltered response,
The lone heathen mammal playing at the edge of The Deep Yearning
Struggling to break away
From the insubstantial.
Flirting with untamed transformation

Longing
dragged screaming ****** ******  into
Fleshbloodbonematter—
Torn in two by her scent-wet presence,
And the half-awake memory of her riflehot gaze.

How
Thunderous and resolute,
I stood,
Raw and naked beneath
The deep, blue-choked sunset dusk,
Beneath neon’s glow—
Sharp and lean against the coming gloom—
Just as it had once appeared
In my Kerouac dream.

I would have taken her in these arms then,
Tested her racing pulse against my  lips, tongue, canines
Had I known she was so close.