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.

Every breath an altar
To what remains unsaid

Each tear
A cathedral

We are  
stillness  
Before water break
Tenthousand ripples,  
Silent calling
Of midnight crane,  
And light  
Soft
Dancer
on the air
On the surface tension balance of
all things unknown.  

A warm wind  
Carrying the scent  
Of forgotten old summers,  
Cut through me.  

Tears
Here,  
Where the river bends  
And time and your pale thighs surrender,  
We are nothing but  
Two lines  
Crossed in a hidden current,  
Lost somewhere inside
the moon’s  
Secret arc

In brief: scalpel words so cheap
Misanthropic cold compress
Jaded and hard in denial
Heavely Medicated without
Prescription

Mute Pain
Guilt soaked peace
Once more
At least
On this rock
I’ve built my church
And drunk of this poisoned cup
Enough

Salted sigh the spike
Do not resuscitate
For the bones of it
Are a pistol cool pressed
To a temple
Derelict  

Sleep without rest
Please, one more breath
Vein or scar
Blood loss
And the cost:
Everything

Blackened pixel
The negative point
Of suicidal fire
Running
blind and barefoot
Each breath revolts
Subtly
entirely

full exchange /
This
reverse transmitter-
moment
Meets mind
with
Annihilating momentum

Every step fires
A catalyst transfer
Charged with absolute precision
Power throttles me

I can never stop
I can never look back
This is what I am now
Now this is what I am

Her
Deer track wet
Her Rip tides  
And the thickness of my predation taste
I am alone mere
Water vapor
suspended in the empty medium
A mirage
Dining with lepers and ******
The brain here has to settle for the image
stored away somewhere in the synaptic catacombs
But pulling up this her scintillating portrait seems to please it no end
The self perpetuating mechanism
Fragments clasp and cling together with fragment
Peeling away
Mingled blood and saltwater
deep in the caverns
- I -
hover between the synaptic gaps
languishing
Among the sharp fragments of thought
hoping to string a few together and escape through a lone slit of sunlight
Alone-I
Exalt  suffer  howl
Now Scalping the loneliness  
Of the clotted humid tropics
Come back
Come in
Are your receiving?
Let me know if this message makes it
If it makes it through the razor wire
Through the melting dusk
Through the throngs of idtiotic
Military aged males
And lonely women
To
Hawkwise spiral up on the currents of your breath against my neck
Up The hot current of your breath against my chest  
in through and out this entire breathing sylvan aloneness
To lose itself awhile in the cirrus  
- [ ] Or fall down somewhere to drown in within kudzu choked deeps
- [ ] Yet

Somewhere in the vast-nothing-nowhere-universe

her kitchen light is still glowing

I have seen her shoulder **** and warm in
clean sunset light
Swimming in the rolling ocean of her exhale
Now I know I will live forever

Do you misunderstand me?
Oh well
I understand you quite well
and with deep reverence

I am not interested in speaking to you
I do not converse with masks
Cowards

I am speaking to the body
To the animal-
Consciousness
To Nothing-In-Between
You:

Yes you,
Old
timeless-newborn

Don’t play coy with me, Lover

undercurrent

True One


Mystery.

Born and bred of the
Old Blood,
into this turgid violent current  

Though I wear the mask of deep survival,
I cannot help but see through the eyes of the Ancients  

wound-licker,
Soul-less,
The frayed anti-redeemer of all trivial anomalies.
Threaded and tangled in itself at the roots,
A lone ember in the belly of night.

hot cognitions—
Structure and unstructure,
A Self-organizing system misfiring
at its most critical boundary

All fight and no dog,
Snatching hard against a broken chain,
teeth and needle
sinking ever deeper into dark
Into stillness.

The hand of Fire reaches out,
And the hand of Shadow reaches in kind

I am
Is the river that i cannot cross
Yet I am that shore,
I am the lone current,
Carver and carved,
The obstinate raging flow

Blurred colors at a boundless edge named
Vision

dissolute alone in the placid twilight
Yet somehow
the scarlet thread of passion
weaves on
through the hills, along forgotten highways, fields
grocery stores, storms,
Into the very depths of a dying sun
Into those eyes  

Between furnace and night,
Napescent and breath
Lingers in the deep
A soft shadow fallen
On the sharpest edges

rhythm,
pulse
The forgottenlovesong

A clasp of whispered promises
Rolls down the unlit steps into the outside dark and is gone forever

Between the hammer and the anvil,
I am white hot
Hay-colored and molten,
Dripping **** along the jagged edges
Of steel night highways.

In agony, in search,
I trace the valleys' shadowed thighs,
Run my fingers through all creeks, all rivers,
Remembering the forgotten taste of her,
Her sigh within all trees, in the grasses.
At night, under stars,
Weaving in and out of dreams, Far from the woodsmoke and fire
Dying in an ocean of hemlocks and ash.

Awake-dreamer-Emptiness itself seeking
Over fields, stone barns, abandoned churches,
For the face that holds everything.
The compass of the universe spins
Around her navel, her cheekbones, her eyes

I am pulled inexorably,
Ever tighter toward that center.
We dance on a fine silk brocade—
There are cities, trees, stars—
And suddenly, we fall through.


From the Wilderness,
Into the gaping dark dazzle of infinity.
Now, I speak only what can be spoken with all Being—
A reflected balance on the edge of the mirror,
The knife-blade plunge of honey-colored sunsets
Somewhere in the galaxy between her ribs,
The flame to its moth.

Separated from the tribe,
But noble and clean,
The eyeless monad,
Drifts on the scarlet sea of Dreams.

One reflective artifact,
Snagged within the reflection
of all reflections.
The dancing construct  
within a dancing construct ,
The invisible wind weaving through all branches—
Formless and egotistical ,
Both branches of one root:
Zero.

Atavistic emotions,
Sensate filigree
Minus continuity
petals on a breeze,
That disturb the surface for an instant
And vanish

This self that awakens
Has never known sleep

Honing in on
The Primary Doubt,
The deft cogito-scalpel of thought,
Lances all assumption
Beliefs, abstractions
Laying bear this unspeakable truth:

Listen-

The eternal law of stillness,
Holds all forests and hills in its silent embrace.
The gentle touch of it
Ripples in all rivers and mountains.

Far from the rusted gates and crumbling walls of the mind,
There is a place—
Where every leaf and stone,
Are burnt up in the blood-soul-fire
The perfect Will to Silence

Here, in the solitude-communion of sky and soil,
All language falls away,
And from this silence,
The stream is clear—
Pristine and bright,
Nurturing all that lives.

Lifeblood

Current

Channel

Enzyme

Tat tvam asi

Absent any and all calculations,

On the glass-clear viridian seashore,

The ego wave function collapses into

Humidity and rain—

Filled to spilling at the brim with summer thunder.
Rain-

The raw taste of it,

sultry, thick velvet touch to myskin,

Echoes the fresh heat of her riflehot gaze,

and sears into eternity itself
the image
Of her cool, pale naked radiant body against me.

If you would seek me,

Find me here—

Among the eddying vastness of  _

Between the weathered, marble pillars,

Amidst the silent spaces
Of the synaptic web.

Intertwined with

The razored open wound 

Of the event horizon,

Scarlet in its dying rhythmic pulse.

Smooth, in the subtropic lush

Mist, spray, and salt drunk air
 mingle with bloodshot sky.
I Breathe.

Gently

Gentle enough to shatter

The skulls of all the Buddhas

With the nine-pound-hammer of the instant:
Of

Wind,

Wave,

Pine,

Insect,
Foam,

Corona
Silence.
­­
My wiring stripped clean

Of all psychotechnology.

Emptiness now hangs heavy
on the ancient blackened hook

Of ivory starlight.

Within that deepening indigo dusk

Fingerprint smudged in charcoal gloom-
This feral,
Omnicentric / six-sense animal 
Dreaming-awake
Above and within Chronos' labyrinth.
Recollects effortlessly the
Seven billion years lived

On the delicate edge of a moth’s wing,

That I might better savor the weight, and crush of moonlight.

Eons in their trillions spent
As the color green,

Meditating through blotted out eons
On each exquisite shade of decay.

So simply remembered,

Are the lifetimes,
& cycles of lifetimes spent
As softness—

Now a lone petal breaks free of the bloom,

Falling,

Swimming,

Diving,

Dancing,

In ecstasy,

Arcing In flawless helix -

Absent any and all calculation.

With Grays and Blues
Awake before the grayscale
Is abolished by morning sun
She leans naked in the doorway
Watching snow slip
In the silence before birdsong
walking crooked fence lines
The steam of horse nostrils
fare to kiss her
As the dogs dance behind
snow still now on the hillside
Fireside
She reads alone
Laughing spilled wine
words she drinks
Content to leave
The kitchen light on
curled again in
Linen sheets and quilt
cool skin
She swims
In dreams
Of gray and blue