At Singing Hills*

Down upon the earth, boy,
brushing dirt from broken flints.
The woman, tall, in khaki pants,
slowly stands and squints.

Down upon the earth with
pockets full of stones.

A hundred yards across the land
where knife-grass spears the sand
a bullsnake sleeps in sunlight.

Speak of arrowheads and Utah,
you,
with dignified excitement;
speak of ostrich eggs!

You and I, she'd say,
Galapagos!
Where armored turtles
heave their bulks across the land.

Here Mother Earth lies naked
to her bones.
Flint bones,
in sun as white as lamplight.

With your Thermos cup in hand
talk of arrowheads again—
or Galapagos—
Where giant turtles rule the land!

What mighty importance
rests so fat on the shoulders of you

that i'm refused
the right to lay love where I want it grown?

Bonds can loosen
Loads you've carried furthest can be shared

I know Trust is earned
but it's Earnest too, when I demonstrate it purely,

Laying all my bones
at all your doors as promises and gifts

I'll even renew - if you want -
That honest vow to remember all your birthdays

to Topple on your soul
If you need the weight of someone not you.

Can we be side by side
In a blurred rush towards the singularity?

or Am I the ***
you lead to water - am I the water itself?

Don't let me place-hold
or keep the seat warm for overdue truths

There's no need
to balance each other's acts of self sabotage

Or to pretend
Either of us is any more than what we are

We both understand
That grace is to us just brightly coloured feathers.

Please let us be safe
Together, in that disappointing mess

And let me work
on Those snags of control and owning and having

Because I don't remember
how you became confection behind a window

What made me
Treat you as the best since...sliced boys

but My diet did change
I didn't want to spoil you for lesser bread

and Now a hunger
and rot collide in the vacant spaces you're yielding.

Is it an upset
to cry at your objection to my care

Or when I kick
and scream at the labels you stick to me

When you call me
callous Hysterical and paranoid to preoccupation

Incurring open fire
and pointed barbs about your ***** Mother

Who ruined you for women, love
You, who will only ever be half aware of this and that.

I'll go willingly though
on display, to be mocked in silent penance

For What else next
but to try to hold you to me

To try to sit as still
As time and light do for me when you move in my direction

and Be as hard
as your endorsement makes me.

But for all the noise
Of our collapsing walls and siege machinery

The poison
that may never fully be drawn.

You are here.
I am here.
What else are we gonna do.

Moths float out from behind
an opened, warped door.
I push my face into your clothes,
hung heavy like pearls
in an antique shop.
Stale and familiar,
the scent follows me
like a lost little bee.
It buzzes even after I leave.

Hopscotch down the hallway
to find dead crickets
in the bathtub.
Scuffed wallpaper camouflages
a cobweb. Metallic vines
curve around bursts of petals.
I’m certain you chose this pattern,
but I don't know.

Memories are few.
I fill in the holes with honey
and arrowheads.
Indian feathers and
an old brooch.
Piles of pie.
Did you love to bake pie?

Games of bridge
on that old, scratched table top
with a musty deck of Bicycle cards.
Each deck a photo album
of your face.

Your raisined face.
I remember holding it in my hands.
“This aint a walk for old womans.”
And out the door I go.
Empty handed and independent.

What a rash of time we've wasted.
Drunken, displaced it all.
The hiking trails up solemn, summer
ridge lines. Jagged arrowheads lifted
out toward the sky and we feel gifted.

A crack in the rock a millennia old.
The dangers of going it alone;
the spy who came in from the cold.

Two open throated eulogies and scatter her ash.
Two years of time spent together, now memorized pash.

Sifting through sight lines of our mediocre city streets.
Sweating up the summertime together-alone,
and getting twisted as we jam to louder growing beats.

We took our hands and divined a place on the timeline.
Steady rocking for two revolutions until
she set over the horizon beyond the sunshine.
Look for her and see her in every which place.
It's never her figure and never her face, but
shower curtain blurs and the curls in hair of other girls.
She exists as every brunette that I'll never forget.
Not that I'd want it.

They say, "She loved you. That much is clear."
What a romantic gesture to abandon me here.

If you can read this from your heavenly repose. My heart has grown fonder and still it grows. I'm sure you can see me,
the struggle of having to be anything at all.
Your number is somebody else's now. There's nobody to call.
Summertime gives way to Autumn,
I'm sorry if you hurt having to see what I do now.
The glyphs in my mountain roots.
My rotting bark and lost spark.
My constant stops and false starts.
My swelling, my welts, the harm I cause.
You're not to be blamed, darling.
Not a single word from my tongue nor do I entertain
the thought of others who wish you disdain.
I've lost a bit of myself in the guilt and the shame.
Truth be told, I'm not sure I'll recover and be the same.
A jilt is one thing, a turn down is fine.
But I lost who told me she was mine.
I should've doted more and been more attentive.
You fell in love with me because I was romantic.
So where did I fail you and how can I improve?
I just want to make you happy,
I just want to show you.
There was no need to quit the way that you did.
We could have taken a break,
you could have hibernated, hid.
But it's fine you chose the way you did.
Now you're the punchline of my dark jokes.
"Oh, I'm sorry, no, I only kid."
Repeating myself like I've forgotten what I even said.
Loving is hard when you've never felt it.
But it's harder than that when you feel it and lost it like I did.
Do you think you can forgive me?
I don't know if promises will be kept forever.

Southwestern Dis-United States of Memory*

Piñon smoke and sagebrush, voice of New Mexico night driving into an Arizona dawn rising over dreaming pueblos, low-ridden plazas, kivas and ruined cities’ rubble traced and highlighted by sunlight, Anglo angling into Aztec toward Zuni over arid zones… A to Z to El Dorado; a voice covers the high hills with a dusting of snow—every word hangs in the notes of the song: music to fall apart to, breakdown to, hurling the soul  into the bottomless well of psychotic nostalgia: *música de cavanga, falling into the depths. Melody pushing to the threshold of a bar and leaving you there with cash in your pocket and no ride home. The warmth inside beckons—you step across as the song fills, swells, intoxicates, then excavates the wall of the dam until it collapses. The fatal mistake: you read too much into the lyrics of shallow love songs. The deathwish beast of despair arises, the flooded plains dazzle your eyes, the Indian girl smiles on the rim of the grand canyon, the tattooed cholo pulls a knife in the trailer park, the dark waters under the bridge murmur and surge with regret; el río de Las Animas, Durango CO, Aztec calligraphy on the wall: Las Cruces, NM; Clifton, Morenci, Globe, AZ: stepped pyramids of copper tailings, gang-warred walls in fallen barrios covered in Chicano hieroglyphics, the ruined huts of shepherds and cowboys, pit-house dwellings’ flaked arrowheads and pottery fragments scattered forever in the coyote laugh of desert dusk. Crepuscular colors on the names of mountain ranges: Santa Catalina, Sangre de Cristo, Sandia, each one a separate sunset delirium—then you ride through the night to the city of palm trees and the orange-lined boulevards of Heaven.

The singer herself grew old but her YouTubes live forever.

The Queen of Absentia rises from royal
stool to watch the moon set sheathed
in broiling cloud as she skips whirling
adders that hiss in fat jagged coils, their
hollow blades jutting death in sprinkler
sprays of misting veils and her

head is hypethral; a Gaudi shipping
container soldered in reptile curves,
licked by arrowheads of falcate flame
as she rounds its laughing corners;
an adderaled lab rat, eyes black funnels
drinking electrodes pulsing crimson and
the stars are crackling in the pan as she    

sees planets torn shrieking down Hell’s hungry
plughole as fallen Gods divide by zero
and the clock’s skittering claws scratch
prophecies of consequence of poorly
sewn seams, but she smiles like a risen
crocodile and says,
    
‘you’re just jealous cos the
             voices only talk to me.’

And again she dives as unwanted
advice gibbers up out snapping drains,
and power points shoot sharp blue spears
lighting substrates of ancient horror, inchoate
but fattening before her eyes as she

sits, wrapped in ghosts, guarding her
ochre tea in its chalice of steaming bone,
trying to sell herself a ticket to
tomorrow’s sunrise, staring at thunderheads
bunching up satin over sodden ninjas sprouting
cardboard hair, slicing down legions of
roaring pearl as death hunts hollow-eyed below.

Her Majesty holds court, amid the percussion of
steel and plate, a matador to shadows
that clasp their hands and dance around, as
clouds hammer rain to the ground.

any ground 18 stood on crumbled as all once-great nations do.
the flame of hope that had kept the lights on
turned and burned down the wooden roofs,
while the archers left arrowheads in flesh.
lakes of insurmountable grief covered the ruins of who she once was.
in moments of cruelty, she could feel the bottom of the waters,
could feel the glory of the old self.
the wickedness was that she did not possess the strength to lift it up again, could not resurface glimmering gems.
left without sight and taste, doomed to the brush of fingertips.

I always thought one day I’d write something worth reading
So far, just lines and lines, used up catchphrases
I slumber in the pine needles and breathe in the scent of cut
Juniper
Bathe in the shadow of sundials as the day fades, turns smiles to
moonlit slumber
In the green grass among the dead leaves I lay my head and listen to
leaves changing color
On the cold sand I listen to high tide turn to low, the rolling of the rocks and the
breaking waves of foam
The birds in the trees sing of bamboo forests in her backyard, blue room where she
collected rocks and lucky charms
Books with pages torn out, arrowheads she found in the field, a feather in
her hair
Pale blue eyes which reflected my dullness, reading Camus by the door
She used to read to me, when the sun was sinking and my head was spinning from the
last cigarette
And hold me like a child, hold me with my eyes shut and my lungs screaming to speak one
simple phrase
To grab the pen, to open my eyes and speak symbols onto the page, make my ballpoint
sing
To read a word worth reading, to write a line worth writing, this is my desire

There is no peace at all for the wicked.

Stinging, ruthless words that pierce through mind and heart
Swiftly, precisely, from lips of clay depart
Arrowheads dipped in green poison find their way
To an unwary target, without delay.

There is no peace at all for the wicked.

The tongue is a sinister, crushing weapon
Who dares resurrect one fatally bludgeoned?
“He deserves my verdict!” Rage seethes in defense.
“He smashed my fortress with the least reverence.”

He is without excuse.

Yet the comely victim-prince says, “Follow me…”
He with the sad, compelling eyes
And nail-scarred hands offered gently, steadily
To a soul vanquished by frantic, chaotic “I”

He whose dazzling raiments from the throne hang
unused
Willfully submits to slight, beating, abuse
As leather sandals cushion dusty, wounded feet
He weeps; Fallen creatures smite head and side–they bleed.

Still the comely victim-prince says, “Follow me…”
Now, therefore, beyond excuse,

Man is guilty.

near the surface,
just beneath the sounds of our feet
among the bones, are arrowheads
maybe a spent cartridge from the bluecoats
who brought a strange thunder,
disturbing the a cappella birdsong,
deeper
hidden in eons of darkness, unperturbed,
until now, by the shallow, scratching efforts
of the creatures above,  
a black organic soup, remnants of plants
and animals who once breathed  
like we, we who now voraciously drill
through the tired but tenacious skin  
to reach a rich marrow, one we resurrect
to blaspheme in our mobile ovens
and scatter ashes
on a deaf and dying rock  

Post Script:
The earth never forgets.
Whatever we do to ****** it is recorded, often in ways undecipherable to man, but etched  permanently somehow, somewhere.
Does the earth seek revenge?
Or is it retribution, or a reckoning?
Anything that has the power to recall every act in infinite detail and in perpetuity has the potential to respond.
Maybe a propensity to respond?  
Is the earth an angry god?
I do not know, but
the earth never forgets.

Are you not what i always wanted ?
if so, i am thankless and crib death mysterious.
i am ****** and clarity
if you are not to be
what's mine.

you are confounding compounded. a rough in the smooth crime.
a jinx in my saving grace... and a loon.

if it be so, that we cannot connect
then let me set my sparrows to arrowheads
and fell the beasties of my wayward
skylarking -
so they may know a noble death in mid-flight
where the downward
and the Midnight are -
eyes, still chirping absurd love
at your dissonance
with cold
blessings.

but give me this.

keep my hands in your robbery.
intertwine my fingers to lay prints
on whatever you stole from god.
let me share the fall
and the fault
so that we may yet share
a single living
Sting.

elsewise,
the ruin and the peck
is only your wound
chirping
and my song is mute
as a victim
in a flock
of ill.

or a grain of hope
in a scarecrow's
eye.

The flames of the furnace (well-travelled by wind
slowly glazing the rags of gray women chagrined
at the sight of a hair fleeing tresses now thinned)
sometimes billow like waves flooding naves through the night,
when the lightning peeks in where the tension hangs tight
while the lanterns, alarmed, appear fulgent with fright.

Having lost both his hands, and now dancing for dimes,
Captain Hook haunts the alleyway's rivers of rhymes,
sometimes singing or prancing to mimic the mimes
with white faces contorted to pillars of pain,
as the ringmaster murmurs “we're all the insane”
and the inmates dunk donuts in droplets of rain.

With their hammers in hand, in their plum pinafores,
Satan's soldiers of fortune wield powers of Thor's
leaving blood on bent bodies, the tombstones of wars
lining highways and byways  with manna and gold
for the mastermind movers, survivors consoled
with some pie in Valhalla (or so they've been told).

Above boulevards, battered with batches of bricks,
flys the Duchess of Dawdle on waxed candlesticks;
while she watches, debauches, her ****** tricks
as he talks (on their walks in the summer-day parks
where a parrot kneels praying, a parakeet barks)
’bout the buffed brazen beaks of the latter-day larks.

Hoary goblins glow gruesome, they leap from the loft
to the hard-hearted rues, shedding tears that they've quaffed
through the night of the dead as the clarinets coughed
and the keepers kept watch so that no one escaped
dingy dungeons where priests and their puppets hide caped
behind walls lined with tulips and justice hung draped.

In the Garden of Eaten, where apples once grew,
lie the bones, somewhat blanched, from the last barbecue
and the snakes strut like storks down a lost avenue
along tracks  like the cracks on the mask of the moon
all alight with the shadows that seep down a dune
as the firefly crawls from a crimson cocoon.

Phantom trains travel tunnels (dispatched in all haste),
voiding tickets to nowhere, it seems such a waste
to see roadblocks with red lights at dead ends misplaced
at the base of the bowels of the bottomless pit
where reflections of life seem so ****** counterfeit
from the back of the eyes of the blind hypocrite.

Lady cockroaches, camped in the Countesses' beds,
are commanding crusaders to fit arrowheads
to the ends of burnt bridges suspended by threads
from frayed thongs of diminutive bald balladeers
taunting Cerby, the three-headed dog, serving beers
to the pagan disciples of bold puppeteers.

The oceans lay barren, the garbage dumps filling
with fracking and cracking and lead water spilling,
for milling and drilling are thrilling but killing
the birds and the beasts and the tea leaves, soon falling,
yet gurus roast chestnuts but can't heed their calling
while mauling and crawling on knees while they're brawling.

Unshorn sheep in the meadow are led to the bay
to be brainwashed and fleeced, trusting donkeys that bray
of the virtues of demons that haunt yesterday,
while the vultures deflower the turtle dove lanes
where the blood trickles up and the cruel crimson stains
Easter eggshells and feathers – that’s all that remains.

One eyed bees pilot lines through electrical storms
and blind hornets hum hymns when they're swirling in swarms
while the rest are repressed as the blue marble warms
(regent Queens losing sight that the end has begun)
and for eyes of the ewes, veils of wool have been spun  
and the wasps fly their flags from the **** of a gun.

Seven trumpets (attempting to echo the horns
of the Siamese goats and the three Unicorns
giving birth to the mirth in the temple of thorns)
sound the bugles of sorrow inside of the sea
of crazed lies of the wormwood afloat like a pea
in a pod of dark dolphins that can't disagree.

Often bellowed by barkers, to crowds with no faces,
are words (in their aftermath, leaving no traces)
of picnics and parties in limbo-like places
on paths to perdition where pundits are preaching
and sirens belch bullets while pirates prowl, breaching
the shadow's barbed branches, with whistles blown, screeching.

They're dissecting dissenters that dare to annoy
and then trample with jackboots sent in to destroy,
until taming the toes of the last Gypsy boy
who gets caught in the craw of their cold catacomb
with no rescue by running nor staying at home,
and no freedom to breathe, only rough roads to roam.

December 18th, 2018
I've been running down this
Snow-covered road
For fourteen miles
With arrowheads
Pierced through
The bridges of my feet

Extremities turning blue, then black
You can't turn back now, face it-
"Twelve inches overnight", they said
We reap what we sow, echoing...

A whisper ran beside me
Running off the road - into the woods
I followed-
Until we reached the lake

Frozen almost to the center
I laid down, began making snow angels
Looking up at old light and dancing trees
I hope the ice cracks reach me-
Before they do

And ‘panic’ doesn't nearly describe:
Pure oxygen turning sour in lungs,
Meals threatening a return from the stomach,
Twitchy fingers and wobbly legs,
Soreness of a tense body,
Laughs-turned-sobs,
Eyes adorned with purple rings,
A destructive adrenaline that welcomes blood.

The red bag has been replaced (just as I was).
No longer do my weapons sit alongside your arrowheads of safety and legitimate love.
A black casket is their new home, shiny and perfectly angled.
It hides in the farthest reaches of a drawer,
beckoning my hand to let the metal topple out of its dark casing.
Three generations of proving that I’m alive,
that I’m capable of feeling something other than
the feet of someone on top of me or the sting of words meant to be innocent.

And yes, I am stronger than I once was.
But I’m stronger in a different way, in a different sense of the word.
Yes, I am weaker in spirit and weaker in a way that makes
daily thoughts into nightmares.
But I am stronger in body.
I am ready for the war this time, and I swear to Orion that I won’t let
my lack of muscle mass or the words ‘replaced’ and ‘forgotten’
etched across my thighs and hip bones hold me back from fighting.
I will throw punches until my arms lay limp and
I will kick until my feet are bleeding and my toes are broken.

I used to keep a bell jar
full of old fine fishing line
arrowheads, gold coins
and stuff not easy to find

like cherry cured shine from
my mountains of Tennessee

buried in a lunch bucket
twelve paces from the coop
waiting for the moon
who took his own sweet time

slower than a long night
listening to the same hoot
of the same old hoot owl
in the same old dying tree

knowing it was the end
of my days on the Creek
me, I could see it coming
like a dead star's light

from so long ago
I couldn’t possibly know
which old road I’d follow

so holler at me my
friends, my loves
from time to time
wherever you be

whenever your heart strings
are feeling a need
to tell this spirit of mine
your sorrows, your joys
or wishes for
better tomorrows

and I will from somewhere
be there with open arms
and ears and a heart

sewn tight with that jar
of invisible string
that binds our lives together
forever and longer than that
light from a dead star still
burning on shining so bright.

Sun rays roll down the green grass & ochre weeds
Yellow, bitter, flowers, litter the hillside
Long red rays turning pink as split figs
Orange as hot coals, blue as the ocean
Then the bustle of twilight, such noise
Streaking headlights fade into receding redness
Carrying their sound with them, down the road
Figures, sillouhetes, wander by me, quiet conversations
Wind stirs their outlines, rustles their clothing, their hair
Bringing me the scent of dust, of split juniper
Darkness descends, but it cannot ***** out street lights
Or the flourescent floodlights, glaring artifical brightness
Or the blinking red eyes of radio masts
I'll peddle back now, chased by headlights
Down black asphalt roads, black as the night
Radiated heat, gathered from this boiling day
Sweat pouring down my face, into my eyes
Breath tearing at my chest, blood racing through veins
I have to outrun the night, to make it on time
To that quiet destination, a little room on the second story
With a chair, a desk, a shelf full of unread books
A yellow notepad, a pen that doesn't work so well
Arrowheads and unshaped stones, a bullet on the dresser
My grandpas old knife, a symbol of the ****** Mary
Your charms that you carelessly left behind
A small tiled room with a shower to stand under
Watch it drain away, dirt & soap, all of it
A face stares back at me, changed, distorted
A reflection in the mirror, a reflection that was me

Skies stretch sparks to light the damp ground
And I watch, chuckling by the lambs
Lapping the waves that smack tastily at their feet
And bring in the harvest for the day.

The sun bows its head
And sea makes its sleep
For it to hide amongst the bubbles
Until the Night claps it awake.

Footprints stretch up the beach made
Of arrowheads and other cobbled things
You're there, you're there
Pulling me to your place.

Warm, shivering houses, of
Wooden overcoats and salty lashings
Made wind by fervent tides
Desperate to huddle in and hear stories

Of your uncle, your father, your brother's ruddy cheeks,
But you have eyes with me
And we lend them together to the fire
To hear of orcs, of brochs and angry kings, far away.

The howling streets meet no one,
And pirates prowl their decks to see
A glimpse of my island girl
As she holds my arm cased in wool

Blond hair crying to the floor.

For I am a story, you see, I know what I have when I have it
And salt, quiet lamp-lit salty living
Make ancient ages while keeping,
The mainland for themselves.

Good thing I have her,
So I can share in what she calls home
So I can lie in the lavender in Summer
And cry with the Winter rain when she's gone.

The delusional expectancy of arriving to a unified decision under a false, and somewhat mysterious banner leaves the tender footed Neanderthals to drawl and crawl towards their inevitable demise, at the hands of a lesser evil, catering to their cowardice, the ultimate usurper.
…

Barriers formed and forged in concrete molds left behind by a war mongering ancestry devoured by their ****** progeny.

An enemy approaches…

Throne rooms held in recessed hills, concealed in a shroud of fog, left off by the chilled steam stewing off yesteryears loss.

Heroes transported on expensive tapestry, in banners provoking deeds of old, and the memory of their meaning.

Hold in masses of collected honor.

Catapulted horrors break the line.

Strains of panic retreat in woeful singularity.

Fear infects the herd as arrowheads of cowardice break the chain-mail guard.

Women and children pushed behind a diseased king as he purges his principles in the face of death.

He seals the entrance in stone.

A son, known for his great misdeeds, and vast misfortunes takes step before his small family as the army approaches.

In a hallowed tomb as a mere boy, he heard the tune, uttered from the devil’s lips.

A summoning song.

Here he sings the treacherous tune as the sounds of heavy marching fill the halls.

The last barrier breaks.

Shrieks of terror erupt.

Demise is at hand.

Men lose their valor as they turn and flee, only to be met by a concrete reminder of their inevitable fatality.

The child’s voice grows demonic as the words begin to devour his soul.

There’s an odd presence in the room.

Death is prolonged…momentarily.

A void is opened.

The army begins to flee.

Victory is at hand.

Then the illusion of their invasion lifts, as soldiers, once more than visible, turn to ghosts, and finally fade from battle.

Cheers break out, only for a moment.

A hole opens in the center of the room, at first no larger than the size of a pin, but it expands outward at an alarming pace.

Guards scramble to funnel their people out of the breach.

An evil comes forth, once barred from the walls of this land.

It antagonizes the people with tales of its delusional sorcery.

Then thanks the young boy who brought it forth.

A world is soon devoured.

The end.

Worded arrowheads
are fastened to shafts.
They rain down on
our Love-fed ears.

Bowstring at ready
pulled back high-sky,
They strike down all
who lived this earth.

My soul, infringed,
asked, "How can this be,
with heart shut tight
from melancholy?"

Closed cold, a shield,
I thought could withstand
the force of a blow
guided not by your hand.

The force of a blow
guided not by your hand.
In time the sands
will salt our land.

Your words will crop
my sagging skin
and feed the ground
with hollow chest.

Death for the young
never-held as best,
but for this earth
a heart at rest.

But for this earth,
put Death to rest.
The price of youth,
pays for the best.

Three children brought
Onto earth
Three children did
He rear
Three children made
From His own genes
From stardust we appeared.

From the foundation
Of our lives
He sent us to school
Possessed of his intelligence
And HE was NOT a fool

Great aptitude for reading
This is how he taught
The books my father gave me
Produced much
Higher thought

We went to places
far & wide
Hawaii was like heaven!
We went to Montreal
For Expo '67

Various religions
We were to understand
We went to see the kivas
In the native lands

We went to search
For arrowheads
We looked for
various traces
Of native habitation
Appreciating other races

He tried to teach me math
Using the flashcards
But I was into writing
So he let me be a bard

He loved the
arts & sciences
He loved agriculture
He grew up
deprived of it
So he taught us culture

We took the piano
He helped me
make a start
Writing my own music
He encouraged my art!

I'll read him this poem
We will then discuss
How he has the  
GREATEST legacy

For my dad has *US!

One wears the wages of sin
As war's protecting bibs
Where arrowheads of flight
Cannot pierce the pump within

Taste the salt upon the sea
The sea where sins are drowned
Upon the hearts that sit on sleeves
The head of smiles we crown

Back across the cross we bear
Hear the pounding of the condemned
Perhaps we will never be more
Than the crown of thorns we wear

So the cherry tree has fallen
It's bark black with disease
Lime should cure the problem
I will be planting trees

What was the inspiration
for country ponds , for carefree
bodies of water nurturing native songs
Filling young hearts , blue mirrors with tall pine edges ,
carefree days 'neath cozy river birches
Dragonfly prancers and rock bass river dancers ,
sultry bullfrog diddies , red clay marsh , rolled up
britches , sacks of sandwiches , straw hats ,
cardinals , egrets , herons , chickadees and finches
Rain cooled July breezes , row upon row of knee high corn ,
blackberry , blueberry and dewberry thorns
Songs of the creek , of highland hayfield and crystal clear rivers
Tales of arrowheads , tomahawks and hawk feather quivers
The confluence of neighboring streams
The story of piedmont dreams

Such a simple synonym of a great yellow house

swaddled in the shadows on a flat patch in the backyard

a refuge resting of bric-a-brac and ornamental knickknacks

with a paint chipped porch that beamed once a brilliant white

a birdhouse filled with straw the previous owners left behind

a plywood room banished with no insulation and one lonely window

something of substance, with grainy walls to hold me up

a quiet place to talk to myself when the sun goes to sleep

where the imagination springs open deliciously

behind that old closed door that creaks

a cube where prayers share the stale air with the stillness of time

improvised shelving of old milk crates battered as gypsies

like migrating baggage nomadic through the years

that rainbow hammock hanging loose from the rafters

a husk to lift a weary back, a sheath to house the soul

a shaky legged easel from my love, nested into its very own corner

reflecting outward like a mirror so I might better see myself

the plastic man of gold  modestly retired above the window seal

the only trophy I ever felt I ever earned

an electric heater rattling its nonsense in the cold night air

amusing any shivering listener who cares to be warmed

A string of soft incandescent lights that dangle overhead

perfectly framing the faded native masks like vibrant yellow teeth

wilted candles scattered amongst the odds and ends

there wax bellies spattered on the floor to keep the paint drippings company

a mess of tousled brushes protruding from the dented silver can

wearing disheveled hairpieces to match their eccentric ways

the squatting antique box with its stitching and fat brass latches

enshrined as a tiny monument to the mantis and the moth

secrets scribbled on the dead parchment crammed into their tombs

journals that became maps on my journey to myself

icons harbored naive and coarse

to be plotted and stationed, rearranged and cherished

a cocoon that bursts from inside out

viscera stashed in a capsule to be kissed and romanced

the stacked canvases like a house of cards

leaning in tired on the supports of their brothers and sisters

the faces of reincarnation hanging on pushpins

those abstractions surreal in all their horrid geometry

the pirate ship, the aerosols

the old machine that holds the rotten gumballs

bolts and screws and arrowheads

a native tongue that enriches the enigma

not merely a physical escape of hoarded trinkets

fitted ad hoc with all the contrivances to tinker away the while

more abstractly a spiritual gathering of subdued memories

a space becoming itself a philosophy unraveling the details

For me we it
comes realizing later
that Chris Cornell is gone
same as Dad but different still
we have our Garden
of Sound with weeds sprouting against
the grim Cutter hoping
for a missed experienced

Maybe the refugee's trauma
have dried all the tears on
lonely crowded airfields
of a long ago Vietnam seeding
salt from a Grandmother, mother,
father, aunts and uncles,
paladins in our child eye dry
because of the stampeding Thestrals
we shouldn't see

And now almost 50 we know
better the slings and arrowheads
of fortune the calcifying currency
souls make by roughing the round edges
of damning tears scattered like petals
over littered cigarettes killing
us softly because they've metastasized
from intellectualized Lung ****
to a flowering carcinoma

We begin to touch from fingertips to flesh, that’s how we introduce ourselves. We’re naturally compelled to to feel each other’s energy.

My fingertips are encoded with my identity. They are imprinted with twist and turns, a blueprint of my chemistry.  

They extend beyond my reach. Grasping at life, taking in everything it returns. They may be burned while touching the flame or met with warm hands just the same.

My fingertips dance gracefully over goose-bumps and soft skin. They feel the rhythm of deep breaths and skipped heart beats that begin to beat again.

They palpate rough stones in cool river beds. They caress raw edges of ancient arrowheads.

My fingertips have healed broken hearts and past regrets. They mend sore feet and weak spines. They feel for the lone tear drops that are intertwined with high fives and laugh lines.

Like branches seeking light they reach out for love. Past tangible offerings seeking all the things that can’t be touched.

Taste
new words
to see
it through.


a pseudo
synaesthesia
grown easy
on the eyelet,
fits, apparently
awake

the derelict
convictions
say,
it cannot be
this much is all

The All, we are
to ever have
and less the time
to take

Seems aeons
since the badlands
let, their Agincourt
of arrowheads,

projecting from
the epicentred
tragedies
of Your


a softer
vector
than before

yet, pertinent,
as ever

Their
ambient
trajectories

descending
back to you

You were a girl and I won the privilege of watching you grow.
So darling, the porcelain; how trite a description for you.
But it made you smile, always. Even when I didn't put
any inflection in my tone.
It was enough for you that I said it, and only sometimes meant it.

It was Summer, if I remember of any proper, when we met;
or, rather, spoke, for the first time.
Then the Spring where I lost the last line of your beautiful mind.
And that willful fruit bloom from your high hanging branches.
You used to joke, "Don't steal my sap, but lick my wounds."

Arrowheads fletched from your leaves and flew unsoundly,
toward the open eyes of glimmer for those of whom you
allowed near. I caught each one and bled, and with my
oily fingers I drew wilderness and art on your bark.
Spring was meant for you to bloom, my darling.

Maybe you didn't hear, or know. You forgot things sometimes,
like to stretch your arms toward the sun and siphon goodness.
A gentle axe tap to remind you. To make you familiar with,
the pain of the care. The stone was heavy and often deflected.
It's Autumn now. Our favourite time of year. We never got to
make bouquets with your hair.

Winter is coming. You would hate that reference in a poem to you.
Novels are always better, "Except Kubrick!" we would say in unison,
and how you, this time, would always remind me of the night I said
something wittier than the rest of all my life. You cheered up a suicide
because you feared the same loss twice, as all old wounds heal sharply.

How did you do it? Give me laugh lines.
So deep they soak in water and are vibrant.
I don't blame you, all things in nature must wilt.
The markings of calendar, and I know when the rains
wash away the snow and leave blades of grass heavy
you will be there in support, lifting the tiny sprouts with a fingertip.

That they never felt before.

Spílaiaus, noticing that Vernarth felt unprotected on the iridescent Nimbus, greeted Zefian; he was in the Phlegrean Fields reliving the Sibylline Treatises of the Pytia Cumea, when the last death rattle of the Universe began to beat with force Zefian sent from his Thracian Gold Quiver right next to where the Sibylline Treatises could materialize again by withdrawing the Arrow of the Vóreios where it began to protrude from the Doric stylobats of the Megaron, everything was comparable to the Parnassus from which Leto; Apollo's mother would grant them Vernarth's Megaronic Songs, making up for her withdrawal since he was saved from the fire in 548 BC.  from the Acropolis, being able to assent to the presence of Triads Women who moaned at him due to his deserted unbalanced voice without being able to receive his exclamations. Zefian then before the lightness of his cosmic phalanges withdrew the Fourth Arrow from the Phlegrean Fields; before it from the volcanic caldera, he released the nine books recovered in total from the six cremated, to then be pierced by Zefian's Arrow to finally project them towards the contiguities of Prophyits Ilias where their spirits appeared here with such reflections of Miletus conversing with each other that the beauty of Coronis was not enough tenor of Paralesias of the Firmament of Apollo, so the Heavens of Patmos had to be opened with the nine sybilline books along with Vernarth's Hellenic Trilogy to establish the Duoverse as paralesias of the world that would restart from the Ádyton to save the Inheritance and his astrophysicist strangulation.
Both vicissitudes of the Fourth Arrow were heading at incalculable speeds to collide and merge with the Arrow that pierced Apollo's Lynothorax to the detriment of Coronis, thus abandoning transcripts of the oracles that crossed paths in the Seventh Hour of Paralysis to later touch with holistic chrysanthemums with their pointed ivory ornaments that hung from the Universe wrapped in an omphalos, which became a Kosmous of wands encrusted with igneous flames to burn to a great degree among the stylobates that the upper canopy prevented from being incinerated from the rest, protecting the parapets from the Megaron that depended on the nearby Cloud of the Iridescent Nimbus where Vernarth resided in the armband patterns of the monarch Croesus.

Spílaiaus replies to Vernarth: “From this promontory, I go to your parents, I tell you that I see signs of great parapets where the center of the Kosmous rises; “The Ádyton, is closely linked to the fusion of the Quarta Saeta, and Septenario del Ibic or Virola to the depths of the Katabainen; whose Katabasis grows through places of impious land from a Megaron that is nothing more than traces of Lycurgus in limber blood that the tabernacle could not contain, nor could it dispossess for a chalice the firmness of an instigated Christus that could now flow and be reborn by submitting to Cyrus, and other satraps of the past, referring to the fact that Vernarth's asceticism depended on the minimum luminance that could come out of Tartar. Vernarth, distinguished himself more calmly when he perceived that Eurydice filled him with greater agreement with the one who is delimited from an underground room, than from a sub-empyrean who began to separate him from the parapets of the Megaron with the shape of a Howling Kosmous burnishing from the same district Strategoi.

In this way, the Adyton was made up of a temple with Seven Steps until the arrival of the fusion of Zefian's Arrow to collide with that of Apollo, then both being the curtain of the interface of the Duoverse that became oracular with the presence of Jerome de Estridón, and Spílaiaus taking them to the Forests of Parnassus and Kanthillana with the Pythonesses in the spurious Oracular of the nuptials. The Sybilla Herofila is present with her veil with the darkness of Castalia, with ceremonious gestures also in front of her the Sybilla Cumea for the brothers of Delphi and Adyton who reopen it with the power of their God, who was accumulating access to an infinite where nothing isolates it, not even from the sip of a sea that does not grant the gift of quenched thirst, then the Psiloi custodians as advisers of their "V" of the pentagram would take charge of the Oracle's minions to unite the center of the Kosmous with the Universe-Duoverse where he rested on the niche of Hestia.

Apollo emerges between some proxenos that accompanied him before noticing the impact of the Arrowheads, and compasses between proxenos that would admit the New Duoverse of the Oracle of Adyton, for a new universe that was gestating from a polymer towards a multidimensional height that rotated to exhibit only the edge that would admit the mass of Saetas to create rings of vibration, and frequency of Apollo in front of Vernarth looking from the magnanimous lookouts of all Greece. This is where the shepherd Coretas juxtaposed himself with his flock to swarm in the thin strips of landslides that would be left by the atomic detonations of both colliding Arrows, whose cracks would drop obtuse crude oil down mysterious empty cliffs in the face of a Greece that would be born before Anthropotite or humanity, only eclipsing Vernarth in the company of the atomic hatching in the middle of the sieve of the same faces of his entourage that will make him return every day of his transition, like fiery Ashin of the Roman Vestal in assiduity of Naples.
Apollo indicates to Vernarth: “If you stay alone in the drift of Astro Cirrus, you stay with the shadow of Coronis, or you will tell me that it dissipates from the discharges of Tarquino Prisco, you must treasure your Trilogy as a pendulum on the towpath of the Dodona or from the hiding places of the fetish between leaves of the inventory that unknown is not by an auspice that will open from the greatest Paradise ”

In advance of the hallmarks of the Itheoi Duoverse; with the Pre-Kelesete or Possession, they decide to contribute the Anticipatory that will open the doors of the Soul that they have to enter the Universe of San Juan Apóstol, from then on a whopping bump are unleashed with the hatching of Saetas between Zefian and Apollo. The Cabal skirmish was accomplished in the dark! The macro transport of spiritual masses begin to coexist transporting the end of the Himation Ceremonial, later until an impartial right here appeared from Camphor, it was his signature Macrowave protoform of the Himation itself; called Camphor-Xórki (syllabus). The Pre-Kalesete began its walk through the Nothing when Vernarth tried to look down on the limpid spheres of Patmos seeing the holistic whole involved in a Greece that was hailed from the Hatching Arrows coming from the last breath near the Camphor-Xórki of San Juan Apóstol where the Xorkí began to syllable “O θάνατός σου είναι τώρα Ζωή – Your Death is now Life”, from the Quantum atomic that began spelling out by Vernarth's Stóma; or beginning of his astonishing mouth that was regurgitating the oscillating lapses between the Keselete and Xorkí.

With expeditious speed came the Arrows of the Phlegrean Fields, forking one by one until the Fourth Sagittal that was isolated in the evolution of myriads of stars that were made up of the proximity of the Nimbus where Vernarth provided himself in decades of nebula Celestines that shone to tear pimps fibers that still aspired to hijack the remains of the Millitum Vernarth, in the form of clusters of radio galaxies that moved towards the reddish, expanding from the Campos Phlegraios in Naples itself; like geological hydrothermal fissures that clustered behind a sudden crimson blue of the great Universal that split receiving the Saeta Prima from said field of fire. The gravitational completion of the curve generated the Saeta Prima that was made conventional with assistant telescopes, before exultant excesses of wanting to see it as a Quasar that descended from Andromeda together with the Auriga, in such a radio galaxy journey to melt the bars of the Universe to be distended by Vernarth's bombastic Stóma that expressed itself more than his dwarfed senses by the Galaxy that was propelled by the waning of the radiance of the Quasars.

The Primal Saeta is abducted in the intermediate vortex of the Quasars, it remains in the orbit of the Nimbus where Vernarth remained in photometric that allowed him to reflect it in its silhouette with the closest astral referent of Orion. The Secunda Saeta came out of the transversal valleys, this came with the agreement of the Pre-Keselete of Saint John the Apostle bathed in ultra-luminous infrared Ouranos, making vibrating strings of the frequency of the Universe in an ultra-luminous dream emanating from molecular gas, adapting to the new fusion of Zefian's Prima and Secunda Saeta with the determination to split the monoxide at the base of the Nimbus from the acroteria that still accompanied it with the universal entity of the Empyrean as hydrogen that formulated the Saetas clash in homologation of the same aerodynamics prop of the Xiphos, from solid metal to liquid in pearly spirals from the magnitude collapse of the Tercia Saeta, this would bring the same from the Horkun hydrothermal or Horcondising Mountain with thousandths of a thousand light years that would unify on their Solid and Liquid pedestals as the Fifth Essence of the Horkun, the Third Bolt arrived between five Kyrios who followed her through the atrium that was beyond the Hydor that incarnated in collusion with her deformation to soon reform, beginning to go towards the manifest of shared energy towards magnitudes divided by the coefficient 0.7 Micron of atomic energy levitating from the quasar equivalent that stretched from the luminous zenithal meridian in front of the mast of the Four Leaf Clover, which pretended to be a Cherub still emanating from nothing, towards the fractal splendor of the Patmos region ten times greater than the hydrothermal that reconfigured Greece at a distance of ten molecular cycles minus a molecular trace of the carbonate crystal. The diameters of the absolute observable were coming out to the delight of a Hellenic Ego observable in the wide Cosmos rendered in anti-gravity of the Fourth Arrow; being competent to see how he appropriated a snowy-blue sky that softened with the obstructed eyes of Saint John the Apostle, granting more than ninety percent of the explosiveness of the Quarta Saeta above the infrared that dominated the collisions, leaving them inactive for only seven seconds before concluding the snowy waves with the dense and glacial gas helically topped by few waves of any gas that sprout from each galaxy that never ended as an isolated Nimbus as Kant preceded, in a time that becomes more extensive than our own light that lives in its bright end. The dislocated morphology of the Fourth Saeta would ignite the border of the Pre-Keselete from the Phlegrean Fields, Kimolos, the Horkun, and Patmos in an unleashed spiral since the matter was uncontrolled from other unknown matter between myriads of collisions caused by Zefian to the limit that cuts his inspiration, only falling asleep all the previously mentioned Duoverse with Vernath's Megaronic Odes in Epilogue of Xorkí, from here towards the metallic lithic tip of the Xiphos with its spelled enchantment.

Megaronic Odes

"You see from the Enchantment in which all matter becomes Free, You see how each one of them after being Four will now be one that speaks of their very existence that you do everything... you realize that the noise of the Duoverse is born from the Xorkí, where everything dark turns grey... and black is Xorkí.

“Everything that has four digits moves with your four wings, everything that you call Quarta Saeta is a Xorkí syllable…”
Camphor is the heat of friction of the contracted memory, it is here that all pain that is in this field of tragedy urges it, and leaves you distrustful of sap that is another that you lead to the Pre-Keselete as an environment of infernal turns that seem to be good of a good that is born to crash fatally. I want to tell you with these Megaronic Odes that I write, which do not belong to me, they are concise clashes of two atomic ignition fields of the Keselete and Xorkí of San Juan Apóstol that make me not mortified, that you will destine me to the gross speed of the blinking of my Hellenes eyes quicker than those of enchanted thought.

“I need to tell you that between La Prima and Quarta Saeta, my charms between frictions will rest on herbs from Corinto and Sudpichi, I will join the choir that will begin to rise for me, it will do so for you who have just begun to know me, soon we will see you, my dear Adelfos"

"As for the Primal and Quarta Saeta, it is the fanfare of a being that would visit every night, it would invite you to live your own experience that was seen to shine for the last time while being handcuffed to an agro bush, which would sustain itself against an enchantment of the Xorkí in a revived future of the brand new Vernarth with his prodded and resonant Xiphos”

Vernarth utters: “Eurydice... here I am, a closed pilgrimage looms towards the dim light with the nocturnal phrase of him endowing me through the conclusive!! Father... Mother, Myloi of the Sad Wind, here I am with your Primordial Arrow endorsing Pillows, beloved Adelfós, the Rabih San Juan? Almighty God bless you from this Quilt holding our spirited hope of seeing you again! "

Between The Prima and Quarta Saeta, enormous hydrothermal plasmas of the drained Don would be cited, which would conglomerate between the interdimensional of the four Saetas, to later send them from the "Heroon Hurkun Funeral Home of Kanthillana", from there to Lefkandi for the transition of his cremated body that began to revive from there ipso facto, later from the Phlegrean Fields with the Fourth Arrow that Zefian would finally bring with the III Trilogy of Vernarth Hellenic being transferred from the iron prop, supremely seconded by settling in the Prophytis Ilias to revive in autonomous descent of the body of a “Hero in his Heroon who will be reborn from his immolated body”. Incontinently, the arrows will be spaced through the interdimensional strapping of all of Greece to revive its awakening just as it happened with Erestles in Messolonghi; but this time of Orion's Wagon breaking with its coined bar eternity in its Hurkun chamber. In this way, Vernarth is distracted by looking at him at three hundred and sixty degrees looking at the Prima, and from this Secunda Saeta seeing how he rose and accelerated his trajectory adjacent to the Tercia and Quarta that would take him towards a failed break over Thyatira; with the Son of Yahweh, who has eyes like a flame of fire or Aish, and feet similar to going burnishing the bronze chaff towards Patmos to revive immediately with the subrogation of his body in the company of the almighty Mashiaj, Saint John the Apostle and the granted Right of the Hexagonal Birth, with the posterity of prosapies remaining everlasting to resurrect him from the neophyte and Hellenic Hortus Heliacus.