Love poems are stupid,
Because in only a few months time
They’re likely falling to pieces;
Out of juice, out of line.

However, I’ll still write in my spare time,
But would rather focus on cacti,
Because no one gives them
Their time to shine.

I love you, sweet cactus
How you love when the sun shines,
I love you, sweet cactus
Your agave so devine.

I’d rather write about a cactus
All prickly up it’s spine,
Because that cactus is alive,
That cactus is mine,
That cactus will last
Longer than you and I.

Stop being such a cacti.
I’m only trying to move you into sunlight,
to let you learn, grow.

You were such a cacti
because you peirced me with your blunt needle.
yet I still bled,
because it still peirced me through, and skimmed my bloodflow.
I didn’t cry
because I realised that is just simply you.

You were such a cacti
when I tried to water you, my dear.
I only wanted to keep you alive
keep you radiating.
Keep you, as you.

This time,
your dagger imapled me.
From my finger and gushed into my left chest.
I now understand you
because you won’t hesitate to grow without my nurture,
and won’t hesitate to peirce with my love.

She hated her mother's voice, her strong accent thick like champurrado.    Her defiance, her identity.    

  She didn't fit in, and her mother's voice was a reminder why.
A constant reminder.   She hated the moment she crossed that border, maybe “I would have been the popular girl at school with a mother in the United States”. But here she was just an illegal.  

  So many postcards, pretty pictures of tall buildings:   “Las Vegas, city of lights”. She dreamed of one day being a tourist,   like them gueras on TV,   with their flashy credit cards, ordering coca light and rare steak. But here, she was just an illegal.

  Her resentment grew like a cactus: green, slimy, tall and filled with thorns. Each microagression a thorn,   each mispronounced word a bullet.

  She remembers that one day   when her English teacher made her read. She caught her as she was about to leave the classroom,   “Miss Cuellar, it's your turn!”   “Dang this pinche vieja is slick!” she thought...   For cacti can't speak, much less read. But they remember. They remember each day they went without water, so their roots grew deep and profound in hostile ground, and they kept themselves strong, they hid themselves,   they stood tall and vulnerable in the middle of nowhere.

  “I am a cactus” she wrote as the first sentence of her English paper about identity, she then deleted those words, what the **** was her teacher going to think? Now this crazy *** illegal thinks she's a plant   so she wrote her name instead. But deep inside she knew she was a cactus in the middle of hostile lands, far away from that precious lake of healing waters where the wind sings and hills are green; far away from that country of dreams, colors and stories. Stories where her existence made sense, stories where she belonged. But here, she was just an illegal.

  So many things would trigger her, the sunset, the heat, people starting conversations,   “don't talk to me, cacti don't talk”   they grow thorns, they grow green, they like to be left alone. But she knew that that was not her natural state, she wanted to be free. Her spirit wanted to run out of that cactus. Why couldn't she be a bird? Un tzentzontle or a humming bird, even if they didn't live as long, they at least get to fly.

But instead there she remained, rooted, guarded and defenseless, no matter how profound her roots were, she was still an illegal: wrong countried, wrong bodied,   multispirited.   One day her skin began to cry,  a deep beautiful wound  from which a flower sprouted.  She had found poetry and realized that while cacti didn't speak they still flourished.
  To be continued..

Quietly and alone,
a flower blushes
in the cactus garden.

Viciously and slow,
the flower is pricked
by the venomous spines.

Here in the desert
it's been raining
on and off
            for days
making the succulents and cacti
glisten with wetness
their thick skin sparkles
and catches nature's ironic eye
flowers and plants shine
so much better in the half-grey
Here in the prehistoric depths
Of rocky whitewash and silt
             flash floods rush through
flushing out all guilt
         And inside
a raging storm commences
and I feel so blessed
to be a part of this celebration
my lungs expanding in my chest
I breathe in deep
that fresh purity of air
let it cleanse right through me
from my toes up to my hair
It rushes in my body
taking no prisoners in its force
flows through every vein
cleansing poisons in its course
its power flows into me
washing out this stubborn pain
Turning the confusion
                     into clarity again
From inside subconscious thoughts
           realization thunders
rinsing from my mind
                 the emotional strain
and replacing it with euphoric wonders
Come, my raging desert tempest
Bathe me
       penetrate me with wet
restore and purify
my being
take over and disinfect
let me feel my own strength
until it pours out from my cells
into the space inside my heart
where love and lust still dwell
My tears mingle with the sweet drops
                as I fling arms open to the sky
releasing strikes of lightening
for every word I cry
as I summon, pray for lightness
mixed with the sturdiness of earth
Let joy rise up and bubble
within my being
as rebirth

The rumblings of traffic resonate muffled behind me I sit in my century old chair accompanied by my century old mind. A ding of the magic bell follows the crack and jolt of the muffled horn – muffled by the palpable self-ignited tension that a choice is near or already washed-out. The toot of the train tempered by the windows and drapes yanks me out of the cloud I sit upon watching myself perplex about a choice an unfamiliar choice. Which is it, the flower for me, or the flower that waits? Which cactus do I drink the water from – both will ***** me, but ripped from their home the cacti will cry inconsolably. Vague metaphors faced by a conundrum that isn’t humdrum my veins filled with uncertainty until I look to the cacti again

i remember when my mama took me up the mountain,
she told me,
"now, you are ready."
and pine and oak softly fluttered their leaves at my arrival.
there were yellow flowers,
growing wildly,
strangling the delicate blue blossoms,
made of flimsy roots and spindly bosoms.

i was the youngest in a tribe of
golden skinned people;
dreadlocks, tattoos,
moon cycles on the sides of their eyes,
and hair like cattails whispering in the dark.

with my stomach churning,
i entered the tall, dimly lit tepee.
the medicine man sat churning the ashes
in an empty fire-pit,
and women stood around me scattering
flower petals like
soft skin
all over the red-dirt earth.

his eyes twinkled,
and told me things that he would only let the
dusk unfold.
i took my seat on a white sheep-skin,
settling myself.

as the night grew older,
the fire grew larger,
shapes elongated on the fair skin of the stretched
tepee,
the flames dancing wildly,
smoke drifting up into the
starry dark.

the fire keeper stoked the raging
yellow and orange tongues,
and the medicine man sat with a bandanna on,
his waterfall nose moving,
and his leather brown skin creaking,
as he told us stories of the sacred medicine.

and we sat,
somebody started singing.
my mothers warm frame was close to mine,
and my step-father next to her,
shoulders touching in the close proximity,
intimate, smoky air.

they beat the deer-skin drum,
badum badum *** badum badum ***
in native languages like
roaring rivers,
they sang songs to the medicine,
for the opening of the heart;
their swift and strong voices
rising like smoke and flame.

when the drum was passed to me,
i didn't know any songs,
wasn't aware that i had to know any.
i started to hit the drum with the padded
stick, and
closed my eyes,
feeling the sticky sweat of my perspiring forehead
drip down upon my licked lips,
tasting of wood and dirt.
i sang something lilting
sounds coming from the deepest
crevices of my throat,
being gently pulled from the grasp of my ribs.

the medicine man put pine on the fire,
it sizzled and breath was filled with
sweet and sharp.

when the air was right, and
the night was thick with song,
he uncovered baskets of small,
green and ridged fruit-like shapes.
"buttons,"

the medicine was taking her form, and was cradled
as a native man took it around the circle,
along with oranges.
i'd find out soon why.

i took two, small and light in my fingers.
i closed my eyes and took the first bite.

my mouth was struck, eroding teeth
and erupting tongue
my face contorted from the bitter juices the small fruit
held within its delicate skin,
my stomach churned and i swallowed it down
biting into the orange, skin and all
begging for a shock of zest to take
down the intense flesh of the medicine.

i looked around,
some people were on their third, fourth.
the beat of the drums was constant,
along with the quiet,
restful crackle of the sighing fire.

the second bite was less of a surprise,
and i finished my first one.

it was only at the third bite of the second button
that my stomach refused to go any more without
heaving,
the astringent juices of the
small fruit working its magic on my stomach.

i closed my eyes and embraced what was around me;
slowly swaying in the deep voices of my
family,
mi familia,
'ohana,
and the heartbeat of the
mountain drums.

soon, i felt weary.
my mother rested her hand like falling rain on my shoulder,
and i lay in the warm arms of her
shawls,
twisting around me like snakes.

a traditional rollie was passed around,
made of corn husk and hand grown tobacco.
my eyes grew slow and drooping,
and i fell into the waiting arms of sleep
while listening to the music of
tobacco and wood smoke, hushed voices,
wilting night,
dancing fire, and alive laughter.

my sleep was deep and dreamless,
my body carried to other places by the medicine,
leaving my mind behind.

i woke to rough feet on the red dirt,
and my mother and father intertwined like red roses,
sleeping below the tepee's watch,
my mothers white skirt fanning out like
soft sheets in the summer
walls.

there were goodmorning smiles,
light spreading from one set of a skin to another,
as my family embraced me,
told me they were proud and grateful to me
for sitting with them.

a bowl of chocolate was passed around, along with a crate
of juicy, pink, dawn touched strawberries.
i dipped them in the dark, sweet and rich paste
and one after another,
felt myself expand into the universe even more.
only when my mother awoke,
to sprinkling flowers,
and lifted sky,
she told me that the chocolate held the medicine too.

i made my way across swaying, long grass,
and sat in the sun, sipping tea with a sliced lemon,
making art with twists and curls of my pencils and pens,
listening to the experiences of last night,
the enlightenment,
the sense of overwhelming love,
that was not quite drowning.

i basked in everything,
let the heat soak into my flesh,
the lilting laugh.
somebody handed me a guitar,
and i sang with my chocolate tinted lips,
and let my voice float within and around the mountain,
filling the tepee and the empty fire pit
once more,
with the sweet and bitter tastes of
the medicine
*peyote.

In all seriousness, looking woebegone in a plight to chase hyacinth in a pile of snow,
regardless of synecdoche of your embarrassment;

In a four-wall Angry **** soul of doom,

We are laying on a pile of Cacti,
Fibonacci sequences of nature adding thorns
To miniature quilts and houses,

You dig and get more cacti,
And you bury yourself beside it.

The origin of spiritual sustenance is defined differently by each person. Most attribute it to a divine power or some God incarnate that helps us, limited corporeal beings that we are, relate to a deity or to the infinite. Like billions of other sentient souls, this is a way of "seeing" or believing that I have embraced on some level. However, when I ask myself what sustains me beyond this, I am taken down another path.

That path leads me to the crumbling adobe dwellings or sometimes to the freshly painted stucco buildings scattered across the great southwest. That path leads me to something more tangible or palpable than I can glean from traditional halls of worship. I am led instead to a simple yet profound vision--the sight of a hot plate of Mexican food.

Here is where a slight or perhaps dramatic shift in the way one thinks about the spirit is required. This is not necessarily a new concept but merely my take on it. You have all heard of "Soul Food" as it applies to the cuisine of the African American community or more generically in recent years, "comfort food". Also, some of you may recall me saying at one time or another, truly good junk food bypasses all vital organs and goes straight to the spirit. Let me clarify that last line--it is not that I believe the physical laws of the universe are suspended when one eats certain kinds of food—calories will still be consumed, the food digested and metabolized, etc. Instead, I believe, like so many things spiritual, eating Mexican Food transcends the natural laws of the universe as we know them.

This begs the question, why Mexican food as opposed to some other fare like Chinese or good old fried catfish, a southern favorite? The answer is simple. Some people, because of where they were, who they were, and when they were, are Christians, some are Hindus, some are Muslims and some are witches. I am a worshipper of Mexican food.

My sustenance, therefore, comes not from those in polished marble and stone palaces, clad in clerical garb and carrying holy texts. Instead, it comes from humble servants scurrying about hot kitchens doing what they do perhaps simply to feed their families—from my point of view, a noble endeavor in and of itself.

From the time I see a Mexican eatery through a bug-splattered windshield, I notice its energy or aura. When I open the door and see the gaudy but somehow authentic colors on sombrero covered walls, and hear playful Mariachi, and smell the frying tortillas, I know I have entered one of the houses of the holy. Truly, the colors, the sounds, the sights and the smell all take me to a higher place.

This sounds strange to most readers I am sure, but if I were speaking of a nature walk in dew covered grass among the scent of lofty pines, listening to the sound of songbirds, all could relate to its transcendent quality. We somehow place pristine nature above nature sculpted in a way for human benefit. I do this myself, except when it comes to Mexican food or perhaps a beautifully restored VW van, but that is another story.

To return to my original premise, the spiritual value of Mexican food—when the hot oblong platter is placed in front of me, I first notice its colorful array on the plate. Imagine a platter with red and blue corn chips, gray/brown frijoles covered with white cheese, orange rice, chili verde (green), a golden cheese covered enchilada, olive green guacamole, red ripe tomatoes with rich green cilantro and snow white onions, and last of all deep green jalapenos, forming a colorful tapestry and visual feast. (Contrast this with a hunk of brown steak, pale green peas, and a white glob of mashed potatoes.)

The scent of this feast immediately attacks my olfactory bulb and like so many smells, has the power to evoke startlingly clear memories. For me, I am taken to a place where the door opens to a moonless starry sky. I am in the desert, perhaps for the first time. I am in the desert, being courted by the dark desert lady who still haunts my soul in the night. I go back there so many nights, when all is quiet and my long day’s journey into night is finished. This vast, dark and inhospitable land that has called holy men to it through the ages calls me, a man as common as the cook whose labors unwittingly took me there. I huddle among the cacti, creatures who ask the earth for so little. I feel the endless winds that carry the remnants of a thousand ancient souls across the black Sonoran sky and rattle the door from where I came, as if still asking for entrance to a place where they can no longer dwell. Long ago, they returned to the desert for a final time, and now, a thousand nights and a thousand miles away, they mix with the holy night air as only desert dust can, and for a moment tempt the living, but then return to the black night. I do not yet join them—the door still opens to me. I can still see the colors, hear the sounds and place earthly but heavenly morsels in my mouth, and ask for more salsa.

Outside, in the dark desert, the night waits for me, but I have a few more bites to take, and a few more words to write, and to borrow a line from another, a few more miles to go before I sleep—thus, the spiritual value of Mexican food.

Aztec in arts
Spanish in conquest
The Mexican breathes
And lives
Taking control
Controlling the taken,
Our blood hot
Like the chile we eat
Don't expect any less
Outside we are strong
Desert cacti
Sharp unforgiving and rough
On the outside
But the inside
Water flows
The love flows
For la raza
Death envies our vidas
So rich and full
Fearless
And feared
Tattoos cover our skin
Like they did
Our ancestors
Soon we will rise
Soon we will unite

A dream over due
1999
september
it is august
the flies are insects
growing the Vice apple between the graying chicago winter fern of the ******
towering
empty parking lot super market trees
brown
baige
***** and autumn
skin like apple sauce
dancing inside the mirror of Lust and his Sister Fresno California
On a Payphone
At a Fuel Station
Lights all Blue
Lights all dull
dullified by the gasoline
the cigarette butts that collect in the mouths of mountain saints
Capture Zen
Burn all the books that led you too led poisoning

I am Van Gogh
Scrapping off the dried paint of my walls
of my women
naked in my bed of a hope factor

I am going insane
and the stars do not mind
the Clouds seem to be careless
Vagabond seasonal weather Kansas

Everybody is on the Train
headed to Dreams
100 dollars a ticket
Give me your Wallet
your Sister
your Sins
your nights and your day-shadows bouncing off walls and mailboxes like school-boy toys
your
you're
Insight
Outsight
Farsight
Downsight
Glancing at the peripheral French Decedent girl with black hair
hair black like wet once lit cigarettes

God, smoking a cigar made in The Ol' Great West of timber and the elderly gasping away their lives as a window sits neatly with tundra flowers
and a cacti that never dies
Winter comes in a Van
Full of soup
Full of the Dead Children of Days on in
Full of Dogs with rabies
Full of Cheap women
who gave up on 7:30
and washed their hands in the juices of an Apple Eve sank her yellow teeth into

Savage
Savage

Headlights heading towards Home
Towards Late-Night Television

Oven on

God and Satan
Spooning on the water bed of America
America the great
America the greed
America the want

America the me
you
her
Dog
Pigeon on the side street of NYC push town till suit bye Death

Coffin constructed of Iron and Filled with Wine
Coffin made by a young man sitting in his jacket
smoking a neat cigar
smoking with Gin
Gin
Gin
Gin
The Fireplace is where we may have made Love
But the Heat was ours
and the Torn down back door back yard Tall 100 year old Tree
has left
only a Stump
A beginning of its sprout from a seed
to a Giant
to a home for Birds and Flies and ants and rodents

I am in the Tower
Drinking your Whiskey
Drinking the lipstick of a woman who has nothing to do
so she falls in love with the Shadows of night bricks
of City Street Walls and streets
Swerving
entwining
Curving
Doubting
Ditching

Like love it self
Left out in the Sun
Left with the cacti of Old Age
old hands and old eyes that quiver like melting ice in the 90 degree Texan weather

We run to the fountain of Youth
but the gates are closed
The Pool boy quit his Job
and now the water in contaminated

Drink Vinegar
Drink Chlorine
Clear the mind
the hairs on your chest
the Teeth in between your Chin and Lips

It is no Longer Time
it is no Longer Past
Future
Clean
*****
Washed
Murdered by a knife

It is no longer 1AM
and the Sky wants me to wake up

But the Coffee Machine is crooked and only works if I hold it at an angle

Goodbye Crows of Brooklyn
I'll be on the payphone collect call to subconscious

I'll be on the road
traveling with my hair
traveling with Life
traveling with Destiny and Hope and Emily Tennessee

5 dollars a gallon

When the mist rose,
fragrant painting the horizon red,
radiant in the evening sun,
emerged of roses a bed;
And we walk on
        hand in hand
                   by a lotus pond
                           in some sapient
                                 distant land.
The chorus of the stars,
hymn
to a limitless vast,
the vistas
that we held in those palms;
Little taps nimble on the roof tiles
the noon-song of the after-rain
drip-dripping sky.
It   was   I    then, and -
you,        as         you       are        now.
Tither have        you       gone hiding?
Waiting at the edge of the platform,
last siren of the day,
dying into the night
rattling in the rails,
echoing in my soul;
Trudge
            now    long
to the aboveground
late bus, hedgewalking
past the cacti
in the garden next door;
flowered, thorn-bushes then
smirks
now the desert rose
crowned King
dew-frozen    of the hour dim

The desert
Is dry,
My thirst
Unsatisfied,
May the dew
From the thighs,
Of the motherland
Amplify.

When my lips
Reach to sip
& my tongue
Is fortified,

I cannot stop
Until nature ****
And our beings
Emulsify.

To the just Lord
She crys,
With
Sweet agony
In her eyes,

My mouth
I open wide,
To reclaim
What is rightfully
My prize.

Our hands
Clasped
&
Unified,

We give
Praise
Towards
The sky,

Once her
Convulsions
Turn
Petrified,

And I listen
To her bosoms
Beat
A Morris code
Lullaby,

My heart
Is
now on
High,

So this old soul
No longer needs to be
Spry,

For the flesh
Has had iT’s fill
And I now
Am ready to die…

There's a place between society and the wild
Where aimless bodies are piled
We call it the Wastelands
All creatures die of old age
Or hunger inside this cage
The deer are never hit by cars
For they never travel that far
The Wastelands use fear
That's what keeps them here

The Wastelands are a scary place
It's horrifying how nothing happens
It becomes too much to face
So we hide under satin
To provide comfortable resting
And avoid Wastelands testing

The Wastelands are a barren environment
Solitary coyotes learn from the cacti
Who soak up meager moisture
And become prickly to protect it
Never knowing if nourishment was near
They grew prickly because of their fear

We inhabit the Wastelands
We're trapped here
Where the walls of the city
Seem to mirror
The walls of the wilderness
So it's here we build our nest
But surviving is a constant test
Because we have useless hands
Here in the Wastelands

Wastelands
Interaction
Is reaction
Create a faction
And never leave
Even if love cleaves
It lies behind ramparts of containment
And the fear of society's arraignment
Even if peace calls
It stays behind walls
Of trees hiding predators
That keep us embedded here
So we ***** barriers to protect us
From the barriers surrounding us
We find our connections through hatred
And build teams around it
We made foolish deals with Satan
This is what we're amounted

Scavengers from both worlds encroach the Wastelands
Journalists and artists mine our souls
Vultures mine our flesh like gold
Taking what they need and going home
Our rabid mouths begin to show foam
From the frustration of loss
But inactivity is our cross
While we watch carrion feeders
Carry on eating
Our friends
Until we turn and look away
Knowing that'll be us one day
Because in the Wastelands
Friends are just creatures who are near
There are no animals to hold dear
We're afraid to lend an ear
When Wastelands use fear

The Wastelands are hell
Dry river beds tell of a time
When the rain fell
But now we're plagued by drought
You can tell by looking at the trout
They flop on the ground
Wondering where to wander for water
The cacti remain still
It's the Wastelands will

In the Wastelands we wait to die
Although we really want to fly
We're just afraid of heights
Which impedes our sight
Where we can't view over our own barricades
It's fear that prohibits our ability to elevate
And we see that the order is too tall
Back into the Wastelands we fall

A little bird tried to fly through the screen door and I thought, 'if only there were more air up here'.

The view from the second story deck encompassed miles of low scrub hills, piñon, and was daily growing less hazy as the fires subsided. The little bird was dead. Was not even twitching or rolling or whatever idiot birds do to fight or hold onto life. Or maybe it was unconscious. If it was a head impact, it could just be out cold. I could take it in for a bit, see if it revives. But the brains of birds are very small... maybe not large enough to switch out of consciousness without damaging the whole system. It could wake up brain damaged: amnesic, whistling gibberish, unable to collaborate or co-worm-locate or sit on eggs or whatever other higher functions birds perform. Angry, all the time. Likely a burden and a danger to the community. Condemned to either death or a life of lonely suffering. I'd rather not be culpable for that.

Prospective buyers are arriving at four, the realtor as well, for a tour, so I grabbed a broom and swept the quiet body into the shaggy juniper that surrounded the house. Swept up with maple leaves that had settled on the porch since this time yesterday, together a mass of decomposing matter, under the railing and into the dark.

I'd spent a lot of time alone in the house on Grand. Watched nature slowly creep through the iron fence and into the faux-pond, up under the patio bricks, purple flowered and needley plants growing taller and more hostile daily. Increasing numbers of little brown birds mistaking the reflected sunset in the plate glass doors for real sky.

"If only there were more air up here." A little joke I repeat out loud while sweeping broken bodies into shrubs. The thickest places, where they wouldn’t be seen when (if) someone ever dropped by to view the house.


I don't live here, the house is soon to be foreclosed. But a friend of mine knew I needed a place to stay and offered this, his third home, empty of everything except a coffee maker, some landscaping tools, a few boxes that had yet to be moved. I have a twin sized mattress in what must have been a child's room: a strip of Denver Broncos wallpaper runs the circumference, every other surface painted complimentary blue.


The couple arrived at five. She wears a salmon coloured shawl over a white blouse. They’re performing the theatric act of young couples in love (with the idea of a larger house): she ecstatic over the seven jets in the master Jacuzzi tub, he hesitant about the people-paths in the wall-to-wall-carpet, the everpresent pastels we know were once in vogue but will take weeks and at least two layers of base to fully eradicate. It’s the realtor’s job to showcase the place but I often stand outside the plate glass windows of the living room, keeping an eye. Playing the role of groundskeeper because hitchhiker is so much less glorious.

So far it’s been the same. Always she with a genuine smile that will be gone forty minutes after she’s left the driveway. He, always in t-shirt and “trying to be casual” jacket calculating the square footage of each room, the viability of the fireplace. Opening cabinets, but not concerned with storage space. He wants to see if the brass hinges really have brass pins. Is it wood, linoleum? Look closely at his eyes and watch them dance across a virtual blackboard, adding up the gallons of primer and paint needed to cover up the colour mistakes of a before-his-decade.

  2

You can almost watch his eyes dart across the blackboard. A house is a house but the home must be shredded, burned, before making it yours.


But they all do this. A dozen or so now, this summer. And I spend a lot of time alone. Injecting my thoughts into people who think they know what they need next, before getting in a small car and checking out a properly closer to town. Making little jokes to myself as I sweep the porch. The isolation even maybe altering small parts of my self. The social parts, perhaps. I feel good, most days, but find myself repeating the same phrases: “****. Shower. Shave”, “If only there were more air up here.”, “I could learn to love a leopard”, even recently a little Old Testament, which like a ******* I’ve been taking to bed with increasing frequency and a growing selfish guilt, repeating,

“As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.”


They won’t be back, but for the first time now there’s a deer in the yard. Meaning there must be a hole in the fence. A doe, and fawn too, and I can sit and stare with my broom in hand because my job is to sweep the deck. Dead birds and maybe rats, leaves of course, but with all the water the bank is wasting on this waste of a lawn, come deer: come all ye deer, come and eat. Maybe you will even eat the frighteningly thistly things. Regardless, in exchange for this room I was given a broom and deer are far too large to sweep.



When my student visa expired in Canada I left the country with no identification, five Canadian dollars, a five litre backpack mostly occupied by a camera, and in my mind some distillation of the romanticism from On The Road that I’d managed to power-read in a Heathrow bookstore four years before (lacking the pounds to actually purchase the book). I crossed the border via ferry, and entered the country without identification. I thought this was impossible but it turns out that when you have no time but your whole future ahead of you, and nowhere to get to anyway, insisting “I am a U.S. citizen and you need to let me into this country” does in fact work, if you repeat it enough, and are willing to wait. In my case border patrol even gave me a twenty note and a pat on the back before sending me on my way.


How I ended up sitting on the floor watching birds die, backlit by a desert sunset, in the mountains of New Mexico, is a long story, and to be honest the details have largely escaped me. I do remember I was reading Hemingway. “The Innocents Abroad”, and trying to find myself in any character I could lay my hand on. The word “Innocent” in the title, I suppose, far moreso any actual character, struck the most.


It’s the middle of The Great Recession. Or The Great Depression. The Great Compression. I can’t remember any longer which economic period this particular episode occupied (why can’t they name them more sensibly, like hurricanes?) Call it, then, The Great Introspection, as I narrated myself through the dozen rooms of a million-dollar house: the material self still alive and thriving inside in a self-congratulatory spiral over the personal ROI that left Canada on five dollars and put me, rent free, in a home worth that multiplied 200,000 times. The home where I first had my own key. The home where I learned to drink a glass of water before my morning coffee.

(Five years and $98,000 in college expenses later that was, easily, the best advice I’ve ever received.)


Eventually the phone was disconnected, the water, the power. The jacuzzi, though dry, was still a good place to lie and read. And the piñon and snakes, cacti and juniper, then inklings of pine trees came in steadily. When you would look at them they would freeze. But every morning something new was growing, some new pink flower popped up promisingly to crack the mortar in front of the door. Sweetly at first, then growing thorns, and I walking the perimeters saying “if only there were more air out here”, saying, “can not feel her anymore”, as if the decadent madness of the lawn could be silenced by speaking out loud. Trying to walk the edge of the fence, increasingly losing it in the encroaching bush, then resigning myself to the living room, the **** carpet flattening into a forest path while I impressed miles into that offensive floor.



words. seeds. thistles. marvin morales.


Sleeping on that filthy mattress, the Denver Broncos looking down, still optimistic about their upcoming trophy, or cup. Whatever it was that a bunch of cartoon horses could win. But the sweeping gave me solace, even though the growing thistles made the bricks uneven and caught in the bristles of the broom, leaving little shards of transplanted pink flowers emedded in the yellow polyethylene. I loathed them, but looking back I can see I played straight into their plan. Transplanting little seeds to new weak places in the cement, where they could grow tall again and **** up what little good was left of the land. Bring deer to eat them. Bring little idiot birds to pick the seeds out of the faeces, recycling with pure intent, and flying off into the bright light of sunset. Then crashing broken to the floor.

And like the lawn, like the porch, like what happens when you read Twain, something in me changed. “If only there were more air”, yes, but there is never enough air. Piling up among the deer, among the doe, among my now all-consuming pacing and talking to ghosts who don’t live here anymore, among the many birds who ate their worms and went on to hatch a dozen more, flew into a plate glass sunset, and were ignored.

you and i are fretful, wary fish--
old souls. anxious beings.
sometimes i think that you and i are part of a whole--
the two fish tied together by the rope.

as the song says,

"i wanna ruin our friendship,
we should be lovers instead;
i don't know how to say this,
'cause you're really my dearest friend."

but honestly,
i crave you in the most innocent of ways.

if i could kiss you just once,
simply sleep next to you and be at peace,
that would be more than enough for me.

we made a pact -- at thirty we will get married
just because we can.
but it hurts --
i know it doesn't mean the same to you
as it does to me

i just want to marry you someday
live in a house near the Atlantic
and the rooms will be full of cacti and succulents
the scent of baked goods will waft out from the kitchen
where we will be battling the cats
for space on the table to let the macarons cool --
vanilla bean, rose raspberry, chocolate peppermint

some days, this is all i can think about
and i could never admit that to you

To serve as a sub title I would call this antidote presented in a flowered bouquet first of flowers then
Thoughts that are found in such gifts of treasured beauty an antidote in the central theme of my life

Trying to give any and all relief from pain and suffering if nothing else it will serve as a brief distraction
As you read unfortunately we can only win small victories but anything to help just possibly it will make
A crack that will lead to understanding and more winning can occur

The gold bejeweled lives I have known they the towers the earth’s perennial flowers they were the all
Consuming hours of my life others view life conceptually one part is a stone wall that grows the figwort

With the other English Ivy Hedera the first has the notation of growing in old ruins here
Is the represented tendrils of the heart ever growing ever showing a map of feelings ether joyful or

Tragic within their sinew your strengths and weakness are displayed yes they are hidden to the natural
Eye but in quiet conversation they reveal themselves in the loveliest ways they are rhythmic waves that

Flow over those that we love instilling in them our secret otherwise unknown selves then now I would
Like to present the main body of this piece what are the first words women say when they receive

Flowers how lovely is their words for this to happen their heavenly Father stood before this blue globe
And spoke to the wayward wind my desire is to make an unquestionable quality that will be the very

Essence from where its fragrance is derived he told the wind go and do my bidding instantly the wind
Split into four parts from that time till now it is called and said gather from the four winds in obedience

To the master one part rushed down and felt the tearing of mountain peaks it screamed with delight
And pain it soothed itself by quietly passing over knolls that stood on lonely hill tops then through vales

And valleys it made progress looked across the great span of earth to see what its kindred brothers and
Sisters were finding in its drift and wonderings it noticed one was awaking the wild African world then it

Turned and whirled as it picked up the scent of Africa’s coffee fields instinctively it knew where it must
Go next to the southern tobacco fields it delighted in the pungent promise where in parlors ever so

Humble the tiny pleasurable string like smoke would lay on the air and from a great distance far from
This domestic scene it could see its fellow kiss and roll across the earth’s great rivers the Nile and its

Rectangular pyramids the burial enclosures of the pharos with reverence they silently passed to deepen
This they drove onward until they felt the sacred Ganges below they drank of the sighs of millions of

India’s people refreshed by this dearness to link themselves to the one true God they set a course that
Would take them to where in future days a Union Jack would have the notoriety that the sun never set

In far off lands without its shadow proudly waving it pointed glory folds back to the Thymes where the
British crown would nobly reign and one of its greatest achievements would be the land of free men

That it spawned so out to sea it turned to visit this kingdom not of royal crowns but the garland of
Freedom that rested on every man woman and child it was home for many waters the Mongolia the

Ohio north lay the Great lakes in its center the old Mississippi it followed it down and made its turn west
To rivers called Rio Grande the Red Brazos on to the Colorado the snake and if they could be heard

Speaking they be saying Chisim Platt fairest blue bells I know your home in these familiar dales and pick
Up the from the arid desert from dry river beds biting sand go to its roots and you would know long

Ago waters that held brimming life over the gold fields it continues and dips into the blue pacific
Washing sand an grit its next stop was turquoise waters rainbows and waterfalls it fell into the swaying

Palms coconut papaya pineapple layered it with richness it would create the fabled trade winds it turned
To view it exact opposite its brother wind that came down from the pole it knew Russia’s Siberia Alaskan

Tundra at this point it heard the Father state you have done well he drew a great breath that captured
All that was gathered in the heart of the wind then he turned to carpeted fields that stood incomplete

Flowers were as a sea but they were empty petals they were the reproductive part of flowers but they
Were barren of vividness and true deep colors but worst of all they were odorless and then God

Breathed upon them the secrets that the wind had stored from the four corners of the earth in that
Moment flowers became the true marvel and were forever established as the hallmark of romantic

Expression first picturesque layered with gratitude stillness the chill from the pole that reached down
Through the Canucks of Canada there is the splash of **** frost felt if not known the enticement of the

Soul of cool contrasted with the deserts heat cacti drenched in sunlight never to be complete always in
Rays that makes it beholden in glimmers it shimmers it touts a glory born from harshness it lingers as

Indescribable beauty burnished sands its court this is also found in the allure of flowers hidden within
Is weariness but it is the refined kind it speaks to you not of tiredness but of rest of shade and shadow

A quest is announced do you not feel a sweet breeze how else does its fragrance come within reach
You’re carried back to mountain meadows meows from baby mountain lion kittens are laced within

The story flowers release through their fragrance and truly this just one of Gods many gifts to man
And the greatest Rose of all is His Son the Rose of Sharon

it's times like this that i wish
i were a cactus
and i didn't have to deal
with people things
like being in college
and trying to transfer
and writing essays.

i just want to be a
seguro.

All the world's happiness is for you and there is nothing for me
You got a garden full of beautiful roses
And i got a garden full of succulent cacti trees
I know even roses have thorns
And sometimes u too bleed
But imagine bleeding all the time
Because that's the fate of having a cacti tree
Yes even cactus have flowers,
On those rare occasions
But have u ever seen anyone talking about cacti flowers
Oh the horrors of being a little flower on a much thorny tree?!

Priceless Times


To serve as a sub title I would call this antidote presented in a flowered bouquet first of flowers then
Thoughts that are found in such gifts of treasured beauty an antidote in the central theme of my life

Trying to give any and all relief from pain and suffering if nothing else it will serve as a brief distraction
As you read unfortunately we can only win small victories but anything to help just possibly it will make
A crack that will lead to understanding and more winning can occur

The gold bejeweled lives I have known they the towers the earth’s perennial flowers they were the all
Consuming hours of my life others view life conceptually one part is a stone wall that grows the figwort

With the other English Ivy Hedera the first has the notation of growing in old ruins here
Is the represented tendrils of the heart ever growing ever showing a map of feelings ether joyful or

Tragic within their sinew your strengths and weakness are displayed yes they are hidden to the natural
Eye but in quiet conversation they reveal themselves in the loveliest ways they are rhythmic waves that

Flow over those that we love instilling in them our secret otherwise unknown selves then now I would
Like to present the main body of this piece what are the first words women say when they receive

Flowers how lovely is their words for this to happen their heavenly Father stood before this blue globe
And spoke to the wayward wind my desire is to make an unquestionable quality that will be the very

Essence from where its fragrance is derived he told the wind go and do my bidding instantly the wind
Split into four parts from that time till now it is called and said gather from the four winds in obedience

To the master one part rushed down and felt the tearing of mountain peaks it screamed with delight
And pain it soothed itself by quietly passing over knolls that stood on lonely hill tops then through vales

And valleys it made progress looked across the great span of earth to see what its kindred brothers and
Sisters were finding in its drift and wonderings it noticed one was awaking the wild African world then it

Turned and whirled as it picked up the scent of Africa’s coffee fields instinctively it knew where it must
Go next to the southern tobacco fields it delighted in the pungent promise where in parlors ever so

Humble the tiny pleasurable string like smoke would lay on the air and from a great distance far from
This domestic scene it could see its fellow kiss and roll across the earth’s great rivers the Nile and its

Rectangular pyramids the burial enclosures of the pharos with reverence they silently passed to deepen
This they drove onward until they felt the sacred Ganges below they drank of the sighs of millions of

India’s people refreshed by this dearness to link themselves to the one true God they set a course that
Would take them to where in future days a Union Jack would have the notoriety that the sun never set

In far off lands without its shadow proudly waving it pointed glory folds back to the Thymes where the
British crown would nobly reign and one of its greatest achievements would be the land of free men

That it spawned so out to sea it turned to visit this kingdom not of royal crowns but the garland of
Freedom that rested on every man woman and child it was home for many waters the Mongolia the

Ohio north lay the Great lakes in its center the old Mississippi it followed it down and made its turn west
To rivers called Rio Grande the Red Brazos on to the Colorado the snake and if they could be heard

Speaking they be saying Chisim Platt fairest blue bells I know your home in these familiar dales and pick
Up the from the arid desert from dry river beds biting sand go to its roots and you would know long

Ago waters that held brimming life over the gold fields it continues and dips into the blue pacific
Washing sand an grit its next stop was turquoise waters rainbows and waterfalls it fell into the swaying

Palms coconut papaya pineapple layered it with richness it would create the fabled trade winds it turned
To view it exact opposite its brother wind that came down from the pole it knew Russia’s Siberia Alaskan

Tundra at this point it heard the Father state you have done well he drew a great breath that captured
All that was gathered in the heart of the wind then he turned to carpeted fields that stood incomplete

Flowers were as a sea but they were empty petals they were the reproductive part of flowers but they
Were barren of vividness and true deep colors but worst of all they were odorless and then God

Breathed upon them the secrets that the wind had stored from the four corners of the earth in that
Moment flowers became the true marvel and were forever established as the hallmark of romantic

Expression first picturesque layered with gratitude stillness the chill from the pole that reached down
Through the Canucks of Canada there is the splash of **** frost felt if not known the enticement of the

Soul of cool contrasted with the deserts heat cacti drenched in sunlight never to be complete always in
Rays that makes it beholden in glimmers it shimmers it touts a glory born from harshness it lingers as

Indescribable beauty burnished sands its court this is also found in the allure of flowers hidden within
Is weariness but it is the refined kind it speaks to you not of tiredness but of rest of shade and shadow

A quest is announced do you not feel a sweet breeze how else does its fragrance come within reach
You’re carried back to mountain meadows meows from baby mountain lion kittens are laced within

The story flowers release through their fragrance and truly this just one of Gods many gifts to man
And the greatest Rose of all is His Son the Rose of Sharon

Spending Nights cheaply,
television doesn't work,
rats or moths,
have chewed the wires,
now a black square,
sits quiet,
Monk like,
Enlightened,
reflecting me,
dust layer,
my plastic texas radio,
calmly,
oozes,
discharges,
Jazz,
my final cigarette,
silently waiting,
like the television,
like the *****,
patiently watercoloring on red lipstick,
seducing not me,
but my lungs,
the ego.
And I fantasize being in an Italian cafe,
smoking,
with low eyes,
like a hill,
with a Gold hungry man
excavating for Fortune,
or bones of Glory,
and maybe a leaking pipe line,
dripping wisdom.
And a tall Italian goddess,
walks,
appears like a ****** magician,
into the cafe,
as the Italian Night,
dances ****,
the stars like beauty marks,
and quaint street lamps illuminating,
sidewalk puddles,
like jewelry,
worn by an immortal belly dancing siren singer,
who lost her voice,
seducing Gods,
now mute,
cursed to ****** Man by her body.
And she sits down,
her legs dark like mud,
but glistens like the hot Sahara Desert,
and her scent,
is not of Cacti and Lizards,
but of Roses,
but of Rust Michigan,
over comes the roasting beans,
like a house burglar,
or a spider,
creeping up on its fly prey,
enters my nose,
and my recollection of beauty,
is warped,
simply by the way she lightly,
taps,
her fingers,
against her legs,
like a light drizzle,
on a tin shack roof,
after a century of drought.

I need to see the looming sky
A wide, gasping chasm of color and power
Cold and unfeeling
Hot and passionate
Black fading into red into blue

I need to feel the burning air
Arid and biting on my eyelids
******* the moisture from my skin
And the toxins from my heart
Engulfing me like the embrace of a captor

I need to see the silhouette of mountains
On the striking horizon, eclipsing the void
To gasp in the thin and desperate air
Cacti that claw at the dusty wind, and
Beg for nothing in the kingdom of bones

palette
russet, olive hues
yellow ochre
bird's egg blue

vastness held
within a bowl
turned over earth
to heal and hold

moisture from
the morning rain
thus the painter's
eye is trained

cadmium white
a fan-like brush
sketch mare's-tail clouds
an artist's touch

far horizon
grayish blue
a woman reclines
in the ****

her form reveals
the breasting hills
her hips the mountains
hushed and still

mid-ground
blurs of olive cacti
the saguaro
rise like hackles

Palo Verde lie in lumps
yellow flowers
bloom in clumps

point of brush
tweaks out the trees
turn of branches
stippled leaves

small are they
to catch the light
but the moisture
loss is slight

ochre foreground
brownish stones
blue-gray shadows
light source shown

grayish purple
prickly pears
ocotillo
here and there

spindly with splash of red
barrel cacti nod their heads

buff highlights
saguaro flowers
I could sit and
paint for hours

there's time to write
but now I pray
look upon these
words today

they paint the desert
you will find
If only in
the poet's mind!


SoulSurvivor aka
Write of Passage
2017

I miss you,
West Texas,
You more than most.
I miss people
And things
But I’ve never missed more,
Than I’ve missed you.
One day, I’ll return to you,
And we’ll be together until I die,
My dear West Texas.
Some say your deserts are unbearably hot,
And I say,
It’s easier to make shade
Than a fire.
Picturesque cacti,
Blooming in the spring,
Sunsets that put oil paintings to shame,
And wild mustangs escaping man’s unyielding possession,
Just like me.
I can see them running along the dusty banks
Of a wide river in canyon carved by the Great Artist Himself,
West Texas,
I want to drive a rusty old truck through hot afternoons till frigid nights,
Miles and miles of sweet loneliness,
Until it’s just you and I,
And I can watch your brilliant display of stars move
Across the endless horizon.
Desert owls,
A serpent’s rattling warning,
Creatures that crave solitude,
As I do,
Emerge in the night,
Like the neon lights of lonely bars in the middle of nowhere,
Sweet prickly pear in perfect harmony with Jose Cuervo in my glass,
A tribute to my lonely West Texas,
Singing me a tune of cicada chirps and desert winds,
And the jingle of spurs on concrete floors,
As the men,
As old and covered in sand as the bar itself,
Make their way in from isolated jobs miles away,
To listen to Tejano,
And sip on that cactus nectar,
Distilled by the Great Bartender
For a night like this,
In my West Texas,
Perfectly lonely,
Perfectly perfect.
I just want it to be me and you
And your hot red sand,
I want to see those yellow blossoms bursting from the deceptively spiny hands of desert life,
I want to hang a dusty, wide brimmed hat above dusty leather boots when I come home,
I want the sky to explode with color,
As a reward for enduring a long day of the heat,
And when the rare jewels from heaven fall, and nourish your cracked ground,
And peace is sworn between all animals,
Predators and prey,
For that moment,
So that all may celebrate the loving dew sent by our Great Caretaker,
I want to dance on your planes,
Twirl in the rain,
And let the drops fall between my lips like the crevices of your canyons,
Brought to life when you are,
Slumber when you do,
Live each day as you live,
My sweet West Texas.

Caught the vampire's failing smile,
cracked by teeth & venom,
wind-walking among the trees,
talking to the vipers
& the rats & the bats & the
men of the old bonetown.

Mr Mann had the right idea,
burn your books & get the hell outta Dodge.
Do not pass go & do not stop,
do NOT make out in the back of a beat-up old auto
parked next to the hypermarket on Dawn & Vine.

Mr Mann up front,
peering through the cracks in the windscreen,
the cracks in reality.
He can see the vampire's slow smile,
the shadows passing across the face of the TV screen,
& hear the old ghost voices,
the old radio voices, the 1949 voices.

Blood on leather,
black roots rising,
saliva on after-effects & after-echoes,
the apocalypse riders chasing the moon up the old dark valley,
the moon chasing the apocalypse riders right back
down the old dark valley to whatever hell they came from.

The vampires! The vampires!
Children beat hasty retreats,
hide under the boxes back of the laundromat,
not daring to peek
as black boots crunch gravel.

Mr Mann has the right surmise,
get outta the books & into guns,
get into heavy metal & iron drag,
get into lead & something magickal,
long forgotten lore & hoodoo voodoo
from years & years ago.

The vampire's smile turns awful yellow,
fades as the stars wheel & that tired old sun begins its ascent,
fades as the dawn breaks over the desert winds & cacti
& the lovers wake in their motel room in the back of beyond
& fumble for their stakes & knives & garlic *****.

Easy now for Mr Mann in the sun-kissed big blue.
Hunt it down in the tumbledowns & old desert towns.
Kick off the jams, break open the locks.
Hose it down with oil & strike a match.
Burn the reality right off that face
& that face right off reality

Splat on the sand. Grue on the sand. Black on the sand.
Mr Mann walking back to the autombile, back to happiness,
radio playing a little something from 92,
or was it 93, he really can't remember now.

there is a fairy tale in which
a mighty princess cowers, under
the vines that
wrap around her fingers.
sweet honeysuckle, they whisper brave nothings. they snake up her legs & cling onto her skin.

she needs, she knows.
she wants to rip her veins apart
with rose thorns as her heart grows.
she dances with the petals and mixes them with her hair, raining ashes into the air.

the uncanny ability to make a king's crown slide. she melts his armour & makes a gold plate, for he would never know cyanide-ridden nettles was what he ate.

poison ivy, the colour of her eyes and her envy. she throws out her silk ties and hexes the maidens next door, she sinks into her demons and lays to rot on the floor.

Where we live it is no desert for the rains still fall.
Where we live the cacti stand tall,
proud and green Men and Women
defending rocky slopes of heaven.
Where we live the bat flies with the nighthawks,
dog fights at twilight against hordes of insects.
The lizard and snake fear a Greater Roadrunner
who laughs at passing cars, for it shall outlive
The Petrol Race centuries forward.

The Sunrise seems like The Mountains'
live birth to a bright blazed star.
The Sunset bombs a horizon
filmed with faraway layers of dust.
The milk cloud of stars and cosmic debris.
The Moon rising, a pale beacon beyond The Mesquite.

you made my blood clot,
so slowly and gently,
coagulating beneath your faint touch.

on flaxen sheets of rough cotton
I watched your plants
rolling their limbs out your open window.
they sprawled themselves, unravelling,
yearning for the gentle kiss
of the suns rays.
an almost ****** photosynthesis.
and for you I would sprawl myself out too,
and with the same eagerness
absorb every scent of yours into my flesh,
and drink desperately from your soul
like a cacti in its first summer shower
since '89.

and your final gasp,
with me, but a sponge
for your every metaphoric suppuration,
and literal secretion.
and you were transfixed there,
spurting auras of sin and love.
a final burst of ecstasy,
you soon became my anticoagulant.

you seeped into my bloodstream,
reversing this gentle coagulation.