"chaparral" poems
there in the wilderness
all things go to live
and all things go to die.
she stole my shirt and hatchet
and took to the woods.
hacked out the heart.
traded one wilderness for another. city into
trees.
she needed to breathe
and wring wet socks, relax, and study the mycelium songs underfoot.
she she she, like a marvelous
new love.
the grass and green stuff woven.
canteen replete with wheat nectar
or half-batch whiskey.
needs nutrient,
the seed so new.
needs space,
the daughter as she grew.
what tempest breaks the trees and old heads
of mother timber?
perhaps deep-winter,
to test the fiber of a florescent forest fleek.
she built a chikee from fallen arms of a sprucewood soul,
drank water from a clay-thrown bowl
and granola to heat her bones.
new fish.
the river is cold on glacier blood.
new day,
driven beyond the random access roads & cobalt blast-holes stretching
gulches bloomed in chaparral.
up they crawl along monumental spine and shoulder,
giants sleeping.
she she she, live a marvelous new love.
the wonder is seen.
the wilderness lived and remembered
by girl or elk bugling their high-decibel poems
when ready.
Mar 1, 2015
Mar 1, 2015 at 9:08 AM UTC
montana yellow dress, the highway looked bitter sunday fit.
she knew the land given,
land taken,
thunder walking west.
met a friend. stopped to talk.
he was a holy kid or dog, both songs of kindness.
trickster cool mountain calf
waiting for the water promenade.
deep creek good old boy swimming smiles,
rose up
and shot like bang with the buzzard sioux feathers.
truth is low clouds flashing, dreams burst
in the earth room.
doused sheets of chaparral and canyon grass
a pretty laughing bird.
wet things watch the water-log, and a frog spits whiskey.
charter bus barefoot leather and a father says kids, smell the hammer,
see the hammer touch its words into the world.
work-tale living, fools bled.
river gal cut, oh
fishing.
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 4:58 PM UTC
He saw a beautiful world.
He saw the world’s grace.
Saw the world’s seemingly infinite majesties,
the magnificent magnanimity of it all.
He saw the smile of people, the perfect pigment of plants
He experienced a beautiful world.
Yet he was unsatisfied with what he saw.
Unsatisfied with the beautiful world he had.
He looked past the beauties, the elegance, and the gems
And focused on the ephemeral troubles that polluted his lens.
He couldn't handle the new deformities of the world he once saw
He couldn't handle himself at all.
Finger to the trigger and trigger to the gun
at once he knew he would regret.
Gun to the bullet and bullet to the brain.
at once he knew this was kismet.
He hid himself under the sullen pall
Entangled himself in the chaparral
For him there was no escape.
For he was doomed for fate.
If only he had opened his eyes
And realized.
He was satisfied.
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 2:51 AM UTC
The mockingbird in arbored sanctum
rehearses his newest musing
an addition to his lifelong
plagiaristic monologue
satisfied,
he ***** into the chaparral
to declaim his litany to
anything with ears.
Feb 28, 2016
Feb 28, 2016 at 1:28 AM UTC
Here in this redolent rain droplets saturate the ground
I watch the clouds move on, then once more the sun to come
this sparkling desert is strewn with tiny diamond stones
the air hangs in petrichor, thick with chaparral
birds drink from puddles in the broad agave leaves
rainwater trickles with steam in the sun of the singing trees
songs of doves coo cooing in the desert mesquite
spiny lizards stop for rest and warmth upon the rocks
they are ancient with tiny rounded teeth
for eating flashing bugs and beetles
here beneath the spindly ocotillo
beneath the pale flowered saguaro, that blooms
amid this ocean of sandy seas
of cool nights and hot breathed days
the way the desert breathes.
May 13, 2016
May 13, 2016 at 10:18 AM UTC
The afternoon sky with its wine dark clouds
red blushed and blue, moments before the rain drenching greys
the scurrilous skies, the black winged silhouettes that fly
amid the cactus trees, thick with chaparral
a total reconstruction of sunny soft memories
this cold tumbling storm that moves overhead
to form, this desert raining lake.
Jan 14, 2017
Jan 14, 2017 at 8:27 PM UTC
Aristotle at my fingertips,
not locked in soliloquies I may perform,
but heard from an Oxford don I have
in my pocket,
as I lean into each lesson and trudge
up and down my morning
constitutional,
where the firebreak meets
chaparral alive with cottontail
this morning, when I almost said, "it's too hot."
C'mon, walk a mile with me… like
on the road to Emmaus, but Christ, no;
this character,
a soldier in me, about to salt out, bids me,
walk a mile, "not two, one
does the trick."
The thought comes
as a dare from the Ralston Purina guy,
and I stepped onto my trail.
I dare think Aristotle's thoughts after Plato's,
thinking
I could have known this when I was younger,
but not to this degree,
if I had not dropped out, and never knew,
by rote,
to pass a test, that
"All men by nature desire to know."
This is
Curiosity, right? I suspect it is a gift.
The joy we find in sensation, proof
offered the gainsayer,
I say again, that which is good for nothing
never
never
naturally exists, so
what tool forms an eye to notice that…
see, through the window
of my poetic-pathetic e-thoughtic soul
a feathery
family of phoebe birds, flits by,
if that is the proper name
{Tufted-Titmouse, my AI replies},
tails reflecting a smokey blue hue,
they swoop and flutter past;
I see
in a non-imaged flashpast pattern
from a time in the summer of 1969…
Disneyfied trails
from Cinderella's dressing room
scene, not seen, but reminded of seeing,
the pattern, in this phantomind dance,
being witnessed now, as
this old soldier once saw it
performed by bluer birds than these…
Time skipper
shifts to another bubble intersecting mine
and
I hear a worried neighbor fret about the fire.
I almost say,
"One of the benefits of being
backedup to the cloud,
nothing to lose."
But I remember, she collects purses and shoes.
Sep 7, 2020
Sep 7, 2020 at 12:16 PM UTC
Sweet desert fragrance
perfume lingers in my mind
long after the rain
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 10:57 PM UTC
my bed is just a velvet patch of comfort in this world
every night I curl into the earth
lay into the soft flesh of her lips and
lay unstirred until rising
like a breath
but what kind of lover is confined to a kiss?
should not I run a hand down the alleys of her throat?
press my ear to the heaving sidewalk
and hear arrhythmia in her heart?
go out behind the lot
of Greenleaf Woman’s Health--
the cheap abortion clinic
sink a tongue into the sewer
bathe in the spray of recycled water
and be purer by surrender
of barrier between veins
lay with this world in every ***** place
sleep with one side to a chain-link
the other to her tunnel
corrugated aluminum
and street run-off canals
and the run-out chaparral
where wind and sagebrush sweep
dry air across my tongue
to grow snail-trails on my teeth
to call this world a lover
I must know more than her face
and claw into the bitter brine
of every permeable place
so when they roll me over
I might reek of all her tastes
fermenting with her beauty
wrapped in sweat of her disgrace
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 6:29 AM UTC
I have a bruise to mark each memory
faded experiences, my tie-died vessels heal
hurriedly as a huddled leaf chasing a stream.
I have a bruise to mark moving
hip-forward, greeting our kitchen counter
first thing after threshold.
I have a bruise from stubbornness
we wrestled like chimps, my head
finding first impressions with tacky tiles,
your floor. You won our primitive match.
A bruise to mark the midnight hike,
I fell into the chaparral.
One to many beers, and a spin-tingling
fear of fallowing you up the mountain.
I slapped you for leaving me behind.
I have a bruise to mark our night,
when anger awoke arousal
Your thumb, your teeth, the main
suspects to my man made splotch.
A shower stinging stain trickled itself away
A fleshy fading peace sign.
I have a bruise from your discovery.
In a constructed pile of soil
You laid me down too *****
Stripping me of theatrical ties, temporary faces.
I willingly wove the canvas, for you
brave adventurer uncovered bruises.
The maps you didn't mark,
blacks and Blues you didn't write.
Paints that I lose so frequently,
like a child in a department store
that I can't forget my human fear,
Being Found.
But though you paint me purple,
break my veins like glow sticks,
leave me in the dark, and wrestle me
like a man,
You heal Me,
like rain to the grasses.
To feel again.
You crumpled contracted walls
surrounding my ability in
obtaining adventure, and your
Happy Bruises.
Feb 16, 2012
Feb 16, 2012 at 11:18 PM UTC
Cool December rains
sticky desert chaparral
fragrant mistletoe
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 8:39 AM UTC
A susurrus wind
of chaparral lingers on
after the rain, in the heat of day
behind mountainous clouds
the hissing sun will scarcely fade
until at dusk it finally crawls
and swiftly snakes away.
Aug 30, 2015
Aug 30, 2015 at 9:34 PM UTC
It's dust, mostly
the kind that burrows
deep into the creases
of his forehead
and hides inside
the crinkles
around his eyes
It's forever stuck
to the soles of his boots
and never rinses out
of his denims
in the river,
not entirely
And it finds a way
to roll with beads
of sweat in dripping
lines exposing
parchment skin
but somehow never
penetrates the ring
around his head,
preserved forever
by his stetson's brim
And it's also ashes
from chaparral
and tumbleweeds,
lit up in circles
where he camped
leaving a trail
of where he's been,
like breadcrumbs
swept away in a
restless breeze
It's the creaking sound
of leather in his saddle
and the rhythmic
thud of horseshoes
pounding sunbaked ground
It's the wind in his face
that grits his teeth
and squints his
glassy eyes
It's standing in the stirrups
to fly above the racing plain,
keeping balance
with the whipping mane
It's the endless sky,
and the horizon
that never fades
But mostly,
it's the dust
that he holds
in upraised palms
slipping through
his fingers, disappearing
from his touch
in the wild and still
untamed range
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 9:57 PM UTC
Gathering chaparral, just after rain
sticky leaved, miniscule, green
tiny bundles, scented woody
now one, with earthen hands
under a winter moon, garland star stitched
pitch of juniper, pinion fire
only a dalliance this
fragrant desert
pyre
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 9:11 AM UTC
a vitamin
no duet
soggy chanty
she gleefully
abet her
set in
bloom with
her trigger
hole fillet
in juice
now feverishly
the vamp
played this
orchestral piece
of mind
there with
her white
chaparral fleece
Feb 5, 2019
Feb 5, 2019 at 7:45 AM UTC
You were a tree.
Not too short but not surpassingly lanky.
The foliage wasn’t thick either
and yet not scrimpy enough
to make the tree look shorn or deciduous.
Ample light passed through the leaves.
The elements were temperate,
neither sultry, nor betraying a freeze.
It was neither day, nor night,
hard to tell the dark from bright.
There was a placid rustle
as the breeze politely shuffled
across the nubilous chaparral.
I stood there
knowing it is you
and the flowers from the tree were
profuse.
They kept falling on and around me.
Nov 22, 2019
Nov 22, 2019 at 10:47 AM UTC
The devil, we're told, in hell was chained,
And a thousand years he there remained,
And he never complained, nor did he groan,
But determined to start a hell of his own
Where he could torment the souls of men
Without being chained to a prison pen.
So he asked the Lord if He had on hand
Anything left when He made the land.
The Lord said, "Yes, I had plenty on hand,
But I left it down on the Rio Grande.
The fact is old boy, the stuff is so poor,
I don't think you could use it in hell any more."
But the devil went down to look at the truck,
And said if it came as a gift, he was stuck;
For after examining it careful and well
He concluded the place was too dry for hell.
So in order to get it off His hands
God promised the devil to water the lands.
For he had some water, or rather some dregs,
A regular cathartic that smelt like bad eggs.
Hence the deal was closed and the deed was given,
And the Lord went back to His place in Heaven.
and the devil said, "I have all that is needed
To make a good hell," and thus he succeeded.
He began to put thorns on all the trees,
And he mixed the sand with millions of fleas,
He scattered tarantulas along all the roads,
Put thorns on the cacti and horns on the toads;
He lengthened the horns of the Texas steers
And put an addition on jack rabbits' ears.
He put little devils in the bronco steed
And poisoned the feet of the centipede.
The rattlesnake bites you, the scorpion stings,
The mosquito delights you by buzzing his wings.
The sand burrs prevail, so do the ants,
And those that sit down need half soles on their pants.
The devil then said that throughout the land
He'd manage to keep up the devil's own brand,
And all would be mavericks unless they bore
The marks of scratches and bites by the score.
The heat in the summer is a hundred and ten,
Too hot for the devil and too hot for men.
The wild boar roams through the black chaparral,
It's a hell of a place he has for a hell;
The red pepper grows by the bank of the brook,
The Mexicans use it in all that they cook.
Just dine with a Mexican and then you will shout,
"I've a hell on the inside as well as without."
Feb 2, 2018
Feb 2, 2018 at 8:16 AM UTC
I throw up
to you
tonight
skin
lost
looking for someone
to cover
and protect
keep warm
ai got u
covered
ai got u
contained
ai got u
inside
ahm skin
I have all of you
in me
think macrophage
think semi
conductance
I am conducting
what
I am conducting
what
breaks beats
ka
thump
the whale of time
slides against me
while I type
cells abraded drift along
I am there too
singing ahm always singing
aginst
this unlettered gut
this superior knowledge
that
knows
this aint
according to the rules
poetry
I reach for the rule book
it's stupefying
sense
reject
sanity
reject
order
refect
wearing your undershirt
inside out
they are not all here
just us gast
ones
just us
crast
ones
*****
in a couplet
hungry
in a rhyme
desperately
killing
in a ******
fever
until I wake up
sordid
out somehow
to a chaparral
and a tumble
to tomorrow
that *****
she haunts
today
like Thursday
Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis
Feb 12, 2019
Feb 12, 2019 at 10:49 PM UTC