Las palabras quisieran expresar los guerreros,
Bellos guerreros impasibles,
Con el mañana gris abrazado, como un amante,
Sin dejarles partir hacia las olas.

Por la ventana abierta
Muestra el destino su silencio;
Sólo nubes con nubes, siempre nubes

Más allá de otras nubes semejantes,
Sin palabras, sin voces,
Sin decir, sin saber;
Últimas soledades que no aguardan mañana.

Durango está vacío
Al pie de tanto miedo infranqueable;
Llora consigo a solas la juventud sangrienta
De los guerreros bellos como luz, como espuma.

Por sorpresa los muros
Alguna mano dejan revolando a veces;
Sus dedos entreabiertos
Dicen adiós a nadie,
Saben algo quizá ignorado en Durango.

En Durango postrado,
Con hambre, miedo, frío,
Pues sus bellos guerreros sólo dieron,
Raza estéril en flor, tristeza, lágrimas.

Willets cull the seawall
snapper on the grill
rock ***** swoon
in shallow lagoons
long boats pass
under quiet
palm shade

Plovers dance and flutter
handrails frayed and torn
graffiti spots
at lovers rock
frigate-birds fall
from a high
noon sun

Thatched roof on a mud wall
fish flags settle score
anchors arch
in front line march
pillar cracks form
under rust brown scars

Elegant tern and grebe
watchmen fall in cue
children play
on crested waves
whimbrels and notchers
perch above Tentaciones

Striped pelícanos
the bandits of the sea!
merchants grow
in steady flow
siblings jostle
in a tide cooled sand

Heerman gull and boobie
durango smoke in yurt
boiler shrimp
and puffer blimp
castle buckets and scrapers
under a dusk light cheroot

Six pulls on a lead line
painted toes in sand
shearwater run
in a rainbow sun
the portly mexicano
flaunts his tacos
and wares

Rooster house for swordfish
bamboo shoots and sails
broken shells
and ocean swells
rise
on the
perfect
La Ropa bay

It took effervescent,
Everlasting,
Highway road sign passings
To get to Colorado
Now I walk
Brooding in the surreptitious snow,
Its gleaming,
Giving meaning,
Trying to reflect back the fact of why were here
The stars are screaming the purpose of life
But we can't hear what isn't near
Light years away is how I spend my day
Reminiscing over you
Under a sky of blue
Durango dreaming of brunette nights,
My final destination's with you in my sights

You sit outside on your front porch, with nothing to do but look out on
The dream
Contemplations haunt these new, dusty streets
    intersecting in your mind are regrets not easily left behind
Loving the self inflicted pain produced inside
   Get up and leave that porch
   Make a left and walk until collapse
When will the music come back
A heart attack almost welcoming
A deer in the headlights
Swerve right
Durango has a high high
height

Grips me
Grabs me
Lusts me
Locks me a POP chorus run off rails
Unspecified Undesirable Unseen
But
Understood.
U-Turn leave the
Unholy
Otherworldly siege of temptations
Judas Iscariot ascending as Icarus
Only to realize inevitably dust settles

What becomes of one with a broken compass?
Who leads who in a world of acidreaming prophecies ?
An age of false promises and dot.com **** Bellaire
Ownership
My land of the free
Your home of the Brave
New World without bees

Sweat a skip in the record
Burn what you think you should do
Listen to the ghosts inside your head
Blur… just ******* blur EVERYTHING
Become anonymous
Become famous
Drop out
Knock out Lady Luck      AHHHH ****
Because it is importantly cool not togiveafuck


Lumpy lopsided souls stand in line
Don’t drug inject fluoride Put a plug in the self deprecating whines or get back in line with a gaze of blight
Beg for pearly whites
Everything conspicuous
Everyone a conspiracy
Eat WalledoffStreet as it crumbles
Cash in
Sell out
What?

Yourself.                                                                  (Ascend)

“Cultivate” your garden *******
Not you, Him. who? Johnny Flynn the Banjo God
I will tell you without being candid. You are Candide. And No one will give you what you need

Icy desolated deserted
Macdade Boulevards across lands of death
Induce a sigh of your own breath
Whispering
Eli Eli lama Sabachthani

In deduction
Of an ethnographic construction
I’ll stay in flux
From one State frustrating
Across the lines of another contemplating
The beautiful country Delco
Far! Far … ~away~ >forever inside

You, saying love
You, shaman's road
You, a bird
You, a yellow sun
You, Emperor
You, lovely door
You, my Walt Whitman
You, Neal
You, Sal Paradise
You, Pancho Villa
You, La Revolución Mexicana
You, navajo
You, the border
You, the river
You, chicana
You, Mafia
You, redemption
You, poetry
You, Salvador Dalí
You, Picasso
You, stereo
You, love
You, ***
You, youth
You, America
You, América
You, español
You, english
You, country side
You, cat
You, fire
You, books
You, E. E. Cummings
You, Bukowski
You, Octavio Paz
You, Coca-Cola
You, Coke
You, India
You, Mississippi
You, jazz
You, Miles
You, Davis
You, water
You, rain
You, lagoon
You, chest
You, car
You, road
You, reading
You, lines
You, Paris
You, Baudelaire
You, Poe
You, japanese
You, katana
You, Mishima
You, gun
You, rifle
You, cam
You, can
You, can't
You, Durango
You, Arizona
You, desert
You, gonzo
You, mezcal
You, alcohol
You, drive
You, crush
You, alive
You, again

Find my waltz to dance with you my Romeo
A dark symphony breaks the silent night
within the souls you have no any escrow
still you've took a risk not too bright
Hold my hand we'll swing 'til it hurts
There's no horizon to this final view
To you, my heart is pouring blue spurts
Let's disappear a while unwrite every cue
Crawl into my thoughts, the thin line of sanity
grab my head and drown me into your love
hey dear, please hang up the wire to reality
and honey, we're the ones dancing above
Don't be afraid of losing all the floor
I may say goodbye just for a while
but tonight I'll wait outside your door
ans for sure i'll kiss your stupid smile

[page 1] And it was soon after, that the weekend had ended, and I drove home, only-sort-of-alone. Unclean, happy, not the type-to-convert. I don't mean to end the evening by evening the score. "Better than no one," but beating the billboard, and the broad-side-of-the-barn, and the *****. 

You stole from my sewn lips the secret sentiments, which would scare you. You would have been more than welcome to have just asked. Which is probably why I didn't just ask, after, I mean, [redacted line] I hope someday you see this, hope they read it to you, over me, cold. I want you to know that I am a *******-great-friend. I'm there on those days that you don't 
[page 2] pretend. But I have faith (I have no evidence for faith's power, just a lot-of-it). There'll be space, here, for you, in the end. 

I'll look at you, last night, like I looked to enable. With two-eyes, and no movement, your addiction poking at poisonous salvation. You caught the wordless-stick, so, and subsequently set fire to yourself. This sharing of cigarettes was seen by the Absent-Folk. Jarring, I gathered. "At least," I had thought. 

At least, at that point, he, stood-up, stumbled away. "*******." Am I sure? No? "No." Neither bad blood, nor enough time-spent-forgetting my bleeding, my beaurocracy, or your backpacking abroad. I mumble, and I'm bumbling now, but before... I bet... that boy's been broken. And his riled-up "Ryan!" rang my [page 3] soul. My ever-loving soul! My non-existent, unconvincing, numbed-and-listless, inner-business! And on the porch, in the mourning, I wished him, dishonest, and shaved off his ***** hair. 

And on that porch, 'round 9 A.M., the band was packing up. Personally? "People-watchin'." Probably should check that they're actually... even... there. Probably should hear the percussionist explain rhythm, again. I can't tell if it's in seven-eight or three-four. I'll scoop up all your passion, as it spills out through the doors. Not isolated, all-four! Volume-set. Vicariously, sailing very... south (towards New Orleans, again) leaves in the river, collected for the raft, stacked neatly in the Pile. Vitamins, from the Oldest-Living-star, absorbed through skin, and eardrums.

[page 4] Stuck on the surprise of "****-function?" More surprised the ****-function wasn't ******? "No?" Not-even-sort-of. Not even worth it, with most of my words! "Oh, not including you. You let your ears be lopped-off, by my lamenting. You look like a love I could lose to a friend. I enjoy the loss, for a cause, since, if you're always right, you can never be wrong."

And in my acknowledgement
of my ignorance I become
more powerful than I'd ever 
need be poetic.

Not that my mistress numbered amongst my lamentings. Alas, "merely-explaining." 

"Oi, navigate!" Alas, "it's implicit." Therein's your mistake. [page 5] Implicit implies! I'll sooner strip-search a subject for intentions, ulterior motives remaining unmentioned (inspired, I'd reckon, by the pills I shouldn't chew, and the jokes I should stop making). My unfocused inertia interferes with my ability to infer. 

And if you're still here, you're fantastic. And I find you fascinating. And, I found, you were following. My sorries were useless, imagined-kindred-lies. I'm sorry I had to go and "color it pink." But, I'll copy this page down for you, if you'd save it? The buffer'd seemed beautous up'till I blew it. Shouldn't inquire after you, should I? If I'm still thinking on it, should I ink-it-all out? What was your name, after all? 

[page 6] Was it really an accident, "or'd work seem like hell?" [I've been checking out apartments down there myself.] My shell was left-stinking-up the old Durango. But any newly-blazed-trail leads me "back to the 'co." A larger, sturdy, empty, circle-home, with an unidentifiable paint job, and thrusters that are supposedly-designed to fall back towards earth, and incinerate *(CAUTION: FALLING FIRE). *
"I'm pretty sure that verse is... It's just awesome." One of my best? "It's just awesome!" Okay! I'll remember, to remind you, that I've said the ****-I-say, spent, sped, speeding, smoked-out, and smoking-you-up. Spreading myself thin, like Communion-wafers and sticky, like reunions. 
[page 7] Saying you're glad I came, saying you're glad I came, saying you're glad I came. 

Someone snuck up with a secret. I'd seen nothing-not-standard. Even, in your snatching a spider, from my hands, and moving toward mundane mockeries, meandering, and making-my-year with a yawn. Simultaneously, I heard a sharp hiss, as someone had slowly let the air out of innocence. Somehow, rendering me speechless. Well, without respect to the "Whoa!!!" Spit's still not-red-yet. "Skeletal." Said-right. I suppose if I think hard, you'd screamed adjacently. I suppose I've never suggested a co-operative cackling. You're with it, right? You're with it, you're with me, and "you're my people." You're going to have a good time. You should know, I should've too, but attitude's [page 8] a fiction. An answer-tricked, alive, unknown. 

As a species we suffer, from seeing something done, and wanting nothing else. I'm on page eight, and ready, perenially-crushed into next-generation-dirt, but there, nonetheless. 

Well, "either way," even without you, even with her, even-in-spite-of-her, always because of him. "Always loved him, almost-******-her." Wish: I'd kissed Larry, too. Wish: she'd never married you. Wishing-dry, and diamond-winged, cursed voice, bumped up some orange change to the counter, and then off of it. More expensive than I'd have guessed. Self-consumed and best-dressed. Not rushing in, but wondering, about my-time-left. "And if death squashed potential, was it ******, or theft?" Only [page 9] if---I can look, and---wait, I have enough left, yeah, here. "Thanks, I got you back when I get some-of-my-own." Very sweet-air-tonight. "Mad, I missed the show." All good vibes.

[page 10]
Regal lions, turned house-felines,
in the cave, with so-loved-Dan. 
Thank goodness for the better ones. Thank
goodness for my friends. 

Often, only reasons to stand 
up, withholding coughs and stretching.
Even if you can't interpret all my 
fourth-dimension etchings. 
[page 11]
Sought to state the timeline, as
I'm not strung-on-the-plan. 
And, almost, every human, with
a Facebook, has a band.

There'll always be peripheries 
and, people on the side-
lines, and people craving
air-time, and people, deserving that time. 

All-white eyes, fall back, in 
waste-of-times, and
beer-soaked-pasts. For
the amount they seem to 
smile, you would be 
thinking, "this could last."

[page 12]
"Alas," this feels like the end. I feel like I'm leaving them. Slowly. Silently. The Shadow, to whom Paul'd refer, trying to stitch-himself to my town-skipping, sans-sunlight.

That Mexican hunger of memory,
That 7- 10 evening shift,
Campesinos de Chihuahua,
Sinaloans de Durango,
Day laborers:
Organized Labor’s stubborn cohort,
Largely ungovernable,
With Union Label conspicuous in absence.
Labor Unions:
Largely dead in America,
Except for SIEU, of course,
Making astonishing strides in unskilled circles.
SIEU: The Future of the American Labor Movement,
Eugene Debs rolling over in his grave again.
But I digress.
Mexican gardeners:
Doing most of southern California’s
Weekly landscaping these days.
Tree-trimming in evening twilight,
Certainly an extracurricular
Earning activity these days.
“Hustlers Only” need apply.
Adding five or ten or twenty,
Cash on Tio Sammy's barrelhead,
Mexican tree trimmers, already exhausted from
A workday that began at 6 AM.
And isn't it a pity?
A moment’s lack of concentration,
Distracted, perhaps, by *****-spirit former selves,
Sipping that last shot of afternoon tequila.
Cue Jay & the Americans:
“In a little café on the other side of the border.
She was giving me looks that made my mouth water.”
Distracted, a chainsaw arcs carnelian.
ReCue Jay et al: The chainsaw
“That belonged to JOSE!
Yes I knew. Yes I knew. Yes I knew.”
Severing his right shoulder deltoid,
A butchering to say the least,
Requiring, at least, three weeks “en casa.”
Tres semanas
Without Labor,
Consequently,
Without Capital,
No wage-slave salt lick.
“No dinero” for bread and butter.
Bread and butter?
A consummation devoutly wished for.
And dead certainly,
Better than Guns or Butter?
That Hobson’s choice.
No Padron LBJ are you,
Down along the Pedernales
Texas Hill Country, west of Austin.
Conjuring up both Guns and Butter?
You can’t have both.
Which is why we laboring folk
Always opt for the former,
Knowing instinctively that
A full-flush, spurting military-industrial complex
Means full employment and good times,
Except, of course, for the soldier boys.

“Y los sueños.”
Bourgeoisie entrechats.
I hear America still singing, faintly now.
A shrinking middle-class siren song--
Just a little something--
Some small baited hook--
Some chum bucket for Les Miserables;
Swarthy aspirants.
“Y los sueños.”
Our hunger of memory,
That once booming American 20th Century;
Horatio Alger:
Alive & kicking in the new millennium.

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.

Ya la provincia toda
reconcentra a sus sanas hijas en las caducas
avenidas, y Rut y Rebeca proclaman
la novedad campestre de sus nucas.
Las pobres desterradas
de Morelia y Toluca, de Durango y San Luis,
aroman la Metrópoli como granos de anís.
La parvada maltrecha
de alondras, cae aquí con el esfuerzo
fragante de las gotas de un arbusto
batido por el cierzo.
Improvisan su tienda
para medir, cuadrantes pesarosos,
la ruina de su paz y de su hacienda.
Ellas, las que soñaban
perdidas en los vastos aposentos,
duermen en hospedajes avarientos.
Propietarios de huertos y de huertas copiosas,
regatean las frutas y las rosas.
Con sus modas pasadas
y sus luengos zarcillos
y su mirar somero,
inmútanse a los brillos
de los escaparates de un joyero.
Y después, a evocar la sandía tropa
de pavos, y su susto manifiesto
cuando bajaban por aquel recuesto...
¡Oh siestas regalonas,
melindre ante la jícara que humea,
soponcio ante la recua intempestiva
que tumba las macetas de las pardas casonas;
lotería de nueces,
y Tenorio que flecha el historiado
postigo de las rejas antañonas!
Paso junto a las lentas fugitivas: no saben
en su desgarbo airoso y en su activo quietismo,
la derretida y pura
compensación que logra su ostracismo
sobre mi pecho, para ellas holgadamente
hospitalario, aprensivo y munificente.
Yo os acojo, anónimas y lentas desterradas,
como si a mí viniese
la lúcida familia de las hadas,
porque oléis al opíparo destino
y al exaltado fuero
de los calabazates que sazona
el resol del Adviento, en la cornisa
recoleta y poltrona.

Bronco is adrift in the city
But walks a straight line
Some slicker said he liked his costume
Bronco doesn’t mind
He got it that no one wears spurs in Durango
That’s just fine
He’s moving along with the times

He’s in town to find a wife
They met on the Internet
Emily teaches the second grade
Hasn’t met her dude yet
She grew up on a farm
Where there isn’t much shade
Attractive she is, prim and petite
They are each out to find that someone to meet

Arriving is Bronco with no swagger there
He takes his hat off, brushes his hair
Rings the doorbell, he could swear
He’s never seen anyone prettier before
She invites him in, he sits in the easy chair
The dinner she’s made is succulent and sweet
Magic is in the air, “Ain’t life a treat,”
Bronco says to himself and almost clicks his heels
He’ll be back next week, will soon seal the deal

In writing my poems, it's always my quest,
to take the time, to make it rhyme, but I'm in distress.
I wanted to convey, how much better I rest,
Since the purchase of a great mattress.
My problem you see after plenty of test, I bought a "Purple,"
and "Dang Me" the only thing I found to rhyme was, "Maple Surple."
One of the the worlds favorite pigments, after centuries of time,
has not a single word to which in can rhyme.
A color once held in history as the royal shade,
even now leaves this poet, his poem unmade.
A purple fruit, from which wine we could make,
And someone chose, to call it a "grape."
I say it's high time to correct, this to long slight,
And save the word "Purple" from it's unjust blight
How about you Auto Makers, with your Durango,Sienna, and Tesla.
Come up with a sporty "Verpule," if you wanna Impreza.
Hey, Disney you once rhymed, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,
would doing "Purple" be so atrocious.
Big Pharma, with your colorful, zides, mycins, and statins,
maybe you can use an "urple" in your next covid patents.
You TikTok influencers I'm calling on you,
#Purplechallenge, together, let's see what we can do.
Well, I was really pumped, but now, I just sit here sad.
The Purple Company, sent a gift, an "ORANGE" mattress pad.
So now I pull out my ceremonial sword of "Silver,"
and commit this poem to: "Hari Kilver."

The open West is an iron lung
  for the polio of my soul

Lifting me up and breathing in
  at once to make me whole

Wild and free, its air blows clean
  to minister my wounds

And nurse me back to perfect health
  —a second none to soon

(Durango Colorado: February, 2019)

There's this quiet sadness that I just can't kick
And with all the madness - might as well get lit
See - they've all gone crazy on me in this town
If it were a painting, they'd be upside down

This whole thing started when I packed my bags
Told them I was leaving and I won't come back
Put the past behind me - go and find my way
Let the sunshine shine me to my brighter day

Now it's four years later - circle's come full round
Seems I'm finally walking with my feet on the ground
Till this lady hit me with her Durango
I got knocked the **** out - back to ground zero

So I leave the sunshine - trade it for the cold
And my body's battered and my soul is torn
So I drag the pieces back, I'm jersey bound
And I had to give up all that peace I'd found

So it's been a good bit now I've been back home
And I traded heaven for some open road
And I'm back with family where it all began
And I've come to understand just why I ran

And tho it's maddening - it still feels so good
To get back to where, somehow, I'm understood
Cause this place is where I let that sadness sprout
So it's only here that I can work it out

Here's my lesson - hurt is hard straight on
To see that you have old wounds that aren't yet gone
But just let them come up and soon you will see
That you've got to really feel it to get free

So it's 2 years since then now, I've come to learn
That it's harder to get up once you've been burned
But I keep my head up - truckin - faith I've found
So that now my own voice is the sweetest sound

One day you're laughing in Durango,
Looking across rivers at rainbows
The colors so vivid, lights so bright
you can almost see the happiness jumping out of your eyes.

You would've never thought laughs,
Would become echoes - far from your reach.
The rainbows you once saw turn to stormy black skies,
Those eyes that once shined - now glossed over.

You said we'd see these rainbows forever,
I cant see them through my tears.

C.k

Ford score and...Chevy
five years ago,
my Model A strapping
handsome big bro,
(who sped like one
speeding Triumph font lee, crow),
wing, & swooping Thunderbird, with
bold face observers whistling Geronimo
(Holy Jeep), this meant war
whooping Comanche

decked out as armadillo
kicking up red feathery
colored dust devils
rivaling the fastest Alfa Romeo
(while choking, gagging, loo
sing russett sputum
flecked with true grit
mouthful size of Colorado)
easily mistaken for masked Zorro
speeding across rugged

terrain of Durango,
ah recall and reminisce,
and if cup ear just so
can still hear (albeit faintly),
a toy Yoda Echo
wing nsync with
Lake Woebegone prairie
home companion, the little known no
nonsense visiting drag queen racer
Noah N. Gin poe

cur face (born that way)
originally from Malibu, a beautiful
Corvair with Corsair, now resembling
groveling growling Gremlin, in slow-mo
what with his Smashface
ugly enough to scare Apollo
the ghost of David Buick,
a poor entrepreneur, who
never did make good profit re: Coupe,
and could not Dodge nor shoo

away, the Stealth fearsome curse
of Aries nibble Viper moo
ving fast as greased lightning,
(whereby an Eagle Talon
flashed like Spitfire akin too
Austin-Healey Sprite)
full Caprice out of the
(sir really yon) blue
celestial vault outer limits, hue
mans avoided only

brave Caravan Voyager Goo Goo
Doll dared (only fools rushed in,
ignoring, and dodging Fiat,
where angels feared to tread), a Motley Crue
shielded with Fisker Karma (credit),
no matter last payments way overdue
sought out (with Escort
in tow) - actually two
yup, that ever elusive Holy Grail,
thus needed to Focus with much ado
about nothing, while

brows scrunched – mad as Jew
pitter by Zeus snorting like
angry red Taurus bulls - do
tee fully kicking up Tempo
like nobody's business ready
to serve their Mazda at heart,
a Legacy Sub (burr rue)  
tricked up as a gnu
that's all Volks-wagon
bidding adieu before
I Escalade from ridiculous
to the sublime.