"mesquite" poems
Pinto?
No, not the wild-spirited, color-splotched mare
with mane streaming like flames-thrown
behind in the wind
Taking desert inclines
with scuffing hooves on rock
catching her balance in mesquite
curbing?
The sage, dust
All
that nature throws in its pathway to knowledge
toward treachery of crosswalks?
“P-l-e-a-s-e don't slow down!
Stop signs--?
”No!
Just keep going!
Don't slow down now!”
“They'll hear us coming
3 blocks away!”
Pinto?
Clogged carburetor--?
No one much-mentioned
rear-end inferno reputation??
A mere twinge in my signature
Woman-without-a-clue
“Hey, it runs, right?
Gets where we're goin'?”
Kids duck in back seat
so as not to be seen
In the cloud of smoke
We make our approach
Hiss Spitter, Belch, Pop
and--
BANG!
--Like a gunshot
Kids take cover
on street, in backseat
duck down
so not to be noticed...
“Oh Ma!
MA!!!
Not right here!
Farther down!”
...so not to be seen
...by friends that matter...
in this ride
from hell!
Backfiring Beast--
“Friends”
skitter away
from what will emerge from the smoke and fumes
of high-risk-situation
Kids spill out through jammed door
to unexpected accolades
onto equality's curb
of laughter
Public school's
wake of exhaust and relief
I drive mercifully away
Start of another school day
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 1:11 PM UTC
anonymous winds
bend tall Timothy grasses,
wake rabbits napping
in the brush
they ripple the surface
of the stock tanks, tickle the haunches
of the beasts who wade there
to slurp the tepid waters
they birth red dust devils
for my eyes to follow, as they scud
through mesquite, and hopscotch over canyons
older than time
one day, soon, they will blow
over a shallow earth bed; I will not hear
their sibilant song, but my sleep will be deep,
unperturbed by their mystic music
Jul 1, 2016
Jul 1, 2016 at 9:37 PM UTC
I got no more ***** on my arms, vaginal schemes and gospel psalms. Very private skinny tribes, lit up with oversized black lights. In the very end, everybody walks this way, they all move like idioms, they all wanna be lit up like stars. Some could be prevalent like cascading dreams, nauseous just like mesquite BBQ baby-back wings.
Fly away little bird, fly away. But don't try to leave
Or you won't get paid.
I know very well, just what kinda caption your capsaicin
Can be, lit up like honey blunts, golden stars on top of your christmas tree. Strawberry Swisher Sweets, Blueberry Dunhill flavors, poke your hand through the fence, make friendly on your neighbors. If you like Kimmel Live, Conan at Midnight too, recipes for the zombies, SS ****** Youth. Blow-up and be a party. Get off work and drink your check. Get down, get off- I'll show you. Just how Martin pays the rent.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:21 AM UTC
They cling to the earth
like lichens
in deep meditation
Lophophora williamsii.
Fallen warriors sprinkled
throughout the blackbrush and mesquite
there in the valley of the Rio Grande.
They whisper to you
as you roam that arid slab of ground
and spin like Van Gogh
in the night sky
while you sleep.
They call you this way
and that
lead you in directions
you did not intend.
In the dry washes
beware
rattlesnakes wait in every thin patch
of shade
and at night
lightning switches the lights on
and off
and on again.
Once the spirit
of this unassuming succulent
enters into you
accepts you
uplifts you
the sky opens
and reveals the pulsing heart of
God's creation
speaking softly in tongues
heard only at the beginning.
It is glory then.
Jun 18, 2016
Jun 18, 2016 at 10:13 PM UTC
Arrive in a neighborhood not mine.
Phoenix sun splits the mailboxes,
Cracked cement, bald lawns, deflated kiddie pools,
sippy cups gone brittle in the sun.
A toddler screams
until a sibling gathers him inside.
Helios whips his chariot down the street,
steals my parking space.
White Shell Woman hushes the child
with a wind of cool dust.
I buy
donuts, Cheetos, pickles-
eat them in the car.
Gas station sink, hair and grit.
I scrub off orange powder.
Kokopelli swings from the paper towel rack,
flicking drops of water onto my face,
flirting, laughing at my small hungers.
Cemetery, sitting on the hood.
Graves hum in the heat.
Yours more-so.
Hecate steps from the shadow of a mesquite,
offers me three paths,
none of them home.
Coyote pads along the stone wall,
head cocked, grin sharp,
watching my pulse quicken.
White Shell Woman whispers:
_Run._
The blood in me stirs-
knife-bright, restless.
I step off the hood,
already fleeing toward
any other life.
Aug 2, 2025
Aug 2, 2025 at 12:44 PM UTC
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.
Jun 21, 2011
Jun 21, 2011 at 4:04 PM UTC
I've been all across Texas , and in return Texas has been all across me
Jim Bowie took a stand at the Alamo
When he had been ordered to retreat
He was perhaps protecting his hoard of gold found in some lost central Texas mine next to Mexicans and the twisting mesquite
Austin has a city limits
Full of out of state conceit
And it's a two day crossing
While it's snowing on one side
The other is summer heat
They grow sugar cane in the south
Up north winter wheat
My sister was born forsaken
In Wichita Falls complete
Black widow spiders , scorpions
The backyard full of rattlesnakes
That we used to beat
She was the only rose
that had the Yellow hair
And when she left Texas
She never went back there
Jan 11, 2016
Jan 11, 2016 at 6:21 AM UTC
I’m finally waking up here is my mind--
A scattering of dreams, confusion.
The desert spread out, in soft clouds
I am awake here is my heart, the horizon
The only thing I can understand, now.
Pain is pain, be gone.
The smattering trail of mesquite smoke
The rising star
The thinning sound of thunder;
The sudden certain mountains
In the early morning rain.
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 12:24 AM UTC
I claim to know the wolf,
tracking scents in the high country
though half truth requires I confess
one has never been in my sight
though in silent night,
in snow weighted pines
and fir, doubtless one
has eyed me in my folly
I have seen the coyote
scratching in the caliche
on the stingy prairies,
crouching in the mesquite
ready for the ****
whilst the hare hops by
when chase ensues
and mammal hearts race
I have yet to see
the canine succeed
the hare hides in Alice’s hole
while the mangy hunter
settles for field mice
or makes bargains with buzzards
while the flies yet crawl
on the ****
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 4:27 PM UTC
The grass bends down beneath my feet accordingly, only to rise,
rise again
The waves break on pebbles, sand, only to crash again on
distant shores
Pulled back through quiet memories, the soft smoked smell of
mesquite & juniper
Lying in the heart of a gray metal shell, laid length-wise, molded into
a mad-mans image
Falling through old, tired, lives, with such innocence, clean &
unburdened by life
Accumulating this tiredness, begrudgingly ground down, absently
tossed aside
Never asking why, like beasts led to slaughter, not of flesh & bone,
put principle & ideal
Dreams of silver, fading into tarnished piles of rust, distorted image,
mocking faded beauty
Quiet nights spent in the shade of moonlight, watching the stars go
down with you
Dreaming of sunshine as the dew collects on our sleeping
faces
Awakened by the fleeting song of cardinals, staring into lattice-work
clouds
Feb 25, 2012
Feb 25, 2012 at 1:36 AM UTC
They call it crude.
The dessicated then carboxilated, carbonified,
****** of dead Permian flesh.
This is the reason the salamanders die.
Corporeal concreted, mummified, fossilized.
This is the reason we dance.
Dirges of West Texas dirt romances.
Lost in the flares,
Caught in the gases blaring making nostrils glare.
Requiescat in pace.
All these women.
Dancing through the caliche,
Giving a reason to taste the air.
Through one breath of speechless.
The loam is never settled where boots tread and weather.
Destroying bedrock through hydrolic fracking to the earths core.
I land my toes in the sand of the Llano.
I taste my Mexicans, greasy, with cheese,
With.
Hot.
Sauce.
Dorthy never went to the fest of Oil.
But there's no place like home.
Her silver slippers or prosthesis feet placed instantaneously upon me.
Would bring me directly into a thorny,
Patch of Mesquite.
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 12:49 AM UTC
So I miss you in the spaces
Where your hands go
The between times
In our sleeping
Where maybe we aren't even touching
But I can feel you
Hear your breathing
In the spaces in between
Sweetening my blood
Flowing thick
Like mesquite honey
Hummingbirds in my stomach hovering
And drinking
their fill
And I'm enough for something
Sustenance for something
Other than me
Enough for someone
Who sees my betweens
And puts his hands
Where they need to be
Warms them
On my belly full of flowering mesquite
Nectar for the humminbirds
And bees
Nov 15, 2013
Nov 15, 2013 at 4:08 PM UTC
Outside my door a cawing crow
of blackened wings and indigo
delivered by night's shivering storm.
The wind and winter's howling call,
scattered nests and down the feather falls.
Crack of limbs, cold and bare branched
mesquite leaves and needles spiral to the ground.
In a swooping field he flies into the tallest pines
deep and slow, the trees creak
wild in cello tones.
Feb 15, 2017
Feb 15, 2017 at 10:49 PM UTC
Blackbird your wings like ashen skies
iridescent as blue morpho butterflies
the impaling of your sharpened eyes
all knowing, you cackle
shapeshifter Yaqui man
desert bird, a grackle
Stirring, you stare me down
shaking mesquite leaves to the ground
the air is thick grey sage
smudged with prayers of peace
a wish to cease
the wars we wage
a vision pure of heart
this message of love unfurls
breathe peace - peace
in this world.
Apr 5, 2016
Apr 5, 2016 at 7:57 PM UTC
Although I hardly gave it a thought
I didn't really doubt
our miniature juniper, a bonsai,
would survive our desert vacation.
It likes the dry
air of our home, needs water
once a week at most and seems
meditative and active, both. While away
I rediscovered my love of agaves -
sotol and century
plant - met Mortonia and became
reacquainted with squawbush, its citrus
drupe which makes traveling the long horizon
of the desert uplands endurable.
Live oaks - emory,
wavyleaf - dominant and regally spaced
giving ground to mesquite only on the sere
sand flats. I counted and drew inflorescenses,
spikelets, florets, awns but grasses
remain a mystery
their microscopic parts. This year
I'll study, give them serious thought before
our Spring starts. The cactus wren was the one
bird I could be certain about. Sunsets
made me sorry
the desert is not my home. But the ocotilloes
flowered before we left and that made up
for the vicious attack of a hedgehog cactus.
Impressive, ponderosa pine and Arizona cypress
the canyon canopy
watered with snowmelt and along the high cliffs
limestone formations predating our arrival by
ten million years of weather. Newspapers
kept us aware humanity had not accomplished yet
the end of history
and that was fair. The planes were full of citizens
who no longer applaud upon landing. Snow flew,
not a pinyon pine or manzanita within two moons
walking. On the dining room sideboard, waiting,
our miniature juniper.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 12:00 PM UTC
Its not the point of killing faith that u will find someone.
Its the action of loneliness and controlling your bonds
Its empty alone and so is pretending to love
You cant make connections not like addiction to drugs.
Save the drug of infatuation.
No reason just meaning less
No selection. Just what drips in your lap
No focus just lenses that crack
The sextant marking starlines that guide your path
is no longer Coordinated calibrated to designate a map
Walk amble climb along to view a moral prefix
to design a way out of a sea just arms length
with the depth of the roots of mesquite trees in the spring
We are all stowaways in a ship waiting to jump to shore.
Trying to find a place to spill seeds in the tilled rows of a *****
The words you whisper are pretty and my minds enthused
tho i know every go at this game i shall lose
Im wandering in a labyrinth
Chasing in a brain
like a rat in a spinning wheel following reflections from a cage
You tricked me. Oh yes. You win
Im no longer a man like all women before you ate the innards left a shell
spit out the hull
Dragged my meat to the floor
One final kiss and i leave, i am missed
You say lies again
i pull off your fist
its on my head
its in my throat
i read words that you spoke
its not my fault
its the blood clot
keeping us unconnected in this note
I am dreaming
secret beaming
red lights blinking
help is sinking
No hope between two
softly stroking
my cross is burning
No fires stoking
On my fore arms
on my chest guard
all is sinking with the funeral
All the voices in my head
are telling me it should be dead
yet the ***** in my soul
tells me that he still pleas for bread
But i starve him
and i lash him
and i strap him to this ledge
for he is wrong
and yes he lies
you're the harpy of my dread
You ******* killed me like i was a lame horse to be put down
Mar 18, 2013
Mar 18, 2013 at 1:30 PM 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
anonymous winds
bend tall Timothy grasses,
wake rabbits napping
in the brush
they ripple the surface
of the stock tanks, tickle the haunches
of the beasts who wade there
to slurp the tepid waters
they birth red dust devils
for my eyes to follow, as they scud
through mesquite, and hopscotch over canyons
older than time
one day, soon, they will blow
over a shallow earth bed; I will not hear
their sibilant song, but my sleep will be deep,
unperturbed by their mystic music
Nov 8, 2023
Nov 8, 2023 at 12:54 AM UTC
Tin cup
Simple pleasure common treasure it has its worth by it connection not everyone but many found this by an
On old pump by itself or next to a bucket you could drink or use it to prime the pump it lends itself to
Western lore found around the chuck wagon on a cattle drive one of the men on the trail drive squats
Before the fire with gnarled hands he holds the cup with hands that are callused from handling his lariat
Day in and day out on the cattle now he holds it filled with coffee strong river coffee drawn from the
Brazos shaded by mesquite cottonwood and juniper finest example of Texas this old cup ties you into
time and place a past that is loved and loved ones that shared campsites that now have passed on in the
Heat of the summer day you drank hardly from its contents it banged around in all kinds of
Circumstances invariably most of them pleasurable ones and who handled the cup mother or a favorite
Grandmother you see her hands lovingly holding the cup they go together like flowers and rain you strain
To hold the thought you don’t want to let go of that special connected memory or maybe they used it to
Measure flour by closing your eyes you can almost smell the bread or biscuits the flour produced it takes
You across many thresholds that are steeped in precious memories that can never be again you are
Taken back to childhood by something so simple but so useful it creates a lost time of joy and
Happiness long remembered and never to be forgotten a symbol or a symbolic trusted identification
With place or person you feel its coolness in your hand you move it around for a few quick moments
You return to yesterday not bad for a piece of tin they give so much credit to other metals for other
Reasons of course the value they possess and what you could exchange them for but that is talking
About a certain amount were dealing with priceless things of the heart that no amount of money can
Buy just think next time there are many items that are in themselves of little value but they are
Touchstones a gateway to a broken past riches that aren’t for sale or they are not to be bartered away
They are never put in a safe but they so readily take you to a safe place tender joy is felt in the heart
A calling can be felt and heard jewels of inestimable value lay hidden they easily come into view when
You touch insignificance without expecting anything the world lets you know you are richer than you
know
Nov 24, 2011
Nov 24, 2011 at 7:25 PM UTC
Letting the vibrations be carried upon the breeze
While the moon bathed the hushed twilight in her soft glow
I spoke
The plateu's grasses and mesquite
Bending to carry my words
Across the miniscule miles that seperate us
The nighttime creatures deftly run towards you
Carrying my message
I spoke
Now I wait for the words in return
For the grasses to bend towards me
Carrying your words I long to hear
I spoke
i need you
The night land creatures scurry to my feet
The Hush twilight speaks
i am yours
Apr 23, 2016
Apr 23, 2016 at 10:41 AM UTC
Summer singing madly
Over empty lot
The still grass
Stands near alone
Before the final crew comes
With trucks and blueprints and concrete
To slap together rent fortune
For the white cadillac man.
Summer swinging madly
Over empty lot
The post oaks
Hesitate along lot edge,
Wait to see what happens
To the few brave mesquite:
Better to stand on edges
And wait
Than venture
To vulnerable heart
Of empty lot.
Summer winging madly
Over empty lot
The birds wing madly over
Rarely dropping
To the grass for seeds;
They sit upon the postoaks
At the edge
And keep a watchful eye
Upon the road.
All wing madly to the edge:
Grackles, swifts, and doves,
The mockingbirds, all
Save one persistent meadowlark
Without a mate
That sings each morning
From the wire,
One silly songster
That loneliness has blinded
And brought to chime
Its idyll
Summer song
Over empty lot.
Summer singing madly
Over empty lot.
Sep 24, 2011
Sep 24, 2011 at 10:11 PM UTC
I feel flat lined, on this flat earth
now and then, when I follow the wild pigs’ path
into the thorny mesquite, the scrub oak,
I see a spike on my graph
when I find their fresh droppings,
dung still steaming on morning’s crisp ground,
perhaps I have found, something to make
my heart pump enough to register a blip,
a puny peak on the scrolling page
true, this is not
the rubber tree jungle where
I first learned terror and trembling unto death
where I hunted other prowling prey, who had no sharp fangs or tusks
to tear my young flesh, but could, with a fateful finger flick
spill my rushing red blood in the puke brown soup
of the rice paddies
those days now are seen
faintly, through a milky haze,
though for others it seems, recalled
at night, in dread dreams
I do not share their nightmares--if I did
I would not wander into the winter woods
to face my foe, to hear its gray growling, hoping
its charge will be quick on this flat land,
and that the thumping in my chest
will paint a beautiful sharp line
on the pallid parchment
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 8:42 AM UTC
many of his posts tilted
like trees tired of the wind; wires sagged,
red rusted, but still jabbed the errant cow
when duty called
three quarters a century
he rode the same trail; of late,
he had gone afoot, the saddle too heavy
for him to heft
walking, he reconnoitered
the tracks with more care--hooves of his myriad steers,
a few equine signs of the farrier’s labor
still there, fast fading
his boot prints were
more numerous now, and sometimes
tamped down by the few beasts left
in his herd
across the line lay his dead
neighbor’s pastures, peppered with mesquite,
pocked by fire ant holes; no livestock grazed, but the giant turbines whined, white whipsaws slashing not timber, but blue sky
driven by the relentless winds,
they called to him, in chanted chorus, issuing a premonition:
one day soon, your fence will fall, and the path you trod
will bear no new tracks for other souls to read
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 10:40 PM UTC
Caravans carefully cross empty mesquite desert
between howls from creatures too small to produce them.
There is a slight bump and the convoy tips.
Tips, tips, tips, like snapping fingers, tipping over cauldrons filled with molten magma. They laugh a maniacal laughter as they slip through millenniums of sand, counter intuitively freezing.
Long gone Pharaohs, oil drums and abandoned spare tires.
Once was lost, but now I've found.
Feb 8, 2014
Feb 8, 2014 at 12:35 AM UTC
mother of pearl harbor
you dock your mountains high
a lavender horizon
in an abalone sky
clouds of pale seafoam
they lap like cresting waves
the fading eastern star
going to its grave
here on earth the cacti
convoluted coral reefs
muted hues to cover
birds within them bleat
mesquite and Palo Verde
roiling gently in the breeze
don't seem to know the temperature
that we're in a freeze
for though we humans shiver
due to the low degrees
they stay green and vibrant
don't even lose their leaves!
not much change in season
on this winter morn
I sit outside to witness
the cold day
being born
SoulSurvivor
written
December 2013
rewritten
(C) December 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 1:38 PM UTC