We had wanted to leave our homes before six in the morning
but left late and lazy at ten or ten-thirty with hurried smirks
and heads turned to the road, West
driving out against the noonward horizon
and visions before us of the great up-and-over

and tired we were already of stiff-armed driving neurotics in Montreal
and monstrous foreheaded yellow bus drivers
ugly children with long middle fingers
and tired we were of breaking and being yelled at by beardless bums
but thought about the beards at home we loved
and gave a smile and a wave nonetheless

Who were sick and tired of driving by nine
but then had four more hours still
with half a tank
then a third of a tank
then a quarter of a tank
then no tank at all
except for the great artillery halt and discovery
of our tyre having only three quarters of its bolts

Saved by the local sobriety
and the mystic conscious kindness of the wise and the elderly
and the strangers: Autoshop Gale with her discount familiar kindness;
Hilda making ready supper and Ray like I’ve known you for years
that offered me tools whose functions I’ve never known
and a handshake goodbye

     and "yes we will say hello to your son in Alberta"
     and "yes we will continue safely"
     and "no you won’t see us in tomorrow’s paper"
     and tired I was of hearing about us in tomorrow’s paper

Who ended up on a road laughing deliverance
in Ralphton, a small town hunting lodge
full of flapjacks and a choir of chainsaws
with cheap tomato juice and eggs
but the four of us ended up paying for eight anyway

and these wooden alley cats were nothing but hounds
and the backwoods is where you’d find a cheap child's banjo
and cheap leather shoes and bear traps and rat traps
and the kinds of things you’d fall into face first

Who sauntered into a cafe in Massey
that just opened up two weeks previous
where the food was warm and made from home
and the owner who swore to high heaven
and piled her Sci-Fi collection to the ceiling
in forms of books and VHS

but Massey herself was drowned in a small town
where there was little history and heavy mist
and the museum was closed for renovations
and the stores were run by diplomats
or sleezebag no-cats
and there was one man who wouldn’t show us a room
because his baby sitter hadn’t come yet
but the babysitter showed up through the backdoor within seconds
though I hadn't seen another face

        and the room was a landfill
        and smelled of stale cat **** anyhow
        and the lobby stacked to the ceiling with empty beer box cans bottles
        and the taps ran cold yellow and hot black through spigots

but we would be staying down the street
at the inn of an East-Indian couple

who’s eyes were not dilated 
and the room smelled
lemon-scented

and kept on driving lovingly without a care in the world
but only one of us had his arms around a girl
and how lonely I felt driving with Jacob
in the fog of the Agawa pass;

following twin red eyes down a steep void mass
where the birch trees have no heads
and the marshes pool under the jagged foothills
that climb from the water above their necks

that form great behemoths
with great voices bellowing and faces chiselled hard looking down
and my own face turned upward toward the rain

Wheels turning on a black asphalt river running uphill around great Superior
that is the ocean that isn’t the ocean but is as big as the sea
and the cloud banks dig deep and terrible walls

and the sky ends five times before night truly falls
and the sun sets slower here than anywhere
but the sky was only two miles high and ten long anyway

The empty train tracks that seldom run
and some rails have been lifted out
with a handful of spikes that now lay dormant

and the hill sides start to resemble *******
or faces or the slow curving back of some great whale

-and those, who were finally stranded at four pumps
with none but the professional Jacob reading great biblical instructions at the nozzle
nowhere at midnight in a town surrounded

by moose roads
                             moose lanes
                                                     moose rivers
and everything mooses

ending up sleeping in the maw of a great white wolf inn
run by Julf or Wolf or John but was German nonetheless

and woke up with radios armed
and arms full
and coffee up to the teeth
with teeth chattering
and I swear to God I saw snowy peaks
but those came to me in waking dream:

"Mountains dressed in white canvas
gowns and me who placed
my hands upon their *******
that filled the sky"

Passing through a buffet of inns and motels
and spending our time unpacking and repacking
and talking about drinking and cheap sandwiches
but me not having a drink in eight days

and in one professional inn we received a professional scamming
and no we would not be staying here again
and what would a trip across the country be like
if there wasn’t one final royal scamming to be had

and dreams start to return to me from years of dreamless sleep:

and I dream of hers back home
and ribbons in a raven black lattice of hair
and Cassadaic exploits with soft but honest words

and being on time with the trains across the plains  
and the moon with a shower of prairie blonde
and one of my father with kind words
and my mother on a bicycle reassuring my every decision

Passing eventually through great plains of vast nothingness
but was disappointed in seeing that I could see
and that the rumours were false
and that nothingness really had a population
and that the great flat land has bumps and curves and etchings and textures too

beautiful bright golden yellow like sprawling fingers
white knuckled ablaze reaching up toward the sun
that in this world had only one sky that lasted a thousand years

and prairie driving lasts no more than a mountain peak
and points of ember that softly sigh with the one breath
of our cars windows that rushes by with gratitude for your smile

And who was caught up with the madness in the air
with big foaming cigarettes in mouths
who dragged and stuffed down those rolling fumes endlessly
while St. Jacob sang at the way stations and billboards and the radio
which was turned off

and me myself and I running our mouth like the coughing engine
chasing a highway babe known as the Lady Valkyrie out from Winnipeg
all the way to Saskatoon driving all day without ever slowing down
and eating up all our gas like pez and finally catching her;

      Valkyrie who taught me to drive fast
      and hovering 175 in slipstreams
      and flowing behind her like a great ghost Cassady ******* in dreamland Nebraska
      only 10 highway crossings counted from home.

Lady Valkyrie who took me West.
Lady Valkyrie who burst my wings into flame as I drew a close with the sun.
Lady Valkyrie who had me howl at slender moon;

     who formed as a snowflake
     in the light on the street
     and was gone by morning
     before I asked her name

and how are we?
and how many?

Even with old Tom devil singing stereo
and riding shotgun the entire trip from day one
singing about his pony, and his own personal flophouse circus,
and what was he building in there?

There is a fair amount of us here in these cars.
Finally at light’s end finding acquiescence in all things
and meeting with her eye one last time; flashed her a wink and there I was, gone.
Down the final highway crossing blowing wind and fancy and mouth puttering off
roaring laughter into the distance like some tremendous Phoenix.

Goodnight Lady Valkyrie.

The evening descends and turns into a sandwich hysteria
as we find ourselves riding between cities of transports
and that one mad man that passed us speeding crazy
and almost hit head-on with Him flowing East

and passed more and more until he was head of the line
but me driving mad lunacy followed his tail to the bumper
passing fifteen trucks total to find our other car
and felt the great turbine pull of acceleration that was not mine

mad-stacked behind two great beasts
and everyone thought us moon-crazy; Biblical Jake
and Mad Hair Me driving a thousand
eschewing great gusts of wind speed flying

Smashing into the great ephedrine sunset haze of Saskatoon
and hungry for food stuffed with the thoughts of bedsheets
off the highway immediately into the rotting liver of dark downtown
but was greeted by an open Hertz garage
with a five-piece fanfare brass barrage
William Tell and a Debussy Reverie
and found our way to bedsheets most comfortably

Driving out of Saskatoon feeling distance behind me.
Finding nothing but the dead and hollow corpses of roadside ventures;

more carcasses than cars
and one as big as a moose
and one as big as a bear
and no hairier

and driving out of sunshine plain reading comic book strip billboards
and trees start to build up momentum
and remembering our secret fungi in the glove compartment
that we drove three thousand kilometres without remembering

and we had a "Jesus Jacob, put it away brother"
and went screaming blinded by smoke and paranoia
and three swerves got us right
and we hugged the holy white line until twilight

And driving until the night again takes me foremast
and knows my secret fear in her *****
as the road turns into a lucid *** black and makes me dizzy
and every shadow is a moose and a wildcat and a billy goat
and some other car

and I find myself driving faster up this great slanderous waterfall until I meet eye
with another at a thousand feet horizontal

then two eyes

then a thousand wide-eyed peaks stretching faces upturned to the celestial black
with clouds laid flat as if some angel were sleeping ******* on a smokestack
and the mountains make themselves clear to me after waiting a lifetime for a glimpse
then they shy away behind some old lamppost and I don’t see them until tomorrow

and even tomorrow brings a greater distance with the sunlight dividing stone like 'The Ancient of Days'
and moving forward puts all into perspective

while false cabins give way
and the gas stations give way
and the last lamppost gives way
and its only distance now that will make you true
and make your peaks come alive

Like a bullrush, great grey slopes leap forth as if branded by fire
then the first peaks take me by surprise
and I’m told that these are nothing but children to their parents
and the roads curve into a gentle valley
and we’re in the feeding zone

behind the gates of some great geological zoo
watching these lumbering beasts
finishing up some great tribal *******
because tomorrow they will be shrunk
and tomorrow ever-after smaller

Nonetheless, breathless in turn I became
it began snowing and the pines took on a different shape
and the mountains became covered white
and great glaciers could be seen creeping
and tourists seen gawking at waterfalls and waterfowls
and fowl play between two stones a thousand miles high

climbing these Jasper slopes flying against wind and stone
and every creak lets out its gentle tone and soft moans
as these tyres rub flat against your back
your ancient skin your rock-hard bones

and this peak is that peak and it’s this one too
and that’s Temple, and that’s Whistler
and that’s Glasgow and that’s Whistler again
and those are the Three Sisters with ******* ablaze

and soft glowing haze your sun sets again among your peaks
and we wonder how all these caves formed
and marvelled at what the flood brought to your feet
as roads lay wasted by the roadside

in the epiphany of 3:00am realizing
that great Alta's straights and highway crossings
are formed in torturous mess from mines of 'Mt. Bleed'
and broken ribs and liver of crushed mountain passes
and the grey stones taxidermied and peeled off
and laid flat painted black and yellow;
the highways built from the insides
of the mountain shells

Who gave a “What now. New-Brunswick?”

and a “What now, Quebec, and Ontario, and Manitoba, and Saskatchewan";
**** fools clumsily dancing in the valleys; then the rolling hills; then the sea that was a lake
then the prairies and not yet the mountains;

running naked in formation with me at the lead
and running naked giving the finger to the moon
and the contrails, and every passing blur on the highway
dodging rocks, and sandbars
and the watchful eye of Mr. and Mrs. Law
and holes dug-up by prairie dogs
and watching with no music
as the family caravans drove on by

but drove off laughing every time until two got anxious for bed and slowed behind
while the rambling Jacob and I had to wait in the half-moon spectacle
of a black-tongue asphalt side-road hacking darts and watching for grizzlies
for the other two to finish up with their birthday *** exploits
though it was nobodies birthday

and then a timezone was between us
 and they were in the distant future
and nobodies birthday was in an hour from now

then everything was good
and everyone was satiated
then everything was a different time again
and I was running on no sleep or a lot of it
leaping backward in time every so often
like gaining a new day but losing space on the surface of your eye

but I stared up through curtains of starlight to mother moon
and wondered if you also stared
and was dumbfounded by the majesty of it all

and only one Caribou was seen the entire trip
and only one live animal, and some forsaken deer
and only a snake or a lonesome caterpillar could be seen crossing such highway straights
but the water more refreshing and brighter than steel
and glittered as if it were hiding some celestial gem
and great ravines and valleys flowed between everything
and I saw in my own eye prehistoric beasts roaming catastrophe upon these plains
but the peaks grew ever higher and I left the ground behind

Science says that there's a mathematical equation that explains everything in life.

But I say that not even physics bears an explanation for...the guidelines of attraction.
Our primal reactions are multiplied in...the highlights of passion.

These laws of love that linger like a lanterns lost illumination...
Like the campfire light on a clear night, leaves coals of culmination.

Sweat beads lead to bare threads and bare bodies.
And oh my, how bare bodies lead to imaginations running wild.

Cold winds inspire warm kisses and close skin.
Sincere actions aren't sins.

Bodies wound in union, formed by light and tightly bound.
Together, these twisted vines penetrate the hardest ground...
Together, harmonic souls produce passionate sounds.
Yet, still somehow, love gets lost more than love gets found.

This equation is unending...like numbers off lips that kiss the air.
Body language spoken...Our physical bonds parallel eternity and pi squared.
And you know that every moment that we share is nothing short of...molecular love for the masses...
Now held captive by gravity and magnetism...

See, the last full moon marked retrograde...and if the moon affects the tide of the ocean...and our bodies are roughly 75% water...can we assume that this is the only body powerful enough to keep ours apart?

This gravity...
This pull...
It's pulling me apart...so let me pull you closer, stop pushing me away!
Hold on tight, dont let these planets drift away into a dark rift of decay.

Let your love lap upon this solid stone like a river riffles smooth sandbars into hills of higher ground.

Because baby, without your water on my beach...
I'm nothing but a desert, dry and deserted.

Gold sandy beaches flow from her follicles
Eyes like oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific are storming with jealousy
Her personality washes over slowly, low tide waves calm treacherous nerves
I use to navigate these water so well, acting the part of a sailor
These days, I consider myself lucky to hear her crash against the shore
My fingertips will never forget the feeling of sand between them

Part I


the plateau. the truest of them all. coast line. night spells and even controlled by the dream of meeting again. the ribbon of darker than light in your crown. No region overlooked. Third picnic table to the drive at Half Moon Bay, meet me there, decant my speech there. the table by the restroom block. While the tide is in show me your oyster garden, 3:00p.m. at half-light here in the evilest torments that have been shed.---------------door locked.  The moors. Cow herds and lymph nodes, rancorous afternoon West light and bending roads, the cliffs, a sister, the need to jump. There is nothing as serious as this. There is nothing nor no one that could ever, or would ever on this side come between. Who needs sleep or jokes or snow or rivers or bombs or to turn or be a rat or a fly or ceiling fan or a gurney or a cadaver or piece of cloth or a bed spread or a couch or a game or the flint of a lighter or the bell of a dress; the bell of your dress, yes, perhaps. Having been crushed like orange cigarette light in a pool of Spanish tongues. I feel the heave, the pull; not a yawn but a wired, thread-like twist about my core. Up around the neck it makes the first cut, through the eyes out and into the nostrils down over the left arm, on the inside of the bicep, contorting my length, feigning sleep, and then cutting over my stomach, around and around multiples of times- pulled at the hips and under the groin, across each leg and in-between each nerve, capillary, artery, hair, dot, dimple, muscle, to the toes and in-between them. Wiry dream-like and nervous nightmarish, hellacious plateaus of leapers. Penguin heads and more penguin heads. Startling torment. The evilest of the vile mind. The dance of despair: if feet contorted and bound could move. The beach off Belmont. The hills and the reasons I stared. Caveat after caveat at the heads of letters, on the heads of crowns, and the wrists, and on the palms. Being pulled and signed, and moved away so greatly and so heavily at once in a moment, that even if it were a year or a set of many months it would always be a moment too taking away to be considered an expanse, and it would be too hellacious to be presumptuous. It could only be a shadow over my right shoulder as I write the letters over and again. One after another. Internally I ask if I would even grant a convo with Keats or Yeats or Plath or Hughes? Does mine come close? Does it matter the bellies reddish and cerise giving of pain? Does it have to have many names?


"This is the only Earth," I would say with the bouquet of lilies spread out on the table. Are lilies only for funerals, I would never make or risk or wish this metaphor, even play it like the drawn out notes of a melody unwritten and un-played: my black box and latched, corner of the room saxophone. Top-floor, end of the hall two-room never-ending story, I'm the left side of the bed Chicago and I see pink walls, bathrooms, the two masonite paintings, the Chanel books, the bookshelves, the white desk, the white dresser, you on the left side of the bed in such sentimental woe, **** carpet and tilted blinds, and still the moors and the whispering in the driver's seat in afternoon pasture. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime and bike room writing in other places, apartments, rooms where I inked out fingertips, blights, and moods; nothing ever being so bleak, so eerily woe-like or stoic. Nothing has ever made me so serious.

Put it on the rib, in a t-shirt. Make it a hand and guide it up a set of two skinny legs under a short-sheeted bed in small room and literary Belmont, address included. Trash cans set out morning and night, deck-readied cigarette smoking. Sliding glass door and kitchen fright. Low-lit living room white couch, kaleidoscope, and zoetrope. Spin me right round baby right round. I am my own revenge of toxic night. Attack the skin, the soul, the eyes, the mind, and the lids. The finger lids and their tips. Rot it out. Blearing wild and deafening blow after blow: left side of the bed the both of us, whilst stirs the intrepid hate and ousts each ******* tongue I can bellow and blow.

Last resort lake note in snow bank and my river speak and forest walk. Wrapped in blocks and boxes, Christmas packaging and giant over-sized red ribbons and bows. Shall I mention the bassinet, the stroller, the yard, several rings of gold and silver, several necklaces of black and thread? I draw dagger from box, jagged ended and paper-wrapped in white and amber: lit in candle light and black room shadow-kept and sleeping partisan unforgettable forever. Do I mention Hawaii, my mother dying, invisible ligatures and the unveiling of the sweat and horror? Villainous and frightening, the breath as a bleat or heart-beat and matchstick stirring slightly every friends' woe and tantrum of their spirit.

Lobster-legged, waiting, sifting through the sea shore at the sea line, the bright tyrannosaurs in mahogany, in maple, and in twine over throw rose meadow over-looks, honey-brimming and warehouse built terrariums in the underbelly of the ravine, twist and turn: road bending, hollowing, in and out and in and out, forever, the everlasting and too fastidious driving towards; and it's but what .2 miles? I sign my name but I'll never get out. I am mocked and musing at tortoise speed. Headless while improvising. Purring at any example of continue or extremity or coolness of mind, meddling, or temptation. I rock, bellowing. Talk, sending shivers up my spine. I'm cramped, and one thousand fore-words and after words that split like a million large chunks of spit, grime, and *****; **** and more ****. I might even be standing now. I could be a candle, in England, a kingdom, in Palo Alto, a rook in St. Petersburg. Mottled by giants or sleepless nights, I could be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, a heated marble flower or the figure dying to be carved out. I'm veering off highways, I'm belittling myself: this heathen of the unforgettable, the bog man and bow-tied vagrant of dross falsification and dross despair. I am at the sea shore, tide-righted and tongue-tide, bilingual, and multi-inhibited by sweat, spit, quaffs of sea salt, lake water, and the like. Rotten wergild ridden- stitched of a poor man's ringworm and his tattered top hat and knee-holed trousers. I'm at the sea shore, with the cucumbers dying, the rain coming in sideways, the drifts and the sandbars twisting and turning. I'm at the sea shore with the light house bruise-bending the sweet ships of victory out backwards into the backwaters of a mislead moonlight; guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos swept like black coffees on green walled night clubs, arenose and eroding, grainy and distraught, bleeding and well, just bleeding.






I'm at the sea shore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets, ******* and two lines left in the letter. I’m at the sea shore, my mouth is a ghost. I've seen nothing but darkness. I'm at the seashore, second picnic table, bench facing the squat and gobble, the tin roof and riled weir near the roadside. .2 and I'm still here with my bouquet wading and waiting. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. My inches are growing shorter by the second, cold, whet by the sunset, its moon men, their heavy claws and bi-laws overthrowing and throwing me out. The thorns stick. The tyrannosaurs scream. I'm at the sea shore, plateau, left bedside to write three more letters. Sign my name and there's nobody here.

I'm at the sea shore: here are my lips, my palms (both of them facing up), here are my legs (twine and all), my torso, and my head shooting sideways. I'm at the seashore and this is my grave, this is my purposeful calotype, my hide and go seek, my show and tell, my forever. .2 and forever and never ending. I was just one dream away come and keep me. I'm at the sea shore come and see me and seam me. I'm without nothing, the sky has drifted, the sea is leaving, my seat is a matchbox and I'm all wound up. The snow settling, the ice box and its glory taken for granted. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. The room with its white sets of furniture, the lilies, the Chanel, the masonite paintings, the bed, your ribbon of darker on light, the throw rug **** carpet, pink walled sister's room, and the couch at the top of the stairs. I'm at the sea shore, my windows opened wide, my skin thrown with threat, rhinoceri, reddish bruises bent of cerise staled sunsets. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. I'm at the plateau and there isn't a single ship. There are the rocks below and I'm counting. My caveats all implored and my goodbyes written. I'm in my bed and the sleep never set in. I'm name dropping God and there's nobody there. I'm in a chair with my hands on a keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock, horse-riding into candle light on a wicked wedding of wild words and teary-eyed gazes and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder. I'm all alone but I feel like you're here.



Part II




I wake up in Panama. The axe there. Sleeping on the floors in the guest bedroom, the floor of the garden shed, the choir closet, the rut of dirt at the end of the flower bed; just a towel, grayish-blue, alone, lawnmower at my side, and sky blue setting all around. I was a family man. No I just taste bits of dirt watching a quiet and contrary feeling of cool limestone wrap over and about my arms and my legs. Lungs battered by snapping tongues, and ancient conversations; I think it was the Malaysian Express. Mom quieted. Sister quieted. Father wept. And is still weeping. Never have I heard such horrifying and un-kindly words.-----------------------It's going to take giant steel cavernous explorations of the nose, brain cell after brain cell quartered, giant ******* quaffs of alcohol, harboring false lanterns and even worse chemicals. Inhalations and more inhalations. I'm going to need to leap, flight, drop into bodies of waters from air planes and swallow capsules of psychotropics, sedatives beyond recalcitrance. I'm requiring shock treatments and shock values. Periodic elements and galvanized steel drums. Malevolence and more malevolence. Forest walks, and why am I still in Panama. I don't want to talk, to sleep, to dream, to play stale-mating games of chess, checkers, Monopoly, or anything Risk involving. I can't sleep, eat, treaty or retreat. I'm wickeded by temptations of grandeur and threats of anomaly, widening only in proverb and swept only by opposing endeavors. Horrified, enveloped, pictured and persuaded by the evilest of haunts, spirits, and match head weeping women. I can't even open my mouth without hearing voices anymore. The colors are beginning to be enormous and I still can't swim. I couldn't drown with my ears open if I kept my nose dry and my mouth full of a plane ticket and first class beanstalk to elysian fields. It's pervasive and I'm purveyed. It's unquantifiable. It's the epitomizing and the epitome. I have my epaulets set for turbulent battles though I still can't fend off night. Speak and I might remember. Hear and it's second rite. Sea attacks, oceans roaring, lakes swallowing me whole. Grand bodies of waters and faces and arms appendages, crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and I'm still shaking, and I'm still just a button. And I still can't sleep. And I'm still waiting.

It is night. The moon ripening, peeling back his face. Writhing. Seamed by the beauty of the nocturne, his ways made by sun, sky, and stars. Rolled and rampant. Moved across the plateau of the air, and its even and coolly majestic wanton shades of twilight. It heads off mountains, is swept as the plains of beauty, their faces in wild and feral growths. Bent and bolded, indelible and facing off Roman Empires too gladly well in inked and whet tips of bolder hands to soothe them forth.-----------Here in their grand and grandiose furnaces of the heart, whipped tails and tall fables fettered and tarnished in gold’s and lime. Here with their mothers' doting. Here with their Jimi Hendrix and poor poetry and stand-up downtrodden wergild and retardation. I don't give a ****. I could weep for the ***** if they even had hair half as fine as my own. I am real now. Limited by nothing. Served by no worship or warship. My flotilla serves tostadas at full-price. So now we have a game going.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------  My cowlick is not Sinatra's and it certainly doesn't beat women. As a matter of factotum and of writ and bylaw. I'm running down words more quickly than the stanza's of Longfellow. I'm moving subtexts like Eliot. I'm rampant and gaining speed. Methamphetamine and five star meats. Alfalfa and pea tendrils. Loves and the lovers I fall over and apart on. Heroes and my fortune over told and ever telling. Moving in arc light and keeping a warm glow.

the fish line caves. the shimmy and the shake. Bluegrass music and big wafting bell tones. snakes and the river, hands on the heads, through the hair; I look straight at the Pacific. I hate plastic flowers, those inanimate stems and machine-processed flesh tones. Waltzing the state divide. I am hooked on the intrepid doom of startling ego. I let it rake into my spine. It's hooves are heavy and singe and bind like manacles all over me. My first, my last, my favorite lover. I'm stalemating in the bathtub. Harnessing Crystal Lite and making rose gardens out of CD inserts and leaf covers. I'm fascinated by magic and gods. Guns and hunters. Thieving and mold, and laundry, and stereotypes, and great stereos, and boom-boxes, and the hi-fi nightlife of Chicago, roasting on a pith and meaty flame, built like a horror story five feet tall and laced with ruggedness and small needles. My skin is a chromium orchid and the grizzly subtext of a Nick Cave tune. I've allowed myself to be over-amplified, to mistake in falsetto and vice versa. To writhe on the heavy metallic reverberations of an altercated palpitation. The heart is the lonely hunted. First the waterproof matchsticks, then the water, the bowie knife, crass grasses and hard-necked pitch-hitters and phony friends; for doing lunch in the park on a frozen pond, I play like I invented blonde and really none of my **** even smells like gold.--------------------- There are the tales of false worship. I heard a street vendor sell a story about Ovid that was worse than local politics. As far as intermittent and esoteric histories go I'm the king of the present, second stage act in the shadow of the sideshow. Tonight I'm greeting the characters with Vaseline. For their love of music and their love of philosophy. For their twilight choirs and their skinny women who wear black antler masks and PVC and polyurethane body suits standing in inner-city gardens chanting. For their chanting. The pacific. For the fish line caves. For the buzzing and the kazoos. For the alfalfa and the three fathers of blue, red, and yellow. For the state of the nation. But still mostly working for the state of equality, more than a room for one’s own.-------------------------------------------------------------­------"Rice milk for all of you." " Kensington and whittled spirits."
(Doppelganger enters stage left)MAN: Prism state, flash of the golden arc. Beastly flowers and teeming woodlands. Heir to the throes and heir to the throng.----------------------------------------------------------­--------------- The sheep meadow press in the house of affection. The terns on my hem or the hide in my beak; all across the steel girder and whipping ******* the windows facing out. The mystery gaze that seers the diplopic eye. Still its opening shunned. I put a cage over it and carry it like a child through Haight-Ashbury. At times I hint that I'm bored, but there is no letting of blood or rattle of hope. When you live with a risk you begin at times to identify with the routes. Above the regional converse, the two on two or the two on four. At times for reasons of sadness but usually its just exhaustion. At times before the come and go gets to you, but usually that is wrong and they get to you first. Lathering up in a small cerulean piece of sky at the end turnabout of a dirt road

I taste the tongue of time
I lay down knowledge before wisdom
for every rhyme

I trusted too long
I got a little fried , . . . in reflection
I don't believe in wisdom anymore

The ripples break breeze
In the ocean where sandbars rise
I don't believe in reason anymore

I'm an ancient descreation
An obeyance out of time
I don't believe in love anymore

Don't scoff at me
Or petty me down
I don't believe in friends anyhow

One by one , thinking about all the things
That will never be done
I don't believe in goodbyes anymore

Well , you are asking ,
What do you believe in ?
. . . . pause . . . .

I believe in these . . . . .
Highest trees , ships at sea ,
Kites flying as high as can be . . . .

. . . just a few things . . .
and dreams .

Beyond the walls of sandbars and streams
waves break into silent white foams
often I've crossed them in my dreams
beckoned by the distantly looming haze.

The sky goads me to traverse the stretch
clouds hinder to ask what if rises the tide
the sea is all around in deadly embrace
her monstrous curls in hunger bared wide.

Climb the sandbars and reach her remoteness
calls the wind of the sizzling September
days as this would be gone in haste
shelled in memories to be ever remembered.

I slip into the lagoon in a drunken trance
the ripples break into a victorious song
the sea she breaks into a joyous dance
the time is here and the tides won't be long.

Before I close my eyes ... Before I drift away ...
      fallow as the evanescent tide grows low;
      before the falling sun echoes
      upon shown waves of estranged sandbars

Before I draw this life’s ending breath ...
      as beclouding skies ache like a windswept shoreline
      kissed by a bitter sweet gale of love and misery
      beget a chilling spell cast of invisible winds of change

Before you no longer remember ...
      the way the song a gentle wind's caress
      swirls and sweeps away bare feet
      set free to soar beyond the reach of your eyes
      
Before these eyes see the final sunset tiptoe down the sky ...
      even the sun feels the dimming in its wake ;
      unrequited footprints in the sand course straightaway,
      never turning around to look back whence they came

Before another tide floods a deserted oceanside ...
      erasing the traces of where we danced naked as the dark
      glimpsing the diminishing horizon ― 

                              and I let go .........
      as the tears steal away the last glint of the sea

           The way you took your love from me ...



                 © harlon rivers ... May15th, 2017

Nothing but water. Millions of chemical bonds that sever bonds of the heart, infinitesimally small, but they amount to canyons of separation. On the edges of the canyon stand pieces of a whole, tied through chance equally as small that grew into something beautiful.

The ties that spanned this fluid canyon are stressed by the howling winds of uncertainty, and crashing waves of dire futures lap at this fragile twine, but it holds fast and firm. He won’t let the bond break. He stands ashore of his continent framed by ignorance of what lies beyond its coral shoals, knowing nothing of the ocean that spans his affection, or of the island where his affection finds a home.

And through the storms that threaten to rip the rope that binds him to his adoration from his blistered fingers, he can see the light that keeps his grip fast and strong. He has read Gatsby and knows the perils of ominous lights that cast shadows on placid waters, but Fitzgerald knows nothing of the tangibility of this boy’s shining beacon.

She stands, not as a faint reminder of what once was, but of a blaring beacon of all that could be, and her light pierces through the cynical fog that tries to ***** out her light.

You are my beacon. You are my light through the fog of my daily struggles, the beacon that guides me through these rocky waters, holding my hand so as not to run aground on the sandbars of doubt below me. I stay strong, and I stay hopeful, for one day the bonds of this watery divide will break, and this distance will be lessened, and as easy as folding a map to span miles, I will be there with you.

So as I stand on this shore, ignorant of the island across this canyon, I hold fast in my grip, and I would sooner be pulled into the sea than let this go, hold onto the ties that bind your heart to mine.

Draw hither golden blade , brother to sassafras and veronica
Purveyor of delicate , sanguine architects in pastoral visage
Of ebony cloth cooling evergreen shadows within -  
Rosin incense , spearmint infused morning dew seasoning
o'er felled timber escarpments , Summer rain infusions of
petit , lavender violet corsage and August whimsy
Petrichor , Persimmon Clover bouquets , juvenile , song filled
brook-sides , poetic diamond studded sandbars , Chattahoochee
Crayfish , Shellcracker , Blue Heron land of Creek and Cherokee
fathers
Of Towaliga , Bear , Moccasin , Indian streams
Emerald swept low country isles , songbird arbors , peridot waterways
beside whitewashed shoreline* ...

This dry Spring
the parched earth drinks quickly,
every cool droplet precious
as the tears of the bereaved.

The rain furrows the dusty creek banks
like sunken, careworn cheeks.
the timid water hurries
past sandbars and gravel spits,
around balding rocks crowned
with rotting riverweed.
and in the green places that remain
to be sought and found between
the highway noise and the factories,
there the shy ones grieve with us
for all those lost to disease and violence,
miscarriage and mischance.

We round the bend;
the yearlings start and bolt
through the tangled underbrush—
an exercise in their own fragility.
The mother does not run.
she moves warily
a few paces away
and meets our gaze: measured, assessing.
She takes us in, then bows
her graceful neck to the tender shoots
that break the hardened clay,
the gesture her benediction of peace.

That Magical Summer

We said we would love one another for ever it seemed to be true we took our queue from the river we
Often stood before its delightful meandering show always curious what is around the next bend it
Blended in its artful soul with the sandbars different shapes and sizes that gave a more picturesque
Rendering little could be seen when the water ran full bank to bank on the bars it seems the trees
Bowed and their branches barely touched the brown exposed face hair to play on the face giving
A tender delightful measure putting it all in a free flowing texture that gave the eyes the joy that called
The heart to singing then as unseen wings the tendrils would swing and sway in the breeze there to take
You into my arms and join in with the soft twirling dance everything would change the entire backdrop
Scenes would whisper what love alone lives on romance would swell and tell all nature our hearts knew
No limits or measure and in those treasured days it was so you spoke and the sky would imply by its
Very Silent attentive sensitive canopy of divine blue it is true love binds all imagination and you it will
Serve the day slowly playfully gives every ounce of light to create those richest expression did we not
Unknowingly cross into the sacred moorings of Camelot it had to be so those feelings live only in that
Tempest of glory that slows and you drift like winged wonders to secret dwellings that dark billows only
Ever reveal themselves to lovers bask dwell on thermals of air as in each other’s eyes you stare it is the
Time for daring if not now never then open your lips sweetly press them then passion’s swell crushing
Then step back look deeply into her eyes you speak and living streams of poetry washes over her
Conscious knowing the heart is melted to pure thought you play among the unknown regions of earth
And sky ghost like you divide light and darkness the core of your soul has been divined this love will
Speak secrets rarified and hardly ever spoken will continue through years that cruel life would denounce
And send to rocky dangerous shores pour the molten lava over this paradise make the way back
Impossible to find and recapture but in the mind it still lives and will live eternally my love a quest of one
Summer will not fall as ancient walls a fortress that love did make will never perish no matter how long
The years stupefy and hold us at bay your essence comes on the summer breeze my heart enlarges my
Mind holds no other thought I follow in shadows and dreams and it is enough true love conjures its own
Habitation

Granite and marble talismans , sugar white sandbars and felled Oak
bridges .. Smallmouth bass explode with hunger at the surface , soft shelled turtles in meditative bliss , fill driftwood and sun drenched rock islands , dancing waters and bank head flora lend a thousand different colors to the afternoon palette of a Kelleytown Summer ...
Water striders communicate with dance to the ballad of a bold Bluejay .. Young anglers test their skills with creek minnows in search of Yellow Perch and Black Crappie as the last hour of daylight swiftly begins to pass ..

What secrets hide behind that sunny smile?
Your sparkling eyes
Hold more than just innocence
What else lies beneath those infinite pools?
Little flashes of light from deep within
Reveal a maze of sandbars
And the wrecks of proud ships
The only remnants of many brave attempts
To navigate waters
Far more dangerous than they appear
I have seen beneath the sugar coating
And glimpsed the steel it covers
And now curiosity drives me on
I take the helm
And enter the maze

How fast can my feet run?

Not on a treadmill,
But across the expanse of the world,
Above the hills and below the valleys,
Into the caves and onto the sandbars?

Blackberry blossom and glorious Honeysuckle vine
Dark green Ferns and scented Loblolly Pines ...
Brush , briar thickets reducing visibility to arms reach
An Ole grey Opossum high atop a Cottonwood Tree ..
Thick floors of pine needles and knee high wild grasses
Yellow Locust , green grasshoppers flying in advance on stair -step hillsides leading into chilly Walnut Creek ...
Sandbars filled with quartz and mica , glistening between the 'Brick red clay cliffs' as far as you can see downstream ..
Painted turtles and Blue Herons , Cottonmouths and Black Racers ..
The music of life at every turn , every ripple of water , swaying River Birch ..

I

Battered by a brute
Nor’easter, the cottage
rocks in rough wind,
teeters on tall stilts,
architecture animated
by howling provocations
until even the somnolent
wine glasses begin to sway;
suspended and racked in rows
below kitchen cabinets,
crystal clinks on crystal,
clear bells signaling alarm—
the storm forewarned is upon us.

II

This seaside aerie rises
high above sand dunes,
undulating driftwalls
feathered with sea oats.
Protected by weathered
shingles and salt-pocked
windows never shuttered,
the house stands sentry,
stoic structure overlooking
the Graveyard of the Atlantic,
the vast saltwater cemetery
where untold ships and sailors
have come to wreck and ruin,
subverted by shifting sandbars
and chancy wayward currents.

Buried in navigational Neverland,
vessels slumber in oceanic silence
on a seabed as soft as coffin plush.
***** convene in chambers of ruin,
scuttling over rotted mainsail masts;
the jellyfish hover, ghostlike, in hulls
above steerage skeletons bedecked
in crenulated shells and sea anemones.
Plankton settles on shipwreck rust:
pervasive spores, mausoleum dust.
And draped across each wreck,
a pelagic pall of melancholy.  

III

On summer nights, children
chase ghost *****, freezing
them with flashlights, scooping
them into buckets brimming
with a berserk racket of claws
and shells scratching circular
walls of makeshift plastic crypts.
From the top deck, we follow
disembodied beams of light
zigzagging in darkness,
graveyard robbers darting
above holes in the sand,
black portals, each one
the size of a child’s fist.

IV

Years ago, so-called
wreckers would hang
lanterns from horses’
necks and lead the beasts
up and down the beach,
yellow beacons signaling
as though from distant ships
buoyed on placid waters.
The lights lured desperate
vessels inland, unsuspecting
captains and crews crashing
ashore in blind catastrophe.
At daybreak, islanders
scavenged the spoils
of their subterfuge—
silver chalices,
jeweled goblets,
golden cups and bowls—
treasures cast to rapacious
hands upon an indifferent tide.
And of course the corpses came,
caught between shore and sea,
rolling in breakers, stuck
in salty purgatory, churning,
shell-pocked and unsanctified.

V

Tonight a yellow mote of light
floats miles from shore, some ship
flickering like a votive stowed
upon a headstone’s crown.

And the half-drunk bottle
of pinot noir in the ship’s
decanter has me thinking:
When my time comes round,
wait for a moonless night,
black funeral gown
of sky embroidered  
with stars and satellites,
and sneak to the end
of the Avon fishing pier
and release the ashes
from whatever vessel
you’ve decided best
accommodates me.
Scatter finite confetti
to an infinite tomb,
ashes dissolving
unceremoniously
in saltwater,
subsumed.

Next morning,
perhaps catch sight
of a spirited sailboat
tacking over waves,
sails billowing in wind
like the unfurled wings
of a sea bird, full of grace,
alighting from grave to grave to grave.

i am drowning and heaving through the mess of my life

I am laughing too loudly and silent at all the wrong moments

i’m sick of causing casualties

i don’t need a small white cross on the side of the road

i need hungover afternoons and darjeeling tea

i need the dust of your attic and the sound of footsteps on the warped wood floors

i need the river and the solitude of the cathedral

i need beauty on the sandbars and sunburns on the dock

i need laughter and tears and poetry

i need soft hands and warm lips and

i need to sleep

i need to eat

i need to run run run

You can do everything.

all the breathing exercises, all the mind calming techniques, all the grounding rituals, take all your meds at the appropriate times and with food, go to therapy, do the worksheets, make the changes, but you'll still falter sometimes.

and it could be anything, and you could see it coming and not even know you're seeing it.

it could be a song, a word, a noise, an action, anything.

for me it's the sound of rain on roofs.

and you'll fall back into the darkness and the hatred where you think no one can find you or pull you out again. You'll slip under the raging black sea, and let it consume you entirely
as black water
fills your lung
like rapids

and it burns but you let it happen.

because it was too quick, too sudden, for you to stop the water from drowning you.
you try to stand but you can't find your footing because there are no sandbars for you to stand on
only water.

and you thrash but sooner or later you're dizzy and your throat burns and everything is spotty and you can't think

and you're gone.

replaced by a shaking shell of the memory
of not being able to move your arms
and the thunder and rain drowning out your screams
and each blow to your head making it harder to make any noise at all
(and people wonder why you have memory issues)

and finally, when it's over
you're shaking and shivering and your sobs are so violent that they don't make any noise
you can't eat for weeks and when you do you just throw it right back up.
you can't look at your brother
or hug your father
and the disassociating gets so much worse that your arms bleed and ache almost constantly.

your "friends" worry, but not enough to do anything.
your teachers worry, but not enough to ask why.

no one ever asks, so you never tell.

and while you shake and shiver in the car
because you remember it all so well
and you just want it to stop
but you can't get enough air
and you're an absolute wreck,
there's light drifting down to you
through the murky black water.
it's bright and blue and warm
and suddenly you're on dry land
and can breathe
but you're looking into eyes made of galaxies and storms
and you're afraid if they see you this way that they'll leave,
because you're such a mess
but you can't pull it together.
but he found you, in that deep, dark water.
and he pulled you from it,
and helped you breathe again.

and you wish you could show some type of gratitude,
but you know that even if you said thank you a thousand times over,
you'd need a better word than that.

and you sooner or later smile,
and it's like the water and tar never took hold of you.

so maybe you can be better, with a little help.

A 'dream of dreams' to 'kick it' along the ocean ..
To travel familiar shores at daybreak
To explore blue mysteries in-
free fall symmetry
To glide the Summer winds
Set sail into a lovers twilight moon -
where seaside imaginations swoon
Bound for Neptune's lair -
with the sound of seagulls -
in thick , salty air
To rest atop sandbars , buoys and-
rooftops
A photographers muse
The musicians newfound melody
The painters inspiration
A poetess's play on words
O , to partake in the pelicans world ..

(After “Tintern Abbey”)

Years have passed under
The aegis of tedium.
Years have passed with
The lamentations of time.
And again I behold
The ancient sentinel
Spanning the shallow straits
Of the Gardon River.
The arches rise stalwart
And stolid, standing in
Mire against history’s
Gentle currents.
Rising high above the handful
Of tourists who have come to
Gawk and play.
Once carrying water as far
As Nimes, the troisieme etage
Still flows, spilling spirit.
We walked across it alone
In years past. The aegis
Of memory.
Pont du Gard beams in
The late, slanting sun,
A monument to engineering,
Ingenuity. Block packed on
Block, supported by the art
Of eternal geometry.
Euclid’s legacy; mortar
No necessity.
Sluices slide past skimpy
Sandbars and reeds.
Brilliant blues, silent
Witnesses to the genius
Of Rome-conquered Gaul.

A trembling pale girl enters a stone
fortress of faith, buttresses flying outside,
in hopes of finding a way to atone,
find an anchor in the world’s shifting tides.

This Gothic cathedral lifts her wet eyes
to its heavenward ribbed vaulted peaks.
They’re painted deep blue like starry skies
in remembrance of what Creator to old Abraham speaks.

There, where each vault’s stone arches crisscross,
shines out like a clear harvest moon
the radiant burst of a gilded boss
that gleams in the recessing gloom.

Adrift in this vast and sacred space,
thin curls of burnt incense waft by
to fill the young girl with scented grace
whilst she sits in this place with wide eyes.

The gold on the stone catches candlelight
and reflects its flickering blaze
as the quiet chanting of canticles might
let her senses be softly amazed.

While the twinkling of these numerous stars
fills her rediscovered heavens within,
the tides of her fears recede past sandbars,
leaving puddles of patience therein.

The promise made by the Father long ago —
Abraham’s children would a galaxy be —
finds fulfillment in this starry girl now aglow
since from her darkness she’s tenderly freed.

She found her anchor and cast it up to the skies.
It caught a bright star and held fast.
New dawn lit inside her in quiet reply,
telling her no tides of tempest can last.

cloud sandbars resting above scudding
cloud-puffs racing northward
anchor the skypath as
guideposts to their next assignment

layered winds move cloudish air
from there to there
as crows caw and dogs bark
while dry leaf-fall skitters on concrete
to seed the moving air with praise song

the clouds steady march along the skypath
as though intent with purpose
listening to the songwinds
taking no credit themselves
giving it all to God


c. 2024 Roberta Compton Rainwater

Now plenty of books. Redundant the quill
Queries well-sated; papyrus well-served
Journalist, poet, and dramatist still
Recumbent and smug, securely preserved
Smirk for the camera illustrious friends
Expressions freeze-frame, the genteel applause
Locutions abed, your industry ends
Settled profession contently withdraws
Troublesome confound? Don’t answer yourselves
All is deciphered, on parallel shelves

What innovation now possible here?
Planet post-poet not artist-constrained
Transmitting thinker nor analyst peer
Unburdened truth-sleuths repose addle-brained
Yet further books, birth ideas that birth more
Science yields questions more often than fixes
New voices surface as wave serves the shore
Shapes settled sandbars, produces admixes
Now plenty of books? The only rebuff
Plenty will never be plenty enough