cowgirls don‘t ride sidesaddle
unless they completely skedaddle
but even then, since their birth,
they hold on with great mirth
to that wonderful horn on their saddle

that trendy ******(e) addiction
becomes you- and your fiction

goes well with the pale
-skinned thin western booted
blue-eyed shooter
riding sidesaddle
on your scooter

does she kiss like me
and bring you coffee?

i could lay you both down
in the in-betweens
and make heaven-

til hell is heavy as a monday
track day in albuquerque
while she sells your jewelry
in sante fe where it's trendy

-i'll be waiting
on the blue mesa.

r ~  9/19/14

I dreamed you came aboard
to commend me to the sea
and I dreamed you rode a horse

to your wedding sidesaddle
even though the only thing
you let between your legs

was the melancholy strings
of the cello, you with your instinct
for music and dangerous suitors

I still place to this day what is left
of the afternoon in care of your hands
kissed by so many strange men

whose names you can't remember
on the long nights we spend
together without sleeping

in the same bed alone we are
dreaming the dreams
we dream when all love is lost.

People wobbling in the heat haze like a real time hall of mirrors
Street performers sing & flamenco & mime
The snap of digital cameras & excited chatter outside the cathedral
Sangria cold & fruity as it slides down easily
The tram glides past the beggars & hawkers
Gypsies’ curses in coarse andalucian as rosemary favours are repelled
Excited Asians watching every move Large Americans loudly exclaiming their delight as the light fades into dusk
Now the Feria comes alive all lights & ferris wheels & music so much music
Men on horseback women ride sidesaddle all in traditional dress
A throwback to a time before bailouts & austerity
Sing & Dance & Eat & laugh & joke
As dusk becomes evening the ottoman turrets light up
The cooler night air seems to remove inhibitions as people from different worlds celebrate humanity with cheers & smiles
Muchos Gracias & Bueno & Buena Noches  in various accents fill the night as the spell is broken

:AQUARIUS:SEPTEMBER:

Last month you saw Marilyn Monroe riding sidesaddle on a bicycle. Her cream colored skirt billowing as she passed you by. You noticed she had aged. She was gray and lined but still beautiful.

Last week you saw Tupac walking to work. He clocked in a few minutes early and kept his head down. During the lunch break he talked to you about settling down and starting a family. He used the word "suburb" and you almost gagged.

Yesterday you adopted a dog who had been hit by a car. You gave her a name and a yard and a bed and grain free kibble. She's fine now. She doesn't even seem to notice her stitches. She sits on the porch and barks at squirrels while you fold clean clothes.

Today you realize you have learned to raise the dead. But only so they don't remember themselves. Only so they have no recollection of who they were before. Only so their lives are blank boards.

You are afraid of your newfound powers, but with Mars in your house you will learn some control.
"Don't bring back your mother," you repeat like a mantra.
You won't feel restraint until the 21st.

She moves like she's one of the amorphous personalities painted somewhere
Along the angled framework of her body pattern:
Handcrafted with the vivacious energy inherent
In my far-seeing dreams the vision of a long-ago queen of the holiest swamps
Traversing them coldly, shining her starlight to dispel all my awful ugly nightmares.
Riding sidesaddle with the billows of morning
Hair wisped about by the wind and blowing watercolor across
The beautiful blooming valleys of her crescent-shaded eye frame.

And weaving out from the delicate anthers of slyly tangled lashes
Comes the glittering deep ribbons loosely noosed about me with suction,
And it turns out that I can survive for ever without food or water
From only one such glance.
Lost in that glassy prism container like an obedient insect, forced
To love himself because all his misfortunes are waved away and explained
By the invisible guiding lines raised in joy at each corner of her faintly blushing lip-land.

Well, Breath-Stealer, even if we can only meet softly now -
A vanishing semblance caught by cold air on our exhales perhaps - soon,
Our individual apparitions will flesh themselves out of the nowhere of time coincidences
And out thankful togetherness can coagulate like feather cracks in crystal:
Two human forms finally able to ignore the vase between them
Sooner than the closest oceans that wave to us,
And surer than sunrise.

The day rides off like some cowboy akin or a kin to Tom Mix,
sidesaddle,
I'm left paddling a canoe through the night breaking into the stars and making cocktails from comets,
if everything comes to him that would wait how long will it be, how long in this state?

The long shadow of eternity swallows me and yet I don't see the colours of a Universe only the ends of the string.

What light flashes before me in the eyes which do not see? not the past light of a fast life, not the soft light of a muted life, someone
turned the volume down and the 3D World turned blue to follow me,
was it you?

Under the skin where the habitual twitch starts to itch and the Demon wants in
I pretend that I'm out.

The praire though miles filled with empty and half strewn with cacti gets by on a lick,
I read the joke on the lollypop stick and my tongue swells.

I always thought Bow bells were bowed but they're not and that's what a lifetime of searching has got me,
not very much when it all comes to this, a tap on the keyboard, a peck on the cheek, see ya tomorrow or see ya next week and what I really need is that moment where bliss melts the curtains and the peck on the cheek becomes the kiss that would last for a week.

How long in this state?
I lay in wait
and wait.

"Dharamsala"

In the middle of the hub
Bub smelling diesel fumes
With both lungs
I press my cheeks
To warm cement and watch
And listen
I see monkeys watching we
Hear little buzzy horns
People doing the thing
Called walking
The tops of airborne eagles
And crows wings outspread
Evaporated snow
Thousands of disturbed flies
From their garbage lunch sorry
Policeman beggarman Indian guru
Thief ? not yet
Except for two cows and a monkey
Smokers hack
Fruits and vegetables
Female sidesaddle motorcycle
Passengers
No sidewalks
Streets shared by people
And machines in traffic patterns
Of foreign cognition
From this side anyway
Welcome warm sunshine
Congested nasal passages
Wearers of blankets robes turbans
Shawls flip flops tennis shoes
Lots of big ****** horns
Politely saying move please
Braided ponytails galore
Four vehicle traffic jam
Goods carrier tourist cab jeep
Rebar Thank God!
Electric wires and water pipes
Functionally scattered
Traffic police large guardrail dents
Guest house hotel tea stalls
Himalayan butterflies
Sleeper sleeping
Broken gurgling fountain
Beards
Malas
Backpacks
Candy

Once Bitten

Sitting sidesaddle upon her big gun
Whilst men were dying from sun to sun
She smiled and bowed as customary
Hollywood intellect rosy and merry
Face-time and ego her mainstay that day
As bodies in bags they still carried away
Used me as I was an immature teen
Politics and war caught in between
Spat on me once and said I’ve done wrong
There were years ahead to forgive and be strong

But as history has shown they won’t let it pass
Still say we killed babies and smoked lots of grass
And political garbage still liters the land
From a shadowy figure of a tall slender man
Used his dead comrades as young as they were
To increase his good fortune if that he prefer
But I’m alive still and being spit upon twice
Older and wiser let me give some advice
Rhetoric you drivel may sway your own kind
But we’re the ones that watched your behind