In contemporary belief.
A archer went to a shaman for relief.
A answer to ease fear of thoughts.
Finding his way home, the trail of war became too much.
He struggled with the regret of building a life away from what he knew.
When he came to the shaman.
The shaman hung his head low.
Smelling the stinch of blood.
Still he could not turn his back to the archer.
When posed with the young archers question.
He sat puzzled. Summering the long winded statement to "a great change must be made. Else all will fade."
Knowing of the young archers longing for a maiden.
The archer looked puzzled.
Yet the shaman spoke nothing else.

The young archer was called upon.
A war broke on the opposing side.
They needed his skill in fear that survival was utmost.
Without time to think the archer grabbed his bow. His arrows and darted quickly in the direction the war has taken place.
He quickly coiled arrow to bow. In repeated motion until none were left.
A field of arrows covered the small space.
War does something to a man.
A brief clarity after the slaughter of contemplation.
The shamans words dawned upon him like a snake.
He darted to the shamans place in great discoverly.
Finding that the shaman as well as his possessions were completely gone without trace.
He darted back to the field.
Searching through a forrest of arrow.
A heart wrenching feeling stuck on his face.
Guiding his way through the arrows he found a familar hand. Connected to a familar torso.
A face stuck in agonizing eternity.
The shamans words made more sense.
Backing away from the body.
Thinking deeply. Damning his hands.
The thing that came as habit.
He broke his bow in the reflection of his maiden's eyes.
This war gone astray inside of him

I watched him take California's south side,
tossing invitations back over his bronzed shoulder,
in a careless way he had coined

But the sky here has a way of wrapping me up, lifting my chin
upward and rooting my feet in this rocky Missouri soil
Like petals of an overgrown sunflower, my lightened hair
danced around my face

I watched the pale blue of the sky fall down on me and intensify
Masking the sprinkle of stars where our gazes had collided,
though the pairs of eyes set thousands of miles apart,
resting snugly in their sockets

Sleepy words streamed into my ear, leaving my mind feeling lazy
Hardly able to find the familiar tinge of dryness in his sentences--
As though the thoughts he had were lessened in value the moment
they passed through his lips

The early morning clouds had not yet agreed upon the day's weather,
billows of white thinning out into wisps and collecting again
Slipping over the roof top and onto the next neighborhood

I was lulled to sleep in their slow deciding as he held his breath for
the yellow of sunrise to spill through his shades in slats,
reassuring him that the darkness is not forever, although I had
caught him wishing it might be

I had never met my match until our two brains rattled,
our hard heads made contact and butted repeatedly
He made a habit of softening mine, kicking soccer ***** at my face
and kissing me slowly

Fast friends, always outrunning one another
Cynicism rushed warm red in our young blood
We unbandaged our wounds, and bled
openly into summer nights- so thick you could reach out
and steal handfuls of loud black

My crippled hands shakily wrapped up his festering gashes
Sealing in hours of stories of starving, of screaming,
of a scared little boy all bruised and beaten, before
we vanished back into our laughably broken lives

The back of his Blazer became my bed while my darling father
snored drunken oblivion into the air conditioned house I escaped from
Fresh cut grass from the open field, caught rides on my bare feet,
scattering across the comforter that spread over folded back seats

We wrestled and hurt ourselves, I would win, underneath him
We got faded and hurt each other, spilling unspeakable tales from
between our teeth and tears from frozen eyes, down onto our collars
Smoking like chimneys as we lay, swimming in music and moonlight

Every sunset was justified in its ending
Putting the people to sleep and quieting the cooling streets
The beginning of every day was a feather
trying to break the spine he was straining to straighten

He would tell you he was fine,
never given the chance to settle into good,
interrupted every time he slid into being okay
I would tell you he was a private young man,
overcompensating for chronic unhappiness
with good intentions

Laughing off every nightmare, until the room shook,
with sinister hilariousness-his own brand of medicine for
a sweet heart, poisoned by misfortune, a sharp mind
blinded by the lack of peace and easy comings

The night he left, I bought a sapphire tie to compliment his icy eyes
Unsure whether It would be a poor parting gift
or end up tied around his wrists to keep him from going

We had ended the physical slice of our relationship some time before
I sat in his passenger seat and struggled to form a sentence
that would be worth a ****

We waited for our stupid minds to catch up
to the swelling and swirling of emotion inside us
Refusing to say goodbye out loud, I tasted the
Peppermint and *** on his mouth for the last time,
quickly

My best friend went away and he never came back

Someday I will be unexpectedly thrown to the ground
Blaming it on my own unsure feet
until I catch sight of the culprit pair of Vans attached to a
smirking Blonde Beauty

I will grin as I trip on him again

Fake concrete crosses and the worn black skeletons of barns hover above secondary looped highways. We weave and bob over the Mountain.

Old dirt roads share the same name as the mailboxes that still line them. The Walker Homestead: now a pile of trucks stacked on top of a doublewide toppled next to a house once built in classic southern architecture.

Stripped naked pines are whipped by cold mists.

I awoke during the credits. I lay with tongues. I fall to sleep in verses.

For $30, you can heal in an hour at Hot Springs.

“The Dali Lama has soaked in our tubs!” The woman told me on the phone. “Seven years ago, that is.”

“He’s not still in there, is he?”

The Lama’s not betting on Hot Springs North Carolina for total consciousness. Or maybe he is.

Maybe any *******, even Madison County, can bring you enlightenment when you’re basically a God on earth.

Google: Does the Dali Lama have a car like the Pope-Mobile when he travels? Is he carried on one of those Cleopatra looking things? Sedan chairs.

Ross plays a CD he listened to when he drove the flat empty asphalt of Montana and Colorado.

He was searching for stunning landscapes to shred. A kind of enlightenment I don’t think the Dali Lama could do.

Google: Has the Dali Lama ever snowboarded? Read the whole Dali Lama Wikipedia page.

It’s only the Killers though. We both sing the chorus, staring straight ahead.

I got soul but I’m not a soldier.

Ross says he never liked that song. It’s something I never knew.

Hot Springs has been one of Western North Carolina’s premiere locations for rest and relaxation since 1778.

Except in 1916, when it was an internment camp for German civilian prisoners who were on a cruise ship captured on the coast.

They were all very friendly and really bonded with the townspeople. Some of the Germans even returned with their families and are buried in Hot Springs.

Some prisoners are buried in the town graveyard.

The building to our left was the most lavish resort in the Mountains. It had sixteen marble lined pools filled with healing mineral waters that were surrounded by groomed lawns. The summering crowd played croquet.

It burned down in 1920.

We don’t get offered a lawn game when we arrive. Just visitor towels for $1 and an ashtray.

Cold mists whip among the mineral pools.

I awoke during the credits. I lay with tongues. I fall to sleep in verses.

Ross and I consider having *** in the hot springs. We try once or twice, but parts don’t fit they way they do usually.

I see tiny flecks in the water.

Are they essence of the healing mineral springs or elements of the soakers’ fat bodies before me?

Ross lights a cigar. It smells like burning hair. I light a cigarette in retaliation.

The chubby spa attendant knocks on the door.

“Your time is up,” he drawls.  

What does that mean?

Are we going to be executed and laid next to the German civilian prisoners?

≈Did the Dali Lama receive such treatment?

The water drains, screeching as it is pulled away.

They don’t tell you where it ends up.

The mineral pools swirl with tiny flecks .

I awoke during the credits. I lay with tongues. I fall to sleep in verses.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a summering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

Lady Day

And now comes Lady Day, a new year’s day
When happier hours to summering begin
And farmers follow their ploughs among new fields
While in the hedgerows early snowdrops bloom

Old debts are settled, new agreements made
And the oldest promise of all proves True
On this the day of the Annunciation
As spring comes early in Galilee, and here

And all because our Lady said yes to Life
On this our Lady’s day, a new year’s day

America is an untended urn,
Not filled with wick of candle,
But with eyelashes burned,
Butterfly kisses of slaves to simmering plows,
As the Whigs, Mugwumps, and Know Nothings
Like Senates, praetors, and praefactors of old,
In new form, snare the grasshopper pulse of populace.

If we could once more lay our heads—like the universe
Rests its child’s soul in the lap of its native mother—
In our Indian maiden’s lap, where she once rolled
Maize flour and the dusted cornsilk of our eyelashes,
She could knead our eyes closed, and the stars would walk
Barefoot with summering spirit through our midnight homes.

And she took his hand
on a rainy Sunday
Without goal or motivation
just bring shimmer to life

On a spring afternoon
she took his hand
In some comforting whim
during a stroll to be

That summer night
with thoughtless care
She took his hand
to satisfy her mind

It was the October winds
that brought them there
To a meeting of fates
so she took his hand

then he took her hand
On a fog Sunday morn
with desire that tried
To remember the night

and so on an April day
He took her hand
easing the tensions
Or completions to come

a summering heat
Of bodies caressing
in which he took her hand
With ecstasy in mind

more falling breezes
To exhaling dreams
and drifting into distances
When he took her hand

So they tried to join hands
To dispel the rains
With purpose and intent
Of abundant pleasure

Springing embraces
And the joining of hands
Of contentment converging
On a trailing journey

Scorching summer waves
The heat of their days
When they joined more than hands
Escalating their paths

Autumn brings true
The needs of these two
As searching for more
When they joined hands

whiskey neat in a thumbnail chapel on the edge of the world
coated in black honey turning blue for a cause.
scribbling on napkins of unkempt self-harm
while garnering the empathy
of a dead god.
praying to the withers of a horsemen
for the lack of women
on the ranch
your stars are
sleeping on,

coy chattel herding thoughts of a flume
marching against clear skies.
slaves to our miracle.

sipping sparks through a straw.
we are all the Other one.
summering in the ramparts
of our descent
as we winter less
in the sunspot
of our acquired
tastes-
so long, lives the waste
of our time
till each tick
is a boom
whispering the egress
of a locked door
on a cliff of
lost sky.

how beautiful my wounds today-
As long as the Healing
Lies -

like the truth of It
Unkind.

summering in a gentle garden
inspires
burst out quivering
he was helpless to it
kicking with a
swallowed sensitiveness.

The birds might say, “Oh, look at the pretty humans!
They have waited all winter for us to return!”
And so we have, like seasonal hoteliers
Inviting our guests back for their holiday

The seed-buffets on little metal trays
And little plastic houses in the trees
Bespeak our thoughtful hospitality
For little friends who live upon their wings

Now summering in nest and eave and steeple
The birds must laugh, “Oh look at the people!”

about
a year ago the doctors ordered me to return,
put down the tablet, cease driving, stay seated,
you a skinny hair from dying, the drop dead
unkindly kind, come back to the city, there’s
an operating table Resy~reserved just for you,
the menu we will decide, two or three courses,
for
the summering on your sheltering isle, where the
lapping waves sounds of the sound, the greenery
calming befuddles your senses is ended, the congress
of animals too  have ordered your dispatch back to
the hubbub of pizza parlors, nail salons & bodegas,
and
we will slice and dice, drawn up plans to redirect
the arteries and veins that you’ve spent good money,
lazy years clogging, sending you back after you’re
in fighting trim, and and recommence dialogus with
the sun, sky, animals, the water and the waves, and
write of peace of mind, knowing that your body, too,
is
at peace, but not at rest, and let the writing begin
again, with a refreshed perspective, and re-greet
old friends, Hafiz and Whitman, who were left
behind in a hasty departure, your retreat is ended
and now, a new re-treating of the soul, to match
a newly refreshed body