The trail rose up
through the sand
and sage covered hills
following the sinews of a land
scoured by fire and flood.
Even the most severe carving
here was nothing
compared to the city below-
its concrete grid
glaring over my shoulder-
sprawled out,
******* on its dingy
comforter of smog-
******* up
the dust of the desert
around it.

The trail led me up.
Up past twisted
juniper bones,
past pale green yuccas
curling
fine white filagree
from their dagger blades,
past sandstone boulders
swirled like confections,
past ancient cooking pits
nested with ash,
and ghost-like hands
outlined on stone-
to a white cliff face
up-******
beneath the cloudless sky.


From a lone stump
a pinyon jay squawked
drawing my eyes down.
A sentinel
to its comrades-
who rose up
from the draw to my left
and sailed in twos and threes
sinking down into
the draw on my right.
Right before me,
around me, behind me,
first two- then six,
then tens of metallic blue
wings beating heavily against
the unfamiliar desert air.

They had come down.
Down from the scrubby
forests of pine.
Down from snow
covered slopes.
Hungry,
they searched the green
fingers of the washes-
the winter forcing them
down across the trail
that was drawing me up.
They passed close by,
wing beats feathered my ears,
first up, then down-
the sentinel
keeping an eye .


Listening, suddenly hearing
my breath beat
against the wind-
I stood motionless, perched
beyond starting
and destination-
blue wings lifting
the hunger within.


Tom Spencer © 2017

In Yucatan, the Maya sonneteers
Of the Caribbean amphitheatre,
In spite of hawk and falcon, green toucan
And jay, still to the night-bird made their plea,
As if raspberry tanagers in palms,
High up in orange air, were barbarous.
But Crispin was too destitute to find
In any commonplace the sought-for aid.
He was a man made vivid by the sea,
A man come out of luminous traversing,
Much trumpeted, made desperately clear,
Fresh from discoveries of tidal skies,
To whom oracular rockings gave no rest.
Into a savage color he went on.

How greatly had he grown in his demesne,
This auditor of insects! He that saw
The stride of vanishing autumn in a park
By way of decorous melancholy; he
That wrote his couplet yearly to the spring,
As dissertation of profound delight,
Stopping, on voyage, in a land of snakes,
Found his vicissitudes had much enlarged
His apprehension, made him intricate
In moody rucks, and difficult and strange
In all desires, his destitution's mark.
He was in this as other freemen are,
Sonorous nutshells rattling inwardly.
His violence was for aggrandizement
And not for stupor, such as music makes
For sleepers halfway waking. He perceived
That coolness for his heat came suddenly,
And only, in the fables that he scrawled
With his own quill, in its indigenous dew,
Of an aesthetic tough, diverse, untamed,
Incredible to prudes, the mint of dirt,
Green barbarism turning paradigm.
Crispin foresaw a curious promenade
Or, nobler, sensed an elemental fate,
And elemental potencies and pangs,
And beautiful barenesses as yet unseen,
Making the most of savagery of palms,
Of moonlight on the thick, cadaverous bloom
That yuccas breed, and of the panther's tread.
The fabulous and its intrinsic verse
Came like two spirits parlaying, adorned
In radiance from the Atlantic coign,
For Crispin and his quill to catechize.
But they came parlaying of such an earth,
So thick with sides and jagged lops of green,
So intertwined with serpent-kin encoiled
Among the purple tufts, the scarlet crowns,
Scenting the jungle in their refuges,
So streaked with yellow, blue and green and red
In beak and bud and fruity gobbet-skins,
That earth was like a jostling festival
Of seeds grown fat, too juicily opulent,
Expanding in the gold's maternal warmth.
So much for that. The affectionate emigrant found
A new reality in parrot-squawks.
Yet let that trifle pass. Now, as this odd
Discoverer walked through the harbor streets
Inspecting the cabildo, the facade
Of the cathedral, making notes, he heard
A rumbling, west of Mexico, it seemed,
Approaching like a gasconade of drums.
The white cabildo darkened, the facade,
As sullen as the sky, was swallowed up
In swift, successive shadows, dolefully.
The rumbling broadened as it fell. The wind,
Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry,
Came bluntly thundering, more terrible
Than the revenge of music on bassoons.
Gesticulating lightning, mystical,
Made pallid flitter. Crispin, here, took flight.
An annotator has his scruples, too.
He knelt in the cathedral with the rest,
This connoisseur of elemental fate,
Aware of exquisite thought. The storm was one
Of many proclamations of the kind,
Proclaiming something harsher than he learned
From hearing signboards whimper in cold nights
Or seeing the midsummer artifice
Of heat upon his pane. This was the span
Of force, the quintessential fact, the note
Of Vulcan, that a valet seeks to own,
The thing that makes him envious in phrase.

And while the torrent on the roof still droned
He felt the Andean breath. His mind was free
And more than free, elate, intent, profound
And studious of a self possessing him,
That was not in him in the crusty town
From which he sailed. Beyond him, westward, lay
The mountainous ridges, purple balustrades,
In which the thunder, lapsing in its clap,
Let down gigantic quavers of its voice,
For Crispin to vociferate again.

The tides mesmerize,
as the sand, soft and warm beneath my feet,
never ceases to amaze me.
For miles and miles, in every direction,
I can now see;
north, south, east, and west.
A gull yuccas in the sky
as I lie back in that soft, warm sand;
and in that moment,
I am free.

----------


We are spotted and blemished and
ring straked herds of milkable critters,

we are modifiable metaphors for
fountains of milk and honey, from
the other side, breathing in and out,

thinking jello seen through,
to the bubble of me, from the one
of you, in the discernible pixels one
adjusts to ignore as the knowledge

milk of conscious multi-tasking,
driving and paying attention

to a bubble popping book,
a Yucca… in jellotime thought form,

takes centuries for some to bloom,
children believe, because why
would the giant yuccas be
called century plants, if
not because they only bloom once

in three generations to be seen,
as a spikey life form familiar,

in the live and let live desert,

where we eat the snakes we ****.

Which causes jellotime to glup up

a contrasting hueristic to guage
color critical shades of orininating
emotions, also known as answers

matching evidence accepted as its
self, as so, we see, it is, these words

connect at attention applied, a hook,
a will to have a go and making sense,

in timeless pastless points,
as art, around the time disease,
and misperceptions, such enforce,
hold that breathe
thought
as truth as manifest cruelty of mighty
blobs of solid right to stand still
and firm, a we form, from ancient
orders,
used to form first informers, thus
inventing us, after dancing to explain,

some where, in your learning control,
taking hold of yourself, see the shape

we may perceive, as we, the payers
of attention needed to twist these

threads, fine
spiderkites from the pines, common

at lattitudes about a third of the way
up the sphere's gravitational truth
compressing core, living idea, life
at planatary participant level,

poet, po. Poe, ever, more avsinthesis
m'dear, Frankly, whether Einstein
or Ben, said it, compounding,
interest in flim flam,
shaking it down, and pressing it
into stone, on which a you are forms
of us as others, redcoats fighting freedom

living legos, universal, and one use,
life is like that, and we the new ones,

we adapt to our techknowlogos, as such,
informing our selves of news and sighns,

signaling
slow down
you read to fast, this is doubt, the feature,
consciously functioning as qwerty guy, key

element of know how, indirectly hanging
by a thread in 'cient science, finding ling-

ering tastes, and effects from kissing,
stretching tongues intuitively knowing

this is what they mean,
or meant, that is, back when, it was said

that forty million frenchmen, could not
be wrong,
about how we gonna keep down
on the farm,
after they've tasted the happy place,
and tickled a childish fascination
with words

and a will, to make light of the dread,
said by many orders of left mind tyrants,

spiritual exercises in will worship,
worth of a warrior learning
there is no easy day,

popping
into my bubble. Easy entry, plop\

into the jellotime you had in mind,
when the whole idea shivered,

like a little rolling green hill,
seen from the clouds, of course,

we have Google's first score, point
one in the assisting intelligence
user's credo, be doers first,

of nothing evil, follow ons,
all your choice, the weapons used

to pull down strongholds,
mighty fortress forces repelling
efforts to fit one trick legos into

monstrosities as effective as
George's Dragon, or my puff tincture,

in the world of wonderful make believe,

tune in, drip. Drip. Slip into the ABC years,
percolater rythm
post recordible television, black and white,
during Disney-ification drills, preceded
by prelingual exposure to Fantasia,

reigning next oldest memory for which
valid links to now exist, occurred
at the White Rock Courts

during the years after 1948,
and a half,  after Fantasia,
was in local theaters,

and GI Bills was not kicking enough,
for rent in Phoenix and driving,
back and forth up one side,
down the other, old mind
river she keep aggin' us on,

she's no devil, no siree,
that wombedman, she got papers on me.

and wise wizardry between jewels
as bright as earth seen from a distance,

as we all oughta know, by now,
as a hitchhiker's angel once said,

yes, sidereal, crossing the Mohave
at night, … pick the road
from Vegas, two lanes, double yellow lines,

easy for my cars lights to show, so I know,
I am on the right side of this thing,

this mound of telling stories found
looted of all but the ghosts
of its chances taken, on mob made rules.