I takes care to stoke the flames rising,
or simply not to pat them down.
The ***** stare-at-the-wall riding
in hell
thinking
"where can I get another shot in this town?"

Down facing over our work to do
Cold cracked fingers bleed
through the gloves
the need to mend
is broken in the bend
the work for value
time trade
til no tree is left standing
to gather the dust of our
constructions...

blue like enamel cups
unbroken sky
dry cold
flecked in snowflake
from no cloud

feeling the weather
patterns shifting
stretched skin
flexed flesh
over no bones

the marrow is the changing

the days passing
and laughing at calendars
no malice
like a grandmother
teasing
the child of her child
teaching

the trash picked up from the street
the newspaper not
three days old
left behind
in cold
dry

The bar in the airport
watching people
                    watching people
the habitual movement
tracing shapes in space
                there are others
        there waiting, fist clenched
hard breathing

          I am those people.
   I was born of habit,
           & some say LOVE.
A circle still enchanting
    after so many go-rounds.

May the gods not let me
  drift into apathy.
    May I find homecoming
       in the center
& act as an example
   not a guide.

Lover mine,
   give no worry our parting.
In few moons
        with the Earth's spinning
   steady will I hold you again.

Lover mine,
     I see your trick to the eyes
   side line look, a surprise to
catch me in the act          laughing.

That flash, your face
******* in a gasp,
   Lover mine.

Two smiles makes a circle of us.
Me chasing you chasing,
catching we & clasp to the breathing.

                        Quickened,  heaving   Sea
                             oh we...

     This I will not miss,
for I will see it in the warm
sleeping, feel in the waiting
     visions of memory,
       keeping company
               in secret.

I will be
      ever on the other side of
       your thinking,
              your wakeful burning urges,
           pressed against them
                 until next time,
                             Lover mine.

Looping, arching
solar storm bridges,
out into dark,
from one pole to another,
of the same sun stuff.

Magnetic pressure builds to
giving.
Another place,
pressure-less,
accepting, empty hands, bowls
to be filled
& filled until
breaking & letting go
to the
ground
into outer space, sharing.

A circle in a circle.
Concentric stage,
matter/motion actor
playing both parts.

filling in the backside of
this page
space
space never wasted
no waiting
    only patience
                & a breath
   a wipe the brow for
the next pick swing
     shot in the
                         dark
                                   space
making this page
this poem

           pause     & consider

      itself
as related to the reader...

slow formation of thoughts
the crystallization of metaphor
like smoke
like making rainbows
into everything

breaking white light
into color
in the
black

free-floating subjective
realities
convect around and through
an empty space

the objective objective
purpose pole-star
centering concentric
star flung
peoples
all watching
the light that seems to shine
from the void-hole in the
galactic middle

great bending
spectral lender of
experience

Ram Das
wrote the book
years ago
and then some.

What train am I sweating to catch?

Nature doesn't end at cement.
It is
a pour
            i
              n
                  g
          ­            over into

                                                  space

  ­           of the Manifest,
in all its twisting,
reaching ways.
It finds a hallow and calls it home.

Nature is               lonely
but never alone.
Mesh of living weave,
water altered
in the shape of its dwelling,
looking out over      horizons
wrapped around
its e x p a n s e .

Alive and s w e l l i n g ,
in dance and song,
beckoning.

Snake makes a feast of his tail.

One Mother is hungry.

If a picture's worth
a thousand words,
than the poet's opus
is to give infinite images
in just two handfuls.

Distillation of words

so
just a drop
of one
will get you
drunk.

Many wake
with the sun well risen.

Some
find themselves
awake in the dark
turning over into sleep
until the light.

Still others,
night cast from their eyes,
go outside
into the black
to wait
and watch the colors come.

The sun on the horizon
is a shadow,
bent forward in time
by the eye lens atmosphere,
the light of it
sent to greet
the waiting awake,
heralding another
new living.

The smoke before the fire,
comforting the cold.

There is a certain beauty in a broken cup. A delicate elegance in an abandoned building or a disheveled old man. Some ghostly grace to a tattered dress.

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese expression relating to the wonder of imperfection. To be sensitive to the natural way of things, to deny idealism for what is and to revel in it is the path of a true seeker, of a true poet.

Given to dharmas, my ignorance. (?)
Given to paths crossing, to others leaving one
far cast from the shore, my trust. (?)

No current floats alone in the ocean.

Drop by drop be led,
thanking all the way
each unseen life and silver fish guardian,
towards the veracious
colored ring
forever in the distance,
deep and
deep.

Given to the kalpas, my passion. (!)
Truculent waves of time behemoth
rising from the depths
ripple the surface
and show those that thought you long forgotten
the beauty, in the shallows,
of the sunset broken,
dancing. (!)

I commit myself in action,
my time/space faculties full fleshed,
to compassion.

What can I right
now release
for/to/in/as the love of
another?

To see with clean eyes
the preconceived origins of my habit
so that
I may be more entirely here
with my graspings extended,
swept off with the seconds passing
into a spacious future
breathing.

Receiving so as to be a gift,
living.

there's a jazz bone in my body
it moves with muscles taught to loose
and pull back on reaction
fueld by juice and passion
cooled and smoothd to prove
that what lasts is
momentary
and on the
spot

caught
in
passivity is not
to be mistaken for
sloth

i'll see you at three
the deal's not off

I got a jazz bone
I gotta pick whichyou
I don't know which one
don't know how to choose
If love's a gun
and happiness blue
than *** is a number
and 2 is a hue...

I sip my quiet through a cup of coffee, while
on the outside of my angular
bubble made of brick,
wood, and window panes, silent
cars drive by
throwing off with their motion, over-exposed
pieces of the sun
from their also angled bubble
bodies, reflected into the eyes of every passer-by,
bouncing back and forth between us.

I'm going to try a little less
to do a lot more

There's an innate feeling
of                                               
                                                      drift
                    that comes with
letting go.

The space we create for ourselves is,
by nature, weightless
until we fixate to the
points
in it which we made
to relate to;

because love is exactly like gravity,
and the points in space
are planets and stars,
celestial bodies
just perfectly warm enough for life
to explore,
orientations to look up from
and see
the rest of it,
but when we realize who it was
wrought the cosm
and we wake
stupefied and lucid
those pieces,
seeming both so distant and close,
unweave themselves from the fabric
and like magic
they disappear.

Our fists
forced gently into grasplessness
panic at the lack of that
substance our tongues and eyes
and right-side-up sensibilities
wish so desperately was there
from the beginning.
We start floating
of some unknown accordance,
though undoubtedly, deeply our own,
towards the next and closest
brightest shining
source of love.

Not far from where I am, the King fire rages.
Ruling, man-made, it tames the dry wilds
and rakes over our cradles and gardens.
It was waiting a long time to happen.
Conceived in a summer sky unforgiving,
sparked long before any September thoughts of arson,
the blaze was born of the need for renewal.
Brightly alive,
the King eats each and every bird nest and evergreen.
Blinding and blinded alike,
it is a mouth, devouring blue egg and seedling impatient,
eating and feeding, change incarnate,
all the while whispering
ten-thousand times over its
snap-crackle mantra,
the declaration of a wide-eyed being,
seething, like its victims,
reeling in ecstasy.

How many homes are caught in the blaze
not two valleys over?
Is it the instinct of the fire,
like us passing animals,
to turn anything to
FOOD?
All I can see,
and can't help but to breathe,
is the smoke left over from the heat beast's meal.
Soon
ash will be raining
in place of the water
now so needed.
As I pray for rain and watch the grey
drift like fog banks,
like foreboding ghostly hills,
the sun is lighting through the dense
in the afternoon,
in a slow waking morning.

Through the smoke
an orange beam of sunlight
falls at my feet

The nature of a doorway
is both open and shut.
Wait not for the mending of time
'for tending your bruises and cuts.

Ask the moon if she prefers
fullness over cast in shadow.
Her reply, "A darkened sky
makes oceans no more shallow."

Should a poem be measured by letter
or rather, shall we read it aloud?

When all you see are shadows
the source of light is right behind you.

What goodness is there in this wine?
Am I trading time for smokey phantoms,
or is this the way it always was?
Rising from fire and running away.

All my dreams speak softly of progress
and the violence of life,
their murmurs like a word I mistake for my name,
echoing in a crowd and
turning me around.

I've found no solace in peace,
nor in the luscious droughts of love
together we drink and have been drunk on.
However, under my restlessness
my steps are sure,
and the road home,
winding as it may be,
seldom seems against me.

all night spent scrubbing the cinnamon roll shack
alone
out at breakfast
biscuits and gravy
the sun still fresh in the sky
the moon still full and unsunk
on the other side of the horizon
the golden growing cloud scatter
slow rolling and rosy
and blue
orange juice
from two booths over
i hear voices
a woman's
explaining to men how easy is it to be romantic
the doubtful reply
thrown over the table
pancakes and eggs
in an early morning
conversational/restaurant tone
and thanking the waitress
and coffee
i wont be sleeping
until tonight
when I can be with you again

I love you
because you didn't believe me
when I repeated
"life is suffering."