I am meat for my journey.

This canoe made of birch

and our ancestors bones,

is packed, laden with

mystery and fleece,

apples and rye bread,

voices shining of friends

(these here, those gone)

stuffed full of supplies

for northern nights where

grenades of stars

blast their love loud

while we glide here in

silence one flashing

moment on a cerulean lake

built of sorrows and gladness,

clear waters thick mud.

REAL FAITH

Real faith is

knowing

 

in our deep

   bones

 

that through

unseen space

we are

 

forever

 

free —

     falling.

 

Feel each moment

precious

 

in this necessary

descent,

 

stay unbraced unrivened

 

as we open to these givens

saddle-sore and lusty,

 

four horsemen down/

wards galloping, our fate

dusty nonetheless:

 

gravity, dirt, delight,

    and final

disappearance.

                     CHRIS

 

Before he died, 3 or 4 years before

he died, my brother had 8 or 9 teeth,

about ¼ of his hearing, the heart of

 

a fledgling bird, a lifelong love of

booze drugs, wheat thins and

cheeseburgers, and rages sudden

and wild, they’d crash scary

 

as Niagra Falls crackling at night

in an electric storm. Eyes crazed he

lurches feral, craves himself soothed

and held, not alone I suppose, but

nested. Before he died.

 

Chris lived for years smack in the stony

middle of the Oregon State Penitentiary,

everything iron and rock, more than once

 

beaten badly by gangsters who smashed his

soul and his pink hearing aids into plastic slivers.

Slivers.

 

Before he died, he stole my social

security number and we didn’t talk

for a year. Our history isn’t easy nor

a simple story and my frequent disgust

 

with Chris--his jagged wounded ways, his sad

strangenesses, living on disability and smokes,

his tweed sportcoat and turquoise bracelet,

and his longing for our dad, that junkyard dog,

 

just to give him a few slivers of kindness before

he died--my recoiling from these earthquakes these

volcanoes from Chris, an addiction of my own, perhaps.

WORDS

Words, some days, gnarl the brain,

teeth of a rusted saw trying song

for winter’s darkly frosted morning.

other days they oatmeal thick,  

slopped down in throat’s bowl

like the first hominids grunting

towards a crazed relentless God.

On scabbed knees in mud they pray

for language that connects, an urge

that makes a maybe magic where death

alone forgets to groan her luckless dirges.   

Briefly.

                    Colour, Dolor

 

The sky broke in half today. Leaked blue rain

to yellowed ground straight down.

Wounds of light bleed on and on and on.

 

A pit in stomach on the talk show circuit, everything’s

so damn tired, from my forehead down to ankles

stained by grasses.   Emptied out am I.

 

More desert than virgin forest,

now. Where has the moisture gone?

 

Where are the peaches soaked in sugared juices, eaten by

these chosen edible ones, where is the kettle stuffed

with vegetables, the ones baptized of lessor gods, those who

refuse to enact  the  frozen art of rancor?

 

Don’t you know my gut needs this hint of fruit, at least one

minor hint, to mend?  Wounds of light bleed on and on

and on.

 

The sky is broken and still my cries unheard unheeded, this is

not whining! Cops stop and roust us all in daytime strolls

to Safeway where we often shop, our pony-tailed hair

apparently the sign to hassle freely.

 

Go ahead , eat your vegetables all up, let the chipped white

bowl overflow with plentiful hues and tones and shapes

like tools and toys so odd,  it’s all you’ll ever take from me, 

I know. 

 

Blake wrote centuries ago about grief laced (thankfully) ecstatic :

"Colours are the wounds of Light."

 

Bleeding through bandages of simple time, these days

of morning chill, warmed over coffee,

I could not agree more with thee,

mystic erotic Mr Blake.

 

These wounds of light do bleed on and on and on.

Autumn morning
coolness

an inner emptiness

persistent shadow
of our human
brokenness

bathes like a glee-filled
babe in fields of quiet
joy as maple trees

whistle within
a welcoming

lonesome
wind.

      gift                                                                                                                              

 

Guanajuato dawn

 

an empty plaza except

for two stray dogs

 

promiscuous sniffers

slop through puddles

like drunken monks

 

bubbling fresh pillows of rain

birthed from gray sky’s

baptismal bed.

 

van morrison’s lush

‘brown-eyed girl’

swirls towards us

 

the Irish bard’s gift

sashays from the yellow church

with peeling paint where

 

a leg-less beggar

huddles alone

on cold and broken steps

 

his prayer for our world

unspoken.

 

enchanted by this rain and van’s

song of first love in green grass

 

you hand the man your cup of coffee

his brown eyes calm thankful

his grip proud and strong

 

as the dogs now still

gather ‘round us

 

morning’s storm no longer drenches

the ancient church’s fading doorway.

                             Boy

 

Two small feet in scuffed tennis shoes descend

into the damp basement of a two story

house immersed in a roiling sea of black weather.

 

The boy drops onto sturdy wooden planks,

Step by step--

until the cement floor rises to meet him

alone.

 

Strange feelings in his belly suddenly present.

So soothing here within this quiet.

 

Somehow only when by himself does this vague mist fall

unpredictably, subtly onto his lap, gently entering

the short body to meet an emptiness,

 

Step by step---

 

he had not known was there.

 

How does he know to welcome this astonishing

surprise, like the night his dream’s flying seahorses--

speechless and soundless, arrived from a faraway sky?

 

Step by step---

like a wild stallion and chestnut mare

together asleep under a sprawling

mesquite in summer afternoon’s full flame.

 

Becoming aware of ripening, or the exact

uncertain moment conception….

 

Step by step---

 

mysteriously happens,,

ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT                                                       

Your happy tongue a fat

planet eternally orbiting

the yellow-orange sun

of sweet luscious grapefruit.

 

In love with its plump flesh,

how its ode-orous radiance

enters eager mouth’s cool cave

 

where you speak a lusty grinning

silence, a born-again tongue

your first language,

 

loose and fresh, new

as a white dwarf star. 

 

And Juicy!

 

Breakfast astronaut, strip off

your space-suit, free-float naked

in your capsule, burst into pleasure’s

sweet music, this citrusy tang

 

where gravity’s absence titillates your

taste buds, lightens all flesh

and linguistic pretensions as it hijacks 

this rocket ship towards an untraveled

 

atmosphere,  seduces quite hasty

like tasty hot sex in the shower

at home far down on earth.

 

Your face fiercely amorous, eyes

sparkle with inhibitions unraveling,

as flying soars further, rivers of juice

flood  across your chin greedily.

This hunger for new worlds to traverse

fulfilled by what flows in-between your

zillions of taste buds, one orb of fruit

 

and by these tiny oval seeds, containers

of cells to flower in secret your blooming

bright brain, explode galaxies of big-bang desires.

 

Oh astronaut!  Let yourself languish and linger,

be astonished inside grapefruit's

succulent pinkness, this stellar ripening

 

that’s nourished and grabbed you

star-struck for good.

 

Taste its foreign fecundity,

 

Savor its puckering liminality,

 

Explore its other-worldly carnality,

 

Hear its tingling full-flavored poetry.

 

Yes my dear breakfast devotees:

You wild devourers

of these fresh tangy softballs

fallen like home runs from heaven above

 

simmer and sizzle

sing if inspired

in this obscene solar system

 

inside your private Sputnik of love

while your requited cravings

beguiled, beguiling

 

you crooning and raving,

a glad captive of your fruity

 lunatic’s mooning,

 

ecstatically sticky

all morning long!

            map

A map in my happy hands

teaches  'surprise' and 'explore'.

Stokes our excitement

of the newfound nearby ocean

a crescent sandy beach where

 

we may doze on comfy orange towels

dream of children giggling in the surf

during dazzling afternoons

 

and then the sudden horror of your falling

out the second story window

from where we hoped to view this sea

onto cold black ground beneath.

 

Now instead I lie alone 

these days and nights

of unrelenting down-pour

to explore oceanic grief

with your picture where you're dancing sweetly smiling

placed next to a bag of your favorite ginger candy and

this flickering candle that grace

our unmapped losses

on my fireplace.

Song

An empty plaza

except for two

stray dogs sniffing

promiscuously

 

rain like fresh pillows

from a bed of gray sky

 

 and van morrison's

‘brown-eyed girl’ lush

 

and swirling towards us

 

from the yellow church

with peeling paint.

going for coffee

from far across

          an empty jardin

                music cries and cries. 

                  Our hungry fingers,

                           in secret, 

                                                 touch. 

                        .                         rain

                             

                                   ink skies 

                     Flood Light                                                       

 

When imaginal light   FLOODS    the mind receptive,

 

becomes a Bosporus deep and broad enough

for a tiny wooden rowboat tattered                wandering  

 

a freighter huge, slowly steaming eastwards

smoking creeping like an insomniac’s tortured

evening

 

and a robust swimmer blue-skinned pounding

her warrior’s arms ACHING CURVING through

cold clear waters swirling      AND, and

 

only AND,          when our humble breathing body staggers

sprints with its myriad moles, scars and scabs, rippled

muscles, weary afternoons and its sex                 MARRIES

this light’s MIRACULOUS infusion                        what occurs

 

takes our babbled breath away,

 

EARTHQUAKES us to another kind of earth

3,000 feet beneath this mundane ground,

straddles us like a lightning bolt from a manic lover

 

ELECTRIFIED     BOISTEROUS

 

all the way from Europe’s insane wars to

Asia’s perfumed slavery days, from

the cloistered monks of Benedict to

 

the masters of the GOLDEN WAY and far,

so far, beyond. 

 

ahh, when imaginal light       FLOODS

the mind receptive

Going for Coffee

  from far across
      an empty jardin


          music cries and cries


           Our hungry fingers,
                     in secret,
                                          touch.


                        Sky of ink 
                                          Rain.

Oh Tangled Death

Oh tangled death

I have come to see

on these steamy sidewalks,

 

far past the middle of my life,

 

We were always, always dancing in your spiny arms.

 

Those tangoed nights of trance

flirting with illusion’s filmy

daughter, smoke-grime

on a tavern window.

 

We are dancing even now

in your tawny muscled arms.

MUSING WITH A TREE

 

Leaves dance and flutter

     dance and flutter

          and dance,

 

tiny embryos afloat

in trees’s breezy

amniotic fluid.

 

Sky’s bright.      A cerulean

uterus,

 

      Glittering.

 

A vast mothering stage

choreographs

the afternoon.

 

PREGNANT

 

and ready

for leaving,

 

you turn from

afloat to afoot         

 

fleeing----

 

             leaves dance and flutter

                dance and flutter

                     and dance

 

       in a strange pile of soot,

 

     these articulated roots, twisted

          in our saturated grieving,

 

Where We burn

  entranced

 

and           still

         We

                       dance and flutter

                                                        flutter and dance

imaginal light

When imaginal light FLOODS the mind receptive,

 

becomes a Bosporus deep enough
for several floating creatures: a tiny wooden
rowboat tattered, a freighter huge slowly steaming 
eastwards, industriously as an insomniac’s tortured

 

night and a robust swimmer blue-skinned pounding
her warrior’s arms ACHING CURVING through
cold clear waters AND, and only

 

AND, when the humble breathing body staggers
sprints with its myriad moles, fatigue, scars and scabs, rippled
muscles, and its sex                 MARRIES
this light’s MIRACULOUS infusion what occurs

 
will more than take our babbled breath away, more than titilate or tickle----

 

can EARTHQUAKE us to another kind of earth
perhaps 3,000 feet beneath this mundane ground,
or straddle us like a lightning bolt from a horny lover

 

ELECTRIFIED  BOISTEROUS

 
all the way from Europe’s insane wars to
Asia’s perfumed slavery days, from
the cloistered monks of Benedict to

 

the masters of the GOLDEN WAY and far,
so far, beyond. 

 

ahh, when imaginal light FLOODS
the mind receptive