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.