Aloha

Somewhere in a timeline
Unstitched
Bare feet dance
Over a grave
In which
I am not sure
My body yet lies

Regardless
Of whether
I am bones turned dust
Freshly planted
Or awaiting my turn
The performance
Is without insolence
Dancers celebrating all
With equal aplomb
Enthusiasm
And indifference

They are spring rain
And winter starvation
Last rites
And birthing ward
Harvest and seed
Sunset ceremonies
Tied to the wheel
Of forever’s
Fresh breaking dawn

Resolutions

Standing at the gates
Of my greatest decade
I am set
To accept these gifts
This hairy eye
Savage heart
And feather quill

Ready to rid myself
Of all things
Man
Willing to step away
From synchronized
And terrorized biospheres
Ascending
Into a forest
Somewhere
Beyond the trees
Somehow
Outside imagination
Expectations
Or paralyzing fear

This life is ripe
For breaking
Overdue
The dawn

Once Every Several Lifetimes

Midnight rendezvous
With a blood red
Shape shifting mistress
Floating behind
Dark clouds
Over frozen landscapes

A tiny miracle
Of time and space
Ancient provoker
Of prophecies
Good tidings and
Heart popping blades

A vision
Tantalizing the imagination
Somehow eclipsed
By your day breaking
Impossibly ripe form
Rinsed of shadow
And beaming light
Like the heavens reborn

Legacy Denied

The red bearded
Viking king
Of our childhood
Has been robbed
Of bloody axe
And booming voice

A life of
Keeping love
At the end of arms
Leaving him weaponless
For the final years
Of a war within

Once a barbarian
We would have followed
To silent
Certain death
Now a statue
More hollow
Than the longboat
His heirs
Long since set aflame
And turned adrift
In the unknown

In One Ear

Forever drawn
To a psychedelic saltlick
Daily
Slate eraser

Too much to witness
Absorb or understand
Overwhelming
Contradicting tides
Sweeping whimsy
Out to sea


Watery tombstones
Marking what can’t
Be exhumed
When nobody recalls
The gravesite
Why they were killed
Or who’s ideology
Was buried

The easy way out
I suppose
But what exactly
Have you solved
With all your
Paying attention
And taking sides

Waves

Not long for a life
Never intended to live
Like cultists
We await
Our reincarnate
Transformation
Into ethereal embodiment
Of collective destiny

Distant sirens
The weeping wolves
Howling willows
Like chords intertwined
And dependent
On the other

Invisible connections
These diamond cables
On a twelve string guitar
Hammering out
A delicate symphony
Once conducted
In far away
Constellations

The last song
Remaining
Is the final falling tree
With nobody around
To witness

Phantom Limbs

It could be distant
Christmas lights
In the whiteout
Of fog and snow
Or the rumnog concoction
Burrowing fuzzy tendrils
Through this pickled brain
But I find myself
On the verge
Of wistful recollections

Dare I say
Even nostalgia

Stained memories
Of lost lovers and friends
Reopened
For the first time and
Having never looked back
Surprised to see them
Burning so clear

Forgotten gift exchanges
My right hand mates
And boastful toasts
Unwrapping before
My very eyes
While amounting to
A ghostly sensation
I have zero use for
Because
It doesn't change a thing

Wile E.

Slinking out of
An old mythology
There is a new agent
Of chaos
Amongst the flowerbeds
And manicured lawns
Of this tucked away
Retirement home

A trickster figure
Slipping nooses
While weathering
The tranquilizer darts
Of excessive authority

No longer
Do squirrels or quail
Linger on the lawn
Like they own something

The cold golden stare
And fixed grin
A necessary reminder
That life hasn’t turned
Completely inside out
Upside down
And all too easy

Veterans living here
Know better than anyone
That ecosystems
Lacking the dance of death
Are just wars
Waiting to happen
So they greet
This toothy marauder
With a salute
And reserved smile
All their own

Where I Stand

A decade gone by
With such little drama
Have to wonder
If golden handcuffs
Have me anesthetized
To the biting teeth
Once responsible
For my three legged escapes

The highs
No longer lift
And the lows
Feel no different
Than an internal teeter-totter
Rusted in balance

Was my life
Already forfeited
Somewhere amongst
The early upheavals

Is this the gradual numbing
Of purgatory
Or some kind of hell
Trapped in bland acceptance

Maybe
These vanilla tented glasses
And regulated temperatures
Are some kind of reward
I am too simple
To recognize
Without the heart stammer
Flashing sirens
And novelty sized checks

You are Getting Sleepy

We are without voices
Warm lips flowing
Silent testimony
Throughout
A history barely begun
Stretching to nowhere
Burning pages
Instead of reading books
Like we are already
Held fast in the winter
Of nuclear fall-out
As if we
Stumbled over a truth
We couldn't afford

Or maybe
A collective conscious
Already understands
And it is those of us
Still talking
Who are dense
And unable
To absorb these
Bathroom stall philosophies
This midnight stroke
The simple truth
Of terminal affliction

The whispers
Just an annoyance
A useless reminder
Of what might have been

A Genuine Peach

For a dozen years now
She has accepted my
Swinging mood
And violent outbursts
With good humor
All the while
Digging in claws
And refusing to let my anger
Dislodge her commitment

Ears pinned back
Eyes clouded in heartache
She forces her way
On to my lap
Over and over again
Never fleeing
The rough handling
Or my desire to stew alone

Hurt me if you must
Dad
She tells me
I will keep coming back
Until you accept
This uncompromising love

See
I saved her life once
And she will never forget
Just as I
Won’t be able to forgive
All those moments
I may have caused
Her to doubt
Moments
I’ll be desperate to live over
Once she is
Finally and forever taken
From my shaking hands

The Halls of History

Descending through millennia
In the big ditch
Geological gallery
A million years
Bypassed with every
Endless switchback
The compacted algae and
Trilobites now glorious
Monuments to extinct oceans
Towering limestone tombs
Radiating the treasured
Coral reefs of pink
And gold

Deeper still
The sage and unbreakable
Metamorphic basement
Once silent witnesses
To limp lungs emerging
From the primordial ooze
Now onlookers to
Our insignificant struggle
And breathless awe
No doubt
Mildly amused
By our toys and attempts
To encapsulate their wisdom
In a three by five
Two dimensional
Post card

Reform

As I have grown older
More cynical
And possibly undecided
These days
Are harder to find
Moments
Of genuine change
Prospects for hope
Reason
To unfurl a flag
I no longer understand

Except our history
Both researched
Experienced
Real and undeniable
Teaches me
That even good ideas
Are dropped on the fingers
Of criminals
To be bent
And broken in a manner
Benefiting handfuls
Until our texts
Are plagued
By page after page
Of ludicrous endeavors

Vox Humana

It is a language
I fail to grasp
All horsepower and
Zero steering
Tearing across reason
Or rhyme
While crackling speakers
Create a chaos
All their own
And dust devils cast
A wary eye

Where does the lesson
Drip from this
Sensual pole dance
Is there something
Behind all the
Heavy breathing
Or is it all
Just masturbation
Once the dollar bills
Disappear

CSI Owyhee

Unlike the rest
Of these predator and
Scavenger ravaged carcasses
Scattered across this slot canyon
Your body was left
To decompose in peace
Skeleton still connected
Dignity intact

Between the two rocks
Where I first thought you laid
Your wounded or weary head
For the last time
I find the horns
And bottom jaw
Wedged so tight
That even in death
Your skull cannot be freed

There would have been
No escape
From this improbable and
Unexpected trap

Did you snap your neck
In a blind panic
Or without complaint
Resign yourself
To slow starvation

How did you keep
The lions and coyotes
From sniffing out a meal
How did the eagles
And turkey vultures
Not notice
Your corpse below
Bloating in the desert

Or does an unwritten law
Of the wild
Demand a sense of respect
Amongst natural enemies
When a luckless sister
With no hope
Can be spared
Some final insult
In the face of such an
Unusual demise

Like Jesus in a Tortilla

Be it inborn
Book read
Or the end result
Of an intrepid dance
With lady mushroom
In the outer realms
This raptor vision
Has stripped all pretense
Excuse and sexy lace
From our production

No longer stomach
What I see
Touch where I listen
Taste this unholy funk

The actors
Exit stage left
And deconstruct
This one dimensional
Backdrop
For the first time
Proving to me
The existence of a
Real human face

Blood, White, & You

An age of enlightenment
Escaped us again
Shoved into the cellar
With our dignity
And seeping heart

The bloated albino
Eager as ever
To blame
Abuse and remove
Every color
In the rainbow
Shake off the robe
Light up the crucifix
Thicken the callous
Of a collective soul

Our mother
Drips from deep gashes
While black tongues
Hiss of Jesus
And collateral acceptance
Psalm sellers
Cradling children
In a stranglehold
Of crosshairs
And averted eyes
As a hundred years
Of unwatchable sedatives
Slip down our throat
Inside a greasy wad
Called freedom

Removing Tumors

Without warning
Or explanation
This sickness seeps
From my nightmares
Staining converging clouds
And kicking up hurricanes
In decomposing eyes

A disease
That will one day find
These hands
Wrapped around the neck
Of another
Or my hunting knife
Buried to the hilt
In a gurgling throat
And at times
Like this
With blood screaming
Through my temples
It begins to feel like
The only cure

Mountain Comics

With the mule trains
Leather dusters
Firearm arsenal
And strung up
Before their stronghold
A headless carcass
Spread eagle
And gutted like Jesus

The grim unshaven faces
Towering gods
Before silver beer cans
Tossed aside
With a weekday job
Or nagging wife
For mountain time
With the boys

This is serious business

 Until
The hunters mount up
Vanish into low
White clouds at first light
While their quarry
Steps out of
Ponderosa shadows
To saunter
Through camp
Giving me
Every reason to laugh
At the best laid plans
Of man

Halloween Peace Accord

Even at a backwoods
Hillbilly watering hole
It is a night
For witchcraft and
Gremlins in disguise
A fountain of
Black Velvet
Bad karaoke
Chasing stolen smokes
And mingling with enemies
Mismatched camouflage
Nascar racers
Cowboy hats and the
Talking bush
Willing to set aside
Daily politics
And basic manner
In which we each conduct
Our business and
Personal presentations
For once
Not focusing on what
Keeps us at odds
But instead
Wallowing in the obscenity
We all have in common