January Remembrances 2024
earth changes
are my changes
as the earth ventures to it’s outer most reach
we must also, inside
or we become kindling for fire set to burn us all into oblivion
we are seeds
and if we become light enough we can ride
the tidal immersion of our new becoming.
every flick of my fingers
is my destiny
and I’m dancing now
as a giant clay man would
gracefully en-sheathed by this tide that will carry my through
to the other shore.
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My forgotten song
who left the Romancer
for Romance
my charge here is not
to reduce myself to mere duty
but to form the embodiment of the Master
It’s taking you a long time to get somewhere with yourself.
All of your blessings are in tow
and instructions await you at the next pass,
which is nigh
An unwelcome passing by
two strangers find themselves
entwined deep inside the belly of Venus
undulating a frequency into the core of the earth
we are here for you finally
our sonar systems engaged
inside the palms of our hands
I make waves in you
and then you in me
and you witnessing me
and your hands pressing me close
a love affair for ancients
who we’ve forgotten to sing to
so they pull us towards them by the rags of our bones
my adult bliss
made good
by my blushed spine.
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you and me by the river
swimming alone and safe
the asphalt off Mohawk
radiating forgiveness
for all that we’ve done to arrive here
you were everything I wanted
but I’m changing so fast
I’ve got to let you go by night
before the witcher’s dawn.
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When the heavy voice of my fate
reigns in
and I open myself like a flower
to what comes
my initiation is complete
remorse and ambiguity recedes
into the faded pink background of my remembrances
of a time when we could pretend we had it all together
before braving the storm
now we know we don’t and we’re thrust into a new birth
ambiotic fluids pulsing initiation
without consent
most of the best things in life don’t ask before they take.
thrust into a new world
love,death, a new routine or obsession grabs a hold of you
and you’re the world’s greatest chef
performing a miracle in your restaurant on opening night.
Souffles for the king
a night robber bedding down in a cold alleyway
these times give me chills
in that love has come for me in the snakes mouth, devouring me whole
the snake eating the tale
all of us eating the earth
saying we’re going through the eye of the needle
but really we’re just waiting to fall off the flat side of the earth.
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American Bodies
Taut and sometimes smelling of Tanqueray
we live in a soup our grandfather’s made
our bodies pocked and poisoned
massive and strong in our right limbs
drugged, abused, caretakers to the lost and sick
fascia woven tightly through and over lipids
we forget ourselves so quickly
yet quickly we return
we’re still in here, these hallowed halls
still rejoicing about how far we’ve gone from the earth
dancing with magic toes at the end of space
we dare ourselves to snap out of it
with every ADHD pill we swallow
and every hollow identity we try to hide under
American bodies
when dead
put more estrogen and plastics into the groundwater
parts of us never decay
we fruitlessly harvest our own fantasies
white pink dread
our own lustful aspirations
drowned in a cacophonous volcano
hot hot hot
the fire doesn’t love us anymore
and we in turn love the Robot
we buzz with the Robot
forever shaking ourselves out of ourselves
bbbbzzzzzzzzzz
we are living buzzwords on our chest
forgotten mysteries in our kidneys
forgotten but easily remembered by our beginner’s minds
naive and full of luck
receptively out to lunch and grieving our apparent loss
don’t take the left turn
when you should have taken the right.
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Wisdom
What if wisdom is knowing
we don’t get what we want
and accepting it.
A peaceful afternoon of laying around in trash
gently accepting the breeze blowing stench
pretending it was anything other than trash
would do a noble disservice to the refuse gods
Instead, know the trash
without praise or rejection
this modern life
has sent us all reeling
to shun it is a mistake
and to take it personally is another.
Becoming modern
loving the trash
eating the pills
sunshine in our veins
perhaps I won’t see the dawning of a new age
but I’ll see the embodiment of this one.
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The drawn down at Fall Creek
is sucking hard this year
none to begin with
only sad poems these days
with the hope of joy in the future.
Superficial breathing means winter never arrives
shallow breathing is one of the signs of death
my mackrel father
and lost soul mother vie for more space
and threaten to topple the whole charade of being here
What last look were you given before you turned the key?
A whisp of Autumn’s brush drew short
Will winter be weary as well?
What if our senses were sharp to witnessing?
What if we reciprocated with her? and Them?
And all of this songbird Rhythm and ancient melody play again
our mouths becoming flutes
even those woods, mono-culture Doug Fir, middle growth
has something to say
‘only when you see me can we begin again’.
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Cancer Full Moon
just leave us where the dogs lie
to each other about who is best
it wants you to see the uncomfortable
truth of your inadequacy
and love yourself anyway.
I say it how the mind would say it
but the heart knows we never came here to achieve perfection
we had enough of that between the blink of an eye
pupils lusting for form
something to gaze
look at how beautiful you are
dressed in foreign garb
take my hand on the stair case that goes below
our hopes and dreams
to sit uncomfortably in the trash heap
ours
and not ours
there is a bed made here
for those willing to endure the stench.
do we all even await a beloved eye anymore?
the young ones are so foreign to my me
I can’t tell their ragged newspaper
from hickory wood
cedar downed in a fall storm
would they even care about all this garbage? Is anyone here to pick it up?
Follow culture, please
keep it together
we’ve seen it’s the way to go
too much decomposition
drives us mad
humans are meant for belonging.
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A baby drown in orange juice
in a small bathtub
a message delivered
a man with contained silver hair
gaze of clarity
reorganizing the pieces of every puzzle
the message
and messenger in one
we are all Gabriel
for each other now
the angels sleeping
and dreaming us
seeing who we will be for each other.
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A sparrow trapped in a basement
icicles forming against the mesh wire
revealing conversations
in the cafe
a woman, deep blue eyes, can’t stop warding me off with her eyes
she speaks of cycles
first or second date
she conceals herself without much prowess
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a sparrow freed
with wire cutters
borrowed from a sacred lover
my soul skating on thin ice
a boy missing
in between worlds
on a plane
in an ice storm
to be taken to this bosom
by this shallow
sloughing off of time
we
erect
free
a bird flying
into an ice world
un-nourished
free
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my foot folded over the knife’s edge of winter
how do you explode into the world after a winter like this?
Carefully and boldly
without question that you no longer represent the future
you are the present.
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My grandmother’s four cornered
stand-up Magnavox Record Player
sits broken from fatigue
it was a dream to have her here with me.
a place big enough to share our soul of the past together
she whispered to me last week at Brice Creek
“you’ve gone through the heaviest. this is just another moment”
She was speaking of an initiation
into a dormant frequency inside myself.
I was being playfully tossed by grace.
Sometimes this feels like an unbearable pin prick
causing one to shift positions
augmenting a new part of you
growing into those new spaces can be threatening to the present
the life circumstances you are inhabiting now.
I’ve been reciting constricting narratives
to hold a gaze of control over my life
not letting myself have a life, or jump into the river of it all
I’ve kept myself not small, but still held back from the unknown.
Now to the delicate work of allowing my new self to take form while
honoring and including my present awareness.
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Buddhism says we are a cup of emptiness
contained in a personal shroud
Sufism says the container is an illusion!
and they don’t say “empty”, more “vast”, “remote” “universal”.
The intimacy of both draw me in.
I’ve not seen intimacy without boundaries.
I love the experience of getting into with another sexually, or otherwise
when we are both very into ourselves
and don’t look to merge first
as an inherent reaction or habit.
when i don’t bleed into the other from a searching place
life and enjoyment seem to have begun only very recently.
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hate and love are not the same
but we can see them like a firestorm in July
or an ice storm in January
intense, extreme, bright,
yet there is some part of us here beyond playing all this out
when my lover annoys me
some part of me doesn’t move or care
when I love him
I try to go all in
still some part of me watches
a phantom participant in a great love story.
Our soul makes us bear uncomfortable wishes and desires.
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what does it all mean?
my mother’s sadness
my 8,016 steps today
a broken heart
too deeply cut to heal
yet seeming to heal overnight
walking into my destiny
is an overcoat flopped over a small child
hands flailing the fabric
against my legs
well the time is
now now now
you’ve cried every tear you needed to shed
about a man who let you down.
you no longer need a parent to love you.
you ain’t looking so great in those knickers anymore.
and no children to pour yourself into.
everyone leaves you alone when you want them to.
what left is there to do but dream the new dream?
give yourself fully to life now
forget protecting yourself from those who love you.
you’ve proven your loyalty to your body, your work, your unique love.
all that is settled.
and now for my latest magic trick: Re-Appearance.
Pull me up by the crown and watch me roll.
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Thomas Merton wrote life into life
my redaction has spoken to the wind and no one else
it’s led me through to the other side.
I sit behind Cherokee walls of ice
because it’s the only way I can communicate with the world.
Only if we are separate can be be at one.
My tiny voice
eating away at my revelry
solitude
the only thing
that gets me there
back and forth
time gave us endless pursuits
but the only possibility of self renewal gave us clarity and hope
nothing else satiates humanity.
Merton knew every human core longing
and he knew modern society was no substitute for it.
how to reorient again and again.
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Part #1
Merton’s medicine is corrective.
A sharp glance upon a life lived out from under distraction.
men no longer turn my gaze, unless they are on fire
it’s not common for humans to hold so much
in fact all of the universe inside them
knowingly
to have meted it out
rationally accounted for it within the depths of being.
east, west, tongues that divide and coral seekers
peace and war
and the inner rabble rouse that leads to both.
a gesture from a Saint
and a tomb of a Revolutionary
We still, yet to catch up to the future.
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Part #2
Entrenched in identities that aren’t even material now
is this part of a holy unwinding,
or does it spell doom?
Always too early to tell
all I know is the world is splitting, again,
or maybe it never has stopped
and we can’t see one another
clearly through the funhouse mirror of technology
everyone is the enemy
no one is to be trusted
even open handed liberals
are hardened into tribal bubbles
I pray this unraveling is real
and good and will get us somewhere
I worry it’s all shrouded monkies
playing in a garden at midday
eating and fucking each other dead
without any of the fun to be had.
remember when chaos and disorder got us somewhere?
suppose that’s when there was an apparent order to kick against.
Re-order and grace.
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I pray for disorder to come
swift and kind in it’s pursuit of all of our madness
make sure it pays everyone a visit
of course this is happening now
it’s just hard to see through
all of the distorted ego projections of the media/social media and our
personal faceless messages to one another.
the second our message is touched by something created inherently to destroy us ( new technology)
the holy and sacred is degraded in one instance.
the second your mind labels a piece of information
as belonging to this camp or that belief system,
or framing it in a particular way to suit your otherwise flimsy belief system,
you’ve taken away the complex manna of life.
the dis-allowance of life permeates into our personal lives
till we have a grain of truth
we go searching for near death.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
this temple is mine at the moment
soon it will the earth’s
then the community’s
pulsing with life
a human nexus uncovered
thousands of years from now.
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I forget about human emotion
until my boyfriend cries about art
Pleasantville’s rush of color
over my shady day dream
neutrality is my biggest gift to the world
magic and devil worship don’t sway me
living with a man who hates and loves the world intensely
is gift that keeps on giving.
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Our bodies extend into the heavens
chaos and ether
decorate our crowns
to be this far up
is mundanity
to say you only believe
what consensus science says
is to deny your everyday psychic and intuitive experience
which at this juncture
are as common as breath
the hyper active over arching mental body is a thin veil
it’s just that too many have fallen before us
so it’s easy to follow in blank footsteps
though we won’t be missing it this time around.
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24
handfasting you under a limelighted moon
at one with all little creatures
insects welling up a chorus beneath our feet
what would it mean to move through this shiny saturnian darkness together
holding hands
waiting for the meter to run out
when I signed up for this
I knew you were headed for me
everything about your decomposing had me enraptured.
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25
terrified at home
69 degrees in January
stepping over broken branches
in the closed park
with you
awake in my darkness
only in the dripping green
can you take off your shirt
so I can smell
what bitter prose god made
when he made you
unfreeze your picture frame childhood
cause these times are like a dull knife through cellophane
kiss the ones you’ve been given
leave the rest.
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This time falling in love
I remembered how it hadn’t gone so well before
so I picked someone I never thought I had any danger of loving
screaming running terror
into the deepest bowels of love
unaware
a semi-truck jack knifed in the road
this incessant dare has been taken too far
I’ve never understood the nature of love
ever increasing angles, dimensions, forms
envelope you anew each time
and it’s like the first time
over + over
in a different body
love is eternal rebirth
always showering my old lovers with rich shit
to be fashioned into some kind of new earth
for us to stand on.
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Knowing my heart has unguarded itself
finally
while the nightwatchmen was asleep
I sneak out
survey the moonlight
digging my heels into the sand
what new open field is there
what mushy wordless space
do I inhabit next?
My body curled around a still standing Oak.
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Happy birthday
to the initiatory one
shining a part from the rest
always looking down
looking to come down
looking to calm down
a gaggle of absurdity
and women follow you
those eyes led me out of the wilderness into a world
where the ancient is embraced
in loving surrender to the new.
Your ecstatic words bite
and twist at the edges of this reality
waiting to break us out into
bigger and bigger worlds.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
the vests of confidence
have given way to
shiny armor
have given way to
a slack line of
unified existence forward and past
easy
harmony is hard work
the only way through to grace is harmony
a road stretched between two opposing forces
we love who we love
and our body gets what it needs.
it isn’t fair
you looking like that
forming my most desired shape before my eyes
less hard work than I had imagined.
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