Last Boat to Avalon

The reality I had agreed to

Lasted til I fell asleep, 

When everything happened, the lack of forms 

No detriment at all,

Like I was falling into the world 

That only made sense in the swirl

At its creation, in the crystal ball

Equipped with every teardrop.

Am I ready to make it whole, 

By seeing it as it is at last

Not as facets to be mined 

But one universe to another?

The disclosure

We've all been waiting for 

Comes out of the earth instead,

For we hum at its frequency.

I sip my amethyst stone, 

Glow rose with light.

AI flies vector my location:

Calm heart, joyous mind. 

It seems that little boat

Has been adrift for centuries,

Locked against the winds and grey,

Spilling out its echo of effort

To every void in its motorboat vibration

As it asks to have a voice, for safety

When it plumbs the sheer nerve

Of cliffs perceived as mute, not silent.

There's no need anymore

For the boat to wind around

This or any other magnetic aura

Hoping to be magnified.

It will tell us now

Anything we want to know,

Though every secret it unhooks from the stars

Was known to us before, as who we are.

Summer Purging with Ground Squirrels

The squirrels are jubilant today

After I learned their secret:

Know everything, but only chase

Seeds you can reach.

One hung high from the tree

So I could see him, waving his

Fat belly, no longer taunting

But cheering me.

They are welcoming at the ranch, too,

Cocked tails in dust formation

Into the ice plants, to gleefully reveal

Their special portals inside.

It's not a trick if you've figured it out;

Disappearance is only magic

When you think that they exist.

And now we're part of a brotherhood,

Where facts are like nuts, easily cracked

And hoarded, but better to discern

And hide. Authenticity comes

From staying so selfish

You recognize you've been lied to

For basically your life, and you are

The only creator being, in the blur 

Designed to hook your eye like a crow.

Maybe there are no nuts at all

Except to be buried, for show,

As a symbol, to help things grow.

It was always the knowing that mattered 

And equally the letting go,

Like a flying machine locked in plastic

With indecipherable directions — how can you

Even clean it up off the floor?

They run away, those squirrels,

From all of their messes, if only

To show us how to live

In endless discovery.

Brio does that too,

Eating his grain like a 2-year old

Letting it fly, but nuzzling some back

When his bowl is empty.

He is stopped by the dust

Rising like vapor over his white socks.

Until that's gone, his dry lips seem

To say, all is lost.

Sad Eyes of the Ranch Hand

The sad horse clown throws his head at your face

Then lifts a fart to your nose as you brush him.

It's a joke, see, but he has that look, like a 

Silent movie sad clown horse, everything

Is funny, he cries, or can be laughed at.

It should be, anyway. For otherwise

The tears would fill the valley, and none of us

Could survive his sad eyes.

                                                   But all he wants

Is an audience, someone who understands

What it is to stand in late afternoon sun

When all the browns turn to red, and the dirt

Freshly wet must be galloped, but there is

A lingering thought that makes me perhaps

Identify too strongly with his eyes

As I think of a certain ranch owner

From my past

                          And his miles of unspoiled

Wilderness near Arvin, Tehachapi,

To corral cattle in flies for slaughter

And accumulate foxtail shrapnel while

Shooting squirrels, and the barrel-of-fish pond

He about broke the bank on, to keep it from 

The interests of wilderness, its rumors

Of condors.

                      Not like here, where the sacred

Lives everywhere, above every shadow,

Because we can breathe with it, a chi-filled

Higher density breath, and see how the sun

Merely reveals everything is beauty,

Expertly arranged to show us ourselves,

In incremental symbols, like the brush

As the sun brushes by.

                                         Then the mirror

Of Brio's doppelganger alone in the arena,

The same sad eyes, restless tail, but maybe

He doesn't notice, and maybe we don't

Need to think anything about it but

It is a noticing, like all the wax

Of all the leaves overhang in a bow

Of remembrance.

                                The doublewide that's dropped

Here on the hill was given to the guy

Who worked this ranch for 40 years, who framed it

With tiny flowers and giant cactus

While the other doublewide sits empty,

Green rugs and aluminum TV trays,

Testament to a golden age, that was

Never built as sold, it was never 

As conceived.

                          The hunted bucks in the mansion

On the hill were all bought at least in town,

And the bar tab at the country club

May have spared a couple jobs, a lot of 

Two dollar bills circulated the county,

And he paid enough so that many will speak

Of him kindly, if they speak of him 

At all.

             It is natural, here, no one needs

Permission to talk, or any hindrance,

No head stall and bit, though sad eyes always

Remember it. Even the oak trees taste

Of freedom, the one thing dear Mother Earth

Wants us to have.

                                The man's head's big enough

To fill the hat, as he spends his loose weight

On his own braggadocio, on his own

Pain. Cry a river, or leave him there

High and dry — it no longer concerns me. 

What's hard is yielding up those sad eyes with

The poker face, no longer a bluff to call,

Sincerely wishing him to win it all. 

The Question of Why the Heavens Parted

Nature and I get along now.

The chickadee at the top of the tree

Is so close

In golden green light.

The rabbit zags

Beside me, content

As no houserabbit would be, with my

Proximity, my eager looking.

The squirrel beeps

The moment I say his name

In the context of a Prairie Dog card

Pulled like magic from the prophesying air.

The birds chirr now as they're bidden

By the dragon frequency that now inhabits me,

A call and response continually 

Recorded by the stars.

It's now available, as if I'm a teenager

Given the key, to nature, power to drive

Along the endless ridges as

The truth peels away every layer.

You savor the process, the marking of time

By the sun, the return of the crows

To sound the alarm of their day's news,

Which never amounts to anything but

It gets the finches to report 

In their sweet staccato 

Song hopes for the peace

That most clearly is.

Champagne-dappled King, golden in the gold

Sun's gravy, is the biggest draft horse,

Surfer handsome, but too sweet to lead,

To put his hoof on the scale.

One shouldn't have to do that, to be,

As Captain attests. Even grazing he is elegant, 

So cool the three brothers, Friesian curlies all,

Stare me away.

Everyone is equal, to be, who you are,

Even if that isn't what you were supposed to

Become, but you tried on that bridle

You were never intended to wear

And the world changed in its motion.

It only took freedom — the whole time —

To know you are alive, in the breast of nature

Never having to be anything but what you are

Exactly, and exactly is how you fit

In the tapestry where the records are kept

Although everyone in range

By this time knows it all. 

Kirk Reaches for a Note

"So he wants to tell you what to do

And when to do it, but that is not

The way it goes," said one smiling

Horsewoman to another, as they smoothed out

The sense of freedom allowed

Under the bluest of skies.

The horse wants desperately to be led

But he most assuredly won't take direction,

So the dance goes on, as it always does

Even on the Day Outside of Time,

The neutral threshold, between who I am

And who I will be

Where I finally received my rhythm section,

Saturn and Uranus — a boy and a girl —

To accompany me, and squeegee 

Pandora's Window so no light gets dusted.

There is no dust tonight.

Even the tree bark is blinding.

The crows take pains to complain

About the rock n' roll I play, that is

To say, they dig it perhaps too much.

There are other songs their craws reach for

In the light that makes them translucent,

Places more authentic and more whole

Not those of the barroom-bound blues hound

Flexing his string finger, but the loftier curls

Of finding not losing the harmonics,

Not the wrench out of experience's sweetness

But the gathering of codes, through petals falling

In sunlight to your fingers —

Who you are is not in being abandoned

But in living on, in spite of the bass

That ever-mournfully turns you down.

Any bird can play the mouth harp,

Feel the pain of being lined up

For release

But how can the notes lift higher

Than the dust beneath the angels?

The copper cowbells help to hypnotise

The horse, put him in a trance, so that

His stride stays on the higher road,

Nothing but a blank sheet of blue to interfere

With the call to be who he is,

No longer irascible or resistant

But cantering with the carousel horses 

In the sky, towards what is to be,

What he envisions

As the frequency agrees.

Confident now that nothing is missing,

There is no separation from source,

Not the slightest pause

Before acting as a God

With all the angels 

As his personal choir

To egg him on continually

With all the questions and concerns

Careful love throws over one

Like a warm blanket

On the cool

High road

Where the figure, to others

Cannot really be said to be real,

Just a dream in a matrix no longer glitching

But moving forward freely,

Not even forgetting,

The fleeting present is that strong.

Sunset Birds Over Kelvin

The crows have been angry with me today,

I tried to escape from myself once

And they cawed "You are not supposed 

To be here." The second time they stopped me

In mid-flight, to invite me to consider

The vast door they stood before

That could now be opened.

It wasn't the truth after all

That matched the gold

But forgiveness of my own need to hold it, 

In whatever form it presents itself, shifty 

Leprechaun to unstoppable shift, the floors 

Becoming crystalline, the air viewable 

As it would be to a fish.

Whatever you make becomes the truth

And there's only the thinnest thread now

Between desire and manifestation.

The world can exist separate from this,

On another hillside, where other oaks shimmy.

In this one, the silence is all-consuming — 

Every word becomes true.

Disclosure in Barking Sands

Tulsi has the tenacity of an oak,

Characteristic of her breed,

In her case feline starseed

Delivered with her white seer

Forelock to Kauai, where I am from,

The base where the alarm first went off

And the cane workers mercifully died

Instead of being able to run for cover,

Instead of any truth allowed at all.

And now we have reached the point

In the heroine's journey

Where the prophecies come true.

The pods in the shells shake furiously.

The caves are cleared and open for tours,

There won't be a need for me anymore

To decipher in a second with the iron in my hair 

Standing on end the ones with kingdom come

Explosives from the ones you can hide in,

Like the mountain lion hides in these oaks

Willing to do what is necessary

To earn the hard things:

Sustenance, shelter, the wisdom of the ages

That refuses to budge. 

Some birds fly up. Brio notices,

The other horses stir up dust

And ripple their necks, but they sense

The hidden danger only vaguely.

There's always a skirmish on the ground,

Always deer that can't be seen, the crying

Always mingles love and trepidation,

The thing that turns love into a true-badour song

That learns to live with its longing

Without its courtly home

But the oak roots hold the rocks in mounds

Like they were weapons, best deployed

In their wisdom not their release.

The turn of the evening brings shadows

To different locations, and the world moves on

With barely a dawning of what happened

To the Seth Rich flag in heaven,

The Racheal Chandler brave things said,

The Epstein Epicenter and its hunters already hunted.

She flings a rock in a sling, but it's for practice,

Not even for show. The target remains,

Always Diana to remind us

That what is taken down metes out justice.

The century plant is ready to bloom.

Julian Assange the white rabbit hops through time.

The land of water and fire has merged 

To Arcturus gateway violet. Now evening violet

Smooths the mountain with quiet,

Birds go on as before, raptors from other planets

Just to make sure

We're okay.

Sunday Primitives in Baskets

Brio chiseled me for some grain

Navajo looked on outraged

But the day resolved

In delightful thoughts

That rose from Laguna Canyon

From happy beachcombers

And art connoisseurs 

Brio too

Free at last

From his stall

As the crows sweep

A rare flyover

When we remember

It's love and love alone

That has risen

In this vapour

To some freedom

Of becoming

Looping below

The dome of blue

That sharpens

Our experience

For the trees

To absorb 

And fungi to

Illuminate our feet

As we ascend

Vulture View

With our food

Of life lived

The vegan ice cream

From The Flats 

The habibi by the ghost

Of the cylinder press

The grasses hungrily

Stalk our energy

As the sultry breeze

Releases it

From our realm

So the new can come

Because now

We are open

To what was

Already there

In the curvature

Of the canyon

The rainbow

Witch wind

That only ever mirrored

What we made it

There is nothing there but

What we already believe

The illusion that we carry

Like a touchstone

Illusion is the only thing

You need

The last resort

Of the free

There were NASA uniforms

For all the little ones

And addressographs

In the Army Navy store

The mustard grass

Vibrates it all

In endless turn

Of response each choice

To sample 'til you've tasted

Every flavor

All valid 

All consuming

And interchangeable

At our will

Choosing a Stone

Even the robostrobe throws smoke back at first, until you know

What questions to ask. Same with the stones, who clam up

Until you let their wisdom approach, going sunwise

From the west, until it gets to know you, says “hi,”

The stone that will hold your own frequency, the only

Reliable witness, to the shape of our rage, our will

They re-ranged into the forms of the Kronos realm

Out of the war between fire and water in our heads,

As the foundation of our solar temple, for our choice 

To be material. They hold our bones, known beyond time, 

In sediment archive.

                                                The Druid bards used to

Sound them with a stick, off trees picked like cymbals

In a Zildjian shop, for the pulse, and played like Charlie 

When he swung back the roll of the thundering Stones. That’s where 

The poems came from, as they were given back only to song stones

Like Merlyn gave Excalibur back to Mnemosyne.

That’s why monarch crowns were assiduously combed

For symbol in crystal  – the people forebore nothing less

Than the silence of the ages they possessed, to confer

God’s authority, the voice of authenticity before they took away

The bells, when we could cry through dolmen portals to acquire

What came before, like unlocked sluice gates of the land, whose wisdom

Waits inside, drawing light down from the stars.

                                                                               But they do so for a price:

We had to hear heaven enough to hear the earth. Open enough to ring

Like the bells that brought on our doom once. Innocent enough

To go on. And so I put on myself the druid hoodie, in impossible quest

To recover silence, listen for once in the Anthropocene to the earth

As she cries to be freed from her stillness, like she’s been in our game

Of musical chairs too long, as the agreed-upon rules are breaking, now,

Becoming news. There’s no reason now the branches

Can’t be waves, expanding with each gustatory gesture,

For no other reason than creation is endless, and everything

Is known, who they are, what they represent.

                                                          The earth won’t wait, the age calls out,

And the dragon spiral stirs the nest and calls for more ridiculous druids

To trudge up the mountainsides like goats, to be chosen by stones and

Attune to the subtlety of how to convey peacefully the memory held

Intact in the ruin like runes, and unlock ancient permanences

Only we know what to do with. Our healing wand would blind with light

All unexamined pockets, as mirrors in a common crystal hit by sun

Echo the sound of the other world, the one beyond the cup-stone

And slate mirrors for scrying. 

                                                      We are asked to walk again the sage road,

Wearing our crown lotus crystal, the one modeled for kings, inside, 

To cast a magic circle in the portal between worlds. They knew 

All along, the old seers, that what they would do would be gone,

But also knew the stones could be trusted, the bards

Who didn’t write anything down, sharing only with the stone kingdom.

They've come down the mountain in invisible streams, nuggets

Everywhere, of golden wisdom, with no worry of any one calling,

They all are! But few yield permission to move them, much less

Consecrate a meeting. Without proper groundwork, people get hurt

As the horse gets too reactive, so the would-be druid must be

Hollow enough, to think, as pure extension of perception,

To follow a trail without breadcrumb or motive.

                                                                                        The whip cracks,

The crow caws, and the blue sky glows with all I need to know,

My twitching hands that sense water, and the meadowlark's report

Of the way to the ley line. "Will you be responsible on the trail,

Are you sure?" You must ask the horse, before going up the ridge.

As his hoof kicks up pebbles, the stones start to hum in my heart.

The mythical mountain lion becomes real in this echo, one must be

Careful to put the earth before everything else, and the earth says

"There must be some spot that only you know." There the rocks 

Will congregate, further up the hill, before the turning back

In hearkenings of other ranches, where the poop smells too human.

The stones kindly slough me off, but where the trails cross

There's a round one, who almost imperceptibly calls. I do the dervish

Dance in full late light, still incredulous I'd find the one

In a stone universe of suitors, but it said "there's a world I can

Show you," and in that delicate blend of trust and knowing

I grabbed it, not like a Tevis Cup, but close. And in that moment

As the black stones turned translucent, every other one was

Closed off, to help me, in my ignorance. All rocks, like all

Sentient beings, hurl towards the one.

                                                                       Mine was embossed

With a universe of stars, like an unfamiliar map that turns

With jeweler's drill discernment into an all-encompassing,

Deeply personal truth that sparkles in every heavenly zone,

As its very weight of geometry makes it sing, in the ever-ravenous 

Belly of the universe. It wants, turns out, the same thing as me, 

To fly, it shares easily, like we were drinking Guinness Stout, 

And the million times it was skimmed into the ripples of the sea

Comes back for review, first as tragedy, then laughter, then the succor 

Of knowing more can be shared, at other sundowns 

Where the waiting burns to be told, in the same fire 

That moved it here, from some ember of eccentricity, 

Some sliver of diversion from the circle. 

                                                                           The cactus holds its own,

As before, the flowers time their blooms as always for the birds,

Who worship the sun, who follows our cues, as the horse

Follows me to what becomes real only by moving through it.

The hills shake off their flannel. Only this moment is permanent.

It has affixed the rock to my hand, for the meditative mind

To tune the fork, and when it's silent, begin again.

The Sight of Butterflies, Without a Net

Uhaul has a broom up his ass today.

"Amber went all Orange County on me

With her Wellesley knee-patch breeches

Putting the Hanoverians in dressage formations 

Like they were falcons. She'll scare the boarders, 

This is no 3-day eventing, This is America! 

It's like she owns the very air."

Left unsaid are her ten client horses

That she'll surely take with her shortly

When she vacates his pasture. But with his

Stylish vape pen and cell phone holster,

He's less concerned about the further thinning 

Of his livery yard than the effect on other horses

Of going cuckoo on a floating trot. 

This always happens when ownership changes, 

Horsefolk don't want rearrangements

And are content to leave the familiar entirely 

Than yield to change. There are a lot of people like that 

Now, who howl at the ground they've always defended

With renewed hatred and vengeance, to stall that same 

Feeling about themselves

But the ground has collapsed, to help them know how

To rise, but few do, they double down instead 

Their snorting and their rearing, their belief in

An illusion they refuse to unsee.

The horses here are the same way, reeling

From each emptied stall as if their fellow stabled

Was escorted at midnight to death row

But it's always that way with a new owner, they change things 

For the better, but the yellow police tape spread across 

The meadow saddens Brio, like the distant high-tension wires

Saddened Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin. He can't see the plans 

That will bring him more grass, an English-sized arena, and more

Room to graze in the face of this yellow optical maze

That vibrates like no mustard he'd ever seen.

New boarders always come to embrace the privilege of

A new thing, and a new coin is soon deposited in

The abundance bank. But the jury is out on who will stand 

The test of flow, the raging river of the solar flares 

And unlocked Vatican vaults. I too am oversensitized,

To how the wind blows the caution tape like reins, and how

The hooves and shoes on the trail form shadows, 

But it's peaceful, in this moment, and swollen with gold, 

Even the dust swells the coffers of the heart, that grows

Like the sun in generosity -- but there's no word

In the silence which trail to take, or what to say

To anyone not in heaven, but one sees down 

With more trepidation, for there's more work 

Within to take on.

My brave innocence is not, however, without incident,

Like when two crows went overhead and spoke my name,

Noting my coordinates for galactic command.

Ah but that only richens the adventure! The hills 

Have stayed the same, and only now it seems

That the nothing they have ever said 

Is the only correct way to answer.

Notes from the Extroverts Ball

In Echo Park, near Frogtown

The Chinese lanterns broke

Into a galaxy of shards,

As Buster Keaton the dog

Rescued children from the pool,

A guest helped himself to a cleaver

For the fistfight in the front yard

And a gunshot Mercedes muffler free

Squealed an inch away from speeding

Over the guardrail to infinity.

Yet there was laughter,

Anecdotes of shrooms and equestrienne studies,

A morse code ode to alpha boobs

As a Magnolia Banana Pudding recipe

Was passed surreptitiously  

Past the strict Vegeterrainean on the deck.

Who was a Wanna-Bee

And who was in the Biz

Was lost in the Tequila mixology

And the toxic drama family.

It bravely went on with a smile

Like the well-tempered fire pit

Until Carson saw the moon

Over Dodger Stadium 

And the party 

Collectively gasped.

At the Ranch, Just Us Horses

Obsidian tonight is braided Rastafarian,

Wears pink boots over his feathers,

Knocks the Peninsula shavings over

Because he can, not a Quarab, a full Arabian,

He doesn't eat the grass as much as he

Talks his way through it, his lips must grip

The strands just so, to tear the truth out

Of the ground, when it's dry like now

And the birds are somewhere else, 

Perhaps a show, leaving the oak trees

Like old black men who hold the thing

Together by never reacting, just flexing

Their wizened gray bark in the sun

And letting their nodding boughs hang

Like Obsidian's jolly ball, which now looks like

A punching bag for bored, boarded horses.

A sound -- one woodpecker pleading

With the silence to be heard, 

It needs its steady chirr inside the pen

Of all that can be captured

For some archival record 

That even we cannot conceive of

But the bird knows, to be heard is

A service, thus one must be listened to

Even when the silence is occupied

With motorcycle crickets and Palomino sighs. 

This place is like a waiting room, the most auburn sun 

Filled with dappling, road apples out like magazines.

Elvis the Pinto and Dow Jones the Gypsy

Touch their heads together from neighboring stalls.

They are like two friendly but melancholy teens

Who show off their stylish eccentricities to all.

Unfamiliar birds dance with their craws 

Across the branch tops. The thing that is captured,

Not the birds in all their innocence, but the ears 

That make it mean, crack the code of its crackling,

Enact more memories of Earth herself, in her chair,

Restoring the Human to her breast again.

The shanty tack shacks are empty now

Though every one is full of light.

A mountain of magenta bougainvillea 

Behind them like a diva, on a stage too large

For any of us to take. With pink snip Obsidian 

Continues, pulls out any stalk he can nibble.

The Outsider Leaves Town

He’s gone now, on the long, long road to Elko

Where snow comes in a flash, and the sky turns

Blue to black in an instant, to make way

For my best life, to be silent.

Who knows what car he’s driving in, and if

There’s a Starbucks station in this dark

Buck moon. All details of the contract we

Signed in blood are still under seal

As all souvenirs have been packed up tight.

He might have friends in Winnemucca but

He has none here, and never really did –

The bid was always rigged for me

To endure with a grin, so I don’t have to

Anymore. The “no” to all that I am

Is between Lovelock and Battle Mountain

Now, yet yes, still, comes too slowly;

The permission slip he never gave me

Has not been passed along – I must forage

Like a goat for what is lasting in my dreams:

Space to breathe, a sense of purpose …

In time I will remember I’ve never

Really changed. The embrace was on a card

And I followed the dance impeccably

And was, like each hard time, released

No longer questioning the right to advance

Or the right to be myself with someone else

Or the freak flag full moon move I once more wave

To bring the old funk to the floor.

There’s vast ores of silver, oil, lithium

Inside of those fat mountain fingers but

The only ones who know are on that road,

The one they say goes nowhere

Though all Chevrolets must get out of Dodge

Or Sparks or Truckee – eventually.

And Vegas is never too far away,

Whose lights were never what they seemed,

But the darkness that now surrounds the plains

Has never felt this comforting before.

I see the pain was mine and mine alone

When the road hitches a new ride.

Its disappointment with destiny needs no tent,

No food, no Molly, tho it may be burning,

That bush, unquenched, ever bright, forever unseen.

The quest won't end, for forgiveness.

Convergence of Eyes

The only noise the rocks will make

Is when they're relocated.

They were told by sacred mountain

To hold its crystal frequency like breath.

We are told this, too, so the sun glows through

The changeable: Our DNA, our sense of what is real, 

The mood the horse is in. At the top of the mountain 

The world's in one direction, the desert's in the other,

Mexico a far-off glimmer though it lives here now

With all the tribes who melted long ago into the hill

Out at the edges of electrical lines,

Where only bikes go by,

Some water towers swallowed by the ridges,

Windows turned like eyes to the sun

As it descends on the golden sanctuary

That will hold the future world.

Ernesto, who lives on the switchback path,

Is no spring chicken when it comes to horses,

He knows every scratch and how they got there

And tells the rocks everything

And even the county authorities let the wilderness

Be his secret ranch to oversee.

A yellow ribbon affixed to the arena flaps 

Too eagerly its victory in the breeze,

Not like the ribbon that winds the blue layered

Golden time of different frequencies held together

By the will of my eye to see it rise across veiled valleys

Veined with green. The fan of wind

Beckons the grasses into feather pens

Paid not by the word but by pollen count

For the universe that reads, like horses do cookies,

Its book, one fluttering page at a time.

God as Truth, Key 77

Sweep the dust,

Process the memory

As part of the process

That no longer includes me.

Say goodbye, fear and shame,

Be as a feather on your way 

As I no longer need to remember

The germ inside their husk

Also dust, just a place 

You can leave when you like, 

Blindfold and all, for the shell

Reverse engineered the seed.

The neighing continues

But the need for anything real

Pops like soap bubbles

Their impenetrable veils.

"Look at these scratches,

Pay attention to my wounds,

My new found friend is not,"

Brio warned, "what he appears."

Indeed, horses precede the stars

Born to house their life force.

Now they roam in Sagittarius,

That fixes its pursuit on pure truth

While the stones of Sirius

Cultivate every eccentric note

For the divine within each soul song,

The coherence of knowing what God is.

We manifest what naturally becomes us, 

Reclaim our sovereign identity,

So nature can chime in on divine command

As reminder we are singular in theme.

Our identities are fixed in stone too.

The mind is just too large now,

Carving a meaning for our dwelling,

The only goal that remains.

A song of nickers and whinnies

As the sun goes down on

What its codes have turned to theory:

Steel bars, a rusted roof, 

Some leather straps that might

Withstand the weather.

The quest for what is

Has barely begun.

On Horses Running Maskless in the Sun

Red, white and blue for the horseman's holiday,

Stalls empty of all but the horses

And a golden light of forgetfulness

Imbuing all that milk and honey

With a holy glaze.

Even the moths say California

In the way they fly freely

Between the column pairs

Through the portal of wind

Cooling the desert fire with life.

The oak trees don't even bend

Their laurels crisp at attention

To hear what's coming 

Down the road,

For nothing has ever happened here

Though the rocks still move 

Relentlessly, and the foxtail turns 

From green to gold 

Instantly, and the pyramids 

Echo restlessly every sound 

Of families in the canyon 

Grilling as usual

At ceremonial barbeques

While the war games wait 

Heavy in the air

In the hush of patience

Before the free are allowed

To do what the universe wants them to do,

Be happy, in every moment of sun,

Every gift of bird song,

Every stamping neigh

How they love the carrots

Almost as much as us,

Though we still confuse this,

These late days, with avarice

But the clamor of their eager mouths 

For our hands is nothing now beyond

The need for a blessing, for

Simply by paying, in that

Moment, attention,

We are the priests

Of this blue light, for we forgot

Everything that led up to this 

Moment so it won't be 

Spoiled from what it could be.

But remembering comes easier

With each upper pitch 

In the frequency gauge

Til' all that's been repressed

Ceases, by itself, to exist

In the melting sun that holds,

Like a candle, a light 

From all of the silent ones

Who watch us, hoping for

Exactly this.

Remembering Machado

It's to get the gods back 

Is the purpose of poetry 

The translator said, as she languished

Over limonera rendered into English. 

"I can't get a Camaro into a pre-great war poem 

Without attracting the attention of the poetry gestapo."

The fox in me hides in the camouflage

Where I'm always welcomed, for everyone 

Wants everything known about themselves 

As long as the observer is transparent

Like a cartoon ghost or a whippoorwill,

Forever thought of fondly, but never seen,

Never really. 

                         The king as always doesn't care. 

His is the reality we begrudge respect for

Although he is almost always never real

At all. He is so far up the mountain now

Above the duero, where the leathered rich go 

And the old Rich Jews, the higher oblivion

Where what mattered was theirs, but it fell 

Through the crack, and they're happy they are not 

Now below ruthlessly suppressing their empathy 

For the sake of the Grail! 

                                                 Lift the cup 

Of fresh-squeezed lemonade with lavender in it. 

My yard is my Earth. My world is my following. 

Each glance at me is a universe entire. 

That's why it pleases me, what I do,

Setting up the hot tub for the summer,

Letting the wind dictate the mix of chemicals 

While I spend my leisure deep in prayer

For the dankest moonlight jams.

Only Birds Over Hillhead Road

Walking Juneau this evening has been like a video game,
Cars out of nowhere to dodge, small attack dogs on magical leashes
And muscular huskies who show they know they would throw her 
Down for lunch, before lurching off, to become the bicycle guy
Who says what a beautiful dog, and a little girl who stares holding
The largest piece of chalk I’ve ever seen, her sidewalk rainbow art
A plea to remember Pluto and all the stars and all beautiful flowers

Then there’s the gingerbread house with matching Diane Arbus twins
And its doppleganger white dog they giggle at, holding spiral lollipops,
And Juneau finally drinks from the ghost dog bowl as if to earn points.
Her sniff itself is her digging the game. Those people aren't real
But there'd be an explosion if she went up to them just the same.
And I pull til she cedes the challenge with wistful whiskerbrows
As I try to keep her safe, to be her badass self, as humans never are.

We get to the park and it's a dog show, like there’s a man with a pipe 
To pronounce verdict to a jury of ground squirrels, but there's nothing 
Real in other dogs to Juneau, as a careening skater carries a surfboard.
And the only thing missing, I notice now, there are no automatic
Weapons shot at me from every breezeway, no Molotov cocktails
From skidding off-balance Challengers, no numbchuck aggros
To fear, tho I do anyway, like the drummer in one of these windows

Who practices the wrist shuffle, anticipating his rapid disappearance 
From the condo of doing what others tell him to do, when he’d rather 
Whistle his tune in the real, the one they always told him didn't have
A right, just like him, to speak — he’d rather slip away than help them 
Understand the king’s business is worth the king’s time, they should be
Grateful he can frivole this age of peace where he's not needed away. 
The moment I refuse the joystick is the moment all resistance ends.

The Cazimi of Compassion

Deconstruct experience, the dragons say,

In dream, look at those throbbing hills,

They've got you hypnotized they are 

Still and real as a newspaper photo

And the scars on Brio's face, just enough

To feel love from Navajo, the Appaloosa

Apollo dropped beside him for repair

Like an Airstream, so grateful to have 

A companion at last, who, with doe-eyed 

Eagerness bit his eager eyeball. 

But Merlin, Navajo's version of me, is on the scene 

Like camo security, to stare down the mayhem

And tighten the valve of the crazy snake nozzle

In the always-full trough of emotional commotion,

Because all water rolls down the mountain to here.

"Hell I get a little spicy over dinner too."

Sez Merlin! You can't make this shit up.

The galactics must have us on speed dial

For the guffaws we provide, how straight

Our faces can bend to not remembering.

"How can you know what happened to them,"

They always ask, "unless it has happened to you?"

Even Quan Yin requires a giant pile of shit

For all the tears she needs to cry 

To learn compassion through her suffering,

So she can spark life into things

By feeling what they feel, as the cow horses

Rein like whirling dervishes and the deer

Disappear in the grass. 

A sawhorse holds a saddle.

I look for guidance

In the hair whorl of the sorrell, eye level

Of the peaceful mind. But it's just another

Scam of belief in what you see, 

When helicopters and waterfalls 

Whirr by you unnoticed all day

Behind cellophaned microphones,

While the Urmah hide like mountain lions

And the dragons only emerge from their holes

Sculpted in the sandstone when the sun falls.

They know in this way one comes to believe

And thus can re-solve the past and re-wire

What happened with what should have been.

Reality has broken just in time. 

We were worried

Our interpretations may have missed the point.

But then we passed, in a reality no one

Who was not then with us would believe,

Creation Corner, in the rich hills, teaching

How to manifest abundance when they're young. 

Repentance as Nirvana

At the moment I recognized the scent

Of a need to find an adequate

Symbol the great white bird

Passed from meaning and my roof.

When the spell of others is broken

The residues, of past lives and

Tribes you gave your soul to

Become malleable enough to move.

Still there's the stick

The master hits you with

That removes more than it inflicts

As he raps the marble floor

To scatter the karma

And conjure the benevolent wind

And the breastplates of the terracotta 

Warriors' harmonized with dharma

Although we cringe, at how the outside

Bears down upon the house

And wrap our Easter crucifix in red 

To repent for repentance, dust for dust.

The mercy is seeing how we went off course,

Seeing who we are by what is taken away,

All but the inner quiet 

Has always been empty.

It is holy to let go, that's how

We become clean, repent for all 

By tolerating everything, by believing

They receive enough love

And we notice we are noticing

And can exist that way without a prompt, 

Until the stick no longer comes down fiercely

And we can tell what exists and what does not

And so we transcend the cycle of life

And death, because we have the proof

In a hand that no longer needs to act

And has nothing to prove.

Last Day of Spring

My cells

                are like sails

They pick up all

                               the codes

From dolphins leaping 

                                          freely

Right in front of me

                                     brought

Like a frog a fly

                             out of the sky,

A cloud production factory

                                                 now

With a springtime's worth

                           of negative ions

To remind me where I've been

                      How much I needed

A lot of rain

                       to bloom so profuse

In such vivid purples

                                       the lupines

And behind the veiled 

                                         cigar that 

Throws off spray

                               of 12-strand DNA

It dares me to open to

                                         the cold

Of empty wind

                            blowing every note

On my reed

                      that keens freely to its

Perfect pitch

                        of very unique.

It takes the lightest breath

                                                no lung

As an accordion

                                 but the forbidden

Of all but the pure

                                  by one who has

Left behind all but that.

We are changing indeed,

                                              the container 

Ships cleaned of children

                                              and advanced

Gyroscopes put in place

                                             and no one can

Pretend anymore

                                 that Catalina's still here 

Just obscured 

                             by the day's condensation.

It has lifted like a ship,

                                          asked to navigate 

Different timelines,

                                    multiple realities.

It is OK to let ours bend, 

                                             I finally say,

Still I see the melting mirror

                                                    as a threat

But those feelings,

                                   like grief, get less

And less the more I enter

                                               the discomfort

Of not knowing how

                                       it will end

Or why it was done

                                    in the first place,

The island of knowing 

                                         gleams in the distance.

It no longer has relevance

                                                 when dolphins

Come this close to us,

                                         to show how we are

Really finally ready

                                    to be blessed.

Parking Trap Malted

The Ted Fay Fly Shop lures you in

To the Angler Inn

Next to Rapunzel’s Castle.

Another town that time forgot,

More pink shutters,

Another red barn diner

With checkerboard floors

And menus that never change

Hung as curtains,

Deer head hat racks,

Train track bric a brac

And local businesses on the placemats

That exist at least in memory

If not in fact.

The 5 dollar charge for whining

Has not been updated for inflation,

But they’ll charge you just the same.

The lumber haulers have all gone

All that’s left is the railroad,

Itself an anachronism, some ironic

Take on retro tourism, a touchstone

To dreams embezzled by bankers

Like a smashed penny that makes

The box that contains your childhood memories

Smell like creosote.

On the Road with the Ghost of Buck Owens

At the Dino Mart in Gustine

The consequence of making an alien baby

Back in the dust of Bakersfield

Was revealed, as we became

The children of the Sinclair dinosaur,

Mewling for snaps at the green toy.

It was all we could do to get away

From a Wasco that was no longer roses

In endless fields for New Year’s Day

Along the death road to Paso Robles

Where we commiserated with a Starbucks robot

At California milk spoiled at 103 degrees.

But neither the five dollar rabbit

Nor the zebra from Shafter prepared us

For the dueling flatbeds of homeless chihuahuas,

One done up as a muscle car float

The other a plywood pallet on wheels

Where the chihuahua’s all had bells.

The roads are like that now, especially when

Family is involved. Every exit goes to Arkansas,

A hush hush past that’s now blown up

Like the one burned down house on the road

Where the rainbow ice cream vendor

Wheels her dyed-ice sugar for no one.

Every father has misplaced one daughter

At least, just as every son leaves home

So his heart can be broken, and no one

Looks at any loving couple as anything

But a misplayed bet waiting to settle,

Where the choice of lawyer proves your worth.

It’s a wonder they have all survived

To migrate like birds from this pizza reunion

To Arbuckle and Willows, Maxwell, Artois,

Ceres and Lemoore, Lockeford, Firebaugh

Tracy, Pixley, Ducor -- but mostly Porterville,

Swapped like crops with demand and the weather,

Kingsburg cling peaches for Dinuba pears,

Arvin champagne grapes for raisins from Parlier,

Weedpatch carrots that give way to Turlock honeydews, 

Or Reedley, where they grow loofahs on trees,

Or Galt to work white sturgeon eggs, or tomato sauce Davis

Or Lindsay's fragrant groves of citrus.

But they don't shed a tear, like the other orphaned farmers here

At the thought of someone in their family

Being sent away to Mexico in a plane

They worry if someone will speak to them again

After all the neglect summer dust required

To pack fresh offspring in out-of-state crates.

Father's Day at the Stables

The horse needs a daddy too,

Someone to admire his gait

And validate how much he tries

To canter in this world

So jagged and so bright.

He runs to me

As if I didn't even own him

And associates every gift

Of grain as from my hand

And wants me to play with him,

The one thing fathers cannot do,

With the roles they must assume,

Defender with swords and lies

Of an implicate order that

Denies compassion 

As the devil's fork, 

For one must turn 

Love away

Before the not love

So that the foal can learn.

The horse accepts my strokes

As love before the groom

And stamp and snort

And the digging in of hooves,

In this case not to do 

What the human wills

Although he got what he wanted

Mostly, to gallop the sillies out,

Do his bronco buck routine

To the saddle before riding

But it's the horse case 

Scenario now, 

In which you cannot 

Break his heart

And stay his friend.

Electricity from the sun

Ignites my crystal,

Warms my heart with stillness

As the horse moves his white hooves

Kicking up sun dust

But there's too much wisdom

In the hills this afternoon,

The horse is fiesty 

And unwilling to make 

The mountain come to him.

The violet flame crowns the peaks

With mist. There is nothing

Between the sky and ground

Anymore. I walk

Even though I never have before.

This Week in Hollywood

The place of the temples

And crackhead actors

And the sacrifice castles

Now sublet as studios

With ivy like the highways

Down and out in all directions

To wreathe in laurel

Painfully unrealized dreams

In perfect weather

For every aspiration 

To be lost inside

Threadbare, still haunted villas.

We've lost our identities

Just like those who've turned

To stone as sidewalk stars

And concrete casts of palms,

Our heroes

Who we never even knew

Outside a role

We were played

To fool us to forgetting

Who we were

The heroes all along

Of the silver

Now embossed as dragons

Locked in theatre stone,

The next best thing to 

Being there

As they are

Fixed on by the hard 

Horde of eyes,

The next best thing to ruins,

The records tower 

Round as nature,

Egyptian pillars

To house the oscar, faceless,

Antiquated cinemas

Still lit with klieg

But offering torture,

Pasties, wigs,

Burnt offerings 

Of the holly wand's

Ceremonial magic

For belief

That what is 

Here

Could ever be

Real.

There are blue lights

Down the street

Enforcing curfew

On the multitudes

But just a few brave souls

Wave flags

About no kings

Atop of bridges.

They too are extras

In the cantina

Of stories that need

To keep repeating,

Old stories

Of how we aren't

And we will

Never be.

There's a pink

Compound with stars

On the gate

That preaches peace,

Holds light

In flood darkness

Like it holds in 

Souls

In its well-stocked 

Cabins

Carefully trimmed to catch

The sparkles of late light

On galactically inspired

Fountains 

Dedicated to a founder

Who is far away now

So his existence can't be

Questioned

Except as how we worship ... 

Him, as hero.

Is it enough, these

Woven cushions

On the straightback chairs

To turn the darkness 

Into something beyond these

Renditions of Jesus

And Krishnamurti 

We see on the walls

And all the avatars

Who brought

What we thought of as

Our own freedom?

It is service they say,

With every possible

Emotion,

Even calling in Sananda

Who bristles with love

As he dubs 

The soundtrack with

An empty ache of yearning,

What we're not supposed

To be able

To feel, being led

To the cage

Like the line

At the Palladium,

Of all the sad

Mexican teens

Who now believe

They are not free

To dream

So they can wallow

In restlessness

As if they only

Exist

In the waiting

With the myths

And all the pictures

Long since left

This blessed earth.

The Geomagnetics of Presence

The white dust is alive

It's true

The veil's been uncorked

Like a Bakersfield gusher

And it's all the horses can do

To neigh their way through

Prying attention

From us scryers

Molten in the light codes.

All shapes descend from clouds

Walls bend

And time collapses

While space fills up

With symbols and messages

That are only there

Because I was open enough

To Hathor and her Muses

To pen them into life.

In the beginning was the word

And now it rains down

In light language,

Truth too pure for human form

But here anyway

As the crows for once 

Non-gloatingly proclaim

Here with the sleek June hides 

Of rippling browns like copper pennies

As the encroaching desert coil

Rattles the windy hills 

Snaked with trails

As the dragons posed as clouds

Look down to remind us

We have yet to learn who they are,

The false ones so repudiated

We almost didn't believe they could exist,

Like dinosaurs and serpent popes.

But now that our DNA has been

Handed back to us

And our heritage revealed,

Guides identified in frequency

If not in quadrant

We can look beyond the griffin in the sky

And the Bootes rhododendron

And all the thoughts of how things were

Now black

That can be laughed down the drain

With gratitude now

For they served to keep us small

And as judgement wears off

And peace is restored

As the only state

Worth crying for

The walls move, but just enough

To remind me they were never real

And the orbs dance out of the spray

Just enough

To show me I have to lead

My own way

But I am changed just the same,

As certain restrictions are lifted,

As the horse flies 

On the strength of our clarity

Leave the shiny hides behind.

Silence of the Deafening Retreat

The light codes fall from Mt Shasta

Over Mossbrae and on down

To Sacramento as sacramental water

And to the galactic realms below

The Hollywood portal

                                         All the way

Underground, and Dunsmuir is

Suitable proxy for all of nature,

The universal common denominator,

For it holds the earth entire

In its igneous memories, but like

The waterfall that hisses hush

Will not say.

                           You can see

The fairies, all manner of translucent

Elementals, bouncing rainbow spheres,

Gnats dancing their sacred geometries,

A purple butterfly -- who would think

St. Germaine would have come down

The mountain in violet mist

Amid the feather lines of snow

Melt white and rapids

Charged with light?

                                     I should dive inside

Archangel Michael’s cold truth blue

I suppose, but the rocks have become

My friends, and the Tai Chi class

Has just begun.

                             The I AM society

Protects this spot more securely

Than the Union Pacific that is

Nevertheless content to push 

Pilgrims like us off its trestled path

To the blissful flow of poison oak

And mosquito traffic.                                

                                       The grasses

Who have traveled far to rest here

Glisten in a prayer of peace

So far removed from nearby golden

Fields where the wind propels cow tails

To spin like batons of clocks

In the no time of the present

Where everything exists

If you are quiet enough

To enter it, your heart entire,

The last sacred place.

6 6 Portal Blues

Below the suddenly still Scorpion moon

The first sugar magnolia bloom

Above the dutch iris just for us

And the smell of Carissa.

It reminds us of Hawaii

Like everything nowadays

The liquor blue late clouds

That please the crows

And wash graduation Friday night

That echoes from the pier

Another sincere 80s band

Who almost had a monopoly on shame

Back when, now that nothing

Is the same. The records will play,

The AI Genii will see to that,

But there is only the flame of originality 

That will light the dragons in the sky

So rapidly dissolving

As if we've found out its lie. 

Peace by Appointment Only

The succulents box by Falcon View
Next to the third eye pyramid, streetlights
By Ascension that look like bells.

“Can we bring something? Past lives?”
I asked my white people outreach coordinator
In a unabomber hoodie like a druid

But he simply said become a Jaguar,
Be such a master of frequency you
Can control who and where you are.

But as close as I got was how Kassandra and I
Rode horses on Pismo Beach, dunes veined
With searocket, so I cleared my schedule for the farrier.

What he does with feathers is a tribute to his art
But for Brio it’s a spa day; he drops his hoof
On the fur stand for the nipper and the rasp.

With him, Winona and Wyatt, four white stockings,
Four white pasterns, star stripe snip but not enough
To be a blaze, much less a bald, much less blue eyed.

Their chestnut-haired human Carey,
Technically Ceri, technically from North Wales,
Bristles at having to defer to riders:

“No lead line that’s how I roll”
“Unleash the horses to roll I say”.
She has a Dogma Pet Portraits QR code on her car.

Back in his paddock Brio pushes out the apple
Crisps from the blue star with his nose
Like he is solving a Rubik’s cube.

After three days of dangerous solar storms though
Reality is too much of a hot tin can
To keep kicking down the pasture road.

The hills are ablaze with light residue.
The crows, all the horses are quiet.
The mountain has moved under the clouds.

Even the arenas are locked. To assimilate it
We'll need permission to three-day sleep
Away 6,900 acres in Tehachapi.

But patience isn't a strong suit of Arabians.
They will roll on any hillside that will hold them,
Even old absconded Tejon Indian land.

But the black oaks have all the information you need 
Though one must be under hypnosis to reveal it.
The crickets, as usual, caution silence.

Back on the road, to the giant pulsing ball of sun
As the mountain falls, another reminder to
Release the trauma once and for all

Of the strawberry roan with immaculate bloodline
Who went cray-cray at the Paso Robles Cow Palace
To the horror of the Cutting Horse Association.

Transcendalism at the Ranch with a Rainbow Tail Tamer

All the horses roll at once

At the dragon boat festival

Where we're fifth-year seniored

In the brand new sun

That accepts nothing less

Than all form obliterated

And its underlying energy

Shown finally as geometry

Belled from sound, and motion

Shown to be created in our minds,

The dirt and cactus and horse poop

Frequencies for green-eyed flies

Who secretly run the inner world,

Which might as well be the whole earth

For what its iceberg surface is worth.

Their minds are so pristine, 

Their love so immense and pure

Only a few are let inside,

To where the Pleiades is as close

As the codes in their crystal caves

And the moon's gravitational tyranny

Is not impossibly far away.

Things are exactly as they are here,

Except reversed. 

We, for example, are upside down 

And hurtling through space time 

As if the impossible speed would 

Make it real. The bells entrain us still, 

But we call it the blues, to be savored

Once the pain has been sucked through.

The pyramids lie like batteries

Beneath the sea. The rods we see

From Atlantis are countered

By Lemurian stone circles that pull

It all back to the shiny void beneath

That turns out to be unearthly green.

All of it could have been destroyed

But it was left for us to see,

To find the clues wanted desperately

In solution's salvation, what was seen

As mere stone in the prior age, when 

Life was breathing, not breath.

We got many things wrong

Back in the day, the solar winds

In purifying white say.

But there's no other planet with

The blues y'all. The veils 

Are no longer walls.

Each bee is free now

To believe in any hive they want to

Or none at all. The black horse 

Brays like a squeaking door.

For today, the sound of hinges

Is enough.

Patio Without Cheryl

Talk, talk says the crow,

And I go crying over

My breakfast, the distance

Between its caw and the wind chime

Can be measured now

In seconds.

The symphony of flow

Serves our lives back

As meaning, what can

Be memorialized

And what can no longer

Be believed. 

It turns us true so slowly

We only hear the bearings

As they click, not a moment

Before their aha moment

Of seeing how wrong 

We were, and laughing.

The present is indifferent

To all the past that fills it up, 

It only knows to keep going 

Through it, not to lose it 

But to lose resistance to what 

Has loosened its hold:

The chaos of everything fallen

Held in dynamic swirl, mere colors 

In a landscape of past, present, future -- 

All that we are 

A process of becoming

What we already were.

The Horse Traders

Horses in mourning,

The change we call death,

But a carrot

Solaces the sorrell

Who may as well be a chestnut

(Only the sun knows for sure)

But the gypsy unicorn wants out,

Hooves stamp like an out-of-sync procession,

The gray mare stares with swollen fly eyes,

The Friesian pulls out hay from a hairnet

Solemnly, not like when he went crazy

During the solar flares.

Only the crows seem unfazed.

They've stared down death so many times

It's like a game to them

Where the shiny object always wins,

The shadow too vast to be seen

Except in the darkness of eyes,

Where it isn't seen at all

As much as we convince ourselves

We empathize.

                           Downtown now

They're horse trading jockeyed positions

And rebrands of ranch hand overseers

Based on feel, and the empty stalls

Where the vanished ones were will fill

Again with hope what had to be blown up

Yet again -- nobody knows what will happen

When its only eyes on the other side of the cage.

There will be time to bear your grudges

Toward the living. It's the dead who must

Let go their grip, for it's almost unbearable

But the only way that loneliness takes,

The one stick that ignites the rages of regret

At life not lived, the anguish at things not said.

The company only cares to keep the caravan

In motion -- the harvest is for the living;

If they waited for the dead 

They'd have thrown it all away already,

What the sun almost convinces us

We'd earned.

The crows are loud and alive

To correct us of our vibe, our longing  

For what we only get to see from behind

And remind us there are games more practical

To waste time on, our gulp for air

When a chipmunk could be there instead.

One sits on the tallest tree,

Reminding me its prophecy is always free.

Spiritual Illumination

My eyes are lanterns.

The only responsibility of the light

Is to see.

Form only exists to be created

To share, to merge, to learn the internal:

As outside, so below.

Reflection is not mere resemblance;

I become what I perceive,

Why not God?

I am more non-local than local anyway.

I'm not being kept from truth, simply

Unaware of my true nature.

Light can "be" anything it sees.

What purpose does form serve

Is the question.

Form is more fun than the formless,

That's why you chose it -- it bends to

Your nature: Every barking dog is universal.

Seeing is the same, in truth, as creation.

Form is transient, not the soul. This is the hidden 

Teaching that's been over-explained.

It's time to acknowledge the unreality

Of everything but yourself -- the only thing

You know: Descartes was a female.

Spirit comes through form easily

And does so to communicate who you are

From a higher place you can't, in this form, reach.

So it, too, is a tool to see, 

For light is, as said, 

Only what is seen.

Spring's First Dust

Back in the Saddleback Mountains

I need to live high on the horse

On the high road, the hawk trail

Where the dust is, which rises 

In scratchy clouds 

Like nebulae spirals,

In shells of what is recorded

Of the sights and touches we gave,

What created the views and access grids,

The novels and landscapes contained

Of the continuing generation like

A mandala ever erased in the actual.

The vista builds itself in monasteries of green

From the details. We add our own,

Some unique savor, some sharing of dirt

With all that calls but is never moved.

It's only me, the pacer, measuring

Like the meter's narrow gate

So heaven's kingdom, the utility, 

Can turn on the water of life already

All around, the Tao, the wordless

That words alone turn into form.

My Emotional Support Tree

The Essential Nature of Horses to Dance

The wild bay and buckskin played their cantering game,

Chance glance into dance into music into poetry,

The elegance of a tail snapping at flies.

                                                                       They meet 

Like two chess knights, expressing all love in the curving 

Of their necks.

                              Light on his feet, in perfect symmetry

With crisp gait, tail and head upright.

                                                                   They turn in a circle 

And stop on a dime

                                      While lonely mares look jealously on.

They turn to surprise and amuse and adore 

                                                                      In fitful, fretful steps

On white hooves, 

                               Each side releasing into a blink

In the lungewhip of their desensitizing presence,

                                                                                        Two foils, 

Paint and Arab, to the essential currents of magnet and bolt, 

Eyes like a silent movie couple

While Joey the resident mountain lion saunters through 

And even the rabbits pay him no mind.

                                          Their canter turns to gallop turns to dust

As their strict perfection tests the perfect afternoon

Its largess. 

                       But they are only the entire universe

In their dance, 

                           So it only goes as far as the darkening hills, 

So beautiful whenever you need it, and invisible when 

We want to learn it again.

                                             How can horses dance like that

Without us knowing?

Fire Drill

Shares like the facets of some chandelier

On last night’s game or show rose in the din

Of aviary voices, impossible to distinguish.

We signed names to the clipboard

For the Fire Authority. It was only a bluff.

Yet the fake location seemed real enough.

The elevators for once got to touch our buttons

As we left, ut turba, trying to return

To desks once thought too brutal to endure.

Each floor was a different frequency.

We saw the consequence of every possibility, 

Every timeline flashed its bulb of memory:

The nuclear clean containment zone,

The timeless brand with receptionist only,

The ghost law firm still pending an appeal,

The million-dollar views of an empty suite

Flipped, hipped and staged within a beat of life,

As if on deadline to unveil what can't be right,

These never-before conceived-to-be realities

That easily co-exist with our own, albeit unknown

As most of the universe seems to be.

And there it is, Vates, the Parnassus Floor,

Where piquant muses cattily instruct crows

Who drop artwork for some tax break they don't know of,

Spend their break room moments moaning

How poetry's obscure because people still pretend

They don't understand (and so loathe) it

When really all they do not know

Is why the poet wrote it -- to show, as now,

How intention is all on the poem,

As I learn when I'm back at my desk, in wonder

How to make this experience fit my belief, not seeing

How things only make sense when they can't.

Notes from the Road to Fresno

I.

Selma Tattoo

Marks “The Raison Capital of the World”

Who heard Fresno

Through the Grapevine

And stole the sign

For the Sun Maid.

II.

Madame Sophia

At Clovis Avenue,

The Fowler Palm Reader

For orange-juiced hands

Who want an alternative future.

III.

There’s a hobo from Kentucky

Called Hog Royalty

In Bakersfield.

IV.

The Torah according to Jesus

Is on the coffee shop wall

In giant comic book frames

For children

While you wait for alchemists

To serve your holy brew.

V.

How can there be a place called Windfall Donuts?

VI.

A billboard that I’d like to see:

Burn while you yearn

At Urner’s Mattress

VII.

An actual billboard:

More than a Miticide

VIII.

I left it at some Oildale joint

Where Merle Haggard once sang,

Now karaoke and mechanical bulls,

The block glass of a past

That’s cheap as usual to chisel.

IX.

Oil jenny dragons

In the champagne grapes,

Ooh the world

Death row cows sense

As the Tejon Pass winds

Take on meaning.

Observation at Union Station

We talk and talk, but then we notice

The homeless men, one in a wheelchair

Holding court with a pipe, one rolling

His rucksack of possessions over and over

Along the concrete, one simply rocking

On the bench, all of them talking

Gibberish as if they're understood

Or like it doesn't matter if they're heard

And we feel as ashamed as the upright folk

Upon encountering the town drunk —

Our words are unconditional

But they must be heard

To be real.

Poem at Sunset

I pull my chapbook out of my chaps, at the high

Chaparral beyond Chapman. All judgement

Is overcome, by the spirit of our will, like the sun,

To let go.

                  Who we have always been waits for our

Recognition.

This time the Roman aqueduct toll road has vanished

But the hangar and pylon ruins in the dust sun of Tustin

Still loom in lilac over fields of never-to-be-duplicated green.

The canyon road only goes to the moon

                                            That grows in wisdom 

While we contemplate the burning away of spring,

As the glow of the last mustard lingers.

                              It’s time to get going on who we are

Instead of what we don’t want to be.

A horse locked in the arena, without a human, pleads

“Can you help a brother out?” Instead, I offer him apples

Even though they make him frothy.

                              Brio canters, aiming to please,

Feels our thoughts, prances in the dripping Orange Julius

Ball of sun that holds nothing back, as the track shows

The day’s horseshoe scars in purple 

Shadows and turbulent gold.

Head down, he races, with his eyes on my pen. It’s him

Or me, in constant balancing

                                                    Til the bedroom-eyed mare

Squeals, another smitten filly dutifully ignored,

As the one with the lopsided face looks on.

                           The spearmint spring in the sun,

Insects spiral, there’s a long disconsolate note

Of blue bird.

                        The owner’s white horse Captain

Is a jumper, large enough to leap the fence

In a second if he has to, but he’s content

To reach the grass the other horses can’t.

                                         He rides in the air

Like a ghost, the last of the sun blazing

Like a dragon’s tail, without fear, which is

The Lord of every horse.

                                              It’s the kind of light

I can disappear in, to be, free of

The iron shoe of others, in the void of

Knowing everything

                                    And knowing all of it is me,

Embodied in some chaste form to be learned of,

What would be experienced too directly.

             The precious moments of reddening hills:

The spray of the fly repellent, the mud flung

Off the hooves, the sound of the crows as

Their glittering feathers are combed

                        One last time across the final light.

On Location in Temecula

Film crews are the new donut loiterers, taking over for the PD, who are here too. This patch of cactus farms and grape acreage, neither a there there nor a nowhere, is a ready-made mountain backdrop hacksawed out of the hillside enough to be seen but mesas' away from being measured by the public relations firms. A train comes once a week, the only contact it seems with the outside world except for the cultural exchange at the Walmart. Horse trails meander onto Main Street and the hills crawl with Hobie Cats. 

The trimmed fat of the cattle lands has been  rendered into developers’ Ponzi dreams, complete with happy people seemingly bussed in, who seek the exurbian perfection of lake skiing and vineyard ballooning, the same name brand stores as every other strip-mall delivery locale in alien nation but operating on some alternative timeline without customers, barren of the duende of human misery as well, not near enough the homeless populations of LA, San Diego and even Riverside to provide any sense of things lost, wasted, of who, in the contrast, you are. 

Thus there is a sadness, at how we never know them and they never know us. They’ve gone with the clouds into the mustard, holding something they want us to see but it is only the distance, foreign and tantalizingly vague, not the confirmation they expect that it is real. It could only be that if we capitulate to the roadside circulars, call it a here, as we could, in theory, anywhere the longing machine doesn’t pre-record, and attend to the dust that attaches to its fabric as a mark of distinction. Instead, we try in vain to distinguish it from any other Anytown USA on any other temporary planet.

The way there is long, the way back familiar. The narrative arc caught a few snaps of recognizable life to be peeled back into the Burbank froth batter turner. But no trace of Temecula remains, for all our attempts to see ourselves in it. Home is nothing, it turns out, without the people you know.