Wednesday, August 27, 2025

At the Intersection of Corruption and Innocence

Three Grand Patrons come out of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,
Ghosts of course, but they look very pleased with the plans
They are holding and how it reflects on them

Who are themselves merely a reflection
To the dreadlock skater in his scattershot scatalogue –
He goes right through them, ‘cos he owns the place now.

A three-way is being arranged outside the Musician’s Entrance
While a forlorn man with a microphone treats us
To a song he probably wrote, so unstable are the vagaries

But there’s no one there at all inside the ticket glass
From the golden age. There isn’t a need anymore
To keep anyone out, once the focus of this showcase.

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Of Trances and the Authentic Horse

That mare needs some horse hypnosis.
She’s in a long line of unrequited desirers
Toward Brio, who sticks to his grain
And his noble reputation.

Today he puts on a trotfest for hypnotists
Visiting, checking in with big eyes
On each observer, a smile pulled up
To go with his raised Arabian tail.

But the constant whine continues
The whole time he’s turned out.
If he’s not beside her every moment
It seems she will die.

She’s in the adjacent stall, wears Pink Boots
With a horse everyone thinks is her match,
Call him Blue Boots. He is not pleased
At this turn of events.

He looks so confused he’s in no mood
To woo her back, intent as he is
To track every eyebat
And grimace at each whinny.

There’s a divider fence between
But she leans her head in so far
Brio has to hunker down for hay
Whenever he happens to be near her.

If he did anything, anything at all
The spell would be broken,
But for now she’s quiet
At her stallion’s return.

He is a sovereign, as few of us are,
Barely thinking of others except as
They amuse him, and they rarely do,
His self-possession is that acute.

He doesn’t need the puffery of Pink Boots
But accepts all of her love
Without the burden of it being returned,
In fact, barely noticing.

The other horses crave attention
Though inevitably only to steal it
From another confidence equine,
A fellow wizard of hypnotism.

“Look into my eyes,” and your world dissolves
Because there is someone else
Who returns your stare as though he cares
Because God does.

They bite at each other as ethics enforcers,
So there’s no long-term harm to poor humans.
We are always harsher on our own kind,
The one we see in the mirror.

“Give your horse a better mattress”
The flake bag says, a reminder it’s all love
Even with all that would get in the way,
Like the mule deer that grabbed our attention.

The sovereign among us know
It’s our love that makes us worthy
Of claiming our birthright, to stroke as we dare
Chocolate Chip, the Leopard Appaloosa.

Sunday, August 24, 2025

Catalina Reset

Smog rainbow in the distance glowing with the flow
As the universe forms a rooster tail behind the barge
That plows through mermaid central, pulling away
From the ache of beauty in the eye, of the OC beholders.

It's a right of passage for the passengers, aptly zen,
And writes of passages for me, while the pistons hypnotize
And the waves solemnize all we are releasing, in my case
All that I was, sad chameleon turned zero fool again. 

The off-limits portals of San Onofre shine distantly in the haze
Like it's only secret places from now on that will be illuminated.
With this thought the sun shifted, and a dozen secret structures
On the hills start beaconing, beckoning some reckoning I suppose

But I'm bound to bear the past behind, in this palace place
Of particular memories, on this perfect day, of infinite regret 
And total redemption. It's all-too-easy to blank slate it
But the blue universe expects its births now not to forget.

Two waves off the stern turn to one proud spiral of foam
And all things can be seen now from either side
But they no longer fight alignment, they let the inevitable
Current pull us on relentlessly — but to which Avalon?

What kind of initiation awaits the mystic sisters and your
Humble scribe? The white sun seems to answer
By scintillating the waves like it was frying bacon.
How much we have to learn, when we know everything.

We sway with the boat. I wear a palm tee shirt.
The waves roll back in charged electric currents.
The spray comes up like Gorgonian fans, to appear and vanish
In an instant, as if the ocean must continually be nourished.

As the island looms, mystic pelicans cross, crystal pyramids
Greet us. The bull kelp come up on the mooring line
As the ferry boat docks. Mist crawls all over the hills
Like giant Pleiadean crabs, the peaks free to simply observe.

The weather turns like the wheel of fortune, whose spokes click
In the harbor gears, and the talk of the disembarking passengers
Who roll into an exquisite postcard picture of a romantic getaway 
Comedy movie set taken over by the milling hordes of extras. 

Dry land in fact unearths in sepia tones ghosts of well-feted
Hollywood royalty, who came here after the town burned
And linger in the mist as a ghost flicker of our longing
For the trappings of fame, isolation and elegant dancing.

We walk into this history for breakfast, picture perfect ceramic 
Cups that seemed to have touched Norma Jean's lips
As Robert Wagner stares at me with a beaming Natalie Wood
From a passe-partout across the booth at Original Jacks,

Roy Rogers singing happy songs about grief and loneliness
As burgers, fries and pies continue like time does not exist.
Over hash browns I heed the advice of the sign above,
"Cowboy logic," by tasting my words before spitting them out.

Mermaids are in full regalia in this cycle's row of shops 
Hungry for the docks: Barbie fairies, sea queens on dragons,
Silver and brass green jewelry with abalone siren sheen.
There's even one who plays saxophone on a jazz communiqué.

"Paradise on location" meanwhile keeps its lenses clicking
At the Hotel St. Catherine, where Barrymore tends bar
For Errol and the Duke, Gable and his entourage of girls,
Turning in endless art deco circles in the Avalon ballroom.

A stream of photo-negative ghosts created of tinsel town gowns
From the dreams of picturehouse goers flow to the old casino,
Open to them but not to us, as plus 99% of the island now not is,
But I can see before they disappear how it's just another stage

To never leave, even when they relax in hats on the beach
In those ridiculous old suits. One got flung down the steep stairs,
One was murdered in an insurance fraud, one dove from the aptly
Off-key chimes to the sea, supposedly drunk, supposedly a suicide.

They toast, as ghosts will, at still-massive big band dances
In endless rounds with the drownings and the brown-outs,
Having left their egos at the door, in the lengths one has to go 
To flee celebrity, as the green dock tightens its ropes.
 
The vortices that pulled the dancers here inhabit the boats
Repulsed in lines of force to dance under the conductor's wave.
The opening to Agartha is guarded by these partygoers
Who know the sun can't be transcended if Avalon isn't seen.

There's a green yovaar at the isthmus of Two Harbors, some say,
And the bones of innumerable giants they still won't display
And there's talk of ships that sneak inside the island at night, to a
Galaxy in inner earth as if earth and sky were reversible raincoat.

I can attest the residual energy pocket where time loops like a movie
To keep this vault at 26 miles locked, for what goes on here
Is almost unfathomable, larger than we are ever allowed to know. 
Even the sea birds stay away, to contend among the off-shore spray.

How can we imagine so much abundance already inside us? How can I,
Here where I first played the card shark daddy, and walked the plank 
Off the winning marlin boat, when Avalon returned no clue to wheels 
That turned on me. I saw as much as I was let see, what I let myself. 

They say the OSS and its stargate, that started here to fight the Nazis
Closed up shop in 1945, when they closed the old communities: 
Catalina Harbor, Smuggler's Cave, Cherry Valley, Iron Bound Bay,
As navy bombing takes neighboring San Clemente out of profane hands.

We are only allowed so much memory, soul fragments to collect
In the ocean's out and in breath, so we remember the Avalon font,
Pimu soapstone barons, the homing pigeon service, flying fish tours,
Kay Kyser and his Orchestra radio broadcasts from the casino.

These must suffice of what we'll know of the future,
What we can make survive with unlimited hearts
Or rise above the pressure at least of our programmed limitations, 
The ridges veiled by mist, secret tech and the flags of many nations.

Friday, August 22, 2025

The Mules Take Center Stage

Angie the trainer looks like she came from a John Ford flick.
She keeps the Horspitality House humming
With saddle racks and spur straps, curry combs, hoof picks,
Knows in lunging how to make them walk enough to think.
She’s the liaison between horse and owner,
Explains the one to the other, and vice versa
And she rides, girl does she ride, for long evening stretches
In the empty arena with no one watching but the mustangs ...

But Jessie the Mammoth Ass in her cloud boot
Spooks even her, though she’s as sweet as rhubarb pie
At least compared to the mules, obstinate like horses
But with kind donkey eyes as they hold down the fort,
The two jacks with greying haircoats and Franny the pony mule. 
They're nervous around humans, because they only know
Themselves, and they fear how large they are
And maybe how long they appear of ear.

But they don't push themselves forward like they matter,
Like to themselves they are invisible. They don't have
The wherewithal to see themselves as the Gods
They so clearly are. They haven't done the self-validation piece
And so they don't realize it's all for them. They would love 
A run of the place, Donut and Arrow, but they won't bray for it,
Such sounds are reserved for complaint about the outside world, 
The flies, the ointments, the lack of understanding.

Angie's committed to work on this. It goes with the job, 
To see the eccentrics, and offer a reward 
For any truly perceived value. I, for one, am in awe,
From my pinhole a little further up the hill, at how gentle
They both are, how gentle the process is, as if I should trust every flow
I can't guarantee an arrival for. Everything that pops up as a problem,
Like donkey ears, only exists to be smoothed away
As Angie, miraculously, is brushing now.

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Recluse in a Rocking Chair

Those Mixolydian chords
And that 350-pound voice
Singing the heart out of an emaciated junkie

How I flow with the wave of the arena hive
As if we are one with the bass and drums
And the ineffable sighs that come from feeling everything

So we give everything,
All of our attention
To what happens on the stage:

Does he have teeth missing?
Is his guitar hero drowning him out of spite?
Or is distortion just cool dangerous,

A contract they both signed,
Like blood on the label, when they were
Too young to know anything but hunger?

Or so we speculate,
The intention cultivators,
The wise ones among us, who’ve read

All the interviews,
Examined fanzine notes
And traded tapes like monks eye scriptures.

There’s darkness in his eyes, yes,
Behind the dark star shades
And his movements are not those of a normal person.

Thus we observe his obscura
As if the key to our own authenticity, and the way
We were disappointed by what he never promised.

Even he, the God, will not admit
How powerless he was, how abused,
Though everything he does and is judged so mercilessly for

Stems from not feeling safe
Among other humans, so he screams
His symphony of closure on unprotected childhood

In silenced-lion roar nevermore
Out of the legend of a garage
He seemed to whistle from like software

As if already dead
Or exploded broken on the scene
Or doubtful at least his existence was worth living.

His sound flew over any disclosure
Of the thing he once wanted
To say, but couldn’t, then or now

And the wind carried it away
To the ravenous heart of the Americas
Who were never told such truths anyway,

Though we collectively
Experienced the many same indignities
To growing up not effed up in the 80’s,

The latchkeys never listened for,
The no at each hint of resistance
To the noises made by monsters in their sleep.

We take the monster’s mike
And dance his dance
But the thing that tells us who we are eludes

As the string of indulgences blur
Of date rape, paint and brownstone
That spins our vortex in circles around,

Humming all day long its forlorn tune, a mix
Of redemption with more suffering,
Release with more revolution on the wheel.

He no longer cares
If his fear arithmetic carries,
His anarchist brain forgets the moment everything burns

Why he poured the gasoline in the first place,
For something has been released, and he’s
Still disguised inside what he is not:

A modified 12-bar blues
Infused with everyone’s agendas
From the hair stylist to the road crew,

A family of sorts, or a nest
Of kibbitzers, if you listen in too closely.
We own him 'cos he doesn’t own himself.

And we render
Unto middleman Caesar our coins
But our hearts go to what he is not able to conjure

From the invisible, for us to find ourselves
With our senses. The feeling's only movement, 
An orbit around any center that will hold.

It’s not the same working through the chords
On old guitars and trying to sing his tremolo.
He owns us as we own him.

We call his a tragedy
But it is our own drama magnified
Until it can be seen, or, more accurately,

No longer identified
Except as fantasy realized,
That thing in the needle you never see.

Monday, August 18, 2025

Pleiadean Codes at Sunset

The wet sand, when pummeled, makes dust explode like bombs,
The flood-lit indoor ring seems training ground for war,
A squirrel screams from underbrush in battle signal
As rabbits form to squadrons of targets moving 
Oscar Mike in game-tactical misdirection.

Even the trail has a logjam, two horses and four
Dirt bikes, uncertainly swerving. But Ava rides Dixie
Bareback in earrings for the rose pink ridges and
Distant violet peaks as backdrop to loping
So the dim light can pull through her, in red aether.

The oaks resist the edges of the mountain.
They brush away my thoughts, but I’ve shaken the fur 
Out already. The trails are cold. The knight pulls the
Helmet off. The swords have been laid down, all ruined
In futile defenses of old, unopened wounds.

Below the reddening stables, ground lights turn on.
Like us, they’re on a dimmer switch, to keep the horses
From going blind. Our enlightenment is only
Liberation from that dimmer ticking down our light
Til we no longer fear what won’t say its meaning.

The dust still kicks up in somber purple hues, the mauve
Tack shacks like upright coffins from an old west set
Still claim some empathy, and the steel still glows
In files of unused fencing. The oak limbs turn to snakes
Burrowing into something that is still not seen.

Now in the darkening it’s clear enough the path
My own light gives, not to trails that lead to darkness
Or empty stalls that fall to sun-worshiping sleep.
Instead, the sky itself releases gently its hold
And the maker of what goes dark needs nothing.

Saturday, August 16, 2025

The Stoicism of Tacking Up

Nothing says love like frothing.
It always seems so golden at first
To be the candy man
But it always turns to a curse,
All thought directed at the treat,
The provisioning of which is of no concern
To large wet lips smacking,
To whom my hands are Lord
That can be bitten.

"Impulse control, Brio" one may say
To his frantic, unneighborly neigh
But there's no substitute for enough time
Spent roped to the post
Chomping on an imaginary bit,
So that he can see how the world 
Is allowed to exist as it is
Not as our deep down impatience 
To be at peace with ourselves conflicts.

Ah but I have been such an addict
— Maybe not for apple crisps —
But for wanting the future told,
To give the illusion that it is withheld,
To pretend not to know when I have everything
To be known hidden in a nest somewhere,
So I can create love, from not having
— Carrots or county records — it doesn't matter,
It's that old magic trick of distance that counts.

The crow has moved his pedagogical pedestal
To the lone telephone pole.
He sounds like an airborne crocodile
Who's swallowed several toads.
He brandishes his wings' translucence 
To thoughtfully explain what I will never know
Before his disappears. Is it friend or foe,
What has already happened
But for the timeline that's not yet let us in?

If the saddle stays on his back long enough
And his hooves kick up enough nebula dust
With no hope of ever surviving the wound
Whose straps are tightened but never removed,
He'll gallop through it in a swirl of healing
To learn what he can choose to ignore
On the higher plateau, if the mind says it's so,
No separation anymore
Between horse and sky.

But staring down time on its own terms
Requires resistance to words, foregoing actions
As two beings joined at the heart
Are forced to listen to a whisper within
Whose stillness removes all confusion.
We turn to statue by the cactus berries.
The crow returns to the creosote stand
But this time is silent in the pause between sets
As a cross-tie relentlessly clangs the wash rack.

Only in the silence is it possible to hear
How every trumpet will someday be
Unveiled in the universal score
At the perfect time,
Every individual
Will find the only notes that can be chosen
On their own 
In misspent improvisation
To avoid a truth they claim not to know.

Thursday, August 14, 2025

PTSD at the Stables

When a hausfrau in mid-life crisis sells everything
Except her donkey and three mules
And drives all the way from Florida with them
There’s nothing you can do. That’s a lot of borax
Shit and hay for miracle mules to move. So Uhaul,
Who fancies himself dispenser of miracles,
Did a lot of high-level horse trading, and built
A luxury suite, stall number one, for Brio,
To present him to the equine society
Instead of standing sentry down the hill
Like Cassandra by the river.

One would think he would want to get away
From a horse who continually bites him,
About whom he always eye-complains 
In the most glowering of terms,
But it seems he misses Navajo
Who for his part seems disconsolate
Standing in the shavings underneath his
Flyguard mask, and charges, again, at the fence.
The mules keep their distance 
Like the Appaloosa has the African Horse Sickness.

The view of this from his new manse
Seems to have afflicted Brio with a sudden loss
Of identity. Three abominations of nature
And a junior Pinocchio who appears to be in charge
Are WAY too relaxed after they safe cracked
His former enclosure. “Yeah, dude, scare them away,”
He seems to say, to egg poor Navajo on,
Horrified such monsters could replace him
On God’s acre. These upstart homesteaders
Seem too grateful besides, they promise no trouble
But everyone knows that they lie.

Already, though, I see him settling. It’s amazing
How quickly new worlds turn into
The only one that has ever been, after a few
Keen eyeings of the landscape for threats.
Still, there’s the matter of how doors open and close
At the same moment, the past that would scream
Its relevancy dumped unceremoniously
In a horse apocalypse, where a patina of buyer’s remorse
Forms in the dust. He wants to pretend both worlds
In collision are his, as he goes dizzy between them,
Feels neither are home.

At the same time, Navajo tried to eat him.
Forgiving and forgetting go so nose to nose it seems
It’s hard to pull them apart sometimes. That’s the way
Of divine will. It tells everyone (even mules) what to do,
Controls the only feedbag and its inexhaustible supply of love.
He can see the horses above and below, can’t help but notice
He’s slipped somehow into the community, having acquired
Enough tolerance from his stretch at the edge of the woods.
The other horses in turn have learned to let him speak,
Because he knows, they see, more than they can,
And being who he is is all that counts, to anyone.

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

The Final Hello

Today I became invisible again
To the neighbors. No more peace officer calls,
No letters still forwarded.
The calla lilies have been harvested,
The smiling haulers long since come and gone
Have picked clean even the most haunted and broken
Like filberts from intransigent shells.
In grief all is free, except the ghosts, they're for me.
I piled her clothes on the driveway side
When the rain – forcing tears – wouldn’t cease.

We never spoke of this. She’d never agree
To be extricated thus, her existence
Turned so recently to fact from theory.
It was all that she could do to be imperious
In the face of the horrors she was born into,
To dictate how chaos would be introduced,
How correction on infinite error must continue
Her ghost limb control in ever smaller increments
To keep her dying flame from turning ember.
Every gift, she’d say, opens in the future.

It was beautiful once, all this ugliness,
Perfection, it was, all this waste, as if
The ease of release could erase the past.
What remains of our love was what got in the way,
So well-distilled it was not even poison.
Her logic was always that impeccable,
Every stone turned, examined and returned.
It was almost as if she could finally say
What I'll never know, now that the mask is off
And what's hidden in the dark has no preference.

A new world opens, free of lovers chains
And their burdens of buried resentment.
I never did answer "what is it I want?"
Was it peace in a nest of betrayals?
An honest account of pain? How far 
Do I have to get from the crime scene
To find the me who's innocent, before I
Stepped my soul back, and waited for what I called redemption
From the last instruction card in the deck,
Which, in the end, just signalled the game was done.

Sunday, August 10, 2025

The Clarifying Light

The grass herds spring in flax as gazelles,
The oaks are giant wolves with silent howls
To guard the wind tunnels lapping from shore.

In this light the deer move like emus
Until their heads buck up, to disappear,
For that's what deer do, the way they balance

The urge to be gentle with the desire
For grass, for fear, the out-breath of light,
To be balanced with love, the light reabsorbed

As if no more. She feeds on an endless world
And gives back a sly nod of gratitude
To the hunters in their red suits. With enough

Gratitude, the forest will encircle her
Living eyes in protection once more.
The sun goes down with purifying fire

To call the hillsides into focus, what
They are: pure service, pure pursuit of truth
And beauty, one blinding light, and the

Textures of experience in its dust
Existing as gratitude for itself.
Even the deer are called by the light:

Luminous eyes, soft white fur, the only
Things that survive this sharp of a focus —
A glare that impresses even the crows.

Friday, August 8, 2025

Hillside Flutter

Two moths over the arena sand,
They seem to be a pair
Although the sun divides them from the green
And grasses don't pretend to even notice them,

The fuel for their flight is the same
Enterprising wind, and how they fly
Requires they have no will of their own
Except to follow — no, not each other

But something they can't see 
That each feels individually
In the fever time, without objection or note
To record in the larger breeze.

They drift to what they know not to want
And share what they don't dare to say
And feel what they cannot possibly know
Except that what hies them seems right.

It is only the hillside that is imagined — 
Everything else is kept away, in dreams,
Like it must stay secret, what they can't,
For each other, complete.

Thursday, August 7, 2025

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.

Saturday, August 2, 2025

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.

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

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. 

Monday, July 28, 2025

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. 

Friday, July 25, 2025

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.

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

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.

Monday, July 21, 2025

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, July 20, 2025

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

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

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.

Sunday, July 13, 2025

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.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

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.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

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.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

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.

Monday, July 7, 2025

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.

Saturday, July 5, 2025

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.

Saturday, June 28, 2025

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.

Thursday, June 26, 2025

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.

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

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. 

Sunday, June 22, 2025

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.

Friday, June 20, 2025

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.

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

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.

Sunday, June 15, 2025

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.

Saturday, June 14, 2025

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.