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.