Memories of August

"Let's cast all memories away," she said with glee,

"They only pull, pull us back," to familiar sadness

And unresolvable regret. "Or, maybe," she re-considered

"We only keep the good ones." 

                                                        Ah, there's the rub,

How to free yourself from self-doubt at the penitential 

Fixings bar of mistakes to have made differently.

The decision she is really talking around

Is the Memory Lane Memory Care facility,

How the food is okay and the service much better

Than back in the day

                                         But everything reminds

Of the life that is no more, here at the daily carousel

From which everything sprang.

And now that we know it's not up to us

To hold the akash anymore

Nor to justify to anyone our past

Can we really afford the luxury

                                                           Of defunct

Antique shops and demolished store-fronts 

That seemed like portals to another age? 

Is the rage at how cheap things have become,

How insincere and ill-prepared the next generation

To be condemned are, merely a cover

To hold on to a way of doing things

                                                                Like a golf trophy

With six crystals as a crown, as if we ever were

Something besides a feeling eye

That let the world change on a dime

Because each soul required it in their contract,

So that the same scene with a rainbow of playwrights

Fills out the skies like a kaleidoscope

                                                                    In the now, before 

All fears resolve, with the tragic funnel cake of far too many

Over-powdered fairs and spiral potatoes not yet peeled —

The hold of the noble dream,

Of peace when there was none,

Beauty when it seemed provisional,

Love when it was only inside you 

                                                             Clings in sinking windows

On the craft homes in old town Chapman.

Will we ever see them for the first time? 

On the Way to the Dog Without Eyes

You can't airquote storyteller

As everyone has an origin yarn

Of waiting for a dime bag at Pico and Vermont

Or finally rising one's sight above the trauma.

Most of these stories lack a certain autonomy

Like they've left to outside entities the drama,

The ones who need no convincing the true and false. 

Yesterday Carole Lombard appeared to us

In the mirrors of the Roosevelt Hotel.

She whispered "Eleanor and Godfrey" 

To seal it at the height of her career

When the Gable Lombard Penthouse

Had more than just this one ghost bellhop

To carry people's baggage in his pillbox hat.

Her look is of anguish, how could she keep this man

From his twin ray Norma Jean, aka Monroe Marilyn

Who has her own haunted Chippendale mirror 

Moved to a darker corner, where you want to rub out 

How blurry you are as an image, but it swirls in waves

And radiates a green orb beauty mark that moves

Across the red brick floor and red dress curtains.

It's bat-shit haunted, meat warehouse cold,

Even the stucco infested with astral mold,

The Blossom Ballroom full of shadows that dance

Transparent through separate timeframes of reference

In a sickly light, as the ghost of Bojangles Bill

Echoes his tap shoes down the halls

By the sculpture of a creature almost a cat.

Many familiar faces have leapt from those mirrors: 

Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields. 

One would think they would want to attract visitors

But they say "Cultivators do not dabble in this,

They do not lower their frequency 

For a flash-powder trick," like we were

Dope fiends warned off a fix.

But Marilyn's been waiting, like she always does

As we scry through her longing for her king

To get to the part where the farm suicided her

Because John gave her an underground tour

And the next day she was going public. "I died,"

She says, "So you can be in the galactic community.

Help the people to remember it."

It's hard to imagine what to do about that

When even the Chaplin bronze has both eyes bolt alert 

And restless Caroline still searches for her mother

And the world's yet to learn the urgency of peace.

But the streets outside expect to catch the truth 

Defenseless eventually, in one person's story and belief

He has the right to say what he has seen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Last Boat to Avalon

The reality I had agreed to

Lasted til I fell asleep, 

When everything happened, the lack of forms 

No detriment at all,

Like I was falling into the world 

That only made sense in the swirl

At its creation, in the crystal ball

Equipped with every teardrop.

Am I ready to make it whole, 

By seeing it as it is at last

Not as facets to be mined 

But one universe to another?

The disclosure

We've all been waiting for 

Comes out of the earth instead,

For we hum at its frequency.

I sip my amethyst stone, 

Glow rose with light.

AI flies vector my location:

Calm heart, joyous mind. 

It seems that little boat

Has been adrift for centuries,

Locked against the winds and grey,

Spilling out its echo of effort

To every void in its motorboat vibration

As it asks to have a voice, for safety

When it plumbs the sheer nerve

Of cliffs perceived as mute, not silent.

There's no need anymore

For the boat to wind around

This or any other magnetic aura

Hoping to be magnified.

It will tell us now

Anything we want to know,

Though every secret it unhooks from the stars

Was known to us before, as who we are.

Summer Purging with Ground Squirrels

The squirrels are jubilant today

After I learned their secret:

Know everything, but only chase

Seeds you can reach.

One hung high from the tree

So I could see him, waving his

Fat belly, no longer taunting

But cheering me.

They are welcoming at the ranch, too,

Cocked tails in dust formation

Into the ice plants, to gleefully reveal

Their special portals inside.

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

Disappearance is only magic

When you think that they exist.

And now we're part of a brotherhood,

Where facts are like nuts, easily cracked

And hoarded, but better to discern

And hide. Authenticity comes

From staying so selfish

You recognize you've been lied to

For basically your life, and you are

The only creator being, in the blur 

Designed to hook your eye like a crow.

Maybe there are no nuts at all

Except to be buried, for show,

As a symbol, to help things grow.

It was always the knowing that mattered 

And equally the letting go,

Like a flying machine locked in plastic

With indecipherable directions — how can you

Even clean it up off the floor?

They run away, those squirrels,

From all of their messes, if only

To show us how to live

In endless discovery.

Brio does that too,

Eating his grain like a 2-year old

Letting it fly, but nuzzling some back

When his bowl is empty.

He is stopped by the dust

Rising like vapor over his white socks.

Until that's gone, his dry lips seem

To say, all is lost.

Sad Eyes of the Ranch Hand

The sad horse clown throws his head at your face

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

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

Silent movie sad clown horse, everything

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

It should be, anyway. For otherwise

The tears would fill the valley, and none of us

Could survive his sad eyes.

                                                   But all he wants

Is an audience, someone who understands

What it is to stand in late afternoon sun

When all the browns turn to red, and the dirt

Freshly wet must be galloped, but there is

A lingering thought that makes me perhaps

Identify too strongly with his eyes

As I think of a certain ranch owner

From my past

                          And his miles of unspoiled

Wilderness near Arvin, Tehachapi,

To corral cattle in flies for slaughter

And accumulate foxtail shrapnel while

Shooting squirrels, and the barrel-of-fish pond

He about broke the bank on, to keep it from 

The interests of wilderness, its rumors

Of condors.

                      Not like here, where the sacred

Lives everywhere, above every shadow,

Because we can breathe with it, a chi-filled

Higher density breath, and see how the sun

Merely reveals everything is beauty,

Expertly arranged to show us ourselves,

In incremental symbols, like the brush

As the sun brushes by.

                                         Then the mirror

Of Brio's doppelganger alone in the arena,

The same sad eyes, restless tail, but maybe

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

Need to think anything about it but

It is a noticing, like all the wax

Of all the leaves overhang in a bow

Of remembrance.

                                The doublewide that's dropped

Here on the hill was given to the guy

Who worked this ranch for 40 years, who framed it

With tiny flowers and giant cactus

While the other doublewide sits empty,

Green rugs and aluminum TV trays,

Testament to a golden age, that was

Never built as sold, it was never 

As conceived.

                          The hunted bucks in the mansion

On the hill were all bought at least in town,

And the bar tab at the country club

May have spared a couple jobs, a lot of 

Two dollar bills circulated the county,

And he paid enough so that many will speak

Of him kindly, if they speak of him 

At all.

             It is natural, here, no one needs

Permission to talk, or any hindrance,

No head stall and bit, though sad eyes always

Remember it. Even the oak trees taste

Of freedom, the one thing dear Mother Earth

Wants us to have.

                                The man's head's big enough

To fill the hat, as he spends his loose weight

On his own braggadocio, on his own

Pain. Cry a river, or leave him there

High and dry — it no longer concerns me. 

What's hard is yielding up those sad eyes with

The poker face, no longer a bluff to call,

Sincerely wishing him to win it all. 

The Question of Why the Heavens Parted

Nature and I get along now.

The chickadee at the top of the tree

Is so close

In golden green light.

The rabbit zags

Beside me, content

As no houserabbit would be, with my

Proximity, my eager looking.

The squirrel beeps

The moment I say his name

In the context of a Prairie Dog card

Pulled like magic from the prophesying air.

The birds chirr now as they're bidden

By the dragon frequency that now inhabits me,

A call and response continually 

Recorded by the stars.

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

Given the key, to nature, power to drive

Along the endless ridges as

The truth peels away every layer.

You savor the process, the marking of time

By the sun, the return of the crows

To sound the alarm of their day's news,

Which never amounts to anything but

It gets the finches to report 

In their sweet staccato 

Song hopes for the peace

That most clearly is.

Champagne-dappled King, golden in the gold

Sun's gravy, is the biggest draft horse,

Surfer handsome, but too sweet to lead,

To put his hoof on the scale.

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

As Captain attests. Even grazing he is elegant, 

So cool the three brothers, Friesian curlies all,

Stare me away.

Everyone is equal, to be, who you are,

Even if that isn't what you were supposed to

Become, but you tried on that bridle

You were never intended to wear

And the world changed in its motion.

It only took freedom — the whole time —

To know you are alive, in the breast of nature

Never having to be anything but what you are

Exactly, and exactly is how you fit

In the tapestry where the records are kept

Although everyone in range

By this time knows it all. 

Kirk Reaches for a Note

"So he wants to tell you what to do

And when to do it, but that is not

The way it goes," said one smiling

Horsewoman to another, as they smoothed out

The sense of freedom allowed

Under the bluest of skies.

The horse wants desperately to be led

But he most assuredly won't take direction,

So the dance goes on, as it always does

Even on the Day Outside of Time,

The neutral threshold, between who I am

And who I will be

Where I finally received my rhythm section,

Saturn and Uranus — a boy and a girl —

To accompany me, and squeegee 

Pandora's Window so no light gets dusted.

There is no dust tonight.

Even the tree bark is blinding.

The crows take pains to complain

About the rock n' roll I play, that is

To say, they dig it perhaps too much.

There are other songs their craws reach for

In the light that makes them translucent,

Places more authentic and more whole

Not those of the barroom-bound blues hound

Flexing his string finger, but the loftier curls

Of finding not losing the harmonics,

Not the wrench out of experience's sweetness

But the gathering of codes, through petals falling

In sunlight to your fingers —

Who you are is not in being abandoned

But in living on, in spite of the bass

That ever-mournfully turns you down.

Any bird can play the mouth harp,

Feel the pain of being lined up

For release

But how can the notes lift higher

Than the dust beneath the angels?

The copper cowbells help to hypnotise

The horse, put him in a trance, so that

His stride stays on the higher road,

Nothing but a blank sheet of blue to interfere

With the call to be who he is,

No longer irascible or resistant

But cantering with the carousel horses 

In the sky, towards what is to be,

What he envisions

As the frequency agrees.

Confident now that nothing is missing,

There is no separation from source,

Not the slightest pause

Before acting as a God

With all the angels 

As his personal choir

To egg him on continually

With all the questions and concerns

Careful love throws over one

Like a warm blanket

On the cool

High road

Where the figure, to others

Cannot really be said to be real,

Just a dream in a matrix no longer glitching

But moving forward freely,

Not even forgetting,

The fleeting present is that strong.

Sunset Birds Over Kelvin

The crows have been angry with me today,

I tried to escape from myself once

And they cawed "You are not supposed 

To be here." The second time they stopped me

In mid-flight, to invite me to consider

The vast door they stood before

That could now be opened.

It wasn't the truth after all

That matched the gold

But forgiveness of my own need to hold it, 

In whatever form it presents itself, shifty 

Leprechaun to unstoppable shift, the floors 

Becoming crystalline, the air viewable 

As it would be to a fish.

Whatever you make becomes the truth

And there's only the thinnest thread now

Between desire and manifestation.

The world can exist separate from this,

On another hillside, where other oaks shimmy.

In this one, the silence is all-consuming — 

Every word becomes true.

Disclosure in Barking Sands

Tulsi has the tenacity of an oak,

Characteristic of her breed,

In her case feline starseed

Delivered with her white seer

Forelock to Kauai, where I am from,

The base where the alarm first went off

And the cane workers mercifully died

Instead of being able to run for cover,

Instead of any truth allowed at all.

And now we have reached the point

In the heroine's journey

Where the prophecies come true.

The pods in the shells shake furiously.

The caves are cleared and open for tours,

There won't be a need for me anymore

To decipher in a second with the iron in my hair 

Standing on end the ones with kingdom come

Explosives from the ones you can hide in,

Like the mountain lion hides in these oaks

Willing to do what is necessary

To earn the hard things:

Sustenance, shelter, the wisdom of the ages

That refuses to budge. 

Some birds fly up. Brio notices,

The other horses stir up dust

And ripple their necks, but they sense

The hidden danger only vaguely.

There's always a skirmish on the ground,

Always deer that can't be seen, the crying

Always mingles love and trepidation,

The thing that turns love into a true-badour song

That learns to live with its longing

Without its courtly home

But the oak roots hold the rocks in mounds

Like they were weapons, best deployed

In their wisdom not their release.

The turn of the evening brings shadows

To different locations, and the world moves on

With barely a dawning of what happened

To the Seth Rich flag in heaven,

The Racheal Chandler brave things said,

The Epstein Epicenter and its hunters already hunted.

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

Not even for show. The target remains,

Always Diana to remind us

That what is taken down metes out justice.

The century plant is ready to bloom.

Julian Assange the white rabbit hops through time.

The land of water and fire has merged 

To Arcturus gateway violet. Now evening violet

Smooths the mountain with quiet,

Birds go on as before, raptors from other planets

Just to make sure

We're okay.

Sunday Primitives in Baskets

Brio chiseled me for some grain

Navajo looked on outraged

But the day resolved

In delightful thoughts

That rose from Laguna Canyon

From happy beachcombers

And art connoisseurs 

Brio too

Free at last

From his stall

As the crows sweep

A rare flyover

When we remember

It's love and love alone

That has risen

In this vapour

To some freedom

Of becoming

Looping below

The dome of blue

That sharpens

Our experience

For the trees

To absorb 

And fungi to

Illuminate our feet

As we ascend

Vulture View

With our food

Of life lived

The vegan ice cream

From The Flats 

The habibi by the ghost

Of the cylinder press

The grasses hungrily

Stalk our energy

As the sultry breeze

Releases it

From our realm

So the new can come

Because now

We are open

To what was

Already there

In the curvature

Of the canyon

The rainbow

Witch wind

That only ever mirrored

What we made it

There is nothing there but

What we already believe

The illusion that we carry

Like a touchstone

Illusion is the only thing

You need

The last resort

Of the free

There were NASA uniforms

For all the little ones

And addressographs

In the Army Navy store

The mustard grass

Vibrates it all

In endless turn

Of response each choice

To sample 'til you've tasted

Every flavor

All valid 

All consuming

And interchangeable

At our will

Choosing a Stone

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

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

Until you let their wisdom approach, going sunwise

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

The stone that will hold your own frequency, the only

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

They re-ranged into the forms of the Kronos realm

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

As the foundation of our solar temple, for our choice 

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

In sediment archive.

                                                The Druid bards used to

Sound them with a stick, off trees picked like cymbals

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

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

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

Like Merlyn gave Excalibur back to Mnemosyne.

That’s why monarch crowns were assiduously combed

For symbol in crystal  – the people forebore nothing less

Than the silence of the ages they possessed, to confer

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

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

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

Waits inside, drawing light down from the stars.

                                                                               But they do so for a price:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Becoming news. There’s no reason now the branches

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

For no other reason than creation is endless, and everything

Is known, who they are, what they represent.

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

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

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

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

Intact in the ruin like runes, and unlock ancient permanences

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

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

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

And slate mirrors for scrying. 

                                                      We are asked to walk again the sage road,

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

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

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

But also knew the stones could be trusted, the bards

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

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

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

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

Consecrate a meeting. Without proper groundwork, people get hurt

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

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

To follow a trail without breadcrumb or motive.

                                                                                        The whip cracks,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As the black stones turned translucent, every other one was

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

Sentient beings, hurl towards the one.

                                                                       Mine was embossed

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

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

Deeply personal truth that sparkles in every heavenly zone,

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

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

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

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

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

Of knowing more can be shared, at other sundowns 

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

That moved it here, from some ember of eccentricity, 

Some sliver of diversion from the circle. 

                                                                           The cactus holds its own,

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sight of Butterflies, Without a Net

Uhaul has a broom up his ass today.

"Amber went all Orange County on me

With her Wellesley knee-patch breeches

Putting the Hanoverians in dressage formations 

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

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

It's like she owns the very air."

Left unsaid are her ten client horses

That she'll surely take with her shortly

When she vacates his pasture. But with his

Stylish vape pen and cell phone holster,

He's less concerned about the further thinning 

Of his livery yard than the effect on other horses

Of going cuckoo on a floating trot. 

This always happens when ownership changes, 

Horsefolk don't want rearrangements

And are content to leave the familiar entirely 

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

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

With renewed hatred and vengeance, to stall that same 

Feeling about themselves

But the ground has collapsed, to help them know how

To rise, but few do, they double down instead 

Their snorting and their rearing, their belief in

An illusion they refuse to unsee.

The horses here are the same way, reeling

From each emptied stall as if their fellow stabled

Was escorted at midnight to death row

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

For the better, but the yellow police tape spread across 

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

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

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

Room to graze in the face of this yellow optical maze

That vibrates like no mustard he'd ever seen.

New boarders always come to embrace the privilege of

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

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

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

And unlocked Vatican vaults. I too am oversensitized,

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

The hooves and shoes on the trail form shadows, 

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

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

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

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

To anyone not in heaven, but one sees down 

With more trepidation, for there's more work 

Within to take on.

My brave innocence is not, however, without incident,

Like when two crows went overhead and spoke my name,

Noting my coordinates for galactic command.

Ah but that only richens the adventure! The hills 

Have stayed the same, and only now it seems

That the nothing they have ever said 

Is the only correct way to answer.

Notes from the Extroverts Ball

In Echo Park, near Frogtown

The Chinese lanterns broke

Into a galaxy of shards,

As Buster Keaton the dog

Rescued children from the pool,

A guest helped himself to a cleaver

For the fistfight in the front yard

And a gunshot Mercedes muffler free

Squealed an inch away from speeding

Over the guardrail to infinity.

Yet there was laughter,

Anecdotes of shrooms and equestrienne studies,

A morse code ode to alpha boobs

As a Magnolia Banana Pudding recipe

Was passed surreptitiously  

Past the strict Vegeterrainean on the deck.

Who was a Wanna-Bee

And who was in the Biz

Was lost in the Tequila mixology

And the toxic drama family.

It bravely went on with a smile

Like the well-tempered fire pit

Until Carson saw the moon

Over Dodger Stadium 

And the party 

Collectively gasped.

At the Ranch, Just Us Horses

Obsidian tonight is braided Rastafarian,

Wears pink boots over his feathers,

Knocks the Peninsula shavings over

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

He doesn't eat the grass as much as he

Talks his way through it, his lips must grip

The strands just so, to tear the truth out

Of the ground, when it's dry like now

And the birds are somewhere else, 

Perhaps a show, leaving the oak trees

Like old black men who hold the thing

Together by never reacting, just flexing

Their wizened gray bark in the sun

And letting their nodding boughs hang

Like Obsidian's jolly ball, which now looks like

A punching bag for bored, boarded horses.

A sound -- one woodpecker pleading

With the silence to be heard, 

It needs its steady chirr inside the pen

Of all that can be captured

For some archival record 

That even we cannot conceive of

But the bird knows, to be heard is

A service, thus one must be listened to

Even when the silence is occupied

With motorcycle crickets and Palomino sighs. 

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

Filled with dappling, road apples out like magazines.

Elvis the Pinto and Dow Jones the Gypsy

Touch their heads together from neighboring stalls.

They are like two friendly but melancholy teens

Who show off their stylish eccentricities to all.

Unfamiliar birds dance with their craws 

Across the branch tops. The thing that is captured,

Not the birds in all their innocence, but the ears 

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

Enact more memories of Earth herself, in her chair,

Restoring the Human to her breast again.

The shanty tack shacks are empty now

Though every one is full of light.

A mountain of magenta bougainvillea 

Behind them like a diva, on a stage too large

For any of us to take. With pink snip Obsidian 

Continues, pulls out any stalk he can nibble.

The Outsider Leaves Town

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

Where snow comes in a flash, and the sky turns

Blue to black in an instant, to make way

For my best life, to be silent.

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

There’s a Starbucks station in this dark

Buck moon. All details of the contract we

Signed in blood are still under seal

As all souvenirs have been packed up tight.

He might have friends in Winnemucca but

He has none here, and never really did –

The bid was always rigged for me

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

Anymore. The “no” to all that I am

Is between Lovelock and Battle Mountain

Now, yet yes, still, comes too slowly;

The permission slip he never gave me

Has not been passed along – I must forage

Like a goat for what is lasting in my dreams:

Space to breathe, a sense of purpose …

In time I will remember I’ve never

Really changed. The embrace was on a card

And I followed the dance impeccably

And was, like each hard time, released

No longer questioning the right to advance

Or the right to be myself with someone else

Or the freak flag full moon move I once more wave

To bring the old funk to the floor.

There’s vast ores of silver, oil, lithium

Inside of those fat mountain fingers but

The only ones who know are on that road,

The one they say goes nowhere

Though all Chevrolets must get out of Dodge

Or Sparks or Truckee – eventually.

And Vegas is never too far away,

Whose lights were never what they seemed,

But the darkness that now surrounds the plains

Has never felt this comforting before.

I see the pain was mine and mine alone

When the road hitches a new ride.

Its disappointment with destiny needs no tent,

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

That bush, unquenched, ever bright, forever unseen.

The quest won't end, for forgiveness.

Convergence of Eyes

The only noise the rocks will make

Is when they're relocated.

They were told by sacred mountain

To hold its crystal frequency like breath.

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

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

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

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

Mexico a far-off glimmer though it lives here now

With all the tribes who melted long ago into the hill

Out at the edges of electrical lines,

Where only bikes go by,

Some water towers swallowed by the ridges,

Windows turned like eyes to the sun

As it descends on the golden sanctuary

That will hold the future world.

Ernesto, who lives on the switchback path,

Is no spring chicken when it comes to horses,

He knows every scratch and how they got there

And tells the rocks everything

And even the county authorities let the wilderness

Be his secret ranch to oversee.

A yellow ribbon affixed to the arena flaps 

Too eagerly its victory in the breeze,

Not like the ribbon that winds the blue layered

Golden time of different frequencies held together

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

Veined with green. The fan of wind

Beckons the grasses into feather pens

Paid not by the word but by pollen count

For the universe that reads, like horses do cookies,

Its book, one fluttering page at a time.

God as Truth, Key 77

Sweep the dust,

Process the memory

As part of the process

That no longer includes me.

Say goodbye, fear and shame,

Be as a feather on your way 

As I no longer need to remember

The germ inside their husk

Also dust, just a place 

You can leave when you like, 

Blindfold and all, for the shell

Reverse engineered the seed.

The neighing continues

But the need for anything real

Pops like soap bubbles

Their impenetrable veils.

"Look at these scratches,

Pay attention to my wounds,

My new found friend is not,"

Brio warned, "what he appears."

Indeed, horses precede the stars

Born to house their life force.

Now they roam in Sagittarius,

That fixes its pursuit on pure truth

While the stones of Sirius

Cultivate every eccentric note

For the divine within each soul song,

The coherence of knowing what God is.

We manifest what naturally becomes us, 

Reclaim our sovereign identity,

So nature can chime in on divine command

As reminder we are singular in theme.

Our identities are fixed in stone too.

The mind is just too large now,

Carving a meaning for our dwelling,

The only goal that remains.

A song of nickers and whinnies

As the sun goes down on

What its codes have turned to theory:

Steel bars, a rusted roof, 

Some leather straps that might

Withstand the weather.

The quest for what is

Has barely begun.

On Horses Running Maskless in the Sun

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

Stalls empty of all but the horses

And a golden light of forgetfulness

Imbuing all that milk and honey

With a holy glaze.

Even the moths say California

In the way they fly freely

Between the column pairs

Through the portal of wind

Cooling the desert fire with life.

The oak trees don't even bend

Their laurels crisp at attention

To hear what's coming 

Down the road,

For nothing has ever happened here

Though the rocks still move 

Relentlessly, and the foxtail turns 

From green to gold 

Instantly, and the pyramids 

Echo restlessly every sound 

Of families in the canyon 

Grilling as usual

At ceremonial barbeques

While the war games wait 

Heavy in the air

In the hush of patience

Before the free are allowed

To do what the universe wants them to do,

Be happy, in every moment of sun,

Every gift of bird song,

Every stamping neigh

How they love the carrots

Almost as much as us,

Though we still confuse this,

These late days, with avarice

But the clamor of their eager mouths 

For our hands is nothing now beyond

The need for a blessing, for

Simply by paying, in that

Moment, attention,

We are the priests

Of this blue light, for we forgot

Everything that led up to this 

Moment so it won't be 

Spoiled from what it could be.

But remembering comes easier

With each upper pitch 

In the frequency gauge

Til' all that's been repressed

Ceases, by itself, to exist

In the melting sun that holds,

Like a candle, a light 

From all of the silent ones

Who watch us, hoping for

Exactly this.

Remembering Machado

It's to get the gods back 

Is the purpose of poetry 

The translator said, as she languished

Over limonera rendered into English. 

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

Without attracting the attention of the poetry gestapo."

The fox in me hides in the camouflage

Where I'm always welcomed, for everyone 

Wants everything known about themselves 

As long as the observer is transparent

Like a cartoon ghost or a whippoorwill,

Forever thought of fondly, but never seen,

Never really. 

                         The king as always doesn't care. 

His is the reality we begrudge respect for

Although he is almost always never real

At all. He is so far up the mountain now

Above the duero, where the leathered rich go 

And the old Rich Jews, the higher oblivion

Where what mattered was theirs, but it fell 

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

Now below ruthlessly suppressing their empathy 

For the sake of the Grail! 

                                                 Lift the cup 

Of fresh-squeezed lemonade with lavender in it. 

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

Each glance at me is a universe entire. 

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

Setting up the hot tub for the summer,

Letting the wind dictate the mix of chemicals 

While I spend my leisure deep in prayer

For the dankest moonlight jams.

Only Birds Over Hillhead Road

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

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

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

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

The Cazimi of Compassion

Deconstruct experience, the dragons say,

In dream, look at those throbbing hills,

They've got you hypnotized they are 

Still and real as a newspaper photo

And the scars on Brio's face, just enough

To feel love from Navajo, the Appaloosa

Apollo dropped beside him for repair

Like an Airstream, so grateful to have 

A companion at last, who, with doe-eyed 

Eagerness bit his eager eyeball. 

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

Like camo security, to stare down the mayhem

And tighten the valve of the crazy snake nozzle

In the always-full trough of emotional commotion,

Because all water rolls down the mountain to here.

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

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

The galactics must have us on speed dial

For the guffaws we provide, how straight

Our faces can bend to not remembering.

"How can you know what happened to them,"

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

Even Quan Yin requires a giant pile of shit

For all the tears she needs to cry 

To learn compassion through her suffering,

So she can spark life into things

By feeling what they feel, as the cow horses

Rein like whirling dervishes and the deer

Disappear in the grass. 

A sawhorse holds a saddle.

I look for guidance

In the hair whorl of the sorrell, eye level

Of the peaceful mind. But it's just another

Scam of belief in what you see, 

When helicopters and waterfalls 

Whirr by you unnoticed all day

Behind cellophaned microphones,

While the Urmah hide like mountain lions

And the dragons only emerge from their holes

Sculpted in the sandstone when the sun falls.

They know in this way one comes to believe

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

What happened with what should have been.

Reality has broken just in time. 

We were worried

Our interpretations may have missed the point.

But then we passed, in a reality no one

Who was not then with us would believe,

Creation Corner, in the rich hills, teaching

How to manifest abundance when they're young. 

Repentance as Nirvana

At the moment I recognized the scent

Of a need to find an adequate

Symbol the great white bird

Passed from meaning and my roof.

When the spell of others is broken

The residues, of past lives and

Tribes you gave your soul to

Become malleable enough to move.

Still there's the stick

The master hits you with

That removes more than it inflicts

As he raps the marble floor

To scatter the karma

And conjure the benevolent wind

And the breastplates of the terracotta 

Warriors' harmonized with dharma

Although we cringe, at how the outside

Bears down upon the house

And wrap our Easter crucifix in red 

To repent for repentance, dust for dust.

The mercy is seeing how we went off course,

Seeing who we are by what is taken away,

All but the inner quiet 

Has always been empty.

It is holy to let go, that's how

We become clean, repent for all 

By tolerating everything, by believing

They receive enough love

And we notice we are noticing

And can exist that way without a prompt, 

Until the stick no longer comes down fiercely

And we can tell what exists and what does not

And so we transcend the cycle of life

And death, because we have the proof

In a hand that no longer needs to act

And has nothing to prove.

Last Day of Spring

My cells

                are like sails

They pick up all

                               the codes

From dolphins leaping 

                                          freely

Right in front of me

                                     brought

Like a frog a fly

                             out of the sky,

A cloud production factory

                                                 now

With a springtime's worth

                           of negative ions

To remind me where I've been

                      How much I needed

A lot of rain

                       to bloom so profuse

In such vivid purples

                                       the lupines

And behind the veiled 

                                         cigar that 

Throws off spray

                               of 12-strand DNA

It dares me to open to

                                         the cold

Of empty wind

                            blowing every note

On my reed

                      that keens freely to its

Perfect pitch

                        of very unique.

It takes the lightest breath

                                                no lung

As an accordion

                                 but the forbidden

Of all but the pure

                                  by one who has

Left behind all but that.

We are changing indeed,

                                              the container 

Ships cleaned of children

                                              and advanced

Gyroscopes put in place

                                             and no one can

Pretend anymore

                                 that Catalina's still here 

Just obscured 

                             by the day's condensation.

It has lifted like a ship,

                                          asked to navigate 

Different timelines,

                                    multiple realities.

It is OK to let ours bend, 

                                             I finally say,

Still I see the melting mirror

                                                    as a threat

But those feelings,

                                   like grief, get less

And less the more I enter

                                               the discomfort

Of not knowing how

                                       it will end

Or why it was done

                                    in the first place,

The island of knowing 

                                         gleams in the distance.

It no longer has relevance

                                                 when dolphins

Come this close to us,

                                         to show how we are

Really finally ready

                                    to be blessed.

Parking Trap Malted

The Ted Fay Fly Shop lures you in

To the Angler Inn

Next to Rapunzel’s Castle.

Another town that time forgot,

More pink shutters,

Another red barn diner

With checkerboard floors

And menus that never change

Hung as curtains,

Deer head hat racks,

Train track bric a brac

And local businesses on the placemats

That exist at least in memory

If not in fact.

The 5 dollar charge for whining

Has not been updated for inflation,

But they’ll charge you just the same.

The lumber haulers have all gone

All that’s left is the railroad,

Itself an anachronism, some ironic

Take on retro tourism, a touchstone

To dreams embezzled by bankers

Like a smashed penny that makes

The box that contains your childhood memories

Smell like creosote.

On the Road with the Ghost of Buck Owens

At the Dino Mart in Gustine

The consequence of making an alien baby

Back in the dust of Bakersfield

Was revealed, as we became

The children of the Sinclair dinosaur,

Mewling for snaps at the green toy.

It was all we could do to get away

From a Wasco that was no longer roses

In endless fields for New Year’s Day

Along the death road to Paso Robles

Where we commiserated with a Starbucks robot

At California milk spoiled at 103 degrees.

But neither the five dollar rabbit

Nor the zebra from Shafter prepared us

For the dueling flatbeds of homeless chihuahuas,

One done up as a muscle car float

The other a plywood pallet on wheels

Where the chihuahua’s all had bells.

The roads are like that now, especially when

Family is involved. Every exit goes to Arkansas,

A hush hush past that’s now blown up

Like the one burned down house on the road

Where the rainbow ice cream vendor

Wheels her dyed-ice sugar for no one.

Every father has misplaced one daughter

At least, just as every son leaves home

So his heart can be broken, and no one

Looks at any loving couple as anything

But a misplayed bet waiting to settle,

Where the choice of lawyer proves your worth.

It’s a wonder they have all survived

To migrate like birds from this pizza reunion

To Arbuckle and Willows, Maxwell, Artois,

Ceres and Lemoore, Lockeford, Firebaugh

Tracy, Pixley, Ducor -- but mostly Porterville,

Swapped like crops with demand and the weather,

Kingsburg cling peaches for Dinuba pears,

Arvin champagne grapes for raisins from Parlier,

Weedpatch carrots that give way to Turlock honeydews, 

Or Reedley, where they grow loofahs on trees,

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

Or Lindsay's fragrant groves of citrus.

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

At the thought of someone in their family

Being sent away to Mexico in a plane

They worry if someone will speak to them again

After all the neglect summer dust required

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

Father's Day at the Stables

The horse needs a daddy too,

Someone to admire his gait

And validate how much he tries

To canter in this world

So jagged and so bright.

He runs to me

As if I didn't even own him

And associates every gift

Of grain as from my hand

And wants me to play with him,

The one thing fathers cannot do,

With the roles they must assume,

Defender with swords and lies

Of an implicate order that

Denies compassion 

As the devil's fork, 

For one must turn 

Love away

Before the not love

So that the foal can learn.

The horse accepts my strokes

As love before the groom

And stamp and snort

And the digging in of hooves,

In this case not to do 

What the human wills

Although he got what he wanted

Mostly, to gallop the sillies out,

Do his bronco buck routine

To the saddle before riding

But it's the horse case 

Scenario now, 

In which you cannot 

Break his heart

And stay his friend.

Electricity from the sun

Ignites my crystal,

Warms my heart with stillness

As the horse moves his white hooves

Kicking up sun dust

But there's too much wisdom

In the hills this afternoon,

The horse is fiesty 

And unwilling to make 

The mountain come to him.

The violet flame crowns the peaks

With mist. There is nothing

Between the sky and ground

Anymore. I walk

Even though I never have before.