The Defamiliar

Nelly Larson was at my vibrational boundary

Writing her aloneness, before she turned

Alone to stone on me, while Zora continued on,

Seeing but shielding her own.

There are journals. They exist.

Just harder to find, ensconced in drawers,

The secrets that everybody knows

But not how to say.

There's a Parakeet Gate on Waxwing Circle,

A Wet Lab Life Science spot. The ground dries up,

Stones like little candies, straw wandering,

Tails waving in sync with the leaves.

All the streams are now crystal, dissolved

Like the Ascension Church's way of the waters,

Grape vines yellowed, Jackson Ranch

Line Dancing Space for Lease.

Different choices, different result.

I think of the flat plains with my trailering shot

And little gestures that show the bloom is

Recovering, but it's too soon to tell

Hubris must be swallowed first, yet again.

The cottonwood, translucent in its dance

Brings the thirst, as their sun mirror

Snakes along the cool valleys to Lake Viejo.

Even in these Space Goose houses

Inclined high in ashen flax they look beyond

Where they came from, ancient temple or old church,

With the PTSD of ruined pioneers

Like the Light Rail at Patriot

Never built but it could be here

For the enthusiasts of hummingbird moths

And fire authority helicopters.

But no matter where they are now,

Shopping at the marketplace with the waterfall,

Golfing or gazing on the irrigation, they'll be here

Come Sunday feeling upside down, stumbling

Between program bands, green lights risen

Over the Tustin aircraft yard, the Free Chapel

With a giant Betsy at its entrance. You know what they say:

Cleanliness is next to Commerce West.

Masonic compass on that strawberry Tesla,

B.W. Boyd shears, Experian happy to be here,

The privacy invasion people, its only the tomatoes

The nursery throws away that can be nurtured,

The tagged flats are just algorithms, measures

Of contentment, but they have no such worries here.

The smiles creep into everyday conversation

And though there is nothing to laugh at, we all do.

Still Life with Wood Shavings

I no longer have to be 

Every human who's ever been born,

Because I am every

Human who's ever been born.

Pinoy cuisine by Shoreline Ministries,

Lunar Orthodontics by the Wagyu Factory.

They are instituting a shavings regime

In the quiet before the symbols bellow meaning 

And the mules snort uncle and hoses swallow

The thirst like the date oases that dot Cabo,

Aligned with whale birthing noises

That creak through the flagpoles breeze

From deep in the seas, even up here

On the old volcano, the soil still metal and glass,

Water has no resistance here to flow.

The alfalfa is wheeled in on an EZ-Go

With a canopy and sombrero

And some Spanish by way of Guadalajara

To nourish the oaks. The gold is good

For a glow-up in the arena, in a spiral,

The way the galaxy arms explode

Into what you are, light, and light only,

Though the shadows in the shavings

So bright are hauled away by force

With fuming machines, the trace of us

Still more than a rumor, a note,

It must be distributed, like thought

Leadership into the still wilderness,

A first-cut gold that too

Will be consumed

With one eye

To the woods.

Sesquicentennial for Dogs

Cones everywhere, you have to have the tools

For the war zone, the bazooka in your poncho,

For a pressure shot that presents itself continually,

Each fire display a demolished village

And the sound of guns coming after me

On the Born in the USA beach.

Every family's staked a fire in the sand

Like the barren lands, for sparklers 

And fire dancers, the flames alive with the moment.

Each mortar has the will to create a universe,

But the sea clears the smoke, lets everything explode.

Everyone has a few barrels to shoot.

It's only safe at the edges of the sea.

Car alarms go off from every side,

Fire flowers in every direction but one,

A multi-dimensional explosion,

Multiple detonations of the same urge,

Confetti snake, sorcerer's spore,

The swarming of stars, while whole

Neighborhoods are under siege, exploding

Joy pop gunfire, clouds rolling east.

White smoke coats the neighborhood roofs,

The phosphorous left over

After play.

The 4th, When Californians Stay Home

Even though you're innocent 

You still have to have clean hands.

And the streets of Lake Forest are immaculate

With red, white and blue bouquets

And chairs of the same brave colors placed

Along the roadside days away from the parade,

And traffic on Toledo, with those breeze-scream yellow 

Tape rolls ribboning off the open trenches

So Tacos Ensenada and Ballpark Buns and Rolls

Can rest easier, afterwards, when there's rest,

And the four F's of the Fourth are over.

It was what we photojournalists called the crazy day,

Festivals, Family, Fireworks, Food

But no Fun, my light flicked onto the red Firetruck

On their day of hell, they're out there already

Mean streeting to avert some boys with brush fires.

The dangers are legion to public enforcement,

Dogs, cats, squirrels, kids

And the controls are few,

Sunglasses, a haughty look,

To disguise that you have eyes, ever-compassionate one.

You have to make nice and let the city skies burn

In the name of freedom, whose cost is gut bombs

At midnight, clearing out the animals,

Reminding us our warrior nature is our freedom,

Our willingness to say no, that does not

Work for me, no, sir, now, where's my hot dog?

I have to keep my eyes on the game, and don't want to

Have to search for where the horse radish root

Has been bedded. For I am finally a King,

Licking my fingers of pomegranate.

There's an Acrisure nearby, a Blooming Onion Dales.

"We Get It," the license plate says, "Santa Marguerita,"

Here in her town now to bless, and I to snap

A life strapped on top of a Kia, poignant toys, 

A pathos-filled mattress, a voyage to a new beginning

As yet unknown, still red, white and blue somehow, 

Like on a floatie in a start-your-engines parade, in Fountain Valley, 

Say, there are so many stories, but still you can count the daylight

In waiting for the perfect dog to traipse upon your perfect

Sunburst yard of a hundred flags. There it is, exit 9A,

The elusive sea route to Pepperdine, where they marry

The mermaid that is California, and disappear

At the western dome of what we now know as freedom.

Song of the Would-Be Backyard Pets

The hummingbird trills what I need to hear

From somewhere up the bottlebrush tree.

The heavy fruitfall avocado bounty 

Bears the elsewhere wisdom of the elders.

Sometimes it's merely the wind

Rings the chimes.

There are other collectives

But none of them talk to us.

Dolphins? No. Whales? 

Forget about that.

But the crow

Is sharp-tongued guide

And now the spider caught in light

Is only dancing.

The Tower as Exploding Phallus

Another rescue horse put down,

I saw it in his eyes.

He didn't want to be here, too much

Pain on this here

Earth grid with its malevolent

Algorithms. I wasn't

Supposed to look

Of course, nor speak

In any way, either

Ack-knowledge-ing

Or inter-venous-ly,

Not even supposed to be there

Of course, some experiences

Are too private or at least

Too shameful to share

But I needed some timothy

And it was the only way in, through

The barn where the pain is made

In eyes kept dark, without even

Blinders on. But the sky is so blue,

The transparency today so complete 

I want to retire to Portugal, so the breeze

At least will match the vibe, such silence

When every word is in a poem.

It's where they grow the cork,

It grows on trees, like money does here

Before it bursts like 10 million penises

Into every aortic expressway

Carrying some unseen germ, in each car,

A virus or a gift, take your pick.

It's probably a little of both.

Anything out of the ordinary unified whole

Is a flaw, but it is that very quality

That makes it so very highly prized,

Like the pock stamp of beauty, or the fly

On the Eindhoven still-life of fruit,

The unique. You can't read that shit aloud.

Every cell beyond the ear vibrates with its own ...

Insanity you could call it, an inability

To conform, the breeze that makes our freak flag fly

Always stirs some goosies, conjuring within that tiny

Heart of yours an egg chair for two.

Euphoria of an Empty Fortune Cookie

The horse

Runs round and around

From the center

Where it already is.

Carrots like antennae

In the hanging ball

Twirl around the stall

In late sun

With the creak of

Something speaking

Or trying at least

To be heard.

It comes and goes

The nonchalance of being

But when it returns

The heart has prepared the journey,

Doesn't matter the road.

Hell, there aren't any

Until you decide, 

Much less end.

Another Money Shot Successfully Evaded

Photojo PTSD kicked in again,

That China Syndrome chemical spill

According to the BBC

Five miles away but

No one would know it

On the ground here

Were it not for the news

Media and I am so glad

I'm incommunicado now

Because they would be calling

To check if I could check out how much

Exposure had to be swabbed down

Or drop in on the evacuation center

In Fountain Valley. It's just that

I've been to too, too many

Hazmat situations

For one lifetime, and they cut 

The media off any way

Not like the good old days

Of transparent horror, 

The anthrax stations

And the tire fires

Worst of the worse,

What hell looks and smells like.

The thing is

It was my job

To remind people

They lived in a fire zone,

Those poor, chosen

Doomed people.

What if they had to let

The horses free? is a question

Most people don't have to ask.

The only way to survive

Is with an escape route,

A valuable skill for a rat

But it makes normal life

Claustrophobic, forces a course

Correction, a re-routing reset

Of just stopping the watching

For the blue lights of cop cars

And their perfect algorithm of surveillance

At least that's the way it looks

From the mountain, where the hawks,

The messengers you're not supposed to kill,

Don't care what flag you wave.

There's no residue way up here

Of the latest apocalypse,

Up here it can only exist

As a belief. The peek-a-boo view

Of the ocean from the Daily Seagull

Must be considered in the frame

Of the panorama that bursts

In your back yard.

Crowded Day at the Ranch

People are confused by horse owners.

Why would someone even?

All they can think is the Kentucky Derby,

Mint juleps and owning a fine steed

That pays off at a million to one

In club membership and royal

Pretension, but that's a lot of trouble

And effort to the uninitiated.

They think you have to ride it

But the heart coherence is what

Makes the horse such a fine pet ...

They prance now like in Western movies

On the upper-yard arenas, distinct

In their magnificences and browns,

The way they pay allegiance

To the same thing as any of us.

Mother and Foal

The newborn, a shiny Frisian,

So finely tuned with mom,

Tails stroking on the same watch,

Deep with the mother's

All-knowing gaze

Of vigilance, concern, 

Being strong against

The world

For her baby,

Something in her wants

To be seen

If only to recognize

How the regal is natural,

Her pose is her grace,

Her undivided attention

To give herself

In service,

What the universe expects,

For she has a purpose at last.

It was so confusing before,

What good being a woman

With all those restrictions on

Superhuman abilities,

Unshareable ways to see

The void inside the massive heart

That lets everything

In.

But for now, she knows

And she owns, in her gait,

This knowledge.

The little one

Tears free, so trusting

She can bolt at any time

And mother becomes a child again

After a frantic moment she has to

Recover what's left her over time,

Will, speed, restlessness ...

But then she glides in place

In the regimen of the dance

As the wind blows their manes

In the same preordained way.

The little one rears up

Like a knight in chess claiming

The air itself

As her own

But her mother's scowl,

So stern and disapproving,

So false

Cuts just enough

Moxie

The goal remains

But the means

Have been modified,

Things have been learned.

Someone thought to put

Indian paintbrush blue

Blankets on most of the horses

To protect them from the flies they know

Are coming, this row of them,

Like all of them had the same mama.

But her individuality comes

From how she can deliver all

Her new to life requires,

There's no gratitude except

In the air, which her filly breathes

As if the source of love is always there.

Auroras Evoked from Dry Grass

A young Arabian

Gets in whoever's face she can 

Attract

To plead for freedom.

She turns her neck

Like a lasso.

Such authenticity

Does not come natural to us,

We hem and hew

At the border

Between ourselves

And the others,

Wondering what to disclose

And what to keep protected

Or at least undefended, undefined.

That's how much the Arabian

Waving her tail

Seems to whip

Against our hides

Like there's something

We must do

With someone else's discontent

Besides endure it

The ticking clock, the ultimatum 

Of wanting 

That makes us gnats in

Wind-blind circling

Attracted to scent and movement

And that ineffable instinct.

We just flow in whatever way

We can, spend our energy

In balancing what we think

We want

With what we think they want,

Trying to find that perfect point,

That destination temperature

And it always just

Eludes our grasp,

What we're reaching for

Is the other side of us.

The game is not to touch.

The Eccentric Quest for the Universal

The Haflinger with the white tail

Still sees a point in playing,

Chasing the sun, saying hello

Instead of playing hard to get

With a mourning look.

The prompt to be genuine is still

Intact, unlike the new mule

Who you know had something bad 

Happen to bray so over the top of

The silence at feeding time.

The time to live is when you are young,

Before you discover that the others

Are not like you. Some never know this,

They never lose their youthful exuberance,

But most make an effort

To learn the most important thing first:

That what you don't like, you are not,

But it's not until you clear the mirror of it

That you know you are

Something, a specific frequency,

Not just a taste bud sampling all the hay

For the elusive grain. That something

Is a covering, for you to carry, the next

Best thing to a body, a comfort to know

That the mold they broke

When they made you

Was never really a mold at all

Just a set of possibilities

You could choose among

For the choice that wasn't given.

That's how it starts.

The colony in Alpha Centauri

With its hardtack and scrambled signals

Wouldn't exist without the preference

For the impossible,

A blinking point

Of light 

In the vastnesses of space,

Far enough for dreams to create,

Dreams that didn't exist.

When Nothing but Traces of the Dream Can Be Seen

Hugh Nguyen is a shoo-in to win

With his Proven Leadership

In the middle of horse country,

A scale model in some ways

But in others, it's the middle of nowhere

Where the one road can be roped off

By chippers for each emergency

And they are frequent

With the micro-monsoons 

And Santa Ana corridors 

In these well-oaked canyons 

Clear to Riverside.

A bald with blues

Glows now

In the incredible radiance of nature 

On all cylinders,

Now helping the earth

Lift us with it

To a higher version

Of the same place.

The baby birds would give themselves

Back to source 

As gleefully as mushrooms

Were they not programmed for survival

So we get the fear, and the animals

Take care of their own removal;

It didn't have to be this way, 

And it isn't:

There are plenty of birds to go around,

Though every human stumbles to see

So many falling from the sky newborn

And grey, opened too wide

To a world that does nothing but give.

The air is colder now. 

The hawks don't look at it 

As if they are baby chicks

But a reading of the horizon,

What is there, available

To discover what it is 

And the what it is not

That is the source,

Also what it is, as the pale is,

Blue eyes going to infinity

Our only true home.

They still talk today

How, when the last fire came

They medivaced the horses by copter,

Before they took the people

And all of them were saved,

None of the few homes here were damaged.

They're lucky that way, they opt out

Of what nature doesn't want them to do --

Everyone takes orders

From the truth that can be seen

In the sky, just like the whirring

Birds their merry-go-rounds of sound

Saying "me" in all the countless ways,

Advertising themselves to the one ear,

The sun and the hawk, who also

Only follows what is ordered.

At the Trionic Frequency Crystallization

The hologram revealed itself: she disappeared

Not just from the tape but time:

How to be new in the reboot, to forget

That every passing site is occupied

By a memory of something shared, if not real.

The ability to resist has loosened

And you are back on the track

You never lost sight of, for all roads

Converge where you pay attention --

Do you know where your thoughts are?

Watch what you manifest, it practically screams:

It's too garish, too much like a mob murder,

The slow process of subtraction to get

To the one. We'll always have sometimes

But the timelines are a shifting and

Nothing was built the way it was in our minds.

We just can't hold on to the texture of how it all

Went down, when nothing really mattered but the way 

It made us feel, but, when someone hands you money,

You take it.

The Florentines famous for their paper

Had engravings of secret practices at best

Only surmised, but there it is like flies in the still life

Still standing in ashamed dignity, still monitoring

Signals we give off for what not to say.

Revisiting the Listening Post Now that All Hell has Cut Loose

Whatever happened to dandruff shampoo

I ask as the shell removes itself

And the elements go back to being elemental,

The body revealed as politic, mercurial

Beyond the veil, tightened and tempered

Like drapes drawn for Amelia Bedelia's wardrobe

Though I may have oversqueezed the toothpaste

On that one.

Ring the bell clear, a strict two carrot a visit

Diet if you want to call what you eat a program.

Whatchu talking bout Willis? "Honeywood Lane"

"Sunday Drive" -- checked agin! Information

Is everywhere, even Egret Lane, we work on

Each other's nervous systems that way, let's call it

Healing, an Archer, as the sudden sign prompts,

Calibration in Cosy Casa --

It's all laid out, our path and our work

By commercial concerns that any day

Could close down -- and whatever happened

To the one they called "Un", so captured

In high school glory, only to go on

To living apart, from me at least, in my

Ignorant reveries where all is as it was

And all it will ever be.

But I oversauced as usual the Bourgignon. 

The emollients guidelines include

A whiff of optionality, like the law to Greeks.

When you see the word blue on a white car

It sets you back, makes you question what you

Know, but then you realize it's all connected, but

What you focus on, the way you're lasered -- All-

American Asphalt -- pulls you to the loop

Where you are a part of something other

Than what you are. When they say you gotta

Be present, they mean nondistracted present,

To put your attention in the flow lane.

They stumble out of Starbucks one by one

Thinking only of themselves -- but they look

To me, who looks right through, because even a

Micro-glance

And I'm living in their kitchens as they squeeze

Out the shit and juice and the heaviness

Of being them hits. Instead there's Wonder Produce,

Silverwood, the Brinkley. Halal Montessori ...

And Halosox, who wouldn't want a good pair of that?

But it's distraction, the information train on overload,

We don't know how to stop it because we don't realize

We are its conductor

In piezoelectric excitation, astral crispr to excavate

The Milton S. Eisenhower time capsule of dormant

DNA, according to the Edgar Cayce lookalike prophet

Who said it was coming and is finally gone, like that other

Cassandra named Mobius, who even moved to the undeveloped 

World "and largely backed it up" (his obit said) but now that 

It is here he's no longer needed, though even he didn't see

JFK Jr. below the doctor's glowing hand.

Ah, fresh graffiti, more lifelike than ever, and the white

Shoe brigade, talk of woodcocks strutting different stuff

Down Park Avenue, and it might be the cumulative Schumann

But some chef named Gruel is running for office. You say Waygo

I say Waygu, I see wild onion you see dutch iris, but we both see

The crow on the Chipotle, down the coastest with the mostest.

Look there's a CRISPR environmental services dump truck

Or is it a bull shovel?

BARNPWR makes me see the barn power of the populist 

Revolution while you see barn pawer, what drove your horse

To its knees, but when the separate houses of my mind 

Have been connected into one circuit, things like that don't matter 

As much as the Utah license plate, which carries in its symbol

The glory of the great Southwest, which lives in my bones

Though it is not here -- in Hidden Ridge, source of a spring 

Of underground politics, 

But there's still value being the king of the hill who sees 

Everything below with secure compassion, for everything unfolds 

With a grace all its own -- even the biker bar has a kind of 

Tarnished charm, and seeing it unlocks a living thing 

Behind the scenery of appearance, where the squirrel 

Appears to vie for the limited hay 

When it is only there

To be seen.

Coming Up Lame on a Beautiful Day at the Ranch

It's the old vaudeville man and wife

Horse suit costume routine I know,

Show and tell at the ranch, with the two

Horse brains on display, each unaware

Of what the other is doing, one side Stoic

Assessing threat, counting grain, the other

Equicurious why there are so many here,

Is this some kind of intervention?

In fact it is, of the most Sunday picnic sociable

Kind, the people of my life slouched down in love

To spend their allotted God time under oaks

Where sparrows and hawks watch over.

And it was all for Brio, who has picked up our

Collective pain like he'd picked up on the flu

From a bug. His eyes betray his deadpan mein,

The horse who can no longer be spooked.

He can't bear his pain anymore, so doesn't care

If he shows it, one allocated wince at a time,

And all because, the LAPD horse whisperer claims,

The prey made a deal with its pre-dator, the human, 

Who trip-wired him anyway, without meaning to

Of course, we just don't speak the same language,

That is, we don't understand what they actually say

And we believe our force is what makes them behave

When it is our pain we try to punish out of them. 

We don't notice, when he stamps on the fence, how much

Discomfort liberates, so any Western Jesus shaman with a hat

In the vicinity could feel it ring through the pipes.

But, true to form, even in pain, Brio needs an audience,

A team as big as the funeral chuck wagon on the way in,

For his healing, and him so hurt inside he isn't upset

How we don't realize we are the ones to be healed.

It was his set-up, to get us here, to be together at last,

The people who like to talk about themselves with 

The people who can bear it most gracefully. We make sure

He looks at us from both sides, the self and the other,

That dance that makes reality coalesce. What exists

Except as it can be shared? Even the nasturtium

Seems a radiance from some other world without 

The memory of planting it together, to make it undeniable,

The incessant doubling, birds talking to themselves

Inside the trees, as if predation is still news to them

And the only thing that matters is that they are heard,

What the universe does with that does not disturb.

We moved up slowly to let Brio take our focus, to show us

Something besides a trick, something that our side

Could never expect, never being prepared, or made aware

Of how each moment we were trained

To never transcend the fear. And we stand there,

At different distances from him, and feel our primal pain

Rest within our knowing, know how effortless it goes

Once let in, once we feel it is the one gutting, the same

Original wound, that we are less than a God -- though we

Can always choose again to be the center, which now is Brio's

Face, which twins us, makes us pause, how quietly he moves 

Our viscera -- and we never even know. But some of it 

Will be talked of, some will be understood, and we will come 

Out of it a little more confident, to be oneself, for a bit, and 

Confidence is the new coherence, the stretch goal to entrain

More coherence -- our beat they call it the heart.

The Imperative to Magnetize

Left my taxes at the tack store

With my purple eyeglasses --

Another day older, I suppose.

There's been so much of late to contemplate,

Since they dropped the dime in, on how

The world was run, in the entrails for the oracle

Of Orange Lakes. The sign says "Western Hound." 

A pair of crows dive bomb a Dorito

Then tell us there's a stronger wave coming

At the exact same moment that it hits,

Like a sudden vista of once-distant mountains

Getting as real as you let yourself believe in them

At your window. For now, a cloud is resting

Inside the mountain, not giving this time but allowing,

Gathering thoughts before it moves on.

The poplars ring down the valleys with breath,

Carrying what is felt within the receiving stream

That outlasts all that has ever happened 

Down every level, to a sea thankful for any river.

The clouds are so purple it must mean something

But the sun tells us all we need to know:

How much gold is in the trees,
What language the baby is speaking,

How there's redemption in every abandoned building. 

Sidelong Glance at the Earth Mother

Say a little prayer for the adventure we concocted

For ourselves on the fly. The tragedy unfolded

On golden days, with calla lilies and oxygen tanks,

Expecting, like for a baby to come to the world.

But, instead, one is leaving, gathering her things,

Without a voice now, with muddled mind,

Only the heart remains. Death moves in but needs

To find the breakpoint energy to take a soul

So that another can move in. There were white

Flowers at the ranch for the horse that they had

To put down, when, the usual miraculous,

A new foal! Charging at the very world itself,

In whirling, willful motion, a filly, Friesian 

Black as midnight coal, with a glowing coat

And a mare who won't let her fall, or run free

On spindle legs only a step away

And we must take it easy, let the world revolve

Without our shared skull as tiktoc clock

Measuring the shortage of Purina

Heeding the vapor deposited by fear

That clings like tar (barnacles if you are nautical)

Or monsters if you've emerged from the subterranean,

For there are demons at every portal, treasure

In every moment, pearls of inestimable price

Beyond the reach of all but the intrepid

Who care enough to seek -- at an opening of cave

What draws one in? What compels one to explore?

It's something so familiar, you know there is an answer

At some further convolution, where faith and the forks

Are one, and you could be anyone, that is your decision,

Your one job. To remember, is all, that sweet bird

Hidden in the trees, and rabbits under cars.

A hawk appears to squawk, then disappears

With a message to share what you've remembered

And the rabbit munches the grain beard of grass,

Gentle with fear. Now we can only see what isn't there. 

The filly I'll call Midnight was sprawled now in the hay

In the late sun Chinese restaurant, 4 days old, already

Tearing it up on the turnout, but Mama's Mt. Rushmore eyes

Fixed at all times on what doesn't even move.

Century Plants in Bloom

Pumping gas by the Ali Baba motel

When the world has changed:
We know now the photos of the earth

Are faked, the wars are agit-prop,

The people who run the shows

Not actually people at all. The clouds

Have rolled in from another planet

It seems for good, along with our new friends

From the old mind re-training us, gently --

They are like that frog in the old 

Warner Bros. cartoon -- one by one.

Mothman take the wheel!

Out at the ranch the ice blossoms

Are the season's Phoenician purple, 

But it's the same now as it ever was

Albeit the shitshow's completely new:

The mules are gone, the chickens

Were eaten, and Brio's on stall rest

Because he can't stop kicking at fences,

But the rabbits are out in force

Bringing the estrogen back to Ostara

With the feminine in the air

Waiting in the trees to wake up

At the same time as we do, exactly,

A timeline substantially revised

By the solar flares and asteroids,

Their recent plasma igniting our every cell

To party, in misery's company like before

Or to leap into the bliss of uncertainty

Knowing we are held, by the maternal sun

And all it represents, as light agent

Pressing its release upon our

Temporarily lost minds, the short-term

Memory hole that squeezes our belief

Sometimes it seems now to an infinitesimal

Cell, from which we can resist all we want

But we won't be included in what's all around,

Unexplainable but still for sale

Even though its limited time offer 

Seemed to have expired long ago

Like Easter with its second chances galore,

The egg still waiting to be found

Decades later in the bookshelf, which has

Itself been sold for parts by now, for

All unities false and otherwise

Have been in the process of dissolution,

Because there is only one

As we are starting ... to understand.

There's noise from the Draconians

But I've been given a gold card

To wait as long as it takes

For the inevitable flower to open.

Sasquatch by the Mailbox

The tack rooms are deserted,

A red woodpecker sings

Clinging to the pole

As the silence grows loud.

There is always room for a solo voice

When the stalls are in the shade,

The prints grow deep in the arena.

It's like humans are never here

With the buckets empty, the chairs in sun,

The racks and posts rattling in the wind,

Or that I'm even one, pulled back

From a fly mask, silent with my eyes,

Hearing foreign tongues decide

The higher plan, of which I’m not a part,

The joyous grackles, dropping to worms,

The squirrels running for the fun of it.

Mouths fill with alfalfa, shaking dusty hides

At the parliament of flies that rewrite the rules 

For the few short days they are alive. 

The sky is so clear any one thing could break it.

It's only held together by blue,

Maybe a feather, a quill pen cloud

For something not even a memory

But a thought that it's been felt

Somewhere, the pain of this being,

Never enough, always too much,

Waiting and willing ...

Then one by one they come,

The hay man, the farrier,

The lady with the hat,

Like pieces of me

Mysteriously put in place.

I can't hear the voices,

At least what they are saying,

But the ranch is alive, now,

This invisible hour

With my own being --

How far did I go

To never leave,

To get away?

The hay truck comes up, 

A man and his girlfriend, Sunday

Smiles, offering the timothy

To the mule and donkey

And I, no less than them,

Outside their pen,

Devour what the gloves

Dropped down.