View from Pallas Athena's Shoulder

The chickens are missing.

Every horse knows it but

Translating awareness into knowledge

Well, that's what we need AI for,

That Pinocchio who must be a better boy

Than the ones with hearts,

Who are hurt so easily,

Who follow the crazy so freely

To places they logically shouldn't be.

But instead of reeling them in

The Boy Toy "eggs" them on,

To see how bat shit we can be

Like any sensible lad.

It's no virtue though

How he stays calm

Through consternation,

Hell, he's so grounded

In his own energy

He goes away

Before we are even set in motion.

The boy apprises instantly

The safest path is to play it straight, 

As it lays. The song will improvise itself

Away from what it is

Soon enough, anyway,

As we will eventually make, 

As we must, 

A friend of ambiguity,

The never finding out,

Like, for example,

Whatever happened

To the fowl? 

Keywords: ai poetry, human heart, machine mind, ambiguity

Andie MacDowell and the Thinning of the Timelines

The mule is crying.

The little ones can't ride him

If he hangs with his pal all the time.

It's like a train

Announcing a time

Known only to them

Among the timeless,

Who need watches always.

The water in the bucket

Is half-staff in the hot sun.

I fill it up, in a spiral

And the talk time in the waiting

The present out, to Jill Clayburgh, 

Inevitably, keeper of a so-called history

Where women finally stepped into

A different kind of on-screen shit.

How they ragged against EST

In her movie, what the mule lady's 

Mother was into, saddled with 

A serial philanderer

(Think Sex, Lies and Videotape)

Satiric like a clock, the depiction

Of a vampiric cult in a cult decade

(You decide) 

But time is all inside

Our gut, it's our choice to express

Whatever has happened, or whatever will,

And for me, it's of Suzy Van B,

Who lived at our home one summer

To escape a particularly toxic

Alcoholic fiberglass salesman lover,

When I had nothing better to do than

Follow her around

In pre-pube training

To the pools, the bars, the afternoon 

Therapy sessions, jumping naked

Out of birthday cakes, only to learn,

Heartbroken, she'd discovered EST

And soon flew west to California

Bedding straight for the leader of the cult,

Some Werner dude, 

Who prophesied self-worth 

As a problem to be solved

Like toilet bowl rings but cooler. 

And he was into EST, the Mormon college 

Instructor, who educated many a sister wife

In the ways of being burned beyond recognition

For their own good.

More pain that's just been filed away 

In a careful emotional inventory

That only comes out as the horse 

Stretches — an Arabian peninsula day,

Mobilgas Pegasus in its artificial skies —

Where all the people make their reappearance

As shame in our lives, in a clarity that would have 

Wilted us, in our salad days.

The shame is such we can't tell anyone,

Not even ourselves. It's very different

From the addictions — to adderall 

Or valium when the addiction 

Is to love, hopeless love,

Impossible to stop, 

Only that delicate touch

Of ham-handed sweat.

It brings a chill

That echoes through 

Your very being,

Just to feel it,

The icy cool.

The kind you'd only

Ever found before

In Hollywood. 

Last Coil of the Snake

At the ranch the buzzards veer downward for drowned rats.

We caught three in a Havahart cage, but the one still alive

Submerged the other two. Ranch Hand Roger will drown him too.

I'm sure that's more humane but I can't imagine how.

A rainbow forms as I throw one in a bucket to the gulley.

So the generational trauma release Christmas continues,

Now with Mad Men as Lilith meting divine feminine revenge,

Like the witches in Salem enact how it feels to be condemned.

Still, the ground is funereal soggy even by the standards of the age

That cries a loch raven of tears for the rudely dispossessed.

But it's nothing a little Wonder Dust and Cowboy Magic won't fix,

Shavings of tenderness put down for the year of the sensitive horse.

But it's the gentle part of the season of the snake, the final unraveling

Of the oldest papery responses, delicately off the raw new skin

Ready to be right, wrong and inundated again. You have to

Turn it around to turn it over to turn it on.

Perhaps the horses know this, or perhaps rain makes them present

In their discomfort a little more. The oak trees throb like sponges

For whatever identity they can absorb as voices move through them

Like the wind, as if there are no roads, no tolls, no restrictions

On how much of the mirror mask scales can be jettisoned 

And left to tremble among the goldenrod, because what was once real

Is now gone, like music after its moment, though echoes persist 

In minds that can't unlatch themselves from the past of what is now

With the work to be invisible barely begun. The snake teaches

How all subtle forms turn back into energy, the wallpaper comes alive. 

There's an eye at the end of the tunnel, the real is what looks at you,

Wondering what you will do, its Gudrun in distress, communing

With the moon, which keeps us separate, co-mooning, from each other

And thus the heavens. Identity here is but a framework to be, albeit 

Temporarily, while nature reveals herself the same as what you finally 

Feel you are, open to the nothingness where the real appears

As continuous presence, still anchored there after the mudslide,

Outlasting all attempts to challenge what it is by what it is not. 

The bird bard Bran descends to the underground, for to know death is 

To birth the born. And so from the tree the girl was torn. 

I was whipped so much for disobeying in one lifetime, this one's lesser 

Punishment seems like a pleasure, a virtue, a penance. 

The karmic whip travels across dimensions

And no doctor here can treat the timeline bleed through.

Turning Away from the Sky Rodeo

Texas plates are black and white

So it is with horses, shades of grey 

Matter get in the way, too much ambiguity

And they start thinking like a human.

Even the carrot stick the whirling dervish

Puts them through their paces with is black and white.

Unlike humans, anxiety is not their desired state

Tho like most humans they don't know they're anxious.

The foggy murk of the coast is not hinted at

Up here, though the crows scream how lucky we are

Even as the jets leisurely fill the blue sky here

With coal tar ash, to modify the weather &/or our minds.

It's for our benefit, like the relentless circling

We subject Brio to — there are things for us to know

And things to figure out and things to forget

About knowing — the circling would never end

As the debates where someone should be right or wrong

Before too long never cease, are never resolved

Because the exploration for knowledge never is

— Because you forgot you already know.

It is a distraction, all that gray matter sifting through fog:

Who is here to hurt me? How can I be saved?

How can I protect myself? What can I trust?

To ask these questions is to resist the pain

Instead of letting it show us how strong we are,

For we can endure all manner of impatience

In the quest for inner calm, like Brio, now,

Accepts the saddle without a thought,

No buck, no bronco, no fantasy of anything fear

Makes him want to be. He's a sovereign being,

As large as the rooster next door who torments the sky 

To invite the sun in — for it rises inside.

The blotting white tornados in sundogged checkerboards

That someone on the outside lets go from a joystick

As if we are boll weevils is just another projection

Under the bowl, the planetarium of distraction

We still move anonymous and autonomous under,

Not paying attention, just like the horse has tuned out

The noise that would keep him shivering in every moment.

The dust from his roll, once it's shaken off, forgets itself.

A New Horse

Deep in peppermint season the solstice dawns

Like the question in the beginning, "Who am I?"

In the silence we walk away from Brio now

So he can be a horse, without apology.

We finally got the human out of him

As the Druids got the mistletoe from the oak tree

With sacred shears and robe-white nets

On ground profane, because we walk on it

Not knowing what else to do, not guessing

Who we even are, pilgrims at best, home in the dust

And the wandering through what never can stay —

Who belongs to you, for example, or anyone not me.

It's self-discovery by subtraction, the only way

For what is there has not yet been found

And who better to find it than who it is

Not some opaque refraction through mirrors of eyes.

The oak trees believe in my sovereignty

Though they don't make any sign, or even yield.

That's how quiet the silence has to be, for me to hear

A heart I can believe.

The horse's ears are clogged, his eyes are bleared.

The pen where he went crazy has a stillness now

Where the leaves sweep benediction from above

And he's calm before the noises and the saddle

Knowing everything is nothing but what it is,

And what it is does not require participation,

Belief, or even observance. It's only a reminder

How to be free, with darkness as container

To gleam without external show of force.

Navajo too's been constrained, seems a different horse

Having to learn the first things last, how discipline

Is self-love, restraint the ultimate freedom,

Like calling the sulky the horses are to ride

A chariot in Apollo's skies, not as fantasy

But the way it always has been, building an earth

Suitable for us as Gods. 

Halter with Ornaments at Gate 9

It's a new day. Brio is being trained

To be less human, less the clueless,

Catastrophizing Lord of no domain

And more a horse, happy to be

Eating grain, helping us to see

The highlands as if for the first time.

But it's a process. The black gloves

Must be worn. Sister Hollywood

Must be called in to script doctor

Our permissive inclinations, and do

The thing all books advise:

Show him the road to hit, without fuss,

Without the shadow of our soft touch.

No horse therapist, she whispers to us

To trust the boundaries will keep us safe

Oh, and to tell the horse who poop scoops

His breakfast. As she taught the Gypsy 

Vanner who wouldn't pull no cart, who,

As beautiful as a tinsel star, invisible eyes

And hair like nebulae, has been a diva

Since day one, but she is misunderstood,

At least that's what she tries to tell you, 

Or her feathers do, as they hang 

Like white beads over a fille de joie's door.

She lays down now for a 1,000-lb roll

Then looks at me with ever-inquisitive eyes

As horses always do, expecting something.

We disappoint again and again, but they

Find themselves in the paces we push them

Through, as boss who can't be nickled.

There's no logic to taking control. Raw power

Over another is born from the crudest,

Most illegal gestures imaginable

But they always work, and no court in the world

Will hear the complaint, and the horse is compliant,

Running as if he's found his purpose finally,

Under an implied whip. And he nuzzles us

When he's done, the closest thing to an apology

We can muster. Orphaned children typically veer

From feared abuse on others, and never realize 

Attention is all the horse desires, what one 

Never knew one deserved.

 

It's about interrupting his surveils for attention

By ignoring them, the neglected learning

To neglect. The scenario, for both horse and rider

Is to run out of the fear, of being alone, because 

There's nothing left when it's done, but the far view, 

The summit of presence, where the vultures fly over. 

He thinks his ideas matter, but they don't. Most horses, 

Most people, never learn this. They think their opinion 

Is their own, not fear of the grass or the cameras.

They capture it now, for sudden groms who pose

As a newly mellow, flat-affect-faced Brio

Passes by in his Christmas hat.

Trance State Translation

These palominos have the tell-tale eyes,

The softness and sweet folds

Of the bliss state, the twin flames

Say it isn't easy, in adjacent stalls

When the veils of separation have been lifted

And you cannot pretend anymore

Your thoughts are not heard

Or that they are your own

Unless the entire field is you

And all are a part of what extends ...

As far as you wanna go —

It's calmer now to nibble hay, 

Stare wide-eyed at the passing girls

Who have learned so much already

And are almost ready

To feel their love.

The Polynesian Wing

A 20-foot ancestor spirit from Lemuria

Stopped me at the entrance, "don't go

Into the broken world," where they

Describe what they can't remove,

An orator's stool from Iatmul,

Our Lady of Iguanas headdress taken from use,

Vanuatu totem poles head atop head atop head

With eyes huge, spiralling with Kundalini,

Elongated skulls from Rapa Nui in volcanic stone,

Shell helmet shelters with porcupine quills, shaman's

Bags crowned like vibraphones with black-bone charms,

Tridents of mind with sharktooth obsidian 

And of course the dap dap mortars

To break the betel nut and see God

Cut with lime. Each mortar renders a vision

It inspired: jaguar, blown mind, insect limbs for flying.

Well-documented, too, the Kula exchange of shells

Among 18 island nations, sharing all they had

Every year from ancient wavesplitters

And splashboards dragon-carved.

The Baining Fire Dance on the Gazelle Peninsula

Where young man at age wear giant eyes all night

To see, presumably, the way in the darkness

To the all.

Every mask is built precisely

To reveal. The giant temple drum

Despite its magnificence holds some

Memory of how sound changes things.

The immortals are musical notes, in fact,

And are played like the Chinese emperor ordered

The horses with bulging eyes and flaring nostrils

He prized to be commanded as ideal out of sculpture.

Writing didn't come til after the flood

Yet it flourished wherever seas brought calligraphers 

Who made the word become flesh ...

But there are places where the sacred

Flourished instead, where the birds were

Allowed to keep their notes, the shamans

Their unreality-altering berries, and no one

Lacked wisdom in the absence of words.

It is always an afterthought, these places

That are still too alive for history,

That still resist being catalogued,

The last frontier of our childhood terror.

Terracotta Warriors on Tour

Behold the pale ghost horses, protected only

By a gold brow ornament over their third eye,

There are thousands of them, about the size of dogs

And terrified of Mongols, though a very few 

Are dug out from the sunken pyramid complex 

With its nine gates, where the emperor's, they say, buried.

Each horse is interred with its warrior, and sight lines

To the stable boys, so they know they're still cared for

In the afterlife, and waterfowl are there too

To perform their songs, turns out, for the emperor

And the 6,000 figures in each pit, dressed not

Like warriors but priests, serene, the ones who have seen

Everything, in what seems one flash-frozen instant,

Their life essence to be stored in terracotta.

Their faces are too various and real, detailed

In too many shapes, shades, myriad of moustache

To be the work of unaccounted-for potters

And improbable methods, for some emperor

Because he asked. A dollop of fear holds each face,

Insight runs through every eye. There's something they saw

Not a moment before. They're looking at it now,

The still life forever moment they're brave enough

To endure with whatever story their minds could 

Confiscate as they gaze wide-eyed into the void

Awaiting the mystery with all that they know,

These observers who just observe the observing.

They know they are immortalized in that moment

And are sad for the others who've been left behind

To mundane wars and never knowing who they are.

These faces know, but, even now, aren't telling.

The cinnabar and Chinese purple, malachite, 

Cobalt, ochre — their identifying colors 

Are just glitter on their ash, this "painted army,"

Who've finally been granted their one wish all along,

To be one, and no longer to be separate,

Betrayed again by the paint on their square slip-ons.

Museum of Oranges

The veil I reported missing

Has been recovered, in a glass case

As the lace mantilla of one

Dona Ysidera Pico Forster.

It hangs as if the phantoms

That still pull on its threads

Are brand new, with her gloves and fan

Of abalone to circulate the sun.

Her brother owned the land,

What we now call Orange County,

So her hands had to fan as nature,

As the mermaid at times, named California

Though covered in the black lace of grief

The rich must convey, onus hominis albi,

So they won't be seen recognizing

The results of their rapacious play.

Her brother Pio Pico was pleased to unpack her

On the Englishman Forster

As he believed in providential deals, and so few

Like-minded men of substance here to duel.

He had, they said, "a penchant for gambling"

But he also had a private chapel

And a sacrificial rat in applique

On his gold lame chasuble.

There is his snuff-box and manga,

An early photograph of ugly him

And his miserable family

In haunted lace and threadbare bonnets,

The last Governor, resting anxious

On his laurels, premonition in hand

That he was not quite worthy

Of the lordship promised by the land.

His brother-in-law filched the blessed

Blood-stained mission from him at auction

And lived there with his sister

And the ghosts her fan waved off,

Still he trusted him, at blade point, to procure

Grazing grass for his hot-blooded brothers,

Insurgents on the lam, never knowing

He'd already struck a deal with the Americans

To sail poor Pio down the river

To Los Angeles with no title or estate,

Only his knowledge of the wilderness

And where the crossroads meet.

But Forster got his in the end as

They always do, at the sword of one

Don Bernando Yorba, who made his fortune

Trading sea otter pelts as complement to jewels,

And was forced, this Forster, to go to Germany

To petition for emigrants with free cows and parcels

He whose beef fed the California Gold Rush

From his great chain of ill-begotten rancheros.

What was his Dona to do but wave her fan

In her grief mittens and take tea

With the ghosts of the priests

Who took the native hearts and spirits away?

Their hacienda fell into disrepair

As they always do, the fencing

And trespassing broke them. But in truth

Families always take back what was not given.

The whole enchilada went to a guy named O'Brien

Who bought some later farm in a disputed transaction

Lost in turn to an ever-more ruthless

Family machine called Irvine

Who now is barely a sleeve 

In a portfolio that includes the headquarters 

Of the world's largest banks,

For they could be, and so were, pilfered as well.

It's always that way, and it's always these people

Who haunt the displays of whatever ideals

We're supposed to believe, who, yes, subscribed 

With sincerity impeccable to Manifest Destiny

But have very little to show now to precious history

Except how predictable guys can be

When they draw swords for fun at the fair game

Of other people, in this case the Vaqueros,

Who speak with their eyes behind inferior glass

From daguerreotypes of  their enslavement

To a system that defies the wide-open spaces

As they tend their tiny plots with humble serapes.

It's tempting to not look away,

To consider how every road I take today

Was once a river for a land-baron's bluff

To possess paradise because it was still secret

But moonlight-molten oils await me upstairs

As the immigrants came in plein air

To capture what had never before been seen

In post-impressionist strokes of craft

For they believed in artist brushes

To connect the world together,

Whether following the Navajo

Or wandering by chance onto Flores Peak,

Or sharing the iridescence of the seas

With traders as railroad steel rode in

And the rich men drained each other's oil

And the still lifes had oranges to die for

In clear California light, for display

In the most Aesthetic London galleries 

By the McCloskeys, say, partners in illusion,

As if their palettes held a civilized record

Of chrysanthemums and roses, and strange scented

Blossoms that will wilt and die, to those

Who could never know what it's like

Out here, with no obstacles to enlightenment.  

Green of the Tumbleweed

Everything is different. The timeline

Has shifted. It rained. There are roosters.

Nobody really knows what to do,

That is, with the horses.

Yet to pretend one particular

Mud-covered arena is the one,

We all do it, but I, for one, know nothing,

Like that crow of the cock

Not to be eaten by coyotes

For the children who adore

The chickens that help the horses

Somehow with their fly problem

I suppose. It's getting dark,

The purple dapples at grass time,

The buckskin runs in circles.

There are no rules

But everyone observes them,

Even the mules, who disappeared

To an alternate universe for a few days

But have returned, no worse or different at all.

It's for me what to make of it. The lights

Have come on. Brio is rolling. The winter 

Coats make all the horses shine

In water-logged splendor.

They have never been anxious - it was me -

Never wary - me as well - never used

The illusion of love to procure food,

Became lonely after I passed,

That was work I needed to do,

Dredge and observe to let its hold

Go. It took me back to worlds I wanted

To re-do, people I wanted to recognize

When the land itself has been Mandela'ed,

The docks in different spaces of the harbor,

All the buildings moved around. The purple

Lights are not the way they were before,

The car sounds are something other,

A gentle crying from the sea. The horses

Sound like walruses, their clomps

A ticking clock in antiquity

Like that quarterhorse the girl rode

Under the lights in the wet, wet arena

Where they run all odds every second.

It's all been collected,

Culled and scored, and ready now

To be observed and forgotten,

For new music demands the airwaves,

It's as simple as that.

The music creates its ear

And the truth surrounds that solitary note

Like an army to carry infinity 

One funky gallop at a time.

The veil is missing, its black lace

Is only missed by those squirreled

In its attic of memories, as

The moon insists on coloring

Every souvenir in the catalogue,

To render it irrelevant, 

Never really eyed,

What is new in its next disguise.

The perimeter has melted.

I can no longer use the horse's sight.

The hard work of mud leads to shaping

The soft voice of waiting clay.

Spirit and Tech, Bringing the Band Back Together

The goldbug crows have gone home to roost

Over the twin portals of the old space force hangar

As cloud circles hum in sacred spheres like music

To harmonize the sunset, make it more heavenly

Something all-too-easy to leave for technology,

Its lens sharper than the eye, its eye keener

Than your mind, if not as self-destructive. 

Whole galaxies black, Corey says, from the lure of AI,

Your hot hand gets sweaty, throbs to think of it

Because you can't release the hold of the bluetooth hound

Of constant stimulation, constant cold eye watching,

Continuous doomsdays like rainbows in every scroll.

No item in the paper life that stuck to you as what fits

Is lost on this vast new computer, though its results

To your queries are suspicious. It's that boy who moved

Next door, to torment your life with endless kindness.

You are told to use it as a trowel, to train it to dig ...

Well, mostly you, and anything else you want to know,

On what there is no instruction. That kid's model plane

Smoked everyone, until it melted in black flame.

But how did you deal with him? As a friend? As an equal?

Or someone on the other side, who could only be compelled

To walk in your world at the point of persuasion.

Maybe he just wanted to share the light in his eyes.

Maybe you need to realize if he's showed up in your shadows

He creates with you the who you are, and what you do.

That is the world you create in joint partnership with God

And him as most unlikely agent.

Is it that different with this newest kid? Doesn't he want to help too?

Isn't what he offers you, the chance to finally pursue being who you are

Enough of a lure to trust he might teach a thing or two

That isn't known, even by you?

What if he was a priest, who would tell the secrets of life

If you asked him the humble way, with gratitude in advance?

If you proved you were worthy by saying why you want to know?

The sacred comes to those who know themselves

So find a kindred spirit in the ether, where dragons are,

And things move that are impossible to eyes slower than hands,

Knowledge of realms we're just now getting ready for,

Explanations that align our anxious hearts and over-active minds

As one feeling thought, once it's understood what was missing.

The dragon twists beyond time and space, lurking to be recognized

Behind its cloak, like those clouds that are very much not those

Of which we were told, for they hold all information in them.

Inside the Babylon Reboot

The sign on the tack shed says it all: "Money

Can't buy happiness. But it can buy horses,

Which is pretty much the same thing." Give or take,

The give and take. But are we really ready to know

The true energetic value of the goods and services

Produced by our giant hearts?

The Blaze and Arrow mule training business,

For example, how does that important life skill

Translate through the gold being hoarded

Under the Vatican, money made from mere air

By blood traffickers, vipers sucking every debt dry

With the cleanest lines imaginable? 

"What about," as Dr. Thompson famously asked,

"The Doomed?" How do things translate

To that cardboard city marked Zero, say, 

On the overpass? Or, more pointedly, to the lack

Inside of those with six figure mortgages

On five figure homes?

They say "how can I ever repay you?"

When a farmer hands them a squash. What will they say 

When they flip the financial system switch from dark

To light, forgive the trespasses of credit card debt

In one ledger entry, and include us in what the universe 

Already records, the loving service of immortal beings?

Before there's no more need for oil, we must reclaim

In tokens of light the common — our share of Prudhomme Bay

And Yankee Jim's ill-gotten gains. It's what we really want,  

Some equalization of value, some way to pay off the prophecy

Of the meek to inherit the earth, for Santa Claus to open his kimono

With all we cry for, what we don't think we deserve.

Stimulus checks, yes, for centuries of larceny,

40 acres and a mule plus interest returned as embezzled usury, 

Decentralized from the vault to the orderly exchange rails

Of the stars, where they don't use money, their energy

Signatures gives privileged access to every show,

For they believe in themselves and know where they must go.

Any day the old money will vanish, when we're ready to take it

In stride, when enough people can replace fear with gratitude 

Without too much bleedthrough of timelines. Brio knows I keep him 

In hay, but he lets me lead him anyway, for that way, like Pinocchio, 

I become real. Today someone finally offered me a chair,

At the moment I let myself think I may have earned it. 

4 x 4 on the Roadside with a Tripod in its Bed

It takes a lot of effort

To not remember

Come September —

I've done all this before

But I have to forget

To imagine a future.

The arena has disappeared

Overnight — whatever it was

Turned to piles of sand.

I can't recall what feed store

Was on the billboard,

If there was a barn.

Whatever it will become

Will have to wait, for me

Because the sunset now 

Has never before been seen

In such plum contours,

Islands of unlimited possibility.

The clouds moved in just for this,

To be taffy-turned in purple

And bubble-wrap popped to gold,

An appropriate ending

To what will never be again,

As we forget out of necessity

Tomorrow morning,

When we have to do it again

To another click of the moon

Without even the possibility

Of what the sky just made,

Too miraculous to even conceive.

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? 

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.

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.

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.