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 day 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 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 its all because, the LAPD horse whisperer claims,

The prey made a deal with its predator, 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, 

Not even noticing how that stamping on the fence

Liberates enough discomfort that any shaman

In the vicinity could feel it in the pipes ringing.

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 know that we're 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 its planting. The 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

And 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, whoa how effortless it goes

Once heard, once we feel it is the one pain, the same

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

Can always choose to be the center of the world, now 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.

All High-Fidelity Translations Aside

I light the sage

And literally create

God in the sky, 

Real only in my belief -- 

That's the revolution,

The real altar of belief,

The thing to view

Is you.

Can you reverse the charge

Of the entire cosmos

To find that tiny seed

That has it all?

Or should I be

Like Brio,

One apple and enough

Foam to breed a Venus,

Every moment

Is a choice,

That's the thing.

The world exists to be seen,

Other people exist

For your mirroring,

The holy obligation

To accept these gifts

As gifts,

For every universe

In every cell turned

To bring it to you

Without complaint,

Without confusion,

For you are the end of the search,

The alpha and  -- the omega,

The black and the white 

On the cookie

Traumatized or amused

In the New York minutes

By the bird song

Of cab horns,

Every peep for attention

Measured, to infinite degrees.

So broad is the experience

In the band where you landed.

Nothing is lost,

Nothing went missing,

Nothing is real

But the moment of contact.

It can only be love

That doesn't come from you 

Exactly, nor does it come

From anyone you long for.

The only thing you can know it as

Is truth. 

Sundays in Taiwan

A piece of spiritual journalism

I arrive at the purple yang gate. The lioness asks
“Attain the Tao how?” I’m immorally immortal
Now, but I talk around the treasures
At the thunder entrance, before the 8 divisions
Of divine dragons in charge
Of my cultivation of self-nature.

To restore my innate perfection
Is surprisingly hard
When I’m already perfect
And don’t know it.
Heavenly decrees are needed
To transcend to what you already are.

Red purity and purple virtue
Are used to supplement the merits,
By, for instance, washing dishes,
But when the ten lords of the underworld
Execute me for too much karma
What is my … next act?

The punishment comes from heaven
But the pain occurs in hell –
So, how, again, are they not the same?
Who does all this banishing anyway?
Does anything guard Quinguang Hall?
Does it know me … at all?

Whose fault is it
When vengeance is silent,
Repentance inherently insufficient?
That’s a note to match with my heart
In the first nourishing room
Where habitual nature is cleansed.

There are those who already wear
The purple robes and golden crowns,
Who everyone admires from afar without
Ever knowing what the fuss was about,
What brought the honored escort
Not the one of endless suffering.

“Who is your master?” The lioness asks,
As the question always is, but there are
Many titles piled before God incomprehensible
And no answer that works for both
Erroneous and Pious – the better I suppose
To rectify shortcomings til time ends

In renovation underground,
The cultivation chamber,
Where the Lords of Karma
At every mistake they notice
Further tighten the wheel
Of another sentient sentence

For violations of the social norm,
Sentenced to its judgment,
Hellfire’s torture, in yet another body
Because the one that was released
Craves the endless pain so much
For daring to exist in defiance of others.

The work on what triggers is repentance;
To polish the mind there’s the flying bugs room
And the freezing-ice gate for detailed inspection
Of my meritorious deeds, and a welcoming
Goodness pavilion for punishment because
I can’t see my original being.

I may give a dollar to wash a dish
But is it ego or duty that performs?
Or is the giving formless?
My true, original nature knows all this
Unconditional benevolence, one hand
Not knowing what the other hands over.

I’ve only retained a dollop of
Heavenly instruction, only enough
To make me recognize myself
In other humans … so I can lose them.
Telepathy comes when translation fails,
When the words become impossible on purpose.

Would I do what can’t be done,
Undoom the world
Not with fear of consequence
But gratitude that I even have the chance
To cast all I am aside for the void
Because I judged all my sins to be wrong?

There are some, you can tell by their
Demeaner, people kneel down to them
And others ask them why. That’s all I get
To aspire to, as I contemplate in rooms
For rites learning, merit makeup, where I’d
Visualize 3,000 virtues and 800 fruits indeed!

The mind-favoring pagoda for false pleasure lost,
Transparent monument tower that records each
Erroneous thought, so judgment can
Be passed, on those for whom it is impossible
To reach their natural state of purity,
So easily deluded to think they can.

That’s how deep in our awareness our true nature lies
We believe our evil thoughts created hell
And heaven has the outrageous task
Of balancing, so that we must repent
With gratitude, not by spiritually-charged streams
For too many teachings turn the dharma into venom.

It is Satanic to hold one’s thoughts to oneself
And Satanic to hold to one’s own ideas with others,
For every dispute is with your inner demons
As a test of your mental stability. Before you can
Register as an immortal, the hall that leads to hell
Is the only coherent possibility.

The sincere cultivators ask at this point,
“Are there no exceptions to these seemingly strict
Rules?” But the lioness calmly enjoins them
To be humbly unsuccessful. If you can watch
Your mind, you can eliminate the human mind,
Attain the greater harmony as nothing.

At the Frequency of Mustard Weed

The grass stalks are thick as trees,

The moth flies lightly, as the breeze.

Each taper of mustard vibrates the field

On hills inundated with its yellow

To make it almost disappear

For a moment, as the vapor

Moved by wind shivers and seems 

To wipe the earth slate clean

Until the equation you remember kicks in,

The farm machinery that plied this ground,

The grasses now transcended

In golden seed.

So it is with me,

Bursting star stuff from the tar

As if its disappearance is an end,

And what has ended never gone

In spiral time recursion

Is the stop watch to align,

The ticking tails of the pinto and the mule

Sharing one vibration.

Two grackles dive and spray

Across the empty sense of play

In one frequency of thought.

A blackbird bounces 

On a branch

Like a pharaoh being rowed 

To the after-world

Its eyes reflect

But all I know

Is how to attend the flow,

The mangy trailer cat that demands

The same neck scratches

In the same hypnagogic zone

Under the chin 

As my white king at home,

Who spares me his knowledge now

And his jealousy, which will come

For no apparent reason anyway.

I sigh. The horse tail clocks 

Are no longer synchronized anyway.

The cat remembers she 

Doesn't even really know me, 

A white horse replaces a black 

At the wash bay.

The talk is of rattlesnakes

As seasonal threat, the downside

Of shade, so to speak

But birds are in their music

And the black flies manure,

Where they whirr

Temporary pockets

As random as their bites

Of whatever is white —

The pure can take it,

The discomfort, as experience,

Like old vine Zin.

The grayer among us 

Must be guided

By ice plant blooms,

Gopher holes.

There's one now, with a broken arm

From arching too harshly

From the rattler curled 

Around a tack room saddle.

"Blue Wind" at the Curve

It's the kind of wind with voices in it

All unresolved and whispering

For the fabric of resistance,

That limestone that must choose

On whether to let the water through

Or hold it at the willcall for the people.

It's much like the cops on Santiago

Blocking up the road at one

Head-on collision too many,

The one where the casualties are fatal.

Static comes off with the dust in the brush.

The horses bray like mules in the gusts

For the donkey in heat, each scent evokes

A consequence, as each bluster of breath

Turning in the blue leads somewhere,

A further avenue for deeper reflection

On illusions learned, truths overcome,

Ways of being no longer essential to the mind,

The glass sphere that takes in all of the light

But only becomes what is shadow,

The mask of clothes that become the man,

That fly like scarves now along the road.

The EZ-Go is loaded with shit and hay. 

It still rolls uphill, just so you know.

Horse Medic Under Oaks

The fire horse is lame, can he take that first

Painful step, or does he need more stall rest

To nurse his limp, to no longer tremble

With fear. He shouldn't worry. He has a team 

To soak his hoof in hot epsom salt baths,

Make him lucky or unlucky, his choice,

Frequency of joy, frequency of sadness

To come to center point, to know what it is,

Where the sun's in the middle of the valley,

The place where everything makes sense,

Where one is present with the clarity of

What is, that is, one coheres, becomes aligned.

There's a moment when every photojo

Realizes the woman who won't let you near

Her kid's not protecting her from a boyfriend

But had pocketed the kid for herself

And knows the victim mode no longer works

And neither will the slow news day of 

Driving to the PJs for 3-year-olds to deliver needles

For doritos, 9-year-olds shot dead for boots,

For you can finally see how to live like that,

How everyone has to independently decide

What they want and what they won't abide,

To take the venom of the snake to clear its bite.

Even in the towers, where the vistas are not stars,

They still could be, there's always the opportunity

To not have that, to seek the higher ground always

-- But that is not a decision that is yours to make.

The mirror world was planned, as universal law,

One that even the oak trees here can feel, 

Stretching for some meaning towards the sun,

Shining like armor, each leaf inquisitive

To the feeling self, like all of Mother Earth

Arms at the ready, but not yet knowing what 

To do, and how to reach us, limbs twisting with

The electricity of being, nerves janky

Trying to cope with love and all that it is not

In their stillness and vibrancy, stars flying

In late light around our eyes in the form of 

Gnats and what are flies to God but ... God? 

The Hill Behind Ladera

The water bearer brings the flow but stands outside
Prying with mind its infinite detail the intricate boundaries
Where people are energies of will with no discernible
Access – they live the blueprint as the architect plans.

The fish comes in to say all plans dissolve like false selves
Deflate and castles collapse and dreams slip into seas
So turbid so full of everyone else you can only become that,
Not a future shaper but a shameful reminder of an old door

That still is here, just a grey plywood warp where the clay mine
Used to be, the land still held in its scar, still defined 
By what was extracted. The twin ray chariot rides overhead,
Giving the skygazer's rights to their sovereignty,

No more darkness when we go where we’re not allowed to be
But only if we add what we’ve seen, with our own, undefinable
Wolf cry that aspires to that of the loon, to overcome its truth 
As one’s own, the only one the world was constructed around.

Out in the hidden hills, the polymaths play every instrument
Trying to tame the encroaching wilderness to the viburation
Of a still rising civilization, church steeples on nursery schools
“Grass Fed Beef” on the lush sides of ranches, honey for sale

On the street where Harley riders buzz like horseflies escaping 
Another trap – the Saddlehorn Church campus quaintly reimagines 
The Jesus mask at the furthest remove, where relevance matters
And a purpose-driven life is a service that can be served,

To know you are a freak among the yearlings, who haven’t seen
This show before to know that it ends with the mass consensus
Withdrawing consent and its every creator soul for itself
As the system dissolves, finally seen in transparence, as a system.

Every cup is an adventure on the new frontier. It takes these

Grizzled prospectors to even remember the gold, having explored

Here before, trailblazers for where there is no road beyond 
Because yes, they are escaping from all they do not want

But also arriving in dream to the free city promised by no one
But carved nevertheless as out of the cliff of a forehead
And ranged around the mountain their edge, of civilization,
Experiments in propane and safe sharing in farther horizons

Where the shrubs are in full swirl and bending toroidal
And they fall off the space and time face as the handpan plays
Its hypnotizing rhythms so light can be imbedded
By the secrets keepers – in a way you will never know except

How the woodsmoke clings to the earth aromas
Or tiny bells of new growth knowing it’s only for a time,
All plans come to fruition to die, by extending the mind
To a place where nothing is left – before the pioneer

Inks the idea into form again, in the exile of the priest
At the balsamic, when all has been built, the builder
Has moved on and those left have lost their sense of fun,
The pushers have pushed it too far into realization.

The moment has passed, and what brought it will never
Be enough, for the present passed these ancient vistas,
The hidden sky ridges that never say where they’ve been
Or show where they’re going, only what you want to see.

Brushing Away the Winter Mane

What the horse knows embraces all knowing,

Only in freedom are the circuits joined,

Only in unlimited space can connection's heat

Not need an arctic chill infrastructure

Of holding idea to form. And the horse

Never slows his roll, he groans in ecstasies

Of crystal dust, his gallop scars the stirrups

Of stars, thundering to Alcyone

Two hooves at a time, though it knows it's just

The need of a sequence, not an actual place 

Where something never happened, then it did, 

For everything swirls in amorphous flux

All residues of the one humming as if divided

And trying to harmonize with itself,

All timelines in on the group flex,

To bend the confines of reality deeper.

That's the blockchain we were given

To discover, the timeless wisdom that's become

Our personal assistant, the rainbow currency

Handed to us now more frequently

As our frequency rises to accept such gifts

That are not gifts at all, but basic inheritance

In the soul familia who create with our experience

What we want to experience, believing it real.

The horse is ready, dusted off for another race

In Apollo's chariot, but this time the stars

Are nearer, our neighbors not misted over

But waving to us, smiles on their faces

Like the horses lead the parade, and indeed 

They do, creating betting odds as they take us

Off our slow and burdened-down existence

One GPU-juiced DRAM insert per frame,

You know the one I mean, Sacramento's

First motion picture, of a horse, divided

Into parts by the new silver tech, and now

The horse's been put through full circle paces,

Becomes himself again, and with him, us,

As we experience ourselves as him, which we

Are already, for we have the akashic vault keys,

We like Neo can plug in and know jujitsu

For we were masters of the art not too many

Dualities ago, when dragons roamed the earth

Instead of inhabiting us in the stars, as our refusal

To drink from the Bowl reset the breaker

And we became as free, suddenly, as the horses,

Because we have finally learned above all else 

What the horses tried with their eyes to tell us:

The only good of freedom is serving something else.

The Halcones of Taco Friday

Out the entrance a double-decker carried out carshells 

Whose eyes have just been plucked out, wheels pulled

In sacred death ritual, the glass extracted so that others

May see, any high fidelity picked clean with any bucket seats

Or custom gills or fur replacement upholstery

Left immobile in the picker's yard where the buitres

Sign consent forms to enter and remove any carrion

That can be re-distributed so that families may eat.

A smiling boy guns a totalled Caddy on a forklift

Past the field of rims to get to them, while locksmiths

And Taco RV's await outside to service their necesidades,

These scavengers lured by the art of the possible

When toda esperanza está perdida. The Subaru

We delivered, cleared of title, use and servitude

Took its final ten-mile ride through Stanton, that most

Unlikely town, where the unused game environments

Too go to die: the piano warehouse, the roller coaster,

The lavender sports bar, with Weddings and Funerals

And the Starlite Inn, la tienda de mascotas exóticas 

Where our beautiful but tortured home iguana fue.

We come to deposit it to its angel of rest and a trip

To the Pleiades for taking us out of Natomas

And its model train memories over the Grapevine

To Orange County, where things'd changed not to the good

But one could always start again, fresh slate on the white beach

With the cosas not yet seen: The Philly Cheese joint,

The Naugles in the round, the corazones of everyone

Connecting for a moment in the sun. And the new world 

Demanded new blue Subarus, with no clouds or memories,

Able to take the turbo up the mountain where the Gods

Consent to play with us, because we remember them, first.

The red one to be saved for oblivion wears its pentagram proudly

As it revs to its final stop. It has suffered so long,

Borne the burden of its 277,777 miles like the Uber it once was

But its guts will fall out any moment, and its heart is just one

Acceleration away from seizing. It has been so kind to let us see

The other side of the mountain, and to get there with us, 

However briefly, in our purging and renovation. The car itself

Is a ghost, given for free by a ghost now, trying to help

A little too much too late, and he wants to be let go as well

To whatever star he damn well would chose to go, away from here

Where the porta orinal is freshly cleaned, piezas hang like linens

In the breeze, auto trains stacked in the yard with the violent dead

And our trans cashier who looked like a cadaver with dragon-neck

Tattoo adieu bid us down to our holy number so that AA Michael could

Cry with laughter for how every mushroom thus plucked 

Would plant a seed somewhere else, every person happy to be helping

Move the need along, to be circulating continuously working all the way

Just happy to keep up with madre tierra and her respiración

On this most beautiful kind of morning, this good day to die.

And so death is done, its accoutrements extracted and blessed

Into dust. Is this the last marker, of what had too long haunted space

And we must, when we've reached our experiential threshold, 

Embody the new, what is blooming all around: people unafraid

Of each other, knowing how they fit into the grand design, 

And how they control it, holding the needle of fate

Like a mono de rescate holds pliers in the air. On the way back,

Past the Salvation Army scene of griefs prior from the death

Of a hoarder, life bottled in storage cubes like yeasty bouillon,

The broken lamps, the chairs without legs, the hutchless silver.

She too was laughing from beyond, wishing me luck, thanking me

Again for joining a family I never really left, or so she at a distance said,

The wise one, the one most afflicted. Across the street a giant dog rose

From a Sube dealer roof never noted before, maybe it was there, 

Maybe I, too, had a past, but we are "Under New Management,"

Like Mariner Blue as it cruises Beach to Mariner's Cove home to Banff.

The disputes have not been settled, but the scales have been realigned 

Again. Everyone is even now, and, for now, always will be. 

The new glows pregnant with thought on vines in zero point wind.

They have conceived from every conceivable experience, 

The new fool, now finally consciente, content simply 

To reach for what is, and lay off the what is not.

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 soft, ham-handed

Clammy touch of sweat.

It brings a chill

That echoes through 

Your very being

Just to feel it,

The gelid cool.

The kind you've only

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.