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 to endless suffering.

“Who is your master?” The lioness asks,
As the question always is, but there are
Many titles piled before God incomprehensible
But no answer that works for both
Erroneous and Holy – 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,
Vow to save the doomed 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 a pinto and 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 hypnogogic 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 are in 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.

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.