paths.

former trails traveled,
eidetically projected in the back of my head,
sweeping into the sand and bright.

newer paths lay on
sonorous notes drifting through a rough trail,
miles ahead, miles ahead.

souring vestiges
of elderly feelings, traveled past, left winking
in summer waves of heat.

they scrape about,
flinging tense worries in puddles of drought,
asking me to look at them.

lighter thoughts float
up into thin atmos.

Scared treed memories
of dogged, unmissed pasts devolve and curl away.

I stand on a wasteland,
happy for its solitude, searching through salty tension,
padding across memories and memories and time.

I seek a key, a compass,
a guide through these vast deepenings.

Tired eyes of a dusty child, its me at 6,
holding a horsehead on a stick, tattered vest
and a wild west hat.

this has been discarded, tossed at random,
out into the wastes.

I look at myself as I remember and
feel the surge of bare softness
in a patch of grass beside a gray wooden fence.

The trails all lead to me, as I feel a clap
in and of my mind, and realize that I can parse it.
These clear or cloudy memories are me.

stick on branch.

Now,
time is a stick
on a branch
on a thick and
entrenched log
in a swiftly flowing river
It can't budge
the water flows up
and around
the spindly stick,
its slimy now
it needs to be broken
renewal, reentry
to the greater river,
the enormity, endlessly
wide and deep,
yet static is the stick
of our present moment,
hurriedly, encouragingly
our moment bends
and snaps,
free are we
to flow downstream
and to live.

of fate.

Oh fate,
you mighty decider,
how you toss and drive us about
like lithe shapes of tissue,
how you twist and tug on us
weaving us in and out
of endless blankets of
drama and destruction,
as we suffer on
your cruel loom.
But I know your secret fate,
and so I can live my life.
Whatsoever you throw to me,
I might catch it
and make it mine,
and if my lot
fares worse than others,
I live happy still fate,
for still others fare
much worse than I.

Moonrise.

Cascading varieties of malnourished
yellow flood the forest canopy
neath a pallid, shelled dusk moonrise.

A fading orange mountain looms,
the moonlight skirting its base,
and stars shoot, angles zipping in vectors.

Smart tremolos shifting with wind
break the coolness of treetops,
lightness shaking, shifting under leaf.

And now bright trunks are illumed
starkly against blacker corners,
dens of glowing eyes, colder bone.

High thin clouds with stately
slowness shade the moon,
gray-silver on grimy yellow.

The oped sky's eye lidded
and with sickly tone, but
the sight's ray color-gifted,

blessed in fair vision.

Bouncing Light.

I put on my hat I wear each day.
Into my beaten soles I slide feet.

Into my ears I slide bouncing light.
It drives my soles and my hat's guts.

Title, Artist, Album
The song in my head's selfsame
Today, Alive, Alive

Catharsis.

"I've a very analytic mind,"
I said, pouring smooth coffee
into two clean mugs.
"I am oriented towards details,
not the insignificant ones,
but parts that mesh
and form the whole,
and the parts that aren't there,
but contribute to the whole
nonetheless."

"What do you mean?"
she seemed to say, cooly
buzzing, miles away,
sipping my coffee,
sweetning my day.

"Well its just those things
no one can see,
but they're small or innocuous;
they appear to me.
They are there.
That's how I know."

She reclined across the chair
and sighed; a softening breathlessness,
her eyes inside.

Odysseus sees Her.

Stepped in golden sandals,
she appears from behind a tree.
A balanced arboreal frame,
vibrating, emitting arrant harmony.
Sly lengthy elegance,
wealthy in mystery,
her shy bangs drip smartly,
drawn about, circumscribing
a just scape,
knowing and fair,
radiant and rare.
Taut limbs intoning, veracious of their grace,
bright eyes inviting and clever as they dance,
curves of bronze bound in satin,
her opulence conferred through classic study.
A subtle brush, a potent glance,
the journeyed hero sees truly,
his certitude congealed,
in flesh and robe and sight,
is Pallas Athene revealed.

Los Chisos y Chihuahua

Bone dry
clattering pots and pans
the closest star is our own arrogant master
she extracts moisture
tearing deep our sap
our pulsing water
if its dark its hot
if its metal it burns
when she sets we sing
when she rises we die
everything she touches turns to dust
her penchant for destruction is relentless
we scurry in her light, afraid to sizzle
to fry in her tireless war against the damp

endless devious reactions fuel her divine ragings
a great beast trembles
limbs shaking under the fiery waves
a dusty step
and a shuttered gasp
the beast expires
desired by the wicked goddess
to devolve into a pile of frigid white bones
picked clean
a relic of her celestial terror
and the poor beast's short struggle

blighted and wasted, we crawl across terrible scapes
three times the circling vultures call
dead things dangling from their maws
they her bedraggled minions
she the astral empress
how terrible her gaze
how endless her power