The Road to Puyo

The scent of the hog hanging by it's snout from a thatched tienda 
we zip by on rented beat-up mountain bikes and the jungle road to Puyo
all filling up with a longing for something holy and foreign. 

Eighteen wheeled rumble and honk, leaving little spaces 
For tires and legs and raw feelings of spraying rain 
And the tilt of my head and frame to avoid 
the rooster tail whipping up into my eyes. 

A tunnel approaches on la izquierda 
we keep a la derecha onto la ciclovia of octagonal tiles striped lengthwise 
with sopping cobblestone and sometimes gravel 
and sometimes mud and sometimes puddles and sometimes a stream 
that comes a third up the wheel and peppers you everywhere with agua sucia. 

Maple - Fall - Stream (draft 2)

Several hypotheses occurred without evidence:
Openings in choral forests drown in the sun's
utter light, the omission of umbrage, foliage.

A leaf that was holy in its fingerling etchings.
This was no mistake of voracious feeding,
of a scaled pinching insect.

Circuit grazing empties skin
with the sureness of itself as canvas--
carbon detaching itself to find a mate,
a something that combines.

A little bit of every something in the shape
of this leaf, the flowering river waves
dense with shadow, steeped in silt.

The twitching (stained glass workshops)
of the scaled pinching insect manifest
the mouth of God Inside.

The little bit left in-between
comprising strokes.

The left behind composes more
than the glimmer on the stream.

Sunless Morning v2

The morning of the 26th of September

all of the frost was in my teeth and hair.

I had it out the night before with a witch

who claimed to turn hawk's tails

into animal souls and sodden cardboard into their bodies.

The nightwinds blew into howls
as she leaned her crooked back against

a big birch and sang to leaves as they fell.

I had my hands around a dead branch that had fallen

as she flicked her gnarled fingers through the air.

I kept saying This is Nature!

this is nature

not your stodgy incantations, frump

she just smiled and continued loosing letters

into the waning light of the moon.

              This a fortune told
              now this is a spell 

              of some substance 


A talisman she held

above her head and thrust into the bark:

orange wire wrapped around the notches of a cross,

the cross with a loop, copper and steel:

the ankh came from her fingers 

and stuck into the tree.

Cross a witch as she gilds a spirit and it will follow you.

The pine marten switches feet as it hops across the dirt,

I've been still, watching from the window a sunless morning,

watching as it hops along, tracing frost through soil

and leaving snow amid its tracks.

Ritual

Happy as a swale he climbed to the sandy peak and cast eyes to the sweetwater sea before him. The sun was setting on Lake Michigan equal in spirit to his eyes as they followed through wave and spray and gas and dust. Sixteen gulls wheeled through his sight before the Sun met its end beyond the horizon and each one had its feet lifted to its body. The zooming gulls caught light on their wings and swore to the moon as it lifted itself up beyond the layers of vapor. Several stars peaked through abating fill of rosepink clouds meager at their edges, more moderate nearer the moon. The first brightest light met the eyes as a vision filled the mind, suddenly, the visage of Mars appearing glow-red. As rosy fingers gave way to blue nigh dark the breeze carried smoldering pine boughs to the mouth and nostrils, pleasing memories. Turning to see deeply above, he fell back to antiquity glinting from the stars gazing down to him and the fire he had made. Stooped over a dry stake prodding fire with his neck crook'd to the sky as before and before and before man had done to see.  The guiding light below his feet cast for fortunes and dreams, the ones above for fate and season.  Perching as he had below the night above the sweetwater sea with fire at his feet, a timeless ritual glowing around and in him

Sunless Morning

The morning of the 26th of September

all of the frost was in my teeth and hair.

I had it out the night before with a witch

who claimed to turn severed tails

into animal souls
and sodden cardboard into their bodies.

The nightwinds blew into howls
as she leaned her crooked back against

a big birch and sang to leaves as they fell.

I had my hands around a dead branch that had fallen

as she flicked her gnarled fingers through the air.

I kept saying This is Nature!

this is nature

not your stodgy incantations, frump

she just smiled and continued loosing letters

into the waning light of the moon.

This a fortune told, now this is a spell 

of some substance, this the talisman she held

above her head and thrust into the peeling bark:

orange wire wrapped around the notches of a cross,

the cross with a loop, copper and steel:

the ankh came from her fingers 

and stuck into the tree.

Cross a witch as she gilds a spirit and it will follow you.

The pine marten switches feet as it hops across the dirt,

I've been still, watching from the window a sunless morning,

watching as it hops along, tracing frost through soil

and leaving snow amid its tracks.

Life's flesh

I feel it everywhere, the bite and suck of life's flesh at my lips as its juices trickle down my front and the sweetness it can hold is wrung all from the fibers. A fiend's rush to his dope is the kiss I suck from each dull hallway waiting library sucker punch reception room drizzle desked office spacing drear. You pushed me out like a dragging soaking dog from the clean carpet tombs and white-blind bedroom spots of earth flung to the flowers all mashed beneath my heels as I glanced up at a beatific moon shining through the window in your eyes and without it I couldn't show you how I rang so truly when you clocked me that night, with your tongue so tight wrapping itself around my cerebellum's cord and thrusting heart that then I leaked all purple light and have not stopped since trying to hurl myself toward the rawness of indiscretion and in seeing you opening like a lotus first budding at the magic of my mouth and the fire oh the fire you sent from your eyes to mine the very halo sunning vibrant gods from crypto-Roman mountain peaks that minute you walked up to me and felt eager to feel me eagerly that minute I surrendered to the rush inside us both.

Gifting

I've been thinking on something you gave me:

Was it a song?  Was it a kiss?

Was it me that gave you tremors,
the rapid choking breath, anxiety like a vice?

You gave me reason to question
if I deserve someone as good as you.

The yarn we shared has been unravelling
since we met last July and has since
we've said goodbye (over skype, how small)
given way to a lump of alloyed self-reflections

Of sudden shaking hands and ears that won't stop burning
(I know you talk about me)
but most of all a need to flee, to feel free,
to untangle from the bramble that we're both
wrapped up inside
(and may have grown accustomed to)

But all that yarn's now mine--

All the shock and sorry wrecks
of groping for light are good
for the the soul of a Searcher, the lostness,

(my saudade never fades) yielding nuggets
I collect in sincere fear and blindess
will be gems once I'm out the other side

becoming gifts for the fateful present.

Atlas Sound - Union Ballroom 2012

His hair spikes 

like the Marfan devil that he was

Asking for more sound to

Obliterate the hiding crowd's virgin eardrums

Racking the sounds 

upon ssskittering sounds

Sexless whale moans 

And divertive synth bubbles

Slurring his speech from scotch and wiping the residues 

of his lips into the grainy flipper bass notes reverbing into darkness

Blowing up this university ballroom with clatterous bravado

Droneish filamental rattlings

Smooth cacophony driving repetitively through marginal drivers

Every song ending in self destruction.

Campfires

The vodka popped
and poured itself down our throats
so the night sped up like all the good ones do

and until I saw the lotus in your eyes
I was unsure of what would happen next

then some subtext brought us up the wooden stairway
with the copper mobile twisting in the loft above us

and the lotus in your eyes showed itself and
my 18 year old hands trembled to yours but
until I saw the lotus, I couldn't touch your hand

and the Amadeus vodka that had popped and poured, burrowed
itself into my amygdala and I saw
the lotus in your eyes and finally drew your lips to mine

and the feel of your skin was making my ears burn
and then the moment came where the lotus closed your eyes
and we kissed and Jessie ran up the stairs

interrupting in drunken faux pas, pushing herself in,
upset that you were not in good faith
she feeling some obtuse responsibility for you and for us

as if what she felt mattered in the least at this moment
and so that was another excuse

we opened the door to my bedroom and kept our eyes
on one another and now I'm not sure whether or not
but it seems perhaps my eyes had a lotus in them too

and from that night they've never left
a little flower blue or yellow from the cornice
of our minds, our eyes--

little green leaves burstings from the corner of our brains--

some campfires they start easy and
just don't burn down on their own.

plantland parts

The window is always open
for new sounds rattling through, like
yellow blossoms, tangerine and golden
xylophone ringings, gathering leaves
from the tree you sprang from.

I could hear a pine needle drop.
I heard a pine needle drop.
The pine needle dropped, and I heard it.

It's hard to ever say

It's hard to even say what we mean.

The fingers we've crammed  down our throats
to stifle us loving ourselves would be enough,

but wires of our mothers' hair
are wrapped around our fathers' stare,
the bruises from our brothers' harm

all laid inside our chests and backs.
We hide from arms of playground taunts
each haunting us in sing-song rhyme--

Pained reactions to our bald voices,
counted against us in a vast tally.

Each sagging corner from each pair of lips
and eyes rolled and rolled and rolled.

Reticence to speak, the more comforting retreat,
the missed open mouth, tongues bit mid word,

against the stutter
the stammer
the slur

the secret slip, the dreaded tonal squeak.

Its a wonder we can speak at all.

Timequake

I want to be wise
like Vonnegut was

and not feel my life
like a .44 slug

but it's so hard with
both feet on the ground

and always so filled up with
something

like despair but more often boredom
or this detached pondering voice

more than wedding cake from
the grocery store with green frosting only

sweet and deadly for the little
teeth in my mouth, more than plastic wrappings

dripping over ripened ears.  It's just so fast
with an eye to the needle instead of the dress

Load, ready, aim, fire, blasting off
without a notion of the primer or target.

Winter Haiku

The wind and the chimes

and birds chirping. Damn them all.

I cannot hear the snow.

Spiced Tea

He held his breath as she descended
the western stair and the color he knew
she would pick had just peaked through the colonnade,
a slinky grey dress that fell so perfectly
about her hips and in the face of vibrants lips
at the dress's greyness that he forgot again to breathe

and again forgot to blink so stuck and struck dumb
until he found his voice and heard Wonderful Tonight in his ears
and she passed oiling fingers through his bearded cheeks
and kissed the chin as the sea washed through their eyes,
so strange and divine they rested there at the base
of the western stair loving both their lull and fray.

Foxes I & II

I

I want a baby fox for Christmas, Mother--
a red pup curled at the foot of my bed
to yip at the snowflakes and passing squirrels.
His tail would wrap beneath my nose as
he perches on my shoulder while
I study in the Den.  I know the fox
is not a pet but Mother please
I cannot be appeased by a dog or cat
I want a baby fox for Christmas to sleep
at the foot of my bed.

II

a wolf pup plays

with a fox pup plays

with a boy pup plays

with a gun and then learns

how to aim and then seeks

out the fox boy he seeks

out the wolf boy he takes

careful aim then the boy

sees the eyes of the fox

of the wolf boy then whistles

his hound boy he stumbles

to see through the fog

in the woods then the boy

leaves the farm and the hound

for a far-away land

boy he carries his gun

through the jungle and steam

boy he aims at the boy,

boy he takes proper aim

oh the boy shoots the boy

and his bleeding wound drips

boy the boy drops his gun

and the boy dies in vain

and the boy with the hound

and the wolf and the fox

is a man is a man

is a man is a man.  

yes the boy is a man

in a far-away land

he has blood on his hands

now he's back on the farm

now the boy has a boy

yes the boy who's a man

has a boy of his own

and his boy has a hound

sees the hound boy a fox

bearing pups and a wolf

boy a wolf bearing pups

boy that boy sees the wolf

and the boy sees the fox

and he says to his boy

"boy those pups are your kin"

says the boy to his dad

with a glint in his eye

he says "why father why?

why are animals kin?"

says the boy to his boy

"son we all of us die,

boy but some of us kill"

and the boy saw his dad

with a glint in his eye

and the boy was a boy

and the fox was a fox

but the wolf was a wolf

boy and all of them pups.

Frank the Fregan - for Izzy

Frank the fregan foraged for fruits,

for finery and feathery fronds, finding fleas

and fungi instead, some lice for his head

and a box for a bed, but two day old bread
and a lapsing of dread

and the peace of the dead,
the frugal prince crowned,

to his green dumpster wed.

Short story draft

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

-Mark Twain

He was always hyperaware of the unnerving mouth sounds the old people made when they were settling into their easy chairs, or the sagging, smoke-colored couches in the nursing home Activity Area, which of course meant Television Area in 2029. Only its oldest residents were pre-TV, the few born before the old tube and antennae were a staple of every American living room and kids sat around transistor radios or simply listened to cows mooing and the wind over the plains after dinner. The gumming sounds (he referred to them as gumming sounds even though many residents had most of their original teeth even into their second century of existence) unnerved Jeremy because he was afraid of hearing the same sounds come from his mouth as he relaxed in the Ergo-Back Vibra-Seat each night after his shift at the home. He usually got to his beige flat around 8:30, just in time for McGilroy's Celebraslut Hour and a quick session in the Vibra-Seat before bed. He felt the tension drain out, down from the stacking pressure in his spine to the hot spots in his heels and toes that had been carrying him about all day, padding lightly from room to room in the same terry cotton slippers that residents wore, checking daily vital displays and replacing the meal and medication dispensing cartridges. He heard the elderly smacking their lips contemplatively and shuddered, the retired bank managers and insurance salesmen and nurses and chemical engineers, all of them feeble and cast aside by their children, bitter at the costs of maintaining the ailing bodies of their progenitors.

Jeremy was only 31, but he felt twice that age each time he pre-counted the multi-colored pills that would whirl out of the dispensers for each of the residents every morning at 7:30, again at 9:30, 12:30, 3:30, and 7:30 pm. He felt even older than that when he took his own cocktail of tutti-fruity pharmaceuticals at 6, a small lime green one for smoking cessation, a pink, egg-shaped one filled with powder for kidney health, (there was a slight genetic predisposition he was told by his doctor), another egg-pill, this one cinnamon red, for pancreatic function and mood regulation, a large brown one to alleviate stress on his sciatic nerve (another genetic predisposition) and finally a huge, gray-blue horsepill he choked down once a day for possible vitamin deficiencies, any buildup of neurogenic toxins from the other mediations, and apparently his bowel health (this confused Jeremy, since he had been told his bowel health was excellent at a previous appointment, a point he hoped to take up and clarify with his doctor that evening, but the connection on his Dial-a-doc app had flickered as the Tram from Westchester to his apartment in Dorsett glided into a tunnel, and the white-coated figure on his handheld faded into static).

He knew the pills kept him healthy, that they would keep him alive for a very long time if he kept them up, if he exercised regularly, stuck with the allotted daily value of Carbo-Flakes and MeatMuffin that was suggested by his nutritionist. He saw the evidence of his potential for longevity every day. The thing he dreaded most in life was the prospect of groaning each morning as he sat up in bed for pills, the way many of the residents did. It was a low, wrenching groan, almost bovine-like in its inanity. He'd had nightmares with the groan, the tremolo coming from his own throat as he saw himself sit upright in an adjustable electronic bed, the multi-colored pharma-gruel sliding down the dispenser chute into his mouth and muting the groaning, pushing it down inside his stomach with the pills and mush. But in his dreams he could feel the groan even as it was silenced, he felt it push out against his abdominal walls and against the ceiling of his cranium, a grotesque rumble, increasing in frequency to an almost ear-splitting hiss, until he woke up to his alarm, sweating and terrified.

Jeremy wondered if the residents who groaned when they woke felt this way all the time, but the medicine covered it up, boxed it inside like the feeling in his dream. He had once seen a woman named Irene who had skipped her medication three straight days leap from the 12-foot roof of the home into a bin of used hypodermic needles. After he had called the Ambulance shuttle for Irene, knowing full well she had already passed from the shock, he requested a week off, checking the box marked Personal Issue/Stress Related.

He took the time to visit his younger sister Jean and her husband in Brixton, they had replayed old YouHome videos of Mom and Dad and their other sibling Peter, recalling jokes and details of the trip they had taken together to Sanibel the Spring after Jeremy had graduated from tech school. Jeremy's parents had passed in a Tram derailment four years earlier along with Peter as they were traveling back from Mexicali on a short vacation. A monsoon had swept the whole car off the electromagnetic tracks and pulled it back into the ocean as the tidal wave receded. Jeremy had watched the footage within minutes of its occurrence on the NewsPro app his handheld came with, unaware he knew anyone on the Tram. It had made him a bit sad to see the expensive new Tram slide off the track the way it did. The Rapid Emergency Safety function (or res for short) had worked properly, immediately inflating a bright yellow bumper raft around the Tram's exterior, but the designers of the res had not anticipated the reaction between the unusually high temperature and salinity of the storm surge, the electromagnetic slabs on the tracks and the sudden expulsion of static electricity elicited by the ballooning raft. The combination of the hot, salty water and the superconductive palladium-coated slabs fried the Tram and it's contents in a fraction of a second, just as the res was activated.

Jeremy found out later that night from Jean, that Peter and Mom and Dad were on it. He regretted watching the video so nonchalantly as the reporter calmly explained the issue with the hot water and the slabs and the static charge, he regretted not keeping in touch with his parents better, he would've known they were visiting in Mexicali if he'd called them that morning. He would've been better prepared to hear from Jean about their sudden Tram accident. Sometimes Jeremy wondered if the accident would've been better had it been his Tram, whether the feeling he squelched each time he shuddered at the groaning or gumming sounds of his residents would've died with him forever. He wanted that feeling to die.

The last image of Peter and Jean and him and his Dad on the beach at Sanibel slid in front of him on the YouHome app of his handheld as he pushed his apartment door open. He eased himself into the Ergo-Back Vibra-Seat and quietly smacked his lips, groaning just slightly as the ambulating little electroballs glided up and down his spine and McGilroy splattered his high-pitched voice across near-nude photos of movie stars on the television screen.

River Dog

She stood on the unturned rocks

and paddled between lilies,

huffing each breath to expel

the water coming up from underneath.

Sycamore leaves piled down,

flaking like their mottled bark,

green and white, marbled

like her blue merle coat

shedding droplets down.

Cannonball-sized bodies

folded firmly in the rush,

the rapids telling stories

as she lingered in an eddy.

Boldly she dipped her head and paws

to hear the current speak,

a murmured secret carried

through, the yarning ocean's deep.

Settling

The speckled orange of a Marb Red filter

dangles from his lips, trusting its place there

as it has a pack a day since '06.

  If it's brown it's down he says

shifting his bulk around

under crinkling camo. Deer season's

initiation for twelve year olds and

now we are adepts at 18

  Well I ain't bout killin a doe--

a smirk, guffaws

but this late in the season,

you gotta take what you can get.

Thoreauvian Arithmetic

Simplify.³