like mountains

we hold back until we can't run away

like mountains over years waiting to be a volcano

there's something here i'm not to sure of

and to be honest it feels better than before

and it feels better every day

Unfinished

I arrive to the wind blowing sand into my eyes. I've wandered here, not knowing where here is and where there begins. The air is dry, and so are my lips. In fact I’d say the creek and my flask are the only two things dryer than my lips. And a self-issued slap to the face catches me as my hand finds no smokes to be had in my pocket. I’m outta everything and far from anything. Lying all around me are pictures of lives once lived but no longer. It’s as if I find myself on Mars finding evidence of Martians. And I may as well be for all the good it’s doing. All the trees are dead, standing at a measly five feet or less. Their shape seems to indicate every inch of their life was unrelenting anguish, all twisted and thorned like the heart of Bonnie or Clyde. These are the trees that resemble the hands of the Reaper; crawl in and you’ll never leave. I pass by bits and pieces of broken humanity hinting at others wandering this dessert too. I’m not the first, and I pray I’m not the last.

As I look toward the horizon it seems almost laughable. I watch it white out as it meets the sky, as if someone doesn't want me to see the horizon at all; convincing me to move no farther. The only thing I can make out are the squiggly heat lines dancing to and fro. The tempo to their song seems to quicken, keeping pace with my patience thinning out. I have to admit it seemed pretty pointless to get to this point, and seems almost cruel to make it so. That being said, I’m here and you know why. This was the plan after all. This is where this dance of ours ends. Go ahead. Please bend low, reach out, and draw your line in the sand. I won’t move. The die has been cast.

It’s here in this wasteland we meet. Here. Where nothing else walks, where nothing else lives. All alone in the void of life; alone in the absence of existence we meet. It had previously occurred to me you might not show. You know…I can’t stand it when someone doesn't keep their word. Even so, I guess I shouldn't have doubted. You’re rather good at showing up when I’m past the point of reason. I’m here for blood; let the games begin.

So listen, let me cut the shit and just lay it out there. One of us isn't walking away, and you’re packing air in your holster, while I have a cocked one-way ticket home; curious since you set this up. You stand there, waiting in a mirror like fashion of myself. Ready for whatever hell I think I have left to muster in my self righteous reckless quest for truth. You  only smile in that cliche deafening silence. My mind turns into a white walled safe room when I think it should be rioting like cellblock C. It’s time the silence ends. I can’t afford anything more than a scuffle right now, and if there was an option I’m too dumb to see it. A smile won’t settle me this time. It may be cheap, but it’s time to crack those lips and let it flow. For a talker, you sure are quiet. Regardless I heard it’s time for a couple of voices to cause a little trouble. Speak! Can’t you see the creek has run dry?! I need you to give a damn.

I’m done talking, you had better raise a fist. Either you take me out back and finish me off quick, or my hands will find that throat, and wring that towel out. The dove and crow let loose.Between the flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder I knew it was over before it began, but I tighten my grip as my breath matches my resolution to hold fast. I pathetically resemble a wannabe cowboy trying desperately to hold onto the bull for a few more seconds. But I have no one to impress, no one cheering me on, this is just you and me. I will not yield, I will not succumb. Not this time. This time you are going to know you have to answer, that you will not leave here without holding up your end of the deal.

With a cherry red smile, I lie here staring into the sky. I think the feeling in my legs is returning. You’re right, simple answers won’t do. I like to think I got a few good licks in, and for a few seconds was on top. There is a simple yet profound gratification to be lying here, exhausted, doing a back float in my blood, sweat, and tears. I have my answer, and I’ll lie here in the pleasure and the pain of my victory wrapped in my own defeat.

ology part un

The head and the soul, two travelers stuck in the same vessel.  Inseparable and completely unintelligible to each other.  I picture them sitting in a fancy leather apportioned train car.  They sit opposite on drab couches.  Unable to converse. One of them has a language of sorts but no voice, and the other speaks but only in wispy dry leaf crackle, in the smooth pale skin high on the inside of his lover's thigh, the full moon's reflection on a calm midnight lake, or fresh new socks on cold feet.

These strangers often agree, although they never know it.  More frequently they are grievously offended by that which the other loves.  So much so, that in a panic or rage one of them will try to leap from the train only to be violently hauled back to relative safety by the other, for neither could bear to go on alone.  Blackbird and bread.  Sand and cloud.  Element and ungent.  Earth and embrace.  No couple  has ever loved or hated as well as these intimate strangers.

Is it so strange?  When they come to a book of religion how can they proceed?  If one is thoroughly pleased the other most certainly is bound like Prometheus on the Rock.

When they meet another it is not one but two more that they must meet.  All four grasping and struggling to walk together and know even the simple truth about the other.  When they are intimate who touches who, and where?

I have no answer for this.  The strangers inside my train rumble slowly on.  They sit across from each other in a finely built and comfortable private car.  They watch. They wonder.  They wait.

These December poems

These five poems come, I suppose, in response to my last poem 'Tuesday' which ends with the simple question: Where are you?  This question comes from and in reference to Genesis 3:8-21 where the Bible tells us that the Lord God was walking in the garden in the cool of that day while Adam & Eve were hiding in the trees.  That singular question (3:9) zeros in on the heart of this new condition that they find themselves in, the condition I find myself in every single day: naked, in need of clothes. These lines are then some offerings that attempt to answer the question posed, a poetry from the 'naked' perspective.

As I was thinking further on why it is that I write at all, especially from such a vulnerable place, it occurred to me that in crafting verse I was indeed not unlike the wood carver, looking at the raw form and chipping away until beauty was born.  It seems artists of all ilks are compelled by this need for beauty and the beautiful. And while this parallel to the carver may be true in one sense, I think in another way that the writing of poetry, at its core, requires a uniquely complicated culmination of varying roles.  It is as if first the poet is a timber cruiser, searching an endless forest for just the right tree. Always vigilant, mind fixed with his crude ax in hand, out some fifty miles into the wilds he marches on.  He goes because, as we all know, not just any tree will suffice his purposes.  It must be quality selection of timber that stands true in a part of the forest he thinks capable of producing a crop of the right shape and design.  A soft and pliable quantity that has grown up under the correct conditions.  In reality, this journey, this seeking is the most essential piece of his work.  The poet needs that path just as much as he needs the raw material, almost more than he needs his subject. But now there she stands, the one that is bold enough to contain his potential work of art. It is then that his role evolves, as he becomes now the lumberjack fierce and strong.

I have hacked and packed out many a desirable 'tree' in my short time as a writer.  The work is both exhausting and exhilarating simultaneously.   But as any decent carver can tell you, finding good wood and bringing it home do not make art.  The details must then be etched carefully with a tried and steady hand. Each phrase's edge sanded into the right kind of shape so as to improve the new born form. Truth be told, I think I may never get there.  That impossible perfected place I can only envision opaquely in my mind's eye. That elusive space where the journey, the cutting, the packing out and all of the finish work somehow fall into a harmonious syncopation, like a song being sung.

And so it was, last Tuesday morning, that I awoke under a new fallen snow almost startled to realize the position of my heart.  So far to the north and bitter cold.  My inner thoughts sounded an ethereal alarm of sorts. My vulnerability so real to me there, beneath so thin a veil.
Where are you?  those thoughts inquired.
"I am journeying naked through the trees," I replied.
"Clothe me... in your words."

A.S.

me writer

i am a writer,
silent and free.
with ideas that crumble
and smear
like cakes
at a party.
The children dance there
with their mothers,
while i am alone
with the writer.

But fret not soul
my mind is not there now
or dancing.
Rather I scrawl
to stay propped
as one of those dancers
whose appendages
have failed him.
the legless ballerina,
a writer
silently free.

so how is it then soul,
that i am now found here?
motionless
and freely silent:
a dancer,
a writer,
a me.

urn

I try one last plea
for you most beloved,
on a bed of goodbyes
in a sea of tongues,

as a savory offering to the gods
and their deaf ears.

Where then I find this final verse
in an earthen vessel tall,
filled with elemental ash
in a desert of the nightfall,

as a bright offering to barren spaces
when eyes are only blind,
what beauty shall be found there,
will beauty there be mine?

So I invoke the never ended
of thee now gone away,
on fields of  ever after
in shroud of fired clay,

as proper name forged afresh
all sound and sight  reborn,
urn thou standing now on mantle's head,
I shall spare no more and mourn.

swollen son

minding my affairs
in an old language
like a young friend
pregnant
beneath a swollen sun

tending my reflections
with a desperate sense
like a worn phrase
lodged
between two large stones

apprehending this resolve
in a precious gem
like an ice storm
freezing
those who stayed behind