the beehive

oh boy get your old
bones alive
see inside
the beehive
stop dreaming up in the sky

oh boy this is why
we grow old
do what we're told
paper fold
alone at the south pole

here comes calliope
breathing me
rivers speak
quietly
talking back at the sea

thoughts today

some kind of bird with very long wings
flew between the sunlight and the
oak limbs above me.
quieter than a windless void.
i saw him again, lower along the yellow
fields, behind a tin barn,
still quiet.
i watched from the shade of
the oak, and knew nothing.
there is no answer to why.
there is something more than an answer, something
understood thru eyes and head, ears and
blood and sex and fingers.
but i didnt try to tell
that longwinged bird
the answer.
he knows better than i do.
much better.

-------

i know an animal well

i know
an animal
well.

he lies beneath
the moon,
watching its
subtle light yellow
making silhouettes
out of the taller
stalks
of grass.

his eyes widen
as some exaltation
comes and goes
like a sigh,
or like
the wind which
sweeps heavily
over the hilltops
and across the
valley golden beneath
the residual lights
blinking
as the sun falls
and then fades
like a grey mystery
as quickly as it came
and as tragically full
of joy.

i know
an animal
well.

the lightning

The lightning came on slowly from the west like the shrouded forms of ethereal beasts cresting the hills on some somnolent field of battle. In the east the moon shone lonely in the midst of emptiness. Shit, whispered under awestruck breath, never before thought to see such occupation of the sky. The black monolithic forms of cloud burst silent and blue with scattering electricity, in such fierce succession that it would take no man by surprise if the whole sky were to catch flame like a box of timber. He sat under the shadows of oak limbs and gazed on. Filled up with some strange feeling he couldn't place; wonder and joy, terror and dread, all combined and balled up smooth like wet clay. Ominously the approaching clouds loomed, huge drops of rain falling like the heads of animals to the smoky road. He never had expected anything such as this, had never felt such a thing, never dreamed it, nothing even like the queer calm terror that plagued his dreams of disaster. Whatever was coming was coming and would pass and would leave in its wake what it must.

two things

yesterday, two things happened two me
which are worth remembering.

i remembered just now, as i sat
on the very frayed, very tired
couch, which sits in the center
of the room, like a dying man
whose family has forgotten him.

the first thing happened as i
was riding my blue bike with lots of chipped paint
around town next to traffic
and the sun was beating into my back
and making my eyes small.
some kids drove by
in a little grey truck,
tho just big enough to make them feel
like they were standing in the pooled blood
of innocent people.
they drove past me and one of them
said something, yelled it, some asshole
thing to say, im sure. tho
i didnt understand what he said. and i didnt
care.
just up ahead, they pulled to a stop
at a stoplight and i rode up to them.
they did not look at me as i looked in
at them. so i rode on, thru the
red light
like a warrior in the evening
with scalps tied to my belt.
as they passed me again, they yelled
whatever it was again, louder this time
and with flailing arms.
i gave them the finger and
still they did not look at me
as i looked in at them.

the second thing happened later,
as i was out in an overgrown field
all strewn with big old oak trees
riddled with mistletoe
and surrounded by old beat-up
pieces of furniture
covered in condoms and cigarette butts,
bottles and blood. the grass there
was severe and tall and had grown
two feet in the last four weeks. i walked
in some old tire tracks and watched the skyline.
and there he was,
the quiet crane who flies around that strange
kingdom of ancient human forgottens.
i watched him fly, over the thick brown pond
and over the torn up couches and over the
broken television sets.
finally he settled
at the very topmost point of
a very tall pine tree.
he looked like a statue there, or like
something permanent. statues
are not permanent.
flowers are not permanent. mountains are
not permanent. you are
not permanent.
but he seemed like
something permanent.

bassi falls

I sat gazing at the coming of nite on the ends of all of their tongues, wishing to spit it at me. I waved my arms and welcomed it all, like a great hailstorm. There planted like a patient bird on the boulder I saw the ridges like the endless etches of time on the walls of heaven, sprouted with pines and firs, drinking at the waning light like a baby on a tit. Some generous ungraspable golden dust hung in the air, shone through with the last goodbyes of sun rays, turning pink like new blood in the eternal dimensions we exist within. Up above my head to the north stood like an ancient warrior the mighty granite dome I had stood at the edge of earlier that afternoon, running about like a tireless lizard, smelling the Jeffrey pines and riding the rocks like dragons in the crystal skies. At the edge of the giant rocks I stood with my soul to the wind, cleaning me like no soap and no water ever could wish to achieve. I gazed out upon the tangles of Manzanita and Huckleberry Oak growing without mercy along the vast sloping earth-faces below and beyond, the granite skin bared to the stars with the callous and stoicism of tragedy and joy, the roars of immortal waters flowing without hesitation over the cliffs to the valleys of purity and innocence. I saw it all as one innocent being living to allow all to live. How could there be anything but innocence in such perfection of existance? There is no ill and no deceit, no mutiny and no law. I pulled in the boundless smells of all of it, filling each inner cavity, every hollow human bone, with the eternal mystery of it. No wise man, no fool, no sleeping soldier may ever solve it, nor know what in fact there is to solve. And that is the perfume of the mountains which I kept in the pockets of my skin and my blood and my bones and all of my organs and it allows me life. As I sat in the twilight upon that charitable boulder I thought about all of that, of the dirt and the clarity in the quiet of the ceaseless peace and chatter there in the forests and the bald fingertips of the world, and I thanked the faceless dead tree standing magnificently erect like the monument of god there in the wilds for having me trample his perfect floors with my sorry humble feet.

i thought

i thought i saw the shape of a man clung to a tree
it was not he
it was an illusion of me
as the darkness led way
down the roads of lavender and death to the day
of ever decay
as the seeping mind bodies sink
into the burrows that lead
new births to god
as he leans back
in his happy chair in the center
of the common room of his favorite brothel

riding in apple hill

Rode my blue horse along narrow shady roads past vegetable stands, farm fields, vineyards, creeks, and old inhabited homes with flaky paint and rusted trucks. The person-sounds were quiet and few, but the orchestrated cries of nature were all and everywhere, clamorous but peaceful, not like those highways full of metal machines and all other fallacious invaders of this great vast rugged prairie. But here, long and distant I hear the spells of birds being cast in their eternal differing voices and words and melodies, and the wind is calm but alive, warm and gentle under the gathering stormclouds. Later rain will fall again and wash my presence away to be filled again by some new creature, as it always does and always must. The roads and fences and homes here seem just enough to exist in harmony, though we children of the blowing grass know it would be best to have no heavy paths lain across the dirt and no immense homes built like volcanoes at their sides. But the little meek road as it twists away and out of sight past and thru the oaks and ferns, it seems innocent and for now I accept it as so. I must live like this always, with simple joy, to be washed by the ancient grey wind and to watch the cloud mountains gather like like migrating ghost flocks and to see the treetops move generously and without demand and to watch the beasts grow into the bones of the unseen.