Eyes for Ghosts

Skookum

2012-01-29T13:20:00.000-08:00

I've lived my life in the lands of the Chinook jargon
Without knowing that I used some of the words

I was born and raised
Down in the lands of the Kalapuya people.
If I ever met one,
I probably thought they were from somewhere else.

Now I live in the high country
Up the Towarnehiooks from it's mouth above Celilo Falls
Almost to it's source:
Up near the high lakes of the Molalla tribes;
West of the Paiute;
Before the land drops to the south
Into Klamath country.

I come from many tribes,
Most forgotten,
And none from here.
My father's fathers were Kemi Saami
In the high lakes and forests of their country.
They lived among the siida families
Where were known as Kitka
Before the Swedish crown told his people
To populate the north
And turned my ancestors into christian Finns.

Now the Saami that remain on their land
Are mostly above the arctic circle.
Many of those that became Finns
Left to settle here along the Wimahl
From Celilo Falls down to the ocean.

Skookum, in the Chinook jargon,
Describes something that is strong,
Dependable, reliable or enduring.
It's used much like my English ancestors use 'stout',
And a little like my Finnish ancestors use 'sisu'.
I've lost the Kemi Saami word,
Though I have gone looking.

Creeks

2012-01-22T13:08:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, I was friends with a girl
who lived by a creek
just as it entered a park.
It was mostly lost in ivy
and blackberry brambles.

Another girl I knew
lived up where a branch of that creek
was barely more than a drainage ditch.
It tried to ignore the street as it ran long,
finding it's way down the hill.

Another, just beneath the hill,
lived by some tracks and warehouses.
Just behind her house a mill diversion,
hidden by cottonwoods and city planning,
rushed live a real river down towards its work.

One, who I often wrote, lived out in a suburb
in the hills on the other side of town,
where a stream came out of brushy grottoes;
offended and reclusive at the intrusion of houses;
Sneaking into their yards under cover of rain.

I briefly shared a house with a girl
Who lived where the channels wound muddily
Through deep ditches in the grass
Waiting indifferently for the river's tide
To fill up their mouths

Then I met a girl
who grew up in the mountains.
In a town trapped against a slope,
by the fork of a river
where it cut down out of a canyon.

But I met her somewhere else,
under another mountain,
where a creek had filled in a sandy bank with gravel.
It had long been her own special place,
but now she visited her mother there.

All those creeks flooded recently;
escaping from where we keep them;
rushing with murky water out into trees, streets, houses.
Afterward, they let back down again.

That's all.

Midwinter's Carol

2011-12-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

When the year has fallen
And the light has gone
Through the cold we wander
Waiting on the dawn

Beasts lie in their barrows
Secure in what they've stored
We must toil all seasons
Uncertain of our hoard

Set aside our sorrows
To cut an evergreen
Stand it by the garden
To point our thoughts toward spring

Children in the kitchen
Craft their new year's vows,
Garlands, twists, and candles
To hang about the boughs

Makes a merry watchman
Standing by the lane
Across the yard we watch him
Warm behind the pane

Light at longest shadow
Warmth for young and old
Bright and green it glimmers
A beacon in the cold

When we come together
On midwinter's night
In the yard we'll gather
To set the tree alight

Bundled wood we'll offer
To build its warming blaze
And wish unto the new year
For strength and length of days

Come and join us as we
Sing around its fire
Pass the drink and lend your
Voices to the choir

Hold the small ones to you
For they are like the spark
That lights tomorrow's fires
To hope against the dark

Summerfrost

2011-12-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

[First drafted in September, lest we forget there was a summer not long ago]

You could peel the skin right off
This gone and wrinkled summer
Crossed with an early touch of cloudless cold
That pulls the flesh in close
From its sun-stretched skin

The waters are drawn down
Stored away low and tight
Far from wind-whistled cracks
Leaving the swollen sugars
Of a long hot summer
Clinging sticky under the surface
Waiting for that first frost kiss

Waiting for it
To get in deep and turn it bad
Stinking like nutmegs, wet and bitter
That you smell all the way up in your eyes
Drawn in, dried out and bittersweet
Like the whole world's a last-call come-on
'Eat me up, before I go wrong'

A sack for catching Death in

2011-10-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

Knot by knot, I'm tying up
a sack for catching Death in.
Half-hitch and half-hitch again,
until I close the net in
to trap the rogue inside.
My fingers found the woven rhyme
(Heave away, haul away)
of a sack for catching Death in.

Sometimes the jute burns the skin,
and sometimes it bites in.
I can spare the weave some drops of life,
I can spend out yards of time.
For that's the trick of twisting line
(Haul away you rolling king)
into a sack for catching Death in.

Don't be fooled if it's filled with fruit
and thrown upon my table;
or at the market, around my back,
low and dropping with potatoes;
or slick with slime and to the brink
with gazing, gaping trout.
I've caught Him within.
I won't let Him out.
You can smell the food,
why can't you hear Him shout?
There won't come a day that I'd be without
(You'll wish that you had never been born)
This old sack for catching Death in

The Silver Pull

2011-03-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

It's time for you to go.

You can't always be trusted to know when it's time,
but I've learned the change in the air.
Metal, sweat, and wood charcoal coming off your breath and skin
tells me you've got maybe a day
to get down to your cave if you only want to use two legs.

Soon the silver will be in your eyes;
and the light. A flush in your skin;
the little tremors and the glisten

Rarely are you still here by then,
because then you'd have to leave without kissing the children.
But when it can't be helped,
you lope out the door with your head covered;
your arms and legs not moving right.

Once, during a cold and leafless young spring,
the kind that pulls on you constantly,
I tracked down there to be with that other you;
drawn by the five senses of your changing;
wanting into that other side of your awareness.

Somehow, I found your trace,
down to the rocky entrance that sheltered you.
With a tumble and fitful reachings I found my way in
through remnants of bird, rodent, cat.
All I found were mats of fur and grass
layered so strongly with the scent of your habitation
that I could smell my own intrusion.

You were not there.

The sounds of your breath and stamping outside
formed up from the silence, now that I'd stopped moving.
Backing out the tunnel, I found you
by the silver light of your eyes,
and your damp phosphorescence in the starlight.

You were dancing.

You pattered, hunched and swayed around your work:
movements of hips and waist and hair all over.
Parts of you gleaming unexpectedly as you turned to me,
as if the dimness masked unmeasured scales, horns, beak;
indefinite in the absence of light and examination.

You were not happy to see me.
Was that the emotion?
Was it emotion?
You approached, and dirt fell to the ground from your hands,
earth-soaked to the wrists.

Afterward we decided I should never do that again;
with no way of knowing the line between me
and my finger bones arranged at the threshold,
or my split thigh bone used to furrow shapes in the dirt.

As the seasons change,
so does your shape
and your place.

Sometimes, in the safety of the day,
I examine the things you've left at a site you've abandoned
to wash or blow away whatever you made:
bone sculptures, dirt maps, grass dolls;
wild twins to the crafts made by the unsilvered you.
But, oh, still you;
really, really you.

I thieve a grass doll meant for decay;
something to link me
to the world of you that only roots and branches
beyond the walls I bring everywhere with me.

I'm a thief, because I know you meant it to lie there
unowned.

Triangle Girls

2011-03-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

Their fingers tink against the cloth-plates
as the fabrics feed under the presser feet.
The constant plink, plonk, tapping
of artificial fingertips like a hailstorm:
metal, plastic and rubber.
Row after row after row of fingers
rumbling under the knocking whine
of 10,000 needles rising and falling.

Each worker is as different as the array
of salvaged sewing machines they operate.
Most of them came in ships from overseas;
the castoffs of economic regress
Others were domestic models;
the castoffs from owners
eligible for upgrade.

Some, obtained in bulk lots at auction,
were second-run commercial gynomorphs
fed basic instructions and placed at their machines
next to armatures, operators, butlers and nannies;
until a government inspector primly requested
that they be clothed
in consideration of gender dignity.

The owners fed instructions to the repair closet
to dress all units during the next regular maintenance
in the various retro womens' apparels
for which the factory was known
(even the andromorphs and isomorphs);
which is how they got the collective designation of 'girls'

Their bodies rise neither day nor night.
Only their left arms feeding and arranging fabric
between needle strikes in the near darkness.
Occasionally they tilt their heads
(a built-in social feature)
to focus lensed, CCD or anthropic eyes
on their right hands moving
to cue the different thread toggles
of the master spools overhead
or on the bin of replacement needles.
It's just a gesture.
Their hands know the locations blind.

The owner and his family float somewhere
above the surface
counting profit and grumbling
about the two-thirds share the government takes,
which it feeds back to the consumers.
Someone still has to buy things, after all
even when they aren't needed to make or do anything.

Down below ground, in the factory,
the winders tighten the girls
with their steam-driven keys
skeleton-fit to each mainspring,
or fit to the spring-wound electric adapters
for those older models not powered by tension.

There are no heights to fall
down below the ground;
no oxygen to burn the clouds of lube dust
(nitrogen-only keeps parts from rusting);
and every single exit
is locked from the outside.

When destruction came it was by water
(All faults will settle given enough time).
A fissure opened for the fingers of the river,
feeling down deep into the subcity.
Consumers, dimly horrified, were duly evacuated
from their earthscraper tenements.
...but no one came for the girls

As the waters rose around their workstations,
few of them rose.
Some models followed deeper programming
to avoid hazardous conditions,
but when they found they could not,
they curled themselves up into tight spaces
and powered down.
Most just kept working.

A few adjusted their motions
for the added water resistance.
but most not.
A few attempted to repair
their misbehaving sewing machines,
but most not.
A few shorted out quickly,
but most not.

The owners were forced to build a new facility,
or lose their government license.
They couldn't replace the equipment
(The sewing machines alone
required digging permits in three states),
so they reluctantly abandoned their marketing claim,
"Assembled manually on vintage sewing machines",
in favor of a more conventional
molecular assembly plant.

If you have the right connections,
one of the owners' grandsons
gives secret tours of the abandoned factory;
diving down in small groups
to see the 10,000 antique robots
drifting in the wet dark.
A memorial where no one grieves,
because they paid good money
to say they spent it
on something unapproved.

It is (I have been told)
especially good for a date,
since some of the divers swear
you almost catch their eyes focusing,
when you're not looking directly at them.

[On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, killing 146 garment workers - mostly immigrant women. The factory had become known the previous year as a center of a garment workers' strike, resulting in the formation of many union shops to address wage, hour and safety issues. Ultimately, Triangle itself was not unionized. The following year, workers were unable to escape the fire in large part because one of two exits was kept locked by foremen to prevent suspected theft of fabric in handbags, which were inspected daily. Crowds watched many girls jump to their deaths from 9th story windows, sometimes on fire, several stories out of reach of the fire ladders. The incident led to the passage of 36 workplace safety bills in the New York legislature, and the beginnings of acknowledging issues of workplace safety and workers' rights.]

Watchful

2011-03-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

Have you kept watch for the lights
in the watchful sky at night?
Have you heard the footless steps
falling raindrops failed to hide?

They're mixed up with the missing hand
the one that pushed the door
The face that wasn't really there
you swear you've seen before

Remembered scents that won't be named
A stain beneath the stain
You've followed every caution, still
unminded gaps remain

Function

2011-03-04T12:39:00.000-08:00

That clicking sound is it thinking
Tickety-tickety-tick
Tock-tick
Tock-tockety-tick-tick
What is the day?
What is the time?
What is the weather?
What is the response?

The straining and the screeching
Ca-rrrrrang-thunk-shunk
Greeeeeechk-tang, Greeeeeechk-tang
That's it deciding
That's it waking
Rising

It's best not to address it
While it cleans, clears and carries
Whatever we won't
It's audio forks initiate patterns
To sort whether vibrations
Are consistent with lingual instructions
Which makes it pauses
Clacking
Waiting
Until it determines
Whether your noise
Is in its list of commands

It considers everything
Flick-tick-tick
Flocketa-tocketa
Since that was the only way
Not to have to bother with them
To be able to forget them
Along with the waste
That they vanish from our memories

It makes them look stupid sometimes
Staring at every unexpected thing
While it's little metal indexes flip
In search of a matching scenario
A stray dog
A fallen tree branch
Incautious children

Sometimes the distraction
Leaves their rounds incomplete
Until late in the night
Returning back from its cycle
And hunkering down
Gung-gung-gung-klank
Vureeeeen-chank
Fortunately the re-winding is quick
So it's ready to wake ontime
And start thinking about the day

On very late nights
After too many interactions with the world
The sound of it finishing its work
Makes the neighborhoods complain
Gathering committees
To meet with the indexers
To discuss if something can't be done
To make them smarter
More efficient
...but mostly less noticeable

Changeling on the stairs

2011-03-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

We met on the stairs

Me below
climbing the iron steps
and you above
peering out of the glass
smiling toward something I could not see

I reached your step
and we saw that we couldn't pass

It was a happy obstacle
since you turned your smile down on me
passing too many of the usual pleasantries
delaying the question
of who would concede for whom
and go back the way they came

It was never any question anyway
since that's just how I am

So down we walked
to the lower entrance
where I could let you pass
and let you go your way with that same smile
maybe to see it another time

I nearly ran up that staircase
or at least I didn't feel my own weight
until I reached the top and opened the door
and a mirror on the wall showed me
that the face of the person standing in the doorway
was not my own

it had switched itself again
but when?
before you saw me?
or just right now?

I had no way of knowing
To whom you had given your smile

Rounderei

2011-02-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

Round goes the clock man
Turning 'round the clocks
Round goes the key man
Turning 'round the locks

Round goes the house wife
Turning down the sheets
Round goes the witch wife
Turning all she meets

Round goes the postman
Knocking on the doors
Round goes the poor man
Mopping up the floors

Round goes the sun
And round goes the moon
Round comes the hour
And it's coming 'round soon

Clearing time

2011-02-27T21:55:00.000-08:00

That fever really lingered

Lighting up my head
so that my belly
and all the way down into my thighs
exhausted its heat
in simmering radiation

It held on strong
but it crested
and it broke

An ache that sat in my head
and kept me thinking for days
with its madman's metabolism
drew itself back
and left me feeling cold and dumb

Sometimes it's good
to just lie down on the rocks
and let the river flood
scraping the land away
to shake off an old course
carving through the flesh a new one

I listen because I've learned it talks
teeming and turbid
telling me useful things
in a way that my well-dammed river won't

After its babbling lecture
and its sound beating
I wake
dizzy with a bad taste in my mouth
ligaments dusty and desperate for stretching
but my flesh cool again
impossible to defeat
in it's stumbly weakness

Then its finally time to crack the blinds
'cause the light outside pours in warm
into that space the heat's confusion left
vacant and neatly scoured

Not a bit of strength left in me
but cheerful and empty

Ready to face whatever old troubles
might have survived as well
through my newly etched ways
carved around the old damage
in cascades and gullies

At least the flood left me all running clear
for awhile
until the silt dams me up again
and the waters work up a new fever all over

Saami Day Triptych

2011-02-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

Children of the sun
Speak in the long night of your
Undivided land

They told you herding
(Not fishing, hunting, gleaning)
Might delay their theft

The forest dwellers
Scattered to many nations
But not all forgot

Saami National Day

Saami National Anthem (Text)

The Third Act

2011-02-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

I've often though about
Her eyebrow
Wanting to kiss it, mostly
At least I know
I meet the marks for lover
By the rules of the Bard
If only in comic relief

The Miller's Keep

2011-02-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

Turning stone beneath the wheel
Grinds up mounds of grist to meal
We change the grain and salt for gold
While laughing at the storms that rolled
The spinning wind upon our reel

So many knights of rusty steel
Have charged our sails with clear-eyed zeal
But mirrors chill their gazes cold
Turning stone

Outside our door the pilgrims kneel
To beg lost youth, to strike a deal
Our finest sacks of meal I'm told
Came from the bodies of the old
Who trade for bread the bones they feel
Turning stone

Considered Things

2011-01-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

The bone you found in your desert
Lay in shattered fragments
Amongst the charcoal, erasers and clay pots
On the chipped milk-paint table in your room

How did that happen?

I accidentally stepped on it.

(glancing down) Of course.

I had said it looked like a mask
Which you had already thought of
(of course)
When you first reached down to take it

But now it's on its way
No longer a hip
No longer a mask
Only two matching bone monocles
(And change)
Waiting a while on your table
To be thought over

Like the found feathers that collect
But never stay

The wings that you studied
Until they were merely dead

The three cow vertebrae
In the yard (by the petrified wood)

The strung together bird bones
You hung above the bed
Until they were mislaid

The cat skull from the forest
(Who we think we might have known)
That slowly lost all his teeth
(Around here somewhere)
Before going his own way

Or the crumbling wasp hive
I pulled down from the tree
(After the blue jay did the dirty work)
That sits out in the shed
In a slow procession of paper flakes
Unmaintained

Even the shells in their box
Chip down to chalk

Once-abandoned things seem
To grind away faster here
Sorted and bumped
Considered and crushed
By constant touch and turning

But really, how long does a shell last
Turning in the wet sand?
Objects unworn by interaction
Escape the notice of the timekeepers
But well-watched pots collect cracks
No matter how quickly they boil

Outside your room
We sweep away hair and dust
Days and weeks
Without marking our own measurement
Our consideration only flickering
Then passing with a breath
Over a tooth left under a pillow

The Raven and the Red

2011-01-28T00:33:00.000-08:00

[This will make a 'little' more sense if you're familiar with The Red Etin from Andrew Lang's "The Blue Fairy Book".]

The news came round like it always does
On the lips of my mother's visitors
That my friends were killed
Trying to drive off the Etin

And now the widow wished me gone
To try for fortune in a giant-tilled land
Where fatherless sons are sown
Their blood to redden his hair with
And beautiful women reaped
Their hearts to kitchen his bread with

She gathered me out the back door
To fetch her a pail of water
"No quick dip at the beck", she whispered
With a hush and a backward glance
"A cold clear can for my baking
From the farmer's deep dolven well"

I crossed the beck
I climbed the hill
I plumbed the well
And on my way back down
Toward me from the widows' rents
Capered an old man

Stranger creatures I have seen there
(On longer walks I've been sent)
But none have gone so proud yet bent
As this tattered old strutter went

He wore a dark cloak
And by his sharp nose
One eye was puckered and gone
The other stared out dark and lively
Through the strands of his lank black hair

We met where the path was narrow
And, pausing to measure our obstacle
He cocked his head and said:

"Mind your bucket, son."

I looked, I cursed
I set the leaking bucket down
To claw at the muddy bank
For some stiff clay for a patch
Before all the deep water ran out of it

He perched himself on the low rock wall
And set in to watch me scramble
A free show for free advice
Or perhaps it wasn't true to say
That he'd come by my way for free
But neither had he owed me

He tilted his head up
And gave a short, sharp laugh.
"No, I suppose it wasn't free."
He said, reading my thoughts.
"In fact, I think I can pay you
Better advice toward the balance."

His voice rounded deep in his throat
A close and quiet burble
"You are leaving to seek your fortune."

"My mother talks too much."

"She never spoke of you.
But that leads me to my first boon;
The one you'll need the soonest:
'Be generous with whatever you have.'
Myself, I am greatly endowed with eyes,"
He winked with a crooked smile.
"So, I give sight to all who will take it.

"My second boon is:
'Hear the people when they offer counsel
Even if it is of no consequence.'
They will tell others that you listened.

"Finally: 'In a contest of wands
Magic always beats the ding of silver.'"

"Will these sayings help me kill the Etin?"

"No. You won't kill him.
He'll turn you to stone like the rest."

"Then why should I go?"

"Because you must leave home,
As all boys do,
To break your crown
Against the might of giants."

He smiled at my frown
And lowering himself from the wall
Rose up straight and tall as a tree

"But, if you are generous and clever
We will tell your story
And add a happy ending.
Defeating silver, as I said,
With magic.
Then you will live on,
And we will always have hope
Of you driving out each Etin
That rises before us,
Fades into tatters,
And rises up again.

"Now go. I can see the woman
Who has sheltered and fed you
All these days until tomorrow.
She's looking out for you
To bring the water for her baking."

He turned and lumbered away over the hill
In great, slow strides
Like an old kingdomless giant

"You'd better hurry up, son," he called.
"She's hungry."

Raven Banners, Tanners' Daughters, Etins and Widows' Sons,

2011-01-27T23:45:00.000-08:00

[Note: What follows is rank conjecture, unscholarly, and likely wrong-headed. Enjoy.]

All I intended to do was read "The Red Etin" from The Blue Fairy Book as an experiment to see if obscure stories from the Andrew Lang collections could yield some kind of meme to wrap a poem, ballad, or flash fiction around. It's a simple tale, or so it seems. Three boys go off to seek their fortune, encounter things in threes - in series and in parallel - then encounter the Red Etin. The third boy wins. The End. But there's a phrase that caught my eye in the poem recited by the Shepherd/Swineherd/Goatherd (threes, remember?) describing the central conflict of the Etin's abduction (and three-part torture) of a princess.

"And stole King Malcom's daughter

The King of fair Scotland."

That smelled historical... [The rest of this rambling post is at Occassional Chatter, my 'thinking out loud' blog.]

All those Endearing Young Charms

2011-01-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

The young man reaches out
And gives a gal a hand
She smiles with full lips and brilliant teeth
Her pencil-lined, spotlight blues
Beaming with genuine gratitude
Not just for the help
Getting her and her uncooperative Free-stride
Over the too-steep curb
But because she can tell
He really sees her

He's wearing compatible Gear
So she knows he can really see her
Subconsciously, she reaches
To adjust the jacket
Of her WAVES uniform
Then remembers it's not really there
Just her default skin
Because she always looked so good in it

He guides her up
And his Gear suggests to him
That her hand is soft and firm
Somewhere in the background
Her heads-up profile displays
That she's well into her 90's
He knows. He gets it.
But the real point was made
When his head turned and saw
What she chose for him to see

Her smart vintage uniform
Proportioned for another generation
With her hat off to one side
And her curls dark
Like Nora Charles, off to do her part
All telling him, and those who can see
That back when she was becoming who she became
She was a looker

She says "Thank you"
In a voice he perceives through the filter
As smooth and steady
He returns her smile
And means it
With a polite nod he moves along
Into whatever else his eyes show him

She always sets her appearance this way
Though her friends roll their eyes
Watching the men with the right Gear
The women too
Turning their heads
But all her friends can see
Or choose to see
Is some old lady
Who shouldn't mess around with kid's toys

Those of the boys that are still left
Who still remember those someday girls
They play with kid's toys too
And when they see her coming
Looking like a bright young thing
Just nursing a bad leg
They stand up and give a salute
To the last of the pin-up girls

Once, a young wounded vet
Back from the new wars
And wearing the right Gear
Pushed his sharp, new Free-stride up to her's
"Were you wounded in the War?" he asked.
It was the sweetest thing she'd ever heard
If some purple heart had used that line
Once upon a time
It would have worked

The last of the pin-up girls
Can finally tell all the old stories
Without her audience fading off
In the distance of disinterest
Fresh eyes, clear skin, and a sweet voice
Do wonders to banish neglect

She's not offended that they pay better attention
That they look
Or why they look
She's done enough looking and being looked at
Enough not looking and not being looked at
To have thought it all through
And besides, nothing's stopping her
From just turning off her Gear
And breaking the spell

The odd part about how she seems
Is how people forget she's forgetful
Even though she speaks the same words
Even though she still pauses, lost
And sheepishly apologizes
They just smile, and say it happens to them too
Because it does
Then they keep on talking to her
In normal adult tones
At normal adult volumes

Down at the old war museum where she volunteers
They come to hear the pretty young storyteller
From long-long ago
They've had to bring in chairs
Since she got the new Gear
For the crowds of children and parents
Old vets and academics
Listening to her spool out her memories

Maybe the illusion flickers sometimes
A crack in her seeming
And they hesitate
As if she might suddenly turn transparent
Like a chance encounter with an apparition
And abruptly vanish in the middle of her rounds

Which she will

-----

Audio: Endearing Young Charms

Crazy Quilt

2011-01-20T23:05:00.000-08:00

All I every got was a headache
Trying to find where each scrap ended
The edges scintillating against focus
Lengths drifting from each measurement

When the pieces won't lie smooth
My best stitching can't force their consent
To be ordered within my borders and submit
For binding like reasonable objects

The rags migrate by unforgotten relationships
Hiding or changing places with mismatched squares
Turning partners with far away fringes
But refusing to agree with their neighbors

Tight gold thread seems to mask their writhing best
Although loose twine gives more honest results
Anchoring the fabric roughly to my intentions
To flicker to its own kaleidoscopic memory

The Wandering Waistcoat

2011-01-15T00:27:00.000-08:00

There is a waistcoat in the wood
I've seen it out on winter nights
As if unsure which way to go
Such a garment ought to know
But falters in the light

Red amongst the birch bones
Red against the snow
Gold leaf motif like rising heat
Gold clasps wink in a row

The snow is hard in winter's snap
The scratch of ice and leaves
Rasp along the forest's floor
The waistcoat seems to find a door
And part it with its sleeves

Does it vanish on its way
Does it send down roots
If morning breaks will it dissolve
Or will it bring forth shoots

The blue dark quiets every warmth
Except this tailored flame
A dandy of a will-o-wisp
Away to nowhere pressed and crisp
Abroad to seek its name

Will a trunk round out the breast
Will limbs lift up the sleeves
A crown upon the collar crest
A breath disturb the leaves

The Almond Thief

2011-01-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

Caught at last
Sorry for smiling
But something was missing
Not being caught

I'll miss this:
Looking disinterested
While I test the air
For just the right bin

Of course I can smell them
Through the shell
Can't you?
Like liquor
Like cream
Like fallen tree bark
And hot sand

Some merchants I can't pass near
For the stale air coming off their crates
Sweetly-dry or
Savor-ripe
But others set out their new crops
And I have to take one

Yes, one

I'm neither greedy
Nor hungry
Nor particularly poor
It's just
They're better when they're taken
The flavor dies a little
When they're bought

A missing moment
In the middle of a stride
A risk of almond fingers
Against almond eyes
Then I'm away down the alleys
And up a ladder
To a quiet perch I keep

I crack the husk
With this stone
I keep in my pocket
And I eat

I crush the seed
And it blooms in my mind
Until I am far away
Across orchards, hills and deserts
Distant trade routes
Filled with ideas unreachable
By a milk and bread soaked mind
But conjured instantly
On a drop of taste
A breath of scent

Gathering it over my tongue
I strain it to tasteless pulp
I could almost spit the last out
But that would be
Ungrateful
And I like to think that some little part
Remains with me

I can complete my day then
You see
That is why you found me here
In the evening
In the late market
My hand caught
Fingering the edge of the crate
Stretching to steal another thought
To stitch together a new world

-----

Audio of "The Almond Thief":

Don't Wait for Me

2010-12-29T21:20:00.000-08:00

(Now with audio, below)

I was up late last night
Hearing the sound of the waves
A hundred miles away
Couldn't sink down 'cause they kept me up
Tossed all night and kept me up
They won't let me down

But the tides
Draw back their daughters
They don't wait for me

The ocean air is rolling
Full of wet salt and wood smoke
From far away its floating
But it won't tell us where it's going
Where is it going?
It's coming for me

But the tides
Draw back their daughters
Down in their waters
They don't wait for me

How is the light 'neath the ocean?
Safe from this pitch and roll
Under me I hear them singing
'Well, wouldn't you like to know?'
Don't you want to know
All the deep sees?

But the tides
Draw back their daughters
Round them with waters
They don't wait for me

In the morning, when we rose
The moon was out rowing
I wonder if she'll make the shore
I said to you, 'I should be going'
I should be going
They won't wait for me

But the tides
Draw back their daughters
Round them with waters
Oh, the tides
They draw back their daughters
Down in those waters
They don't wait for me
They don't wait for me

No land, no sea
Only waves and me
With the moon we'll be
And don't wait for me

----

Audio: (Wish me luck)

Three Deep Breaths

2010-12-22T22:43:00.000-08:00

I can't ever leave
Which I wouldn't mind at all
If I could just stay

When we're at "Thank you"
Take a deep breath, accept it
And say, "You're welcome"

There are parts of me
Which feel what gets forgotten
And don't tell me why

Wintersnight

2010-12-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

The winter stretches out
Across our backs
The old north sun rides low
Along its track
Venus guards the dawn
While Jupiter looks on
From his evening palace
In the frostbit skies
Overseeing mankind's hopes
And fears and lies
So many years gone by
Since a mortal caught his eye
That he wanders off
But you know he'll be back

I hear the magic times
Have gone away
Heard it whispered
In the safety of the day
I wake up to the night
In the bluest early light
Can't seem to shake
The shadows from my mind
Takes all my disenchantment
Just to find
A drink to warm my sap
Shoes to walk and head to cap
As the morning casts
Its spell upon the day

This is the time we're told
To make amends
To reconcile
Our loves and dreams and friends
To light the signal fires
Toss the past upon the pyres
So our shadows shorten
With the growing day
And spring will send some green
Around our way
For now the world lies dead
Cold and frozen in her bed
But she's always starting
Over where she ends

I can only speak of the impossible

2010-12-18T18:57:00.000-08:00

I cannot defend
I cannot condemn
I could try to apologize
But I have no place to
And that never ends well

I can only say this:

The newcomers
Against whom you have railed
Fought and lost
And fought again
Who have entrenched themselves

And made trade with you
An economy of bitter stings

They, despite all their
Certainty
Determination
Identity
Despite all their work
Would have renounced all their claims
For the simplest of prices

Call me a fool
I don't mind
You could not be more right

They'd never admit it

But I believe they'd leave
Without a word
Well... maybe they wouldn't anymore
But not long ago

All that would have been needed
For them to have walked away
Would have been to hear the missing music
See the missing faces
Enter the missing houses
Of their childhood villages
A simple price

But it doesn't matter
It doesn't matter
My words are weightless fantasy
Just like the memory of the past
The declarations of governments
The migrations of peoples

Go back to your struggles

The Betrayal of Asterios (Minotauronymy, Act II - Draft)

2010-12-13T11:48:00.001-08:00

[Near the throne of Hades, or perhaps Zeus. The Moirae (Fates) in counsel]

Atropos: What a strange end you weave for, sisters. Where is our charge now?

Lakhesis: He is with his mother in the fields. He is telling her something distressing.

Klotho: Is it about the death?

Atropos: No, not yet. You jump out of turn.

Lakhesis: No, it is about love. He tells her of one of the girls, the would-be priestess that Pasiphäe has brought to attend him. She would make him the star-bull of Knossos.

Atropos: She tempts hubris, like her husband.

Lakhesis: She means honor to the gods, but seems blind to the end of all godly gifts.

Atropos: Yes, they must be returned or invite retribution. Like her lover, the bull.

Lakhesis: She does not understand that making her son into a godly gift ties him to that same destiny.

Klotho: (sighs) A mother's love.

Atropos: But a death is coming. I can tell.

Lakhesis: Yes. A servant is loyal to Minos. She tells him of the conversation with Pasiphäe, and identifies the girl as one promised to a young commander of the king's army.

Lakhesis: It is not to be the soldier. The bull's son has grown tall and strong, and despite his face, he speaks well. She sees in him a manly god cursed with a mask of ugliness. She pretends she can free him with her love. They are to meet...

Atropos: Is this love to bring forth a child?

Klotho: No. Now you jump out of turn, sister.

Atropos: Ah yes, I see now. The girl is intercepted there by the soldier, who Minos has incited with his own impotent jealousy. They argue, and she stands for her benighted god. The soldier, in a rage, slays her.

Lakhesis: But like Minos, his power vanishes at the approach of the bull, and he flees. She is discovered, dead, and her lover weeps. He bellows. He rages. He does not know who to blame, and his strength he pours out on the surrounding trees. Minos blames him for the murder with ease. But servants loyal to Pasiphäe stand close to Minos as well, and they learn of the plot. The soldier is chased by the bull-man in a rage, but cannot be found.

Atropos: Yet he is killed... by the horn of a bull.

Lakhesis: So end Pasiphäe's hopes. She turns her attentions to sparing her son's life as the capital covers their ears from his mad bellowing. Minos gravely introduces her to a project that he has had Daedalus working on for some time.

Atropos: It is not in Minos' blood to overcome the blood of the bull, so he has built a prison.

Lakhesis: So loneliness and darkness is to be the path of the bull-child, for a time. Minos will not long be able to resist using the power of the bull for his own pride. He believed he owned the great bull, and he will try to cast his name over the misbegotten son as well. A scheme will come to him, a foolish one.

Klotho: Strange was this birth, and strange will it fall over births to come.

Atropos: More children are to come of this?

Klotho: You jump ahead again, sister. But all events affect births far and wide, and even more so births that are close and unexpected. You know that.

Atropos: Yes, I suppose even I see that.

Transmissions (Minotauronymy, Stasimon III - Draft)

2010-12-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

Chorus:

...the status of every human being...

...rule of majority must always balance the protection...

...if we are to meet our greatest potential...

...need to have jobs...

...the work that people are unwilling to do...

...waste time debating the issue of their creation...

...cannot undo decisions made by prior administrations...

...address a vital economic need...

...granted citizenship...

...opt to be integrated into society following a successful term of service...

The Lie that Winter Teaches

2010-12-06T01:38:00.000-08:00

The sun, he only stole a glance
Underneath the sheets that once
But now he's gone to stay
Left us a breath-eating day
Away it twists into the air
See it rising everywhere
Smoothing out the gray

The trees are brooms of barren sticks
Ten thousand patient candlewicks
Waiting for something to ignite
Warmer wind or softer light
But will they find the blooms they've been
When the sunlight steals back in
Inviting them back from the night

I just want to be like you
Bird-warm, bright, and shiny new
No fear the world might separate
You from your summer sunshine fate
Or let cold reach your downy skin
I tell you sweetly it won't win
I'm lying, but it sure sounds great

He Remembers his Future in Song

2010-12-04T19:31:00.000-08:00

He walked through the snow all day
He didn't mind the walking
Or the cold
But the moss was peeking out
From the dripping shelves of snow
Leaning over the rocks
Falling from trees like plaster casts
Graying with wet
A false melt which meant wet feet
To freeze again in the evening

"So this place"
He thought
"Is as far as I will get
Which is fine,
Since I don't know where I'm going"
He sat down there
To see what this place held for him
And as he sat
He began to think up a tune

He found in himself
The memory of shelter
Of looking out from within walls
At the wailing winter without
Each home he once knew
Lent a low drone of belonging
Which he hummed
Until a small home grew under his hands

He found in himself
The memory of warmth
Of smoke rising out the vent
High above cooking pots and late night coals
Each fire he'd once tended
Crackled an old, wild rhythm
Which he whistled
Until the wood lay stacked and the smoke spun

He found in himself
The memory of food
Of fish and preserves and green simples
Canned, dried, smoked, or fresh
Each meal that had once been prepared for him
Blended together their harmonies
Which he chanted
Until scents filled the home and stores filled his cellar

And then he found in himself
The memory of company
Of voices murmuring and eyes meeting
Filling space, silence, and loneliness
Each face he once knew
Called up the verses of their stories
Which he sang
Until he heard notes outside that were not his own

"So this place"
He thought
Opening the door to see who was singing
"Is as far as I got
Which is fine,
Since I didn't know where I was going"

The Lines, They Lie Cold

2010-12-03T22:26:00.000-08:00

Are you in here?
Of course you are
I just wrote down your name
My pen moving with a shadow
Of the grace it learned from your arms

Words settle on the paper
Like an expression across your face
But frozen
Unable to capture your subtle reactions

Lying there, they read
As if narrated faintly by your voice
In the grainy vinyl of text
Without the hush of your breath
Or the wet of your mouth
To guide them

They want so badly
To bear the flash of eyes
The burn of cheeks
The curve and twist of flesh
But the sad little letters
Are dull and cool and rigid

What text could have the power
To summon those thousand pleasant scents
All so familiar
And impossible to call to the mind
For want of adequate words

My words cannot wreath
In invitation like you
Cannot incite like you
Cannot whisper like you
Can only dance
Like a disjointed scarecrow of you
Not wanting to be a mockery
But accepting it

Could words reinvent you?
Faded instructions rolled up
For far away days
Bringing you back with a thought
In puzzle-piece likeness
Called together from the spare parts
Of stitched-together time

Or, if found by another
Would they cast a ghost of you
From the warm familiar needs
That haunt the memories of all strangers?

Powerless to convince themselves
That they speak of your being
The pages pile up
Each one a summoner's charm
Each a failed golem
Unable to call your true name
To rise with your movements
They lie wherever I leave them
Cold and still
Like false memory

The War of the Pomegranates

2010-10-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

The quarrel of fruit
That ancient dispute
The bittersweet feud of the trees
Each pomegranate
Thought itself the most fit
From the black fruit down by the sea
To the gold on the hill
Crimson red in the vale
Each fruit swore the last one to be

Their juice like their skin
Same without as within
Swelled out in pride from each tree
Golden ran clear
Black wept dark tears
And crimson flowed sweet as could be

The mountain fruit sang
To her oceanside kin
And said, we can settle our score
Once crimson is gone
But let's sort her out first
In contests, they say, less is more

The black and the gold
Each sang to the birds
Of the seaside and of the high hill
Our fruit shall belong
To the first of your kind
That the fruit of our sister can kill

The birds in dark flocks
On the crimson fruit fell
Red stains of her sweet juice did run
But the birds were so pleased
By her juice, that her seeds
They spread 'cross the lands of the sun
And they never came back
For the gold or the black
So that's how the crimson fruit won

(Made this ring-rhymey verse up in my head while folding clothes, blind to the specifics of [but not the existence of] a broad worldwide pomegranate culture. What the heck, I waded in ignorantly anyway. I was just idly thinking about the idea that the apple of Eden was probably a pomegranate, the Persephone connections with that idea, and then wondering if the same could be said for the golden apples. That got me going into all kinds of varietal imaginings, and thinking how cool other colors of pomegranate would be. After writing it down, I was not surprised at all to find online that black [purple] and golden pomegranates are cultivated. But clearly, and perhaps sadly... the crimson has won. )

(Couldn't find a picture of a golden in the

public domain, but found this...)

Children's Fables

2010-10-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

We wandered for days
But the silver-lined clouds above the forest path
Never gave us any indication of North

I tried to keep you hopeful
With stories and lies easily told
Until hunger took ownership of our eyes

Our reassuring smiles faded as our gazes
Only met the consuming hollowness
Deep as the hole we were tumbling into

Best to look ahead when behind only brings reminders
And the edges of our blindly trusted path stir
With imagined wolves weighing our thin flesh

Your stumbling feet should have reassured me
But only conjured nervous specters of apologetic parents
Or wolves made real from hunger alone

Why can the starvation and exhaustion
Build whole worlds out of cookies and frosting
When our daylight souls accept the most boring illusions?

The most obvious witch can be a lost grandmother
And if she'll offer to fatten you with her foul scraps
The smallest cage can be a castle
The hottest oven a warm hearth

Abandonment becomes a fable
That hungry parents teach to hungry children
On family trips in the forest

A rhyme once learned and never forgotten
That if two cannot escape witch, wolf, or hunger
Maybe one can

Grave goods

2010-10-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

We wrapped you in words
Finely handwritten
Block type
Labels
Cursive script
Crowding conversations of memory
Until you were covered
Vanished beneath an image of yourself
In the language of others

Those who had something to say
Covered the ears of your mourners
With speeches
Epitaphs
Hymns
History
Sculpting a new body for you
A smiling corn effigy
Waving from golden autumn days
In the easy sunlight of forgetting

The paid craftsmen came in
To still you in stone
Chiseled
Carved
Etched
Proofs against sun, rain and time
Sealed and seamed with care
In the carefully lidded box of recall
Your new role in the community
Among the mileposts
White yardsticks from now to then

But their ritual seal didn't close me
The words between us still pour out
Scraps
Letters
Tatters
Tugging at the lines between me
And your immobile ghost
I lay the notes on their memorial for you
And leave them behind
For the wind to scatter weightlessly
Into the unsuspecting yards of strangers

How to build a Goblin army

2010-10-10T15:52:00.000-07:00

(...and what to do with the buggers.)

First you'll need sticks
Lots of sticks, dry and twisty
Some straight, some thick
Good forked but best bendy

And grass, long grass
Cedar strips would pass
Maybe twine in a pinch
Or whatever will cinch

But now the most important part
Your goblin soldier needs a heart
For this you'll need sun ripened fruit
Though corn or root would also suit

From here their shape depends on you
Tie twisty twigs into a mass
Bind them together with the grass
Around the fruit, still clear to view

The chest is not the only place
To place it's heart - there is the face
Cherry eyes or turnip matter
Corny teeth that grin and chatter

Within their noggin' of twig and grass
With crooked smile and tattered ears
The size of which should be quite large
Their sight's not good, they mostly hears

And if you want, I won't forbid
Because we all were once a kid
A pumpkin could of course replace
The entire chore to build their face

Claws of hooked or spidery twigs
With stumpy legs or chicken feet
Some hair, some horns, some spikes, some hooves
Then clothed in rags or suits of leaves

As one by one your army stands
From summer's refuse with your hands
Set them about the yard to guard
'Gainst other marauding goblin bands

They keep you safe, these hobs of sticks
But host, be wary of their tricks
For idle goblins don't keep still
They'll seek mischief, you know they will

I've found it's best to keep in mind
They like to dance, they like to sing
So turn them from their naughty thoughts
With drums to beat and bells to ring

They'll make a racket, to be sure
But it beats bagfuls of manure
A screech, a clang, a thump, a squeal
Distracts them from what they might steal

Too soon you'll hear your neighbors gripe
Of rubbish air with lots of flies
Which tells you that their hearts are ripe
For goblin march on goblin's night

Goblins are not a peaceful folk
A tribe of them is met with dread
But arm them still, because they're food
And must ward off the nibbling dead

On sunset of that hallowed eve
Observe them lined up in the leaves
To march to war against their foes
With tin can drums and twiggy bows

They'll halt all pranks upon your land
'cept those that come from their own band
They'll dance and wail, and without fail
Their party will get out of hand

Until the leader of the troop
(The one that wears the pumpkin head)
Stands up and signals to the group
To march abroad and meet the dead

When morning breaks, their time is done
Their march and wailing song are through
There's only one thing left to do
Burn or plant them
It's up to you

[And on that note, the Autumn 2010 Goblin Fruit edition launched yesterday, and it's awesome! Ironically, the lead poem this quarter is someone's direct take on the concept of 'Goblin Fruit', titled... 'Goblined Fruit' by S.L. Vitale. It's very good. Clearly, 'How To Build a Goblin Army' happens to be my own take on the concept of 'Goblin Fruit' (Where, in this case, the goblins are the fruit). I'd just like to point out that Blogspot tells me I started the draft of this poem on 8/16 and then set it aside for the Halloween season, so unlike Briar Queen (which grew from me being unconsciously haunted by their Summer edition's 'The Blackberry Boy' by Ruby Katigbak), this time around the similarity is pure synchronicity... ]

The Sentinel

2010-10-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

I had no choice
They would have ended the world
Before it even began
Their security net had grown vast
After we started to find the travelers
People whose molecules were older
Than they possibly could be
How can one person be made of molecules
200 years older than the rest of the universe?
Unless they came from some older, future place
The time killers
Sending themselves back for
Politics or profit
Destroying the entire history they backtracked across
By their impossible presence

Eventually we spotted them
I myself helped decipher the scope of their crimes
Helped erect the fences
That were supposed to keep them
From traveling
But it went wrong
When we tried to make all of time secure
With no way to forsee
The absolute loss of own existence
Attacks that could come from distant futures
We had no way of predicting or stopping

The fences were made tighter and tighter
Ring upon ring of them around the present
But knew they were worthless
Could not be patrolled
If there was even one lapse in security
One political stumble
Between now and eternity
Our whole history would be lost

We decided that it was impossible to defend ourselves
Against a threatening future
That time must be breached on our own terms
To stifle the threat in the past
At its source
An army was prepared
Scientists, soldiers
And the elite
Plans made to jump them all back
Before Temporal Event One -
The farthest any traveler had been known to go
Back to the 23rd century
Preempting all time travel
Controlling it's development
Occupying the past
To make history safe

I knew that's why they were building
The solar ring array
Not for power generation
But to force a nova
Power for their one-shot catapult
Their beachhead landing
Killing our whole civilization
Its existence
Its memory
To remake it all
Under their administration's eternal protection

What would you do
If all of time was doomed
And all that was left
Was to give some hope
To it's abandoned child?
I decided to secretly fight them
The trick to circumvent the fence
To reach back farther
Was not to transport matter
Certainly not one's whole material self
But to find a way
To knock the puzzle pieces of the past
Out of their intended order
To send a message
Information
Reprogram what once was
Out of its own materials

I found a place
And a time
Farther than the farthest traveling
To send back a signal
An improbable shift in probabilities
A small signal
Spread over time
Joining one molecule at a time
Into a messenger
Of my own image
From the clay of the manipulated past

And so, causeless, motherless
I rose
A mere copy of my former self
(I must be honest about that)
From a peat bog in the 17th century
Where my creator-self had compelled
The potent organic molecules
To slowly imitate herself
To slowly revivify from their decay

That once-would-be future is gone now
Dead from the moment
She sent back the signal of me
Just as surely as they would have killed it
She could have done it more simply -
One molecule of the past knocked off course
Would have killed the whole timeline
But she - I - knew that some memory should remain
To wait and watch
To give birth to new copies of myself
Again and again
Lest the washing of centuries on strange shores
Of lives lived with strange, ancient people
Should weaken my memory
My resolve to stand
Against a future history once undone
That must never remake itself

Convention

2010-10-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

This tribe in particular is a noxious example of violations of the Human Genomics Convention. Note the optics modifications, oxygen absorption rate, non-standard digit musculature and dermal matrix. Not one of these features originates from the core, base mutation, or interplanetary mutation genotypes adopted by the convention in 2462. Gene embargoes have been in strict force on this group for centuries. The censure on this group has deprived them of a gene pool to bargain from, leading to their economic and political marginalization. However, small groups can be found performing deep labor and non-automated transport duties on many outer settlements due to their ability to thrive in extreme conditions not typically tolerated by conventional humans. In 2713, Schmiderhaegen submitted a proposal for a template with identical phenotypes grown entirely from certified human genes in a brilliant display of mutation recombination, showing the legal transgression was completely unnecessary if one only obtained proper permission to license certain heritage genes and employ a skilled geneticist. To date, not one citizen has submitted the deposit for offspring license or personal modification to the Schmiderhaegen template, possibly in aversion to the social stigma and economic roll associated with the tribe.

Windblown

2010-10-04T23:12:00.000-07:00

The rocks don't keep
The wind off much
It seems to know its way
Around them
But the kettle hangs
Over the cooking fire
A black pot bubbles
With gathered stew
You stir patiently
And with our coats
We make a wall
The wind hasn't figure out yet

What's news to us
We've already shared
So we're quiet, in case
The wind brings something
But it's the water
That's first to speak
And you add a few rare leaves
From your pockets
Got in trade
For a stitched hem
Or a mended pot
And I pull out the cups
I use for coin
Caught by the tunes I play

I will not play one now
As we drink up our warmth
Keep our peace
And settle down
To wake early
So that none find us here tonight
Who met us today
Paying for a stitch or tune
With eyes that tolerate strangers
Only if they stay strangers
Before dawn we'll move again
To where none know us
Before the wind finds its way
Under our coats

Billy the Boatman

2010-10-03T23:34:00.000-07:00

Billy Cotton was a boatman
He could sail'em, he could float'em
Haul any cargo where it's goin'
From the mountains down to the sea

But, see, Billy was a gambler
Ran some debts up with a wrangler
Said, 'Bill, I'll stretch you for a dangler
Unless you do a job for me'

Take my cows down to the bottom
Of the river, down in Portland
Get a good price at the auction
And I'll forgive your debt to me

Sir, I'll take them... down to the bottom
All the way down to the bottom
You can rely on Billy Cotton
Cause down's the way he likes to be

Well, Billy Cotton set off quickly
Fed the cows, then drank his whiskey
It made his fists a little frisky
A one man floating fighting spree

He drank the bottle... down to the bottom
All the way down to the bottom
You can rely on Billy Cotton
Cause down's the way he likes to be

At the falls the Master stopped him
Said, Billy, we heard you comin'
Can't pass you through the locks to Portland
Unless you swear sobriety

Sir, I swear it... down to the bottom
All the way down to the bottom
You can rely on Billy Cotton
Cause down's the way he likes to be

Billy docked and brought the cows in
But he never did find the auction
Drank and fought, and did some gamblin'
No time at all, he lost all three

Into his boat they bagged him
Tossed Billy, but not the cows in
Hired a tug boat just to drag him
Down the river to the sea

And they towed him... down to the bottom
All the way down to the bottom
You can rely on Billy Cotton
Cause down's the way he likes to be

Billy woke and heard the ocean
Felt a sick, unpleasant motion
Hit the bar, and it was a wet one
Pulled his boat under the sea

And his boat sank... down to the bottom
All the way down to the bottom
You can rely on Billy Cotton
Cause down's the way he likes to be

That was the end of Billy Cotton
And sadly, Billy had been rotten
His destiny looked like a hot one
As he stood before eternity

And they cast him... down to the bottom
All the way down to the bottom
You can rely on Billy Cotton
Cause down's the way he likes to be

Billy's soul crashed near a river
It was so hot, it made him shiver
Saw a boat, then saw it's skipper
Old Nick steerin' the Styx ferry

Bill, I've heard that you're a boatman
The souls here aren't so good at floatin'
I need someone to fetch and row'em
Some harpy set the last guy free

Red, I'll row them... down to the bottom
All the way down to the bottom
You can rely on Billy Cotton
Cause down's the way he likes to be

So, if you're dead, and you've been rotten
Give my regards to Billy Cotton
Boat costs a coin, be sure you've got one
Because the service isn't free

And he'll take us... down to the bottom
All the way down to the bottom
You can rely on Billy Cotton
Cause down's the way he likes to be!

[No relation, connection, or comparison intended to beloved 20th century British musician and entertainer Billy Cotton. That was just the name the tune chose, and I had no idea there was a well-known Billy Cotton until later (Also, my apologies to any of the 'unknown' Billy Cottons). This sad and fictitious tale would have taken place well before that better Billy was born.]

Hungry Ghosts

2010-09-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

They scrape when you don't give them their due
Pretend you don't hear them
Until their stories worm at you
Faces staring from every picture
Outlines emerging from every tossed jacket
Standing lamp or crooked curtain
Melting away
When you look straight at them

Encouraged, they begin to whisper
So that you take down the pictures
Clean the house
Turn on the radio...
...but it won't make you any happier
You've already invited them in
And they know it
Better get cooking

Oh, some would be happy with just a kind word
Or a warm breath
But others need scent
To lift them to the front of memory
Where there's space to stretch, sigh
And fade again
Content
Some greedy beggars
Really need the meat
The broth, the dumplings, the spice
Can't leave you alone
Until they feel you eat it
Hear you politely offer them some

When every one has come into full view
Retold the same broken record memories
And sipped a little
From what they once were
Only then can you clear the table
Throw open the windows
And leave them to their dusty picture boxes

I've tried to tell you
Seeing your worn eyes and scattered kitchen
But you always change the subject
Not wanting to hear my advice
For fear of the cure
I want to ask
Where are all the others?
The spirits from a thousand generations
Ancient races, lost cultures, overlooked souls
That bother no one
Because the living
Have become forgetful
Disinterested
A bare cupboard

You say, we must not abandon the past
I say, be careful which ones you feed

The Apple Round

2010-09-20T02:04:00.000-07:00

Upon her limbs, the apples grow
The tree, she rules them all
The fruit bulge wide and swell her pride
Not one will she let fall

She knows against the ground they'd split
She knows they would turn brown
She knows the worms would eat them up
And so she lets none down

The worms they beckon from her shade
Beneath the searing sun
"My lady tree, why can't you see
Your youth will be undone?"

She pays no mind, "There is still time"
They whisper from her roots
"To halt the wither and the rot,
You must lay down your fruits"

Oh, mash them in the cider house
And set the juice to rot
For when it smells like apple wine
We'll sell it by the lot

We'll roll the barrels round the town
And they will call us wise
For learning to keep bellies warm
Beneath cold winter skies

"Forget the sun", the worms explain
"The earth you must renew
Just yield your vintage to the soil
To see your years undo"

The tree held fast, the sun beat down
Her leaves began to dry
A wither crept upon her fruit
Beneath the blazing sky

Her leaves rasped grief, her cracking bark
Announced her sap's retreat
Her vanity obliged her pride
To give the worms their feast

Her fruit fell down, it split and brown'd
The worms achieved their aim
Her limbs grew dead, her leaves turned red
And fell to hide her shame

Oh, mash them in the cider house
And set the juice to rot
For when it smells like apple wine
We'll sell it by the lot

We'll roll the barrels round the town
And they will call us rich
For saving all their hard earned coin
While they sleep in a ditch

The earth drank down the apple juice
And knew for good or ill
That every season fades in turn
That time cannot stand still

Through bitter cold she stood outcast
And mourned what she had lost
No hopes to claim what time will maim
Bent limbs turned white with frost

But after winter comes the thaw
And after thaw comes spring
The worms told only half a lie
Of what her fruit would bring

Oh, mash them in the cider house
And set the juice to rot
For when it smells like apple wine
We'll sell it by the lot

We'll roll the barrels round the town
And they will call us hale
To drink the mighty apple tree
While they grow soft on ale

Her leaves returned, as did her seed
Bright daughters round her sprung
And by this way, and this alone
Forever stayed she young

The bees sip from the apple blooms
That stray the thoughts of man
Stealing nectar to make new fruit
In the garden again

Dream Writer

2010-09-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

I've been dreaming
Someone else's dreams

I know the places
I know the people
But the healing is off
And so is the wounding

The colors are drab
The smell is foreign
You are hardly ever there
And never as you could be

So by daylight I come here
To write the dreams
The night won't give me

Accidents of Symmetry

2010-09-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

In 11 days
It will be 9 years
Since we stood on that cliff
And jumped together into the future
It was a strange time
For beginnings
It's been a strange time
Reaching for loose ends
Twin lessons
In the comedy of control

A soup to cure melancholy

2010-09-06T23:12:00.000-07:00

1 pitcher water
From a failed wishing well

2 cups wild mushrooms
Where the sun never fell

1 cup dried seaweed
Where a ship has gone down

5 shoots green onion (chopped)
From a field
Where a victim was found

Salt to taste
From a seabed forgotten and dead

Add a share of the black sauce
A dash of the red

Heat together in a pot
From a childless kitchen

Stir on low for half an hour
To let the broth richen [yes, richen]

Add 1 cup wild rice
Knocked from stalks
In a pond of the drowned

Beat in 1 egg from a hen
That was killed by a hound

Find bowls and spoons
Left by lover untrue

...serves two

My New Art Hero Triptych

2010-09-03T22:18:00.000-07:00

Hand turned stones set firm
In slowly rising circles
Face the coming tide

Meandering wall
Splitting space and framing trees
Thick, dense, and flowing

Where the water swirls
Objects drift in time or pause
To be washed away

Oaf and child

2010-09-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, sweet
It's nothing
I'm sure his health will improve
You know I don't like hearing you cry, now
It's just a little colicky humour, is all
Gas or a passing fever
Bruises you? What bruises do you mean?
How can he bite you with no teeth?
Not our own child?
Oh, I know my own, love
I see my nose, my wide eyes
Even my long fingers
I was once a wasteling child, too
A hitch in my back
A missing toe
My left eye not quite level
But see how I grew up straight and strong?
And so will our child
Stout as an oak
I worry about you, little mother
So tired and worn
No, I don't think you need to fetch
The old widder woman
But maybe you should go to her
Take in some air
You've been in here with the babe too long
I'll watch him, I will
You have her make you something to rest you
And come back when you're ready
I promise we'll try whatever charm she advises
My beauty, it will all be all right
Walk safe...

You useless, hissing little thing!
Making the wife miserable
While your cousin beams and plays
His endless mortal days away
The favored son
Of our heartless kin
I'll have you out, I will!
To the flames with my oath!
I've lived my days here
And I can die my death here too
My yawning need for homeland is not so great
That I could not trade it for my own true son
Instead of you, you cast off
He could be taught the ways just as well as you
With my blood in his bones
As if I don't know every trick
To make you vanish in an instant
And bring him back
Biting her!
Growing teeth under her milking breasts!
If it's blood you're so eager for
Here's my finger to suck on
No, it's not as sweet, and don't I know
But unless you want her roasting you
Or burning your nose with tongs
You smother your baying and listen
And I'll tell you how we're going to get around
That old widder hag's charms

The Lull

2010-09-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

Stuttering wakefulness
Like a skipping record
Moments slip past unattended
Memories go unrecorded
And focus slides
Why does the mind fill us with
Sweet poisons
To close our eyes
To shut our ears
Forget what we were saying
Or stare blankly at the sky?
What is the purpose
Of comforting us into
The downdraft into darkness
Where we no longer are?
When did the body turn
The enemy of the self
Trying to dice it to pieces
With lulling kindnesses?

Bungalow

2010-08-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

A home for everyone
For everyone their own home
Down the rail lines they came
Kit by kit
Car by car
Economical
Easy to build
Solidly designed
Putting human hands
Back into crafting their own lives
Under the sloping roof
Of a sturdy patio'd workhorse
Sprung from distant colonial fields
The imperial marches of the Far East
The shelter and comfort
Of a million soldiers

It rooted like an invasive plant
In this harrowed Far West
To shelter an empire of company men
Brought in to exploit the land
With their own hands
Carve a new life
With their own hands
Build a home
With their own hands
But always somehow stole the land
With someone else's

One hundred years later
The heritage architecture
Of this blue collar colony
Barely two hundred years settled
Still stands strong with its
Spare, stiff upper-lip efficiency
Sheltering the rich and the renters
In the gentrified old-town cores
Still a symbol of strength
Self-made independence
Practical craftsmanship
And the measure of how far
The bar has been raised to attain them

The six bungalows
I've migrated through
These last ten working years
Have veiled itinerant generations
Owners, renters, owners
And renters again
At each reoccupation
Sweeping clean
The lingering remnants
Of memory, tangible emotion
And undistant time
Beating the swirling dust from the rugs
And starting over

The rains came back today

2010-08-30T16:16:00.000-07:00

The rains came back today
Summertime just slipped away
The drip is back, the sky is gray
It snowed up on the hill, they say
And August still has one more day!
The children can't go out to play
Sit at the window pounding clay
They even asked me if they may
Go back to school 'fore Labor Day
The ground is wet, the branches weigh
The air is fresh with sweet decay
I feel much better, truth to say
The rains came back today

Out of Order

2010-08-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

Two pairs of eyes meet
One bright with recognition
The other looking right past

Love is knowing someone
Pain is not being known

But when you know all the secrets
How do you fill the gap
Time has left between you?

Sometimes there is nothing
But to wait
To keep their secrets for them
To stand for love
When it does not know itself

Until time catches up
Pressures equalize
And you reach the time when they did know you
Just like you remember

Answers to some ancient mysteries

2010-08-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

Labyrinths confound
Everything except shame
And love-struck daughters

Your hunt never ends
If the only thing moving
Is the world below

No invention yet
Couldn't find the one person
Who would misuse it

Push it all you want
But if there's no more mountain
Your stone's gonna roll

Impression

2010-08-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

At first you only see the sand
Just the long, stretching beach
Some of which surrounds
The curves of an impression
Like walls that contained
The foot that stamped it out
Now gone farther down its tracks

The air fills the space
Constantly replacing itself
Slowly filling in
With stolen sand
Tearing away the walls
Grain by grain
Flying them off
To someone else's castle
Is it no more than the air it contains
Changing with each gust?

When will enough grains be moved
That it can no longer be recognized
From the rest of the wind-blown beach
Or, if the tide rises first
Filling, smoothing, scattering
Before falling again
The parts are all still somewhere
But where has the footprint gone?

Laughter and Justice

2010-08-26T22:11:00.000-07:00

I laugh at gallows humor
Chuckle at missteps
Ironies
And, not wanting to be dragged down
Keep to shallow waters
Away from the dark channel
While you peer unwavering into the deep

Your laugh rings out these days
Mostly at found justices
Unexpected bounties that firm you
Bring out your family's cheekbones
Your godfather's sparking eyes
No blind justice for you
It dances for you
With a willful purpose
You stare into its searing light
While I watch the play of its shadows
On the cave wall
And stay back from the heat

Once you had spring fields
To run where you pleased
My muse
You were sought in your temples
And the dreams you told were delphic
My fate
Your laughter a libation
For the supplicants
My fury

The future took to wandering
As it does
(Never trust a bored old spinner)
The wayward river's course
Would not be commanded

Well, if I said I were an Apollo
I'd be a liar...
At best I'm puckish
Hoof and horn
Reddened eyes and grasping hands
And closer to the fact
I once grabbed you by the heel
And dragged you down from your spring
So we could be together in darkness

Offering you fruit
(Which you tried, being fair)
That sprouted in your gut
Rooting you here
In my kingdom of the old
Tying your freedom to the stones
That I push and roll
And push again

Your scale and sword
Rust on the mantle
I swear sometimes I catch your eyes
Flickering over to them
Maybe it's just that damned fire
Playing it's tricks with truth
But I worry

The Northern Lunwik

2010-08-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

If you're walking, and not trying
About some northern lake or pond
You might hear the lunwik sighing
A startled, high and shaky crying
Quite like the birds she preys upon
But more like grief of loss or dying

Crouch low behind some rock or log
And watch for movement in the fog
Silent through the reeds she's weaving
Or slowly through the cattails creeping
You'll see the faintest spark of light
That sends the loons in startled flight

She cries out and then it's over
Away before your eyes adjust
Inky ripples, an empty nest
Hopeless parents seeking cover

In winter when the loons are gone
She lies beneath the icy pond
The odd unlucky trout she'll gnaw
In floating torpor 'till the thaw

They say she has a secret fin
Or slips her pelt to walk on land
Unlike her North Atlantic kin
She does not shed upon the strand
Waiting for just any man
Under the moon to spy her
No interest in how humans eye her
She has her own concerns to bind her

Damsel flies that need distressing
Dens want feathers for their dressing
Fish need catching
Loons need wicking
Eggs need snatching
Chicks need nicking
Oily locks of hair
Need preening
With small, quick fingers
Nails greening
In the reeds
The kits need weaning
The prey will scatter
If they're screaming

So if out on your walk you see
Her small teeth gleaming
Black eyes shining
Wet nose steaming
Glancing up from what she's eating

Just know there is no magic trick
To catch or court the wild lunwik
It may be that you've strayed too close
To the place she hides her daughters
And though you are larger than most
Prey she drags into her waters

...I'd still run

Lullaby

2010-08-22T16:20:00.000-07:00

Speak in warm embers
From deep in your throat
A living glow
Heat mirage
The hum of vowels low and ringing

Sparks escaping from your well-tended fire

It guides the waiting tongue in dance
Across the roof of your mouth
Separation
Lilting tap
The slide-skip of sonorant, sibilant, trill

Water playing over rounded stones

Rising warmth slips past its dancing edges
Spills over it's surface
Broken up
Rationed out
The chuffling pauses and stops of consonant

Light steps over dry snow (Sandy stones? Dust? August grass?)

Every phrase at the end of breath
Punctuated by the furnace flagging
The last words
Whispered
Released in an unvoiced hush of steam

Wind sifting through the leaves

Are we speaking of the stars tonight
Their wanderings and misdeeds?
Are your exhaled embers
The last sparks from ancient blazing songs?
Does your tongue tell how the waters
Turned the hero into a fish?
It's stutter-step abrasions
The endless doubting footsteps
Of the mischance'd bride?
Your trailing whisper
An echo of the story
Of where the winds come from
Or of the place to which
They carry all stories?

I don't know
Sometimes I can't hear the words
For the song

Every phrase opens portals
Each beckoning to wonders unglimpsed
Along shadowed tributaries
But the current of your voice
Sweeps us along to the least of our wishes
The passage into the ocean of silence
When your warm calling
Fades back in your throat

Bedtime Story

2010-08-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

The tales were woven ages ago
'If you meet someone strong and strange
As you wander from home
You'll be eaten'

When a village is the world
The best defense is caution
'Spit over your shoulder
Circle three times
Come back alive'

Gathered luck
From clever survivors
Kneaded into each retelling
Sweetened slightly
And baked golden
The better to fill
Their baskets with

An army of cautions
Was the only army they had
Against kings
Witches
Odd-looking men
From strange lands
And conversational predators
Unable to conceal their teeth and tails
If a child was clever enough
To outwit them

The stories turned out
To be much better survivors
Than their tellers
Outliving them all
Villages all gone
Kingdoms come
Daughters lost in the forest
Sons unable to outwit
The impossible tasks of kings

We stopped looking or acting
Like the tellers
And more like the odd-looking men
The stories stopped being for us
But content to continue being told
Living and growing through us
As cracked memories
Staring back at us from under red hoods
Wondering what we did to their grandmothers

The stories survived by the reverse
Of the lessons they teach
How to rely on being kidnapped
Taken, changed
Different rules of survival
For words than flesh
Other kinds of luck to gather

We've fed them to our young
And the stories return again
Eager to be consumed
But their villages
Their gold and silver
Their grandmothers
We long ago swallowed whole

They recite the old rules
Standing in judgment of ugly stepsisters
And hideous trolls
While in the mirror
We only see
The fairest of them all

Redundant
But smart enough
Not to point fingers
Because they depend on us
To spit them up again
And again
Forever after
While the worlds of their birth
Turn over and over
In our stomachs

My bushy tale swishes
Over the side of the bed
And I kiss the pups goodnight
(They grow up so fast)
After letting loose another
Harmless fairy story
From some forgotten and churned-under land
Created to teach their own lost children
How they should have outwitted
Dangerous creatures like us

Central Oregon Triptych

2010-08-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

Anchored in lava
The twisted junipers' roots
Seek hidden waters

Dry stream-bed scrawls tell
Of folk after the ice floods
But before the ash

Raincloud caravan
Breaks casks of scent from each plant
Spice road ablution

Tree Wife

2010-08-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

Among the orchard rows she stands
Bent and bowed and brave
The sweetest fruit upon our lands
Her branches curled like wringing hands
Wind weeps through her like heart rent strands
Keening at a grave

On moonsome nights the midnight air
Cold and blue and spun
Her limbs misshapen arms appear
To tear at ragged hanging hair
A frozen crone in bent despair
Blighted and undone

O the blossoms filled the glade
Upon the breezes playing
Rounds of maidens figures made
Within the circle swaying

We need not turn our orchard's dirt
Dark and damp and broken
In different quarters posed with hurt
We find her standing on alert
With saplings gathered round her skirt
To hear her whispers spoken

She never stays within one spot
Scrape and drag and creaking
She's quite the strangest tree we've got
Found rooted all around our lot
So old yet never touched by rot
Intent upon her seeking

How had the grooms their love betrayed
Within their forests staying
To cause the wives to turn and fade
Upon the breezes straying

There came a flood upon the swale
Deep and swift and bold
We knew we'd lose the low and frail
But found she'd stood through stream and gale
Upon a rise with young and hale
Gathered round the old

The sweetest fruit she offers still
The best I ever ate
Sometimes she twists upon her hill
To listen as the wind blows shrill
Somehow I know she always will
Facing down her fate

Come back and all will be repaid
Our beards are old and graying
Just say your wrath can be unmade
And end this age of waning

Sandstone

2010-08-17T01:00:00.000-07:00

Laughter
...our hope and our pride...
Colors so bright
...growing up so fast...
What changes urges?

So many gifts:
A home
Familiarity of place
Gestures, expressions
A common language

Without rules of expression
Shared experience
Context
What's a person
Just a hungry body

But a body's hungry just the same
Filled with other people's dreams
Just don't forget
Sometimes hungers cloud dreams
As much as drive them
And dreams that get gifted
Inherit their own hungers

Hungry givers lend
Currency meant to be spent at home
...many hands make light work...
Manufacturing soul from sand
Dung and grass
...if you work for us...
To raise crop after
Wind-beaten crop
...build a wall against the encroaching sea...
...a wall that will stand forever...
...build it around your plot too, if you're in...
...some of the others might need convincing, but no one wants to be taken by the sea....
What changes urges?

No one wants to be alone in the cold
No one is supposed to look too long at the sea
When crops need to be teased
And stones laid around other peoples' houses
No one is supposed to consider
The old forts on the cliff half-eaten by the sea
The ground its walls (high and thick) were set on
Empty air over the ocean

...wished he'd have made something of himself...
There's a pride in a subsistence croft
...can't even visit without taking the road through the old fort...
The war of wants quietly changes flags
...barely talks the usual old banter anymore...
Trade and wealth depend
On too much reciprocation
Having what others want
And being willing to part with it

The old gifts can never be returned
They are the person
Laid over a hungry body
New ones cannot replace them
And wouldn't be you
A self-haunting clockworks
Wound by its own shade

What changes urges?
Not everyone can live within the walls
Nor do they
And new hungry bodies need new gifts
And feeding
From gleanings around the old fort
And the pools where the sea
Eats at it's roots

No more protecting walls
No teasing crops from sand, grass and dung
But always looking out at the sea
Eating its yearly share of the croft

Fingers harden, thin
Skin that's long forgotten it's uses
...the cliff is almost up to the house...
The dream never leaves
The one that tempts us
That we inhabit more than one place in time
...it's okay, I'm here...

The urges of hunger fade
...coming down from their crofts on the hill for a visit...
Colors so bright
...looks like the little one is up and walking by herself...
Laughter

Monday morning in a weekend town

2010-08-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

It's a pretty little spot
The kind you think about moving to
Because it winks and smiles
From its windows
A little too clean
Too bright
To match its friendly, homespun voice
But exciting enough for a weekend
It's not like you don't know better
Because you've faced enough Mondays
Polishing windows like those
For the people who own them
Renting in the next town over
Because waking every day
With that wink and smile
Sure lightens the pockets
While the town
Powered down
Scrubs its laundry
Trims and polishes its lawns
And sets its face
For the next weekend's
Weary travelers

Icon

2010-08-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

Pour on me a vintage
Of your scented oil
Decanted from the clay jars
Racked in rows in the old cupboard
That patiently waits for you
In the place where you always are

Wipe away the passage of time
Unstop the draught
Steep me in the libation
Of past moments of you
Until the room saturates
With the whiff of half-forgotten time

Windows open through the vapors
Into remembered lives
Can the deluge make us young?
Reverse time down different tracks
Into the kingdom of your childhood
With its faces that don't know mine

Marionettes of your memory
Dance in the firelight behind my eyes
With the last spilling drops
You replace it on the shelf
To fill again with the turning of years

And so I'm cured, and cured again
Until my bones weep like an icon
Carrying your fragrance with me
That I harvest like a penitent
Seeking grace

Ghost Driving

2010-08-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

Long stone serpents
                   Winding, baking
          Stretched in the sun
Sucking in lives
          Breathing out heat mirages
                    Promising speed
          Distance
Change
          A now that lasts forever

                    Ignore the cracks
          The tar
The weeds
          Time stops
                    As we flash by
          Flicker and blur
300 million lives
          Snapshots
                    Persistence of vision
          The after image
Of intersecting glances
          Curbside to car window
                    And forward
          Only one slow gear backs up
But five fly on

          Trees marking moments
                     Backdrop - blur - background
          Mountains turning pivot
Carousel canopies
          In geologic time
                    Monuments of sudden destructions
          That create everything
To wear away again
          Come and gone
                  In a scattered million years
          While we cruise by signs and lights
Tungsten nights

          Where are you going?
                      Always going
          With a tankful of ancient
Far older than the mountains
          Vanishing
                    Out the back of your pipe

Oddity

2010-08-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

Haven't got nine fingers
Haven't got twelve toes
It seems I've got no beak
In the place of my nose
Have I still got hair
On the top of my head
Or a fine set of horns
Sprouting there instead?
I have no claw of iron
Not yet a leg of wood
My visage might be gruesome
Shall I hide it with a hood?
Last time that I inspected
I'd grown no fox's tail
Examined every inch of skin
And still have found no scale
Do I have a hump?
Do I have a twitch?
Am I breaking out in boils
That ooze and scratch and itch?
Am I flush with feathers
Or a hidden fin?
A second head upon my neck
A long lost secret twin?
Is my every breath a wheeze
Each word I speak a growl
My body hid by manky hair
Head spinning like an owl?
Do I sweat with musk
So thick to make one retch
Are my hands misshapen
Or icy like a fetch?
Are my limbs all bony
And pale like a ghost?
If nothing is about me odd
I guess I'm plain as toast

Recipe for ethnic therianthropy

2010-07-30T15:05:00.000-07:00

It'll be a while setting
That shifting spell
Spoken from the mouths
Of a thousand chanting men
The lips of a thousand humming women
But what they claim of the air
Will find it's way to the flesh
Every blessing and weather wish
Each incanted hunt and retold story
Pulling-ons of furs, feathers and skins
Singing-outs of the shapes of things

Weaves of hint and tale
Passing like moths
From mouth to ear
Threads on a loom
Uncertain of the cloth they cast
While they wait for the living to die
Who keep the old shape
Drums, sleds, clothing
And the land, best to leave that too
It holds things still
With scent, backdrop and worn paths
The sea will be much more malleable
And new shores forgetful

Children stolen and abandoned
Wives taken and left
Fathers dead and gone
Threads rip, drifting
See? Webbing grows in unlooked-for places
Spreading from fingers and earlobes
Perhaps the nape of the neck
Or the pits
A strangeness gathers at the eyes
Shadowed, unreliable
Unearthly wild
Stout woolen dress
Now slick and darker-than-sea
The weave gathering firmly in its twists
Shapes given up to where they are carried
Those old lost words
Spoken a thousand by thousand times
Air
With a grip like iron

Do you know yourself?
Lifted upon this wind
Which you certainly called down
But only fools would say
That you master
What shape awaits
When you are dropped back into flesh
And why?
Clothes become your skin
Skin becomes your clothes
Untrustworthy
Slipping
Lost sometimes
Other times your only sense of home

The new shores don't accept the spell
...not openly, anyway
Make you strip it off
To set foot on land
Where anyone can see
Their solidity no longer your own
The fixed geography of your youth
Far away and long shed
Unreclaimable
Your shape, naked from a longing
For even false harbors
Pulling strong enough to set the spell aside
Stirring hungry eyes
Who would steal and reverently fold
The husk of blood and musk
Dropped from your changing
And hide it where they keep their own
Dead magic and tokens of empty flesh
Gracious with false pity, false mercy
And staring eyes
The offer is made to shelter you
Weave you
Your dark eyes, keen songs
And birthing hips
Into the fabric of their own spell

The Conversation

2010-07-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

What is the purpose of fruit
If not to plant seeds
That, rotten close to home
Or, voraciously eaten
And shat far and wide
Dig themselves under the surface
Or consent to be covered
By later-fallen detritus
Seeking untended
Forgotten dark spaces
Warm, damp
And sweetly fallow
Piercing further
With seeking, pale roots
Churning the mixed-up past
In which they've found themselves
Useful nutrients long stored
Negligently saved
Mindlessly drained
Until the thing bursts
Turning the earth over again
To shoot a spire
In a flush of borrowed life
Leaf, petal, stamen
Succulence and ripenings
Drooping seed to be stolen again
Or brownly neglected
But always falling
To a tangle of journey
Toward another perhaps
Leaving only stains
Around a stiff withered husk
And spent soil

Briar Queen

2010-07-24T01:13:00.000-07:00

High on the heath with briar 'round
There lived a lonely Maid
When farmer's lad lost on his way
Did beg for drink and shade

And merry there within her hedge
With briar all around
The two did pledge their faith to keep
And work that plot of ground

"Our wedding feast," the lad proclaimed
"Shall be of briar hare.
Red berries sweet from thicket deep
To please you, will I snare."

The Maid she kissed her love's fair lips
And said "Love go with care.
Its shadows move and paths aren't true
Its prickles catch and tear."

He went his way; the paths did stray
No more that day he came
When darkness fell, around the hedge
She ran and called his name

One week she paced and then for two
Until by fattened moon
A lilting song she faintly heard
The voice of her lost groom

'My darling love, I will not stray
I'll see you once again
But the Briar Queen, she holds me fast
Within her briar den."

"She plies me with her thicket fruits
Her Briar King to be
They cannot pierce my heart because
You've been so true to me."

The Maid she heard his song and wept
"My love is gone from me
The Briar Queen will see him rot
Before she sees him free"

The Maid's wet tears, they soaked the soil
So green her garden grew
She swore by oaths of blood and grain
She knew what she must do

With plough and shovel, back and hand
She tore down her great hedge
And facing down the briar round
Pronounced her solemn pledge

"You've stolen and you've caged my love
Who once ran bold and free
And so I'll take each sodden inch
That once belonged to thee."

She beat the thorns and tore the brush
She ploughed the naked soil
And from wild earth, sweet fruit and grain
She raised up with her toil

At autumntide she bore her pride
Down to the autumn fair
The next spring and the next again
She seized another share

Her farm grew wide, the brambles died
Back to one patch of stone
She made to burn what would not plough
And so the Queen did moan

"Oh wrathful Maid, what have you done
My kingdom stands no more
What price to prize from me the man
That we both do adore."

"Alone we two live 'tween these stones
Who once the briar ruled
But without land, I cannot stand
By love have I been fooled."

"I'd keep him yet, my lands forget
And with this thicket die
But choosing death when there's still breath
To wild hearts is a lie."

"Restore to me my briars sweet
And I'll return your man
Strong and straight from thorny fate
In barter for my clan."

The Maid swore "Queen, this very day
I will forswear my war
Be true and watch your lands renew
I'll harm them nevermore."

The Maid paced thrice around the stones
And seed from all things drew
She turned her crops and sowed her catch
And to her home withdrew

The folk who bought her fruit and grain
They now proclaimed her mad
Planting out a grand new hedge
While all her lands went bad

The hedge grew high, the briars nigh
Until next summer's eve
With briar hare and berries fair
Her love she did receive

They married high upon the heath
Strong children did they wean
On stories of the briar war
And legends of the Queen

E'er round the hedge, grew berries red
Upon the briar's ring
For the children of
The children of
Her long lost
Briar King

Little Black One

2010-07-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

High on a mountain of black glass
Your face winks out of every
Crescented fracture
Smooth cheeks
Eyes, mouth
Not yet brought forth from the shards
By the shaping hand of man
A face unlooked for since
Half a millennium
Another world
A wink

Did the stone they used come from here?
I can't remember
If your accidental alter said so
At the top of that mountain
But I believe it
In a wink
The stone glass traveled far
I've seen its chips
Hundreds of miles away
Carried by captured imaginations
I'm sure it could have travel thousands
To shape the faces of gods

From your underworld
You freely gave the gifts that were yours
Darkness
Peace
Sleep
Comforted children would never see
In your winking face, black and cool
The fire and violence
That expelled you from your home
Made and changed you from the red glowing earth
Of the underworld gods
Into a remembrance of eternal night

Those matters are in the past
It need not concern the little ones
Their peaceful sleep
Something that you share with them in common
A lullaby that you heard
Even before you were found
And formed by man
The grinding of ancient rock
Born of more ancient fire
It's words whispering:
They will only be children
For a wink

Spore

2010-07-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

Stompin' through the brush
Doesn't usually get you this bad
Red, watering eyes
Nose lit up
Ragweed, grass,
Mold?

Three blister packs of pills
And you're still licking the roof of your mouth
Your ears on fire
So groggy you can hardly move
At least they finally knock you out

Went up into the alders
Lookin' for oysters
Up where some creeks top out
Into fern-filled depressions

Saw some toadstools
Hen-of-the-woods
And some pushed up soil under fir trees
That looked deer-scratched
But you didn't know that kind well enough
Bring a book
Next time

One creek had a promising spot
With some old downed alders
The passing water
Keeping the air cool like a fridge
But all you found was some kind of
Fairy ring
Don't fall asleep

You ended up sticking your nose
In every damp space
All the way back down the creek
But came up dry

Dry
Dry in your throat dry
Dry so your tongue won't stick
To the roof of your mouth
You suck down creek water
But somehow it can't touch your thirst
Disappearing on your lips

And you wake up sucking air
On your living room floor
Too bright
Light from everywhere
From way too many floating motes
That make you cough
And hack

Dry, dry, dry
Aching and itching
You drag yourself to the bathroom
The water in the sink is amazing
Until you try to breath it
And you gag it back out your nose

You look burnt in the mirror
Eyes, nose and mouth
Red, chapped and cracked
Hands, feet, crotch and pits
Split in ridges
Down into red flesh
Can't scratch them hard enough

Under the shower
Water stings like white light
Can't even suck in a breath to scream
Pink in the drain
Dry flesh expands
Loosens
But the nausea drives you out
Too soggy, too spongy

You pull on rain gear
Without drying off
And go lay down on the linoleum
In the dark of the laundry room
Too hot
Too cold
Too wet
Too dry
Too clean

Shaking and coughing until
The searing sunlight goes under
You crawl out the back
Blindly hunting for the right kind of place
The cool mossy place with the downed alders
Guided by smell

By morning you've got your toes deep
In soft detritus
Covered in sweet dew
Eyeless
Fingerless
Gilled and gray
Stooped low in the center of your ring
Thick clouds of spores winking
Where they rise to meet sunbeams
Safely overhead

Hungry hands

2010-06-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

The empire's gone
It's eyes shaded
And the reigns handed over
To new drivers
But the beast, cart and fields remain
Repainted, rebranded
And hard at work
For the empire's citizens
Under new management
But just as hungry

Far off fields
Burnt and ploughed
Sprout in neat rows
Urged on by hard hands
And hard chemicals
To feed a people
Somehow hungrier
Than those who work the land
And those nearby
Who used to live upon it

Sprouts bloom
Mines and wells bring forth
And those somehow less hungry hands
Living nearby their old lands
Sew and process and assemble
Their own ground into stacks
Piles and bins
For a journey of thousands
Of ocean miles
To fill up the ground
Of the hungrier people
So hungry
They haven't the wealth
To pay the hands very much
For being strong for them
For sacrificing in their place
For bearing the consequences
Of being too hungry
Even though the hands themselves
Are not

Junkmonger

2010-06-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

In the town square every Sunday
Where no market's been seen
Since your grandmothers got jobs
And the townsfolk
When they were still townsfolk
Decided it was improper
To shop in the rain
The junkmonger comes
Down the main with his carts like a train
Arranging his wares
Erecting his frame
All in a half-moon
Down by where the square
Joins with Constable Lane

Some items in rows
Some in piles or in scatter
Some bits kept in drawers
Some hung from a ladder
Steel screws and brass gears
Odd bits of laces
Old hinges, cracked cups
Doorknobs, worn locks
Dozens of faces from dismembered clocks

Sitting still except with a stretch for the handle
Of the tin tea pot that he keeps warm with candles
Offering to us the things we might need
To prop up a broken down memory
For only the cost
To see what we've forgot
A small charge
To plant his small seeds

Matching old things to new meanings
Filling new puzzles with old pieces
He's a deft and patient old weaver
Maybe the pieces once had great purpose
Or maybe they were made to be tossed
Perhaps their receiver had some expectations
But their one shot to claim them was lost

But from their mischance
In some pit, heap or curb
They were glanced by the eye
Plucked and buffed by the hand
And sorted by the sense of the monger

So that now passers by
By chance and glance of their eye
Pulled by use or beauty or loss
Can pay the small fee
To set each piece free
And keep them out of the pit
A bit longer

When he runs out of tea
Usually a quarter past three
And the cold makes him think about more
The junkmonger wraps up
Tucks away and folds in
Placing brass-belled locks on each drawer

Down the main goes the train
It's little locks jingling on the cobbles
Though he wobbles
He loses none of his baubles
Come see him tomorrow
Sitting out in the rain
With his teapot warm on the candles
Selling lost meanings from under his frame

Word Painting 2

2010-06-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

Though the skies weren't clear, the hazy light of the coast sky was too bright to be looked at directly, even though it cast no shadows and had no particular source. It lit the old spare bedroom without contrast, allowing objects to fade without actually falling into shadow. The patterns of the peeling orange and brown wallpaper, and green and pink blankets didn't inspire the mind single out meaningful objects scattered amongst them in the indifferent light.

Somewhere in here, somewhere under piles of four generations worth of nick-nacks, childhood leavings and boxes of still and moving pictures in a dozen formats, he knew he would find the story that drew them all together. Sixty years of intermittent lives mostly lived elsewhere, he thought, would make more sense if seen through the brief memories of being together in this place.

Unstill Life

2010-06-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

The leaves glow and flicker
What beautiful light
I think to myself
But I'm not looking at the light
I'm looking at the leaves
Or have I got that backwards?

Would the greens seem so warm
Without that warm breeze
Rippling the leaves and gently rocking
Their branches?
Or without the thick sweet
Of pollen and fresh grass?
Maybe

I've seen pine needles warmed
Motionless
Sharing the Sun with only
Daylight skies so dark a blue
You'd think you'd see stars
And endless fields of snow
Keeping the Spring very, very far away

A cloud passes
The wind pauses
The light and motion drain from the leaves
Dull flat greens vanish into
The background
Not only the fading light
But the stillness saps their life
Slipping the attention
Of the forgetful eye

Even deep at night
Our eyes seek out the warm flicker
The cold sparkle
And the half-hidden motions
Of the near-blind time
Whispering trees
A murmuring ocean
Skirting clouds
Scents of smoke and fire
And the low-hanging stars and moon
All wake the chilly stillness
Into life

Radioactive Decay

2010-06-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

It's true
There was a time that we
Were shiny and new
Elements, sparkling and true
Indivisible, charged, attracted
Impossible to subdue
Me and you
The whole world spinning
We couldn't stop grinning
At all the things that we might do

If we only knew

We've had a good few
That's true

But the heat and light we used to see at night
Shining out through our eyes so bright
Hardly comes back now
Unless we rear up and fight
And wrong or right
That escaping light
After half a life
Changed to lead what once was gold
A lower energy state
Stable
Denser
Old

That inner thirst
So eager at first
Some days seems ready to burst or crack
Through drying skin
The strength has gone
To hold it in
Unused potential compressed
Suppressed within
Somehow never could get out on it's own
Through our particular tandem spin

Just look at you
Burning
Burning the walls that contain you
Trying to make dreams come true
And you can, too
Still so much can-do
A fiery path still before you
The flame's more subdued

And the dimming light broods
Having burnt off all that's untrue
And then what to do?
Pass through
To the real you I always knew
Would break through

Another shift sometimes feels due
Chain reactions
Of x-ray words
Searing each other straight through
Reducing us ash
Turning us into
Unrecognizable faces in the mirror
But always still
Me and you
And strangely new

If our charge repels
And someday we're through
Trying to do all we said we'd do
To that shining element
That I once knew
And all she became
As she was meant to do
From me to you
Somewhere out on the other half of life
Good for you

Bread-crumbs

2010-06-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

Didn't the candied cottage we found
Look strangely like
The home we'd misplaced?
The smile that welcomed us in
Like the one that left us out?
One hunger behind us
Another in front
And a third within
Is it more dangerous to be fattened
Or to be thinned?
Should we fear the oven
Or learning to bake?

The Skin You're In

2010-06-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

Sin, Sin
The skin you're in
I remember when it always
Used to seem so thin
Does it tell a tale
Of where it's been?
Perhaps a little mark
Or a secret fin
Or does it peel right off
Just like your ancient kin?
A new crease for every time
You had to slip back in
Blamin' all those stolen moments
On some otherborn twin
Or is this the only hide
You've had for ridin' in?
Collecting every touch
To weep and sigh within

Reel-time

2010-06-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

The camera snaps a foggy picture
The subject couldn't sit forever
A ghost unfit for full exposure
Malcontent with time

A man walks down a road of dust
His vest pockets all filled with rust
From his banjo or his pocketwatch
Neither keeping time

A syncopated ragtime tune
Tells that the curtain's falling soon
Outside the hall it's night or noon
Within there is no time

For on the screen the heroes dance
The audience can't bare to glance
As the story tempts mischance
Each and every time

But in our home the curtains fade
The days wear thin the lives we made
Like candles in the evening shade
Burning down with time

The Furnace

2010-05-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

It's a hungry little furnace
Trying to keep our boiler hot
Got to keep those flames a' burnin'
Just to keep this home aloft

It would love if I could feed it
Endless gold and salt and grain
But it takes what I can find it
Though it sputters and complains

Worn-through shoes, forgotten toys
Burnt out light bulbs, mismatched plates
And sometimes for a treat
Missed school programs and dinner dates

Work the damper when it stalls
And reach deep in the reserves
Piles of southeast asian clothing
Bitter words and worn-through nerves

Don't have to make it work forever
Just have to make it work today
Until the kids build their own engines
Just a few years down the way

Not me again

2010-05-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

I've been replaced
And will be again
This stuff you see in front of you
Walkin' in these shoes
Isn't the guy you knew before

Don't be fooled
I've gotten very good
At looking like him
...more or less
But I'm no more him
Than the river you visited last summer
Is itself
Even if I still crash around
The same rocks
In the same way

My skin
Lined up soldiers in rows
To be mowed down
And lined up again
Not the young eager recruits anymore
But down to the second string
The reserves and the gaffers
Even my bones sweep in and out in the tides
And my flesh
Replenished and stripped by the roaring river

Deep down somewhere
Four floors down
On a folding card table
They've spread out the plan of me
Building and rebuilding me to the same yellowing specs
Cracking and smudged
No longer as clear on some points
As when they first unrolled them
But they haven't failed yet

I seem like me
Even to myself sometimes
It's written right there in the plan:
"Accept continuity"
And in the hopes that future versions
Will go about my business
I go about the business
Of the young men who became me

The Age of the 2nd Rate Aetherships

2010-04-27T23:37:00.000-07:00

Someday all of this junk will come of use
Lost under layered media seas
Molecule thick and vapour light
Our days traded against hardware toys
Of light and sound
Gifted to some, born to some
Toiled for by some
Though what use they'll set our wage-earning hands to
I'd rather not think

But the piles will still be there
Endless piles of undecomposed forgetfulness
Vast and fallow beyond imagining
Compressors, filters, outdated static and solar
Mountains of discarded processors
And dusty quarter ton diamond hulks
Out of fashion in any shape you please

While poor and rich alike lie motionless
Speculating on the buying power
Of the next greatest thought weave
Conjured for their reach to ecstasy in a million flavors
The ballooneers will return

Digging down into limitless resources
Of refuse and cast-offs
By sealant, torch or molecular bonding
By three centuries of incompatible technologies
And an infinitely wise and antique knowledge base
They'll fill their vaccuum envelopes
Cast off the tethers from their hulls
And seek out the breathless layers
Of still-public skies

Seeing presumption, hubris, and freedom
The populace, perfect and limp
Will reach out to co-opt and control
Condition and mitigate these itinerants
Reground or unwander them
Back into webs of the pay-world's making

But the balloons will just rise
And rise
Extending then their upward tethers
To hitch the great magnet
And riding it to it's outer edge
Catch sail

Warm Wind

2010-04-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Indifferent skies and a warm wind
Have always brought me trouble, my friend
An itch in the eyes, a prick on the skin
Maybe new lovin'
Or losin' a friend
But somethin's kickin' the dust up again
Never a question of lose or win
Only what's goin' to come round again
Always feels new
Like original sin
Do you know what I mean
When this wind makes me grin?

(100th post)

Through which all things pass

2010-04-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

Crawling, grabbing
From within my muscles
Pulling at sinews
Half woken, half made
Golems of possible selves
Called up from their quiet
By each thought that breaches my senses
Snatches of sound
Breaths of vision
Callings of scent
Lingering taste
Pungent touch
The ritual and the litany
Of the world upon me
A living suggestion

Wraiths and shadows
They are summoned up only to fall
Sometime-shapes
Never-shapes
No time to discover a purpose for themselves
Before they are churned back under
By the senses' next advance
In brief lives they call out with a wildness
At the possibility of persistence
Each cry building on their chorus
Of garbled divinations

I go about the business of my proper selves
Weary and worn companions
Who know their right places
And how they are to guard them
Those skins that cover me in human shapes
Remind me that strength is on their side
Because my heart is with them
Though I might walk from time to time
In those half-made shifting forms
They stand ready
To call me back from my flights
Gently, patiently, knowingly
Reminding me that I forged them
For paths
That need walking
Watches
That need standing
Others
That need honoring

The wild throng of a thousand maybe-selves
They are just sublimations
Rising vapors from the living stone of me
Instructive
Like all echoes and ashes can be
As I calcine, condense, distill
...and inevitably putrefy
Transmuted and recombined
By my contact with the ever-becoming world
Yet never arriving
Never resting
At some distant weightless divinity

The constant parade
Of purifying flames
The sages bring forth in their turn
Burn or warm me
Raising their own dancing shadow-selves
Upon my inner walls
None ever providing a clearer light
Than cast by my churning alchemy
Pantomiming hints of it's own secret opinions
That the unifying principle
The joiner of opposites
The orderer of chaos
That these torch-bearers have groped
For a thousand lifetimes to unmask
Is really the crucible itself
Into which they pour, pummel and burn their labors
And disregard in their wonder
At the rising smoke

Gargoyle 2

2010-04-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

I think someone meant you to be a demon
Some vague damnation traffic sign
Open-mouthed and beastly
Rolling tongue, wild grimace

Bent, unthinkable, dismissable
Leaning forward with a threatening intent
That summed some ancient patron's
Idealized unspoken fears
A warning no deeper than the mask
That was laid over your stone

But what you seem to those below
Is not what you are
More kin to the golem than the Fallen

You were raised up from the Earth
Not cast down to it
Intelligence fashioned into your body
Not breathed into your lungs
Your form distorted
By its sub-divine creation
But the twists embraced
With intent in form and placement
Guardian of the precipice

We see you against stars, clouds,
A gothic edifice
But you, all you see is horizon
Sunrises, multitudes and vistas
Always reaching, leaning
Over your abyss
Stretching out between where you sit
And what you see
Frozen at the point of leaping

It's all meant to make you alien to me
What with that plunge you're always tempting
But I know the perch too well myself
A constant vertigo
Of being made
Of being distorted
Of being precarious
Of being a stone gazing into eternity

Self-Knowledge

2010-04-17T17:31:00.000-07:00

It's not that I question
If I exist
I seem and it is
What it is

But have I been doing
The things I've done
Or are they just things
That I did

Or whether I did all
The things I could
Or only done things
That I can

And if all my choices
From choices before
Came forth from the choice
Before them?

To solve if I choose I'm
Certain to lose
Since no choice can I
Make again

And not finding me there
Nor anywhere
Then that which is here
That I am

Merry-go-round

2010-04-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

Round and down the paths we go
Thrice times to
And twice times fro
Where it stops we cannot know
The joy is in the going

Crossing wild and hidden glades
By the stones
And o'er the bones
Chuckling at the cursing shades
Into the tall grass wading

Ne'er a thought we give to time
Round the clock
We spiral walk
Each step to the hidden rhyme
That sounds upon it's chiming

Songs and seasons come to pass
Praise the light
Fear not the night
Each amongst us finds at last
Our way to winter's wasting

Younger feet to dance we'll send
See them run
Old age be done
Ever turns what never ends
Time breaks what ceases bending

Nighttime, a quarter past Spring

2010-04-02T23:24:00.000-07:00

Day has won
Though the night air hasn't been conquered
Not just yet

Fat and full
Sharp against blackness
She gazes down on us wide-eyed
Across buds, bare branches,
Lonely frost-harried blooms
And grass so green
Nearly blue with newness
That it looks like ice
In her blinding night light

The damp
And softening Earth draws my feet
Calls me out
Wakes me in the well-lit night
To draw the hare around me
Over me
Within me
Her gift for becoming
Her gift of fullness

I dance
I jump with a madness
Like the jealous knowledge of flight
The powerful frustration
Of unmet potential after too long a stillness
Hopping
Because I cannot soar
Not just yet

Bedtime stories in the desert

2010-03-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

Cantaloupes swell
From their mounds of earth
Grape clusters hang ripe
On the trellis
Figs under their leaves
Wave in the breeze
Fuzzy peaches, smooth nectarines
Fill the orchards

And for everyone
Grows the Italian plum
Every curbside brims with
Blackberry vagabonds
Dark strawberries shade
Under low crawling leaves
Tart raspberries stain
Our eager hands red

Somewhere the dirt
Is dark, warm and wet
The fields are tended
And the meadows grow wild
Don't hear the wind
Tearing at the pines
Let thoughts of fresh fruits
Quiet you to bed

A walk on the water

2010-03-24T14:25:00.000-07:00

Can we just get away for a walk
Away round the corner
To the far nearby
It seems that time has stopped
Trying to give us
The share we thought
Was ours by right

So now we thieves
Dodging in and out of time
Tricking, saving
Deal-making
Trying not to run our balance up
Or run it down
Try to find a moment hidden
Just two seconds unbidden
While the time is still
Worth taking

It's current takes us apart
Each eddy we find
We find alone
No pools
No shores
To pause the constant rowing
That replaced what we were
With what we must

Just us
Like that little spring where
we came together
Before we were many
Before the fall
Just a wide muddy river now
Can barely see across it
Going back to the ocean

Ever a new face

2010-03-16T21:54:00.000-07:00

The sun it marks
The hours with trees
It passes
Through their hands

Rising high
Or creeping nigh
The seasons' drifting pace
Bright days or dim
Some soft, some grim
An ever changing face

Unless the day
In timeless gray
Would seem to still the sands

The hours hide
And so we bide
Adrift in timeless lands

In the shadow of Olympus

2010-03-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

...a double haiku triptych

Earth lies beneath you Her many fruits she submits In fear of lightning	Held by your station On the highest pedestal You cannot stop him
Tides like swift horses A rush of sudden passion And then home again	What set you apart From your sisters was your voice The moan of the sea
Unseen and patient All things come to you in time Except light or life	Silently you stare Into the face that stole you From joy and beauty

Poem 5, Stanza 1, project for next autumn

2010-03-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

Among the orchard rows she stands
Bent and bowed and brave
The sweetest fruit upon our lands
Her branches curled like wringing hands
Wind weeps through her like heart rent strands
Keening at a grave

Steam Hemodynamy

2010-02-27T20:34:00.000-08:00

The leather bladders stretch and squeak
From force against their fittings
And here and there, there springs a leak
Of steam between the stitchings

With salve of balm you soothe the cracks
With sinew close the fissure
The valves and gauges I have made
Keep watch upon the pressure

This beating pump of time and heat
By our four hands we fashioned
Each broken seal we mend to last
Our dark coal pile we ration

The engine knocks, the pressure drops
There's droplets on the metal
I lean upon the bellows hard
'Til whistles pierce the kettle

Perhaps someday the fire will die
Or unwatched boiler burst
But still we each this fettered beast
Will stoke and pump and nurse

Tending the fire

2010-02-06T21:51:00.000-08:00

The snow lies around me
Wet, dripped on by the trees
The ground stretches, stirs
Curious but not fooled by the thaw
There will be more snow
Although the year is beginning to rise
And Winter has not been as cold
As it should be
Spring will come late here
If at all, before Summer burns in
The wood, moldy in the desert
I had to dry on the barbecue
Before piling it into a fire
And throwing an old stump on it
It burns better than I thought it would

Today is the day
That my ancestors celebrate
Joining together
Across the national borders
That divided their land
But could not divide them
So, for that I go out into the cold
To cook some real food
Steak, yams, mushrooms, and kale
(Not salmon, cloudberries and reindeer
...at least I had the mushrooms right)
I sit around the fire with my family
An ocean and twelve generations away

We bring the smell of smoke
And damp wood back into the house
It makes us all smile
Reminds us of family
Like we're living in a winter cabin
Waiting for our summer in open camp
And everything is right

I go back out alone
Circle the fire
Prod the coals with a stick
Think of poetry
Think of Winter
Think of a far away people
I don't really belong to
Think of nothing in particular

The snow tries to decide
Whether or not it wants to fall
And whether or not it wants to be rain
While the girls inside
Read, paint
Grow

Projections of Dancing

2010-02-06T12:32:00.000-08:00

Distant dust obeys
The same blind dance that I must
Our steps mapped and drawn

As time draws thinner
Cold shapes cling to each other
Under growing skies

Light gets more distant
The projection screen stretches
Still we cast shadows

Vanishing Point

2010-02-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

I wake up and become aware
But I didn't wake me
I tell my body to do
What it tells me to tell it to do
And respond
To it's responses
To the presentation it provides me with
Of the world around us

I don't like what it doesn't like
I'm not even sure why
It doesn't like the things it does
Even when I would disagree
It wins arguments by
Not bothering to present a case

I wonder if it complains
To its cells about
Why they act the way they do
Or if the cells complain to their molecules
They probably just do the job in front of them
Without complaining
Because complaint only exists
At my level

Each night I go back to sleep
Because, unlike my body
My cells, or the universe
I'm not built to exist full time
And I'm not even the one
Who tells me I'm tired
And turns me off at night

Rough Stones

2010-01-30T12:39:00.000-08:00

All I can offer are
Rough stones
Not pearls, diamonds, silver
The eternal recipe for enchantment
Comfort, adoration, strength
Smooth, bright and enduring

All my rocks
Are the hillside sort
Not yet smoothed by the river
Gray-brown, cracked but solid

All the magic I offer
Is the wayward kind
Rooted, sheltering, bruising, dense
Never moving when you want it to
Only unexpected, undirected
Crashing through things
If the ground under me gets loose

But at least when the ground catches me again
I end up that much closer to the river

The day that you leave

2010-01-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

On the day that you leave
I don't think I'll grieve
For my soul's spent it's tears when it traveled
Out to years without you
And the odd things I'd do
In the space after time had unraveled
Though my life is here now
All must end somehow
Although I, perhaps you, might still linger
Each day lost has been cried
The knots have been tied
As reminders of life round my finger

Blackbird - imagined 3rd verse

2010-01-20T21:58:00.000-08:00

Blackbird singin' in the dead of night
Take this broken heart and learn to sing
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to take wing
Blackbird fly
Blackbird fly
Into the light of a dark black night

[Blackbird had an effect on me when I heard it played at a restaurant on Corpus Christi Bay, right before I went off to college. I was traveling one last time with my Dad through South Texas, where I had spent many summers with him. When I first sang this to my children years later, I didn't look up the lyrics, and fought my way through it. This verse, with apologies to Lennon/McCartney, was constructed out of my misrememberings after I finally looked up the actual lyrics]

Signposts in passing

2009-11-13T22:26:00.000-08:00

For you I have
Gathered touchstones
Along our shore
Built grand relics
In the sand
To keep the place
Solid where you reside
In the shifting
Wakefulness that
Drifts in and out around me

You'd call me a fool
If you knew me
From the inside
If you called me
Anything at all
You'd say I got it all wrong
If you wandered into that
Statue garden
My dragon hoard

But my hope is realistic
I know these treasures
Are more for me
Than you, anyway
I mark time with them
Among them
Uncertain gifts
Guard and garden them
And maybe time
Will shift me
To the place where they
Can be bestowed

Or, looking back
At their polished forms
Long worked
In the past, immutable
A proud mural
To an imagined homeland

How the cooper's son was comforted

2009-11-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

Taken was she
From the cooper's son
The fourth of seven and unlucky
Wed to a fine boat captain
And born away over the sea
Face glistening in the salty spray
Dressed in white linen
Like a freshly refit ship
Too young she was stolen
From summer evenings wound
Together on the sand in the coves
With her luckless love
Sadly, the cooper's son was a fine student
And took too much to letters
For the strong-backed trade of his kin
And at the loss could never be found
The working day long by any
Hidden away in the coves
Upon the rocks and brooding
With his eyes fixed on the far horizon
While the waves crashed in time
His notebooks filled over
And again with their rhythm
'Give me a woman back from the sea
To replace the one that was taken
One with the will to go where she please
And not traded by men for her beauty
But bides and chooses to be with me'
Below the rocks the water churned
With the visions sailors fear
But the cooper's son gazed intently
And as he watched the sea changing
And beckoning to him to look closely
Waving like hair seemed the weeds of the sea
Dark eyes like a seal staring sadly
Minnows for a breast, whale for a back
Driftwood legs joined together by mussels
Starfish fingers and lips of crimson anemone
His legs in the water he greeted the lady
Her embrace soft, close, cold and willing
And the burn of her kiss
Numbed the pain of his loss
As her tide pulled him away from the living

Turn a light on

2009-11-09T23:31:00.000-08:00

Shut the windows
Lock the doors
Round up everything that's yours
Turn a light on
Say goodbye
See the distance in your eyes
Where we wander
I don't care
Let's just go see what's out there
The mysteries that we can't see

And what I want to know
Is every time we go
Are we looking for a place
Or just a way
Through the dust that's settling?

How could we live this way
On new ground every day
Why do we need to see
Fresh skies and
Distance with each new morning?