Drafting

An enormous black dog
Reincarnated as

An old typewriter
With too many keys,

Ink wounding the paper
When fingers attack,

Tired stories snarling,
Restless like trembling dust

Drifting on the edge
Of consciousness,

Straying past its borders
and into the deep wild of the backcountry,

Gripped by insomnia
And feral doubt,

Tuned to the calls
Of the dirt dusk ravens,

A taste in the air
Dry as bone.

It’s all wrong.

Obsidian

An ebony night cuts
Through the horizon,

Shimmering like mislaid obsidian,

Resplendent above
The dark turquoise sea,

The light of a fading village
Glinting patterns across the waves,

A dance of languorous luminescence,
Golden disks in the shapes

Of octopuses and starfish,
Seahorses and Gods,

Primeval fables bubbling
Across a hundred generations,

Histories mapped in volcanic rock,
Every hill, every path, every stream

Venting ancient seismic groans

In the primitive dark,
All myth bent and low,

As Poseidon quietly piles
The beaches deep in sand once more

Invisible to all.

Always Do Sober What You Said You’d Do Drunk

We talk too much in our fast canoes,

Buzzards circle
And sobriety howls

As we pass between mountains,

Two monuments stood staring
At each other for eternity,

Shepherding the river
And conducting the chaos;

Animals wail from the forest

And a small redwood chapel
Winks through the trees,

Water licks the rocks wildly,
Our horizons tilt and careen,

We stare back at each other
Apprehensive and pensive,

Our mouths wide shut,

Drunk on hope.

A Luminous Finger

An aurora’s tail
Whips the night sky,

A luminous finger
Strums on its zither,

Phantom faces
Cavort and careen,

Spirited frenzies
Puppet the heavens,

Phantasms groan
Through magnetic emmissions,

All electric green strokes
And rearranged kisses,

Christ sits in the clouds
Frying tortillas,

All mesmeric contours,
Vivid and flushed,

Rushing through stories
That fade without endings,

Beginning with a small
Disturbed hush.

Thereafter

When dawn broke
We were lying
On a hill wide awake,

We just stared
At the sky
As the clouds shifted shapes,

No more talk
Of the dead
And the worries of youth,

The sunshine
Was our guide
As we swam in the truth.

The Peach Tree

Columns of smoke cloaking
Cluttered thoughts and unfed shadows,

The crumbled calls of entropy,

The breath faint mystery of survival,
Blackened hills and broken wells,

Rusting cogs and pyramids,
Cathedral spires and totem poles

Conducting loose and lost mandalas
As they dance to hope’s melodies.

Revelations spin on pin heads,

Winter’s artificial mountains
And frozen river plains
Mirror soft transforming skies,

A loose decision is plucked from nowhere,
And all is one again somehow,

No static in the daylight,

No rainclouds or feedback
Or dark-dyed idiocy – just peace;

And the cracks find us here,
Wide eyed in a shed,

Laughing in each other’s arms,
Staring at a simple old photo

Of a peach tree,
Zoetic.

Bait

Trapped between
Cognitive thinking,
Drinking and just
Floating in space,
They dangle like bait

Caught in a misty
White chaos
With apes locked in cages
Who slouch and persist
On just rotating lounge wear,
All swear words,
Abuse and raw hatred,

It’s a mess,
It’s bad taste,
It’s a waste,

It’s the kind of
Bent mindset
Found on posters
Once pasted by skinheads
In basements
And dirty phone booths.

That Stolen Desert

That stolen
Desert,

Ignorant
When questioned,

All broken
By nature’s moans,

A crudely
Sketched landscape

Drying the hush
Of all murmurs,

As the sun
Bleeds its war.

Grapefruit Husks

A citric residue
Coats the bacon pink lips
Of all around the silent table,

Half serrated silver spoons
Sit beside a dozen quivering
Grapefruit husks,

A distant radio rolls the news,
Eyelids flicker a gentle waltz
And the kitchenware rattles,

Poorly cut videos flash and repeat,
Cracked echoes of longing
And whispered perception,

All dizzy days gone by
And stippled memories
Reaching out,

Sat in the sun dappled dust
And flickering in the haze
Of another privileged curse.