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The outlaw astride a buckskin pony, wool blanket around his shoulders, cigarillo clenched by tight jaw, eyes of steel fixed in a horizon that we all need. He's a coiled dream of what we think we are. Visionary, just and virtuous, untamed. He's ours. But he didn't exist. 

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24

24

What was your first clue

That there's no grand plan

No pie in the sky by and by

This book, 

a tiny ceramic village 

Decorated impeccably 

For a hollow day

Just a display

In the beginning

A metaphor for Om

Belief in a name sound 

A paradise awaits

Repentant murderers 

Zealot martyrs

Flames for unblessed victims

Self-fulfilling prophesy 

And false dichotomy 

Shape shifting 

Into every belief system

And none

23

The seamstress feels her own tapestry through calloused finger tips

The energy that makes life is a strand of spider silk in the night mist, torn as easily by wind as by struggle 

To feel waves of sound rolling back to us from the walls, from our own mouths, to see them bend the light

We made up that word because the emotion can't be found in the dictionary

And we danced in the first autumn rain like it was our last summer ever

Those years under glass 

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22

WWII vintage green paint and rust roof in the long morning light. 

The white night blooming phonograph horn flowers of the jimson weed are just beginning to twist closed for the day. 

Neglected victory garden of hallucination.

Black rat snake slips in like a rationed silk stocking over the dried bean stalks and leather britches. 

Smelling the lost time with his tongue, tasting the ruin. 

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20

When all you've done still isn't enough. 

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19

Stoned on the resinous vapor of summer yew, immortal and twisted. Fat hollow of trunk fed ashes and bones of scholar, artist and judge in season. Nine undernoon, hail to thee, red cap and mete-wand. Apple blossom, lavender and white rose. The robin on Thor's day. The full moon. The elk hears the notched arrow before the fletchings fly. 

18

At home in a room of broken things 

Less clean things and scattered not put away things 

Organized chaos with more focus on the chaos

A scientific experiment to see how long the test group can function in crisis mode

Life or the universe or god is an unseen mafia boss and his henchmen are coming by weekly to take off my toes then a kneecap then thumbs

Not knowing to what debt I owe this pleasure nor how to settle it 

Call them off

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17

Convince the eye that there are no shadows. 

Draw lines in darkness where they don't exist. 

Mirrors are sisters to lenses. 

Smoke is smoke. 

A distraction. 

We see what we expect to see. 

More and less. 

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16

Patchouli and bergamot down the vertebrae 

Cinnamon and sandalwood across the innominate bones 

Rose and jasmine along the clavicle

Sweet mints at carpus and medial malleolus

What is the anatomy of a memory

A complete skeleton for every kiss

Stacked in the catacombs of each heart

Anointed 

Embalmed

Sacred

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15

A storytelling of rooks. A siege of bitterns. A piteousness of doves. A lamentation of swans. 

Prehistory woven into limb and sky, nests in our collective imagination. 

Earthbound, we drew them on our walls with ochre and ash, built up a tower of words to reach them.  

Lizards have transcended to the kingdom of heaven and we are all Icarus, falling.  

14

Not the sort for jumping, but the ground is coming up either way. 

We all confess. There were Plans. Capital letter plans that were as real in our minds as memories of first kisses and child birth. All of those flung out the windows together. 

All the moments spread out before and after stop and all the adding up falls down like ticker tape and acid rain. 

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13

Precipitous observation of the lack of social progress as evidenced by rhetorical automobile decorations adhering to propaganda, driving home the message, proud of ignorance and hate, propelling it into the future at 65 miles per hour down the rural state highway of my otherwise bucolic life. 

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11

The morning clings to the grass and my eyelids heavy and damp. 

Moth-eaten glory yellowing time's teeth. 

Webs unraveled and restrung in the corners. 

Harvest moon fingernail slides down the jutting spine of ancient mountains. 

Golden cauldron pours cobalt onto the sky. 

The age of the crone arrives. 

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10

On the heels of wound up

Chasing the tail end of a loop

Sit. 

As long as you drool on cue

Buy peanuts for the gallery zoo

Stay. 

Must have every latest ball thrown

Smarter than the pup you own

Roll over. 

9

My broken teeth gnashing at my own back in the dark. What kind of days are these the end of? Gold and glory. Pestilence and plague. Inside each hour they feel the same. Colors have different names and songs have different tunes, but we all see and we all sing. The well shod and the down trod. Hearts race with the joy of love. Tears salt the cheeks of lovers who've loved and lost. Every one of them sleeps, in every age and every city. Every one of them dreams. Every man chasing only himself in the night. 

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8

Summer's tantrum is throwing itself against the metal roofing. 

She's hurling branches around in the yard. 

She doesn't want to go, it isn't time yet, you promised. 

With the top of her voice she protests. 

Slamming the air and rolling. 

Flashes of anger. 

The tears, the tears. 

And then done. 

The cooling and the calm. 

Collecting. 

The wreckage, the broken toys.

Still didn't change the sun. 

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