creative

Dearly Beloved

We are gathered here today
to mark the passing of death;

Death-of-the-Inside,
the clinging fear
and the dénsed darkening,
nurtured since birth
that says

“No.
Not good enough.”

Mark well what you’ve missed
and what remains,
what you thirst for
and even what’s flayed your soul at night.
For this is all a kind of prayer.

So then stay with me awhile
after these words,
and we’ll lay our flowers and shadows
under the arms of the earth.

The tears of the air
tamp the ground,
erasing even our footprints,
and there will be no markers or epitaphs.

Say it now, and say you all so.

This dawn I sense beating draws close;
so I’ll join you at the wake,
when the clock strikes sunlight.

Leaf on the Wind

[I]

Could be my heart’s a heavy idol
slowly tearing out of my body,
to be placed at the altar of Shadow.
Maybe not.
In time, then,
I will make pilgrimages and offerings.

So we pass into the unwritten season.

But wind it back if you like,
the clock,
if only to hear me say

I would help you walk, someday.

[II]

Would you gather my bones
in your embrace,
one last time?

Then lay them to nourish the earth.

If you can hear them sing,
then come to me;
come sit, and listen with me.

If the songs I’ve given in this life
haven’t been enough,
come listen then to the song of my bones,
that you may see cleared a path
to the cliffs of your heart
and dive headfirst into the maelstrom of grace
that awaits you.

I would see you untense your shoulders again,
and laugh until your face rains
before you leave the living of the earth.

Is this like drinking darkness?
You must do that sometimes.
We all must.

If you will it,
this becomes fuel for the light.

[III]

Come, then.
Sit.
Listen.

The secret:
the whole cosmos
is made of music,
and you & I
are fleeting consonant harmonics,
waves embracing in the echo-

watch how we soar.

Three Words

Three words, like…
well, you know the variations.
Take your pick.
They all involve parting.
Falling, they sound of leaves.
They can begin the death of a heart’s song.

I did not know the future.
I was open to the love of things whole and broken.

come come come
yes no wait
go

So I turned my face from the sun,
and I transgressed into hiding;
I did not paint my door with the blood of sacrifice.

I felt the Angel of Death
descend in the dark,
and he did not pass over.
And I became sick with death,
from the bones out,
as I knew he had come to claim the light within.

wait, a moment’s breath

See now, the Angel of Death had brought a gift,
as all things die and come clean and are born.

I was shown a boy, reading a book,
under a pine standing on a hill.
I was shown a girl, reading a book,
under a cottonwood waving in the breeze.

He spoke, and pointed-
“Who between you
are among the bones of the earth?
I will not visit you
for some time.
Now there is work to be done.”

Rain pools itself in tire tracks.
At morning’s break,
they blind in the light.
At night’s fall,
they scintillate in the dark.

Some things dry, and fade,
and some do not.

Now there is work to be done.

Prowl

I ride on the edge of the night,
where sacred-looking things arise
from power lines and signals of the civil-

doesn’t the wolf come sometimes
to the edge of the city?

So I feel alive and electric in the neon,
merely from contact and rhythm;
we are wired for this.

claws click on sidewalk pavement

Yet
I still need the full-breath,
the long-hale up from the blood,

the consonation

and synchronizing hum of your body
rising from the earth,
dripping with mud,
calling to the darkling beyond dream.

Skirting the trail,
sowing and conjuring then I traverse time and space;
it smells wet and rank-sweet in here,

but this hunt
isn’t really a hunt,
is it?

I can hear you
from my bones out
to the stars.

I wander home, alone in the descent of sacred things;
I wander home, alone,
riding on the edge of the night.

Bailaro

Once, a while ago, when the rhythm took me,

(sorry, sorry, sorry,
lo siento, mea culpa;
have you seen all the ways
we learn to apologize
for being alive?)

it was Los Lobos,
and it was Spring,
and I was in the kitchen,
and I was told to stop screwing off.

The next day, I drove past a graveyard.

Most days now,
I’m guilty of screwing off.
(especially where rhythm is concerned)

Lo siento.

Canis Lunaris

Why?

Why does she run,
always out of reach,
twisting halfway
in a leaping dodge through the fresh powder
and over the melting riparian edge
with that sly and challenging smirk,
that furrowed brow?

All day, I thought it
-play-, thought
-pack hierarchy-, thought
-willful child-,

which I accepted, of course.
Leashes are to be used sparingly.

Should I have even been asking?

It only occured to me
after some time had passed-
she was trying to show me the

(secret)

and that I, being only human,
couldn’t follow all the way.

Vernalsong

In case you ever again enter
the winter of forgotten things,

listen-

You are of the transcendent.
You are of the wild and hopeful,
of the beautiful and terrifying Light.
You are of the rising storm.

You are of the running herd,
and hawk on the wing,
and fin cutting the waves,
and the pack-howl at night.

You are cloaked in honor,
you are of the ardent-hearted,
and the sword and the plough
and of the green, growing things.

You speak for those who have no voice.

You are worthy, and I am worthy,
and every single thing is worthy,
and it was deemed so
in the forges of fading suns
containing every single atom
of yourself
and myself,
aeons ago.

In case you ever forget-
are you listening?

Words

What can I say about you
that wasn’t already said
by Monet’s brush,
by Gibran’s pen,
by Carter, opening Tutankhamen’s tomb,
by Einstein’s math,
by my mother’s hands,
or by my dog’s tongue?

What can I possibly describe about you
that wasn’t already given to me
in the absolution of the wild,
that wasn’t felt by my sister
on the first horse she mounted,
by my father
the first time he wandered the woods alone?

What on earth
can my heart not say these days
as it pulses fragments of dead stars
to my eyes,
that I might turn them
on the night sky, itself
half-made of dead stars?

What can you show me
that is not in itself
a miracle?

And what can I say to you
that does not come out
“we are here for the space of a breath,
beloved,
and no more”?

Chronoscope: K-Outland //progenitor _1.5

​The meeting-place beckoned up ahead, the setting sun embracing the giant tree in the coming twilight.

Finally.

Small eddies of dust and cottonwood puffs danced in the rays.

The ground and the grass smelled lush, full of memory. The scent invaded him, goaded him, kissed him.

Finally.

His blood continued to drip onto the dirt as his boots scuffed along the road.

In front of the word ‘dead’ is a decent place to put the word ‘almost’, he thought.

The lacerations would heal in time. The defeat, at the very least, could be learned from.

His vision blurred as the tree got closer.

No!

He slowed his pace, slowed his breath. Vision returned. Mostly. 

The tree waved its arms in worship of the sinking sun.

Finally.

His breath caught.

There was a note tacked to the tree.

He steadied himself against the trunk and pulled the note off, wiping the sweat from his eyes with his forearm.

He looked around, and saw the desolate peace of nature staring back. Nothing else.

He read the note.

>Cordell-
>
>Take care of yourself.
>You need to heal.
>
>XO

He looked up, nodding at nothing in particular.

She hadn’t bothered to sign it. No need.

“Mmhmm. Yep.”

He spat into the dust with force, and almost crumpled the note before creasing it delicately and sliding it into the only pocket that wasn’t spattered with a mixture of bloods.

He slept there until sunrise, bandaged himself as best he could, and continued on the western road.

Having the rug pulled out from under your feet is one thing.

Waiting in a place such as this, he reckoned, amounted to suicide, which is another thing entirely. If the bandits didn’t blow your face off, the echoes and whispers from the path behind would surely drown you.

Cordell walked.

The cottonwood waved in the wind, and bid him farewell.