Single is Nothing

We pause to see radical change
Endorse it every town we tinsel
A branch where math is sacred

Single is nothing
We hang on

Our ligaments
Wish we thought better
Organic chemistry, quantum physics, astrophysics and neuroscience
Permacultural meditation, galactic alignment
Salmon eggs and skeletons mantra
Hawks, bats, hummingbirds, and manta rays

Fictitious realms and societies
Unseen abstractions laughing

Cryptic illustration of all things combined
A whole body together

Subconscious interaction
Clairvoyance and intuition
Star power and amethyst rocks
Heart tremors

Slipping vessels aboard the solution--saline circulation
What does the hand mean, who do I signify?

A cellular chapel, a chapter unwritten
And what do you feel about death?

And how can you inhale this life without exhaling
How could we think without salt and light

Without clear and dark voyages and voyeurism
A radiant teaching embodied and broadcast

From an island where the sunflowers turn
To the child of the sun

Play peek-a-boo like cats and tomatoes
The nightshade purples and resonates from paragliders

Diaphragmatic flight surrenders to wind and creation--
an echo so shallow and hollow--

Unaware of this frequency of sails and photons
We pause on the road to see a mesa and a man-made lake
All insects prehistoric
and where words don't work

Crazy Glue

We were surrounded by crazy glue

Surrounded by tools

We had the antidote for snake venom

and spilled all that too

My brother dangled from a rosary

fell far from a bead

The break echoed for decades

Slipped the rosary into grandma’s pillowcase

She never prayed again

He once was a manta ray

Once was a kite

He laid the sticks crosswise
Jumping in kid shoes

I snapped them apart

I can’t find them in the wilderness

Can’t squeeze their stubborn honey

That sleeps in crevices

Wings folded

The colored corollas too timid to help

What if they knew
he lives in a rock

the size of two palms

painted red butterfly?

What if they knew 

it could speak?

I leave them all spinning

I look for rainbuckets

I look for letter magnets

I look for windows taller than me

I was hypothetical then

Not a real dream

I was a shard of lamp glass

He broke for me

I bottled his swings

I smothered his voices

I asked him to shine

We were surrounded 

Surrounded by fools

We made dandelion sun tea

and spilled all that too

What am I?

I am a robber, a victim, a thief—I am kind remorseful, unburdened, relieved. I am thick as black and clear as forgotten sleep. I am stung. I am still here, still where I was, still looking to be somewhere else. I am fieldless, mountainless, lakeless, in love.  I tremble. I am a jackhammer. I am exhaust. I am raw, unrefined, unfiltered, unholy and I am whole.  I am restless. I am a rooftop—imperfect and boiled softer by the sun.  I am earth heat. I am basalt. I am volcanic. I am ash. I am fertile, sandy loam. I am part acid, part salt, part quiet, part lion. I am broke and I am awake. I am green, I am chartreuse.  I am full of truth. I am unlawful, self-righteous. I am aloof.  I am unencumbered, outnumbered and I am childless. I am full of lies. I am thunder. I am panther. I move swiftly in the dark. I am dark. I am speech. I am description. I am hollow, fluffy, silk and smoke-free. I am away. I am remembered. I am thought—a time of day. I am erupting. I am ruthful. I am a pear tree bearing plums. I am a fountain, a trickle, a bone, a white key, a black key, a coin. I am a canoe, a lighthouse, a totem. I am crystalline. I am a reflection. I am a knapsack, a puddle, an emblem, a bang.  I am a pair, a leaflet, a couplet, a rendering. I am a stair, a pedestal, a pendulum, a portal. I am out. I am land. I am a cell. I am a sail, an insignia, an island, a tide. I am voluntary, inevitable, indiscriminate, enveloped, unchained. 

When I See Felix in Exile I Know

There will always be outer space
and Negative Capability
In which I saw the depth of time and no time and the spaces
within a spilled espresso pot
and the contagious void that it creates
on white celluloid
That paper could pretend to be
a procession of encumbered dancers and laborers
of dark limbs
of any stature and without nations
A superimposition of white ants
traverse a single planet's path
across the liquid composition
whose common name is god
whose scientific
name has yet to be deduced
One could wield political power by symbols
cut and paste to fashion a custom flag
Indicating
There's less difference
between reading Russian and reorganizing a rubik's cube
than there is variation between the Brothers Karamazov
and amongst the constitution
of one cube to another at any point
in metamorphosis
No limitations to the use of rocket ships
Some enjoy them as large drinking vessels
while others prefer them for entertaining
interplanetary cousins
all aspiring to acquire the speech patterns of Carl Sagan
and Carl Jung
It takes little effort

but is of great consequence
to be a man with several folds

about his face and sculptings
to be a pearl in anything

other than an oyster
to leave everything broken

Trees are livestock - traduccion

a river arrives

 behind the barbed wire & each window

her loins root red in deep clay

 hillsides burst 

 bags of all-purpose flour

and the yellowing day finally collapses

while the ceiling asks & the bed answers

"you will never get there"

the cows are slow

and below the shadows of their hats

brims a diversion

lifting one palm

as if to say, "you're welcome"

we always pass 

leaving the beaches, 

the clouded space, the unnamed towns

ahead

like the cow

i don't have a country to go to

there is no table for us

to drink honey 

like this moment

without a watch

Loma Real

The livestock are naked Indians 
and have yellow bark.
A rio arrives at her loins that root deep
swallowed by red clay
dusted with windblown talcum 
from a washed out mountain.
El día amarillo collapses mientras que 
el cielo asks
and the bed answers,
"You'll never get there."
Las vacas son despacias.


Abajo de la sombra de sus sombreros, brims
a diversion--estan levantando una mano
as if to say, "You're welcome"
con mucho gusto.


Siempre pasamos adelante
adelante salgamos las playas, las lomas,
y los rincones nubosos.


Como la vaca, no tengo un pais para ir
no haya mesa donde podemos tomar miel
como este momento sin reloj.

So little that counts can actually be said.

"We are like two old people
sitting in rickety chairs
on the porch
sipping small glasses of beer,"
he says.

The monkeys drop bits of tree from the treetops
interrupting the insects' nocturnal chatter.

Yes, we are as old as we will ever be;
like this,
in the cooling of the day.
In the translation of a single burning star
into a perforated black nylon ceiling
where everything turns clockwise
so many times and so quickly that it appears to be
in the very same place.

We are not thirsty. And I trace the orbit of flocks above
while he plans for the sake of planning.

We are quiet together. Digesting.
When he closes his eyes, I hear him listening
to the crickets
immune to clichés and restless motors in the distance.