One Song

This ever-present moment that is now 
waits for nothing - 
neither struggle nor sickness, 
nor disease or dysfunction
can change this...
this moment is all there is.

This moment cannot be placed on hold,
eagerly awaiting a time in which
we are more prepared for its presence.

This moment persists 
whether we are aware of it or not;
recognized or overlooked, celebrated or shirked,
this ever approaching, always fleeting moment
is immutable...
this moment is everything.

The more we grapple and cling for control,
the more this moment begs our surrender - 
the calm horse that doesn't buck
as we throw ourselves to and fro.

We do ourselves no favor
by projecting forward, by regressing back,
for these apparitions of the mind
are neither here nor now.

For all our avoidance and creative contrivances,
for all our procrastination and self-pity,
the inevitable we must face.

Beyond the illusion of space and time
there is one song - 
we sing and are sung simultaneously.

Hold this moment,
this one song dear,
for it holds no judgment,
it holds no fear. 

Unvoid

Dogs sleep 
like old mens' hands feel,
somewhere on the brink
between life and death,
somewhere in the void. 

Unvoid...
where ghost framed 
silken images hang
like treasures to be worshiped.
Where antenna ears
filter beats from the now.
That ageless wonder,
that ever-existent instant that is now 

Cold black noses
tether teeth and lips,
and yet
the beast is not here,
not in skin or bone.
But again she breathes so softly -
gallivanting in that mind malleable realm,
the place where we've met
time and time again.
Sharing soft sweet kisses
painted with the sun.

Eyelids closed be beam inward,
where emotions speak images.
That ageless wonder,
that sweet dream taste.
   
 
    

Borderland

There's a dog that's not there,
there's a man with no hair,
there's a rhyme
that shouldn't be spoke.
There's a dump that's on fire,
and blood they perspire  
in a wasteland
where we try not to choke.
The plants have all died,
there's something rotting inside
in a warehouse
where chemicals leak.
And I stumble the fray,
broken hands held to pray,
but I'm awake 
and alas
I feel bleak.
   

Meteorite

This evening, driving home,
the road scrolling beneath my wheels,
evening grasping the sky.
It screams downward,
angled sharp,
a burning hot ember,
a trail of fire and smoke,
its head so white
it's almost clear,
an ever-changing corona - 
now mauve,
now sterling,
now platinum -
a metamorphosing gash
in the cerulean sky,
a crack between worlds.

It nears the mesa,
ever smaller,
and I forget
the road,
I forget
my obligations,
I forget
the groceries 
in the back seat -
its magnetism calls me.
Wordless it reminds:
a moment alone,
without time. 

Chant

3 by 3 by 3
it is done,
bury your dead,
bring me a gun,
hand me your teeth,
full of decay,
spread out a sheet
for us to play. 

Pandora's Box

Secrets come in small packages,
hidden in dark places,
where untrained fingers fall short.
Do you wonder about these packages,
what hides within them,
like Russian dolls within dolls within dolls,
like an onion ever-smaller yet ever larger;
yet is the code worth the energy
it will take to break it?

Excerpt: The Gamble

Cecilia cleaved the night in her Lexus―a shiny black knife parting the darkness. She had no concern for the hunt, just her cash prize, she wasn’t greedy. She was speeding, though not enough to draw attention from cops. She glanced down at the GPS just in time to feel the impact of her opponent’s car shouldering into her passenger side, pushing her forcefully into the guardrail. Toe on the brake and she dropped back, leaning heavily on the steering wheel and hoping for a three-lane merge to the nearest off-ramp. Her opponent was quick and intercepted her mid-swerve, again corralling her to the left side of the freeway. A quick heel-toe combination, brake then gas, her opponent on her bumper and it was too late. The PIT maneuver spun her and the world became a wrenching blur of stringy light wrapping the darkness. Her car tore through the guardrail with a wild metallic scream, the impact snapping her teeth shut on her tongue. Then she was flying. Time passed, she could tell, though it felt as if she had just blinked. She was still spinning, yet her eyes told a different story. The passenger window shook inward, sparkling like ice. Her black evening dress pulled taut against her skin as the fabric bunched between knuckles thrust near her face. The passenger window’s jagged teeth bit at her as she was pulled through. The smell of Old Spice hung heavy and a black gun-barrel-eye stared at her indifferently, then nothing.

Excerpt: Emails from Infinity

Starting at a very young age I was taken from my body while I slept, yet I am not a typical abductee. I wasn’t struck with a beam of white light and levitated into a spaceship. I wasn’t visited by grey-skinned creatures with enormous oval eyes bent on investigating my body with an anal probe. My experience of abduction was different. The process of falling asleep and dreaming opened a doorway―a passage between parallel dimensions.

One of my first memories: lying in my crib in my dark bedroom I became aware of a presence in my closet. This “Something” was peering at me through the gap in the closet doors. Its two eyes blazed, one on top of the other as if its head hung on a broken neck. I was immediately coated in hot sweat. My stomach churned and hardened. Blood throbbed in my temples as alarms in my mind screamed, urging me to get away, but I was unable to move. Its gaze had paralyzed me. The Something in my closet was not alone. A spidery thing appeared on the ceiling directly above my head. It hung in the air, a prickly dark ball, a tangled wad of living hair. As I cowered, eyes bulging from my face, it descended towards me. Stomach acid boiled into my throat. My small hands clutched at my favorite red and white Pinocchio blanket, I couldn’t move.

There was a sensation of knowing but not one of understanding. I knew that this thing was guided by The Something in my closet; it had been sent by The Something. As it came near hair prickled my lips and I was swept away from my room, sucked from the body that lay in my bed. I passed briefly through vast hollow darkness; then I was flying over a flat landscape that stretched endlessly in all directions. I hung upside down and helpless below a dark shape, my head too close to the coarse landscape, any closer, and my face would be erased. I flew at such a speed that my teeth chattered together hard enough to shatter, and my skin felt as if it would be torn off. I thought I might vomit from the pressure.  

It’s hard to describe the horror of a place that has no boundaries, a place that goes on forever. Think for a moment of the worst thing you can conceive of, rape perhaps or torture. I flew ever closer to the embodiment of the most terrible thing I could imagine, something worse than rape or torture, a place of raw emotion. Yet there was something else, something beyond my years. I would come to know this as fear of death. The understanding that we all owe a death and that my own was and continues to stalk me. This flight would become a recurring experience for me for many years.

The Fallen

Can burnt bridges be rebuilt,

some might say it's so.

This time is lost 

and found again

and what of these years have passed -

we are not now 

what we were back then

even if we still might dream,

that those times before 

could come again

and bring us haunted things.

To haunt, to have, to die again,

to leave it all behind.

What of these strange

and broken strings

that bind and hold us fast?

What good could come

what bad befall

behind these bleeding eyes,

that closed for me 

a doorway to

before this now was then.

It isn't, it was, it should've been,

but it wasn't

so now it won't.

But "IT COULD" I scream!

It can I dream

be brought up from the ground,

this sooty bedrock,

these blackened beams

compacted over time,

washed hard with tears

and strong with years

reformed, refinished, refined.

Where I Hide...

Bury me in words,
a sarcophagus of sentences,
a deluge of dialogue,
to nourish my decomposition,
to nurture my restless creation.

Feed me the images
that startled my soul,
sunset skimming sky scars,
that free-flowing form
that precedes solidity. 

Those tendrils breathe my breath,
the atmosphere inhales me.
Cooled by the distant 
canvas of night,
my shimmering coals,
my blackened flames. 

The room between the floorboards
hasn't a key,
only neatly laid passageways,
saturated in empty space.

I have two floor plans
that co-exist,
blueprints for the same space,
though I always ask,
how can one place be two?

Amidst Zach's lost spoons
and Georgia's grasshopper jar
I place this small piece of the puzzle -
small but substantial.

Vestige

Forest vines -

earthly roots clasp 

together like hands.

Thick brown knots -

wooden barnacles

encrusted with pale lichen.

Branches tied together,

a collage of frozen umber

cloaks pasty skin.

Eyes reflect

the sun's gleaming rays -

chiseled emeralds within.

Those vines so tight -

long cappuccino stains 

poured over arms and legs.

Rain envelops her body,

a violent tirade of grey.

Leaves stick 

like glued paper -

her only time alone.

Esophagus packed with moss,

she is becoming 

plant.