Spelling Lost its Spells

What to say

to begin the show?

What to play

to get in the know?

Big things have small starts.

It is true,

I will have you know.

But what do I know

anyway?

I talk 

and I talk,

and sometimes

I talk some more.

I learn too

though.

Reels of my past

spin on some hidden projector -

sometimes I get to watch.

How it is

that I can be

such a stranger to myself,

is the mystery.

What is not a mystery?

If we are honest,

it is all a mystery!

We have our words

and our explanations,

indeed.

However,

descriptions are like

the clothes we wear.

They have nothing

to do with what they cover.

Boxes are convenient

and things stack neatly

within.

If words are the blocks

that make sentences,

have we not 

already blockchained

our existence?

My Beloved

For such a wordy man

I'm at a loss

to describe my love for you -

you who both terrifies and entrances me.

I can describe moments...

I see the profile of your face

and you don't know I'm looking.

You are smiling -

looking at something you enjoy

and I am overcome.

Your happiness warms me,

reminds me,

fills me

with a love

that is so powerful 

it is almost a sadness.

These moments glisten

like precious gems

in my reflections, 

and the you I know so well

is revealed once again.

It is easy to forget

amidst the rabble

of oh so important happenings,

and yet

it is the only thing worth remembering.

...

We have traded

mystery and wonder

for

technology and convenience.

Simple Truth

A simple truth:
Whatever you
truly believe,
for you is,
and will be. 

11/04/14 - 3:33 MST

Illusory Muse

You pierced my forehead
with a crystalline thread
and drizzled
your golden honey down,
glistening and sparkling
in the light
of a spectrum unknown.

Weaving with mine
and spiraling quickly into
a complex warp and weave -
that long lost
something,
that thing we know
we share,
but cannot
talk about.

Coughed an eyelash
in my eye,
turned once more
towards the sky. 

I was the muse
all along.

The Dance

The cosmic winds, they gust
shifting and shaping our granular existence
into sand mosaics,
mandalas of hope
spirals of fear,
eddies of potential,
always reformulating -
carrying us through rain-streaked arches,
quenching us upon the river banks,
and back again to the parched desert.

Within these gusts, we gather,
attaching and separating,
spinning upon high,
only to settle once again 
in hostile environs,
feeling our significance
and insignificance 
as one...
and so we dance,
and so it goes... 

Grey Night

The night is
painted grey.
Amorphous shapes -
the prehistoric bodies
of the foothills,
trapped in the murky waters
of the lunar wash.

I see them
in my peripheries,
movements and flashes,
brief glimpses
of those that rise,
like me,
to bask in the light
of this grey night. 

Pure Expression

How to describe with words, 
a place beyond words? 
Recently I traveled 
through immense cylindrical cords 
of pure nrg, 
liquid metal turnstiles 
stretching infinitely 
above and below me. 
They ushered me through, 
bending and twisting 
to allow passage, 
yet also moving 
within themselves, 
rotating inward and outward 
simultaneously. 
Beings of pure expression 
that shone gold, platinum, 
copper and silver, 
yet none of those colors.
There are no thoughts,
there is only information
throbbing through me,
slippery things 
that can't be spoke.   

Nearby my friend is lit from above,
the top of his head gone,
a cascade of buzzing nrg
throbbing through.
This is it, 
he is being downloaded. 
A horizon
stretches infinitely,
from the line
where his skullcap
is gone.
His mind is empty
of thoughts,
completely clear,
and yet he can speak
and he is soberer
than he has ever been.
He can see.

Beyond the mind
play-dough,
and the oddities
that guard the gate,
there is something 
that can only be felt. 
And we must translate
with rudimentary tools,
and bear the burden 
of its heavy load,
this thing 
that we can only
talk around. 

Tormenta

Galavanting clouds
with rain sarongs.
Misty gowns sweeping
the scrub-studded plateau.
Hitching skirts high
over mountain protrusions.
These mysteries 
we marginalize
with words. 

Awakenings

When your skin lifts up in prickly peaks,
and your fine hairs shiver straight
like antennas receiving
some anonymous transmission,
that's when you know.

When you see something inexplicable
out of the corner of your eye,
and you turn twice just to verify its origins,
that's when you...

When you experience a knowing
that goes against your logic
and the screaming siren inside you bleats:
PAY ATTENTION,
that's when...

When the word coincidence
is a glass with no bottom,
and fails to contain the water of experience,
that's...

When patterns emerge like intricate ice crystals
from the random downpour of reality's rain,
...

When all things in life seem like vertices
on some extravagant spider web,
separate yet connected by silver strands,
that's when...

When hidden meanings leap
from the dry text of life...
when you hear not what was said
by what was meant...
when the impossible becomes possible
and straight lines become spirals,
that's when you...

When the totality of these mere moments
becomes a weight reality can no longer shoulder,
that's when you change.

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?

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.

End of the Day

Looking at the burning drifts of a sunset, 

mauve on gold, 

dripping from charcoal clouds, 

and this sensation I can't quite place, 

this feeling of wanting to chase that sunset...

endlessly; 

this feeling of loneliness

and liberation 

mingling within my mind.

Grandma's Basement

I ask,

“Will you take me down there,

where the big spiders are?”

The door creaks open

and the darkness creeps out

like long, boney knuckled fingers.

I’m brave,

I think.

I do make it to the bottom of the steps

where a bare bulb casts angular shadows

across ruddy stone walls.

And then I’m running

back up into the daylight

because there are spiders,

and they are big.