1.17.15

Aransas

at port aransas you remarked what a good team we made.
our combined karmas enabled us to conjure birds, beasts
and open eateries. no phone, a broken map but we were
filled with our ineffable silence which rang brash even
before there was such a thing as beginning.

a coyote sat tall in orange grass eking its way from 
the black canyon humus. you noted my kestrel kept
up with our Four Runner, arriving on electric lines
moments before us every several. that afternoon we
saw roseate spoonbills in flight as well as a small
family of them, washing in the rivulets and dining.

whoopers at great distances danced in order to
strengthen their relationship. the vultures on the
viewing deck allowed us utter privacy with which 
to view the cranes people travel great distances,
and still not glimpse. wheres the fuckin crane?! 
you did your impression of an angry camper. 
you made us laugh until it positively hurt; we 
went exactly nowhere without seeing them.

at dagger island a serpentine monster uttered 
his red longing petrified neighbors took to 
be dream. you handed me a bone crucifix
to hold while you tended to your camera,
i palmed it in cooled prayer of thanks for what
was us in sage walkways, us again in
silent grove of silver trees bent motte of us
driving home whatever sticks is what stays.

thank goodness you walked ahead of me.
a wild boar screamed calamity, charging 
from the wood smelled so eucalypti, 
i begged, no, commanded you to put 
your face in it. he bolted to the wood opposite. 
i did not move. i didnt turn to watch his mad 
exodus. my smile held me in a steel tank you 
excavated like a bell from the muscle blade 
of our conjoined shoulders 

that night i could not move and you did not 
stop speaking excited magic 
spells out what could only be taken 
as good, and right.

1.17.15

Polished Brass Joyousness

wait with me here until the rain stops.

i think but do not say lichen faces melt

into real ones. they wont look at us,
they allow us first turn to speak.

the sky played games with us.
from dark to light it went, as morning ought.

there was even a vague horizon; a longhorn

dismounted fog. moments later even the

charcoalest of grays were undistinguished

again from the utter dark
you persist driving in.

my song you protected
between your teeth like a sheath, held,
under the ID in your wallet, like saints relic.
what the soil offers as reason is kept too,

only the cold colorless sky recognizes
my tune travels the nethers of me

drinking in the earth,

sweet taste my joyousness
would fit into a plot with the beets
and winter cabbages.

new green growth i will name after you
and what my roots whisper about this i cannot

hear, it is that bass. stars so low tonight, yet back

brightly at me like the polished brass winged

instrument eyes you have always

laughed at me with,

before this burnished horizon where churns now

the poplar tulip before me, butter on mashed,

in the headlights, ripped off is its broad shoulder.

 
whats left hangs patient as a crag enmeshed
in the ridge your knuckles make on my sloping
plains like at the bottom of Texas, where they pull

to the wrong side to let a stranger pass,

were he in a hurry.

1.11.05

great flock of orange moths took to flight all at once.
before they wakened and flew id not noticed them,
their bright orange blent in with the brown of the canyon.
when i looked round i noticed several such flocks
little orange mouths pursed and waiting for
a single one of them to alight. they all will.

1.11.15

can anyone take full credit for their boat?

just sail best you can without steering,
take accountability for the boat, leave
the rest to mapreaders.

1.11.15

o its gonna rain

a good thing to remember when you break down
is its all the same when you break it down.
she laughed, i’ll write you off like a rich man
writes off his taxes. she carried a bottle
into the bed. her diction and mine
meant the same anyway, we were finding.
she was teaching me the ways of
Southern Ladies.
i cleaned the tub all over which red hairs climbed.
i noticed thru the window a rattle of seeds,
i breathed.
the pods dangling wind strangled twixt
and tween frogs or bugs lullaby—sucking me in
to thin wine. and i never know if it is frogs or bugs singing.
the day i gave up i wrote a poem to God who i dont know
or care to, just one coconspirator to another,
cursing him for the damn bugs wont show their faces!
you goddamned crickets! i cursed.
show your fucking selves.
and so resigned i was, at that.
went to an Al-Anon meeting with Rosemary
later. sat away from her in the back.
Just For Today they all said.
went round the room, everyone taking a turn
saying just for today i will be relaxed in traffic.
just for today i am grateful for my children.
my turn, i said just for today i am done with it.
the room waited, so i clarified, ‘all of it.’
later i stood outside by a bush smoking.
i was lost in the traffic of my thots.
i looked down at the bush and
                        here was a cricket!
i thot it was a cricket-----it looked like i thot
                            one would,
but still i second-guessed it.
my pulse worked extraordinarily a woman
comes out. fellow smoker, thankfully.
excuse me ma’am, i begged, is that bug right

there a cricket?
yes, she gazed at it.
you sure?
she looked at me. okay, okay, i told her.
thank you, and i know it is. we smoked in silence.
i got home and he had written me.
he wrote that for some time now
hed had the suspicion there were crickets actually inside
his house. hed felt sure of this, but now he had his proof----
he found a cricket in his kitchen
it was going
to be raining.

1.11.05

Divining Rod
i am at the beck and call of no man.
and shld i be?
theres not a woman on this earth knows more
bout me than me,
only the universe can, and rightly say one word
about it
the universe can since its as many songs by
verse and flows all about me as within me
i rise.

to the occasional:
thru poetry alone i survive.
flood warning bridge may ice before i do melt
my words decide way before i do.
poetry wooed and plagued me her sultry ways
killen the whole time i turned into her
like a chair leg
into the knee of affable
affinity
the old ineffible my divinity. i did not pardon
myself. i was that much obliged.

1.8.15

Pleasureville Sunsets