a season long in turning

The rock portal to the trail head was closed
but Mount Shasta welcomed our grace with
piney arms that were in pine swiftly opposed
with grainy scree and an orange needled pith,

woody cones fell plenty in a season austere
where snowfall tumbled into secret ravines
and opened a deep freeze in cracks where
bursts of young pines yearned to be green.

A season long in turning matters to spring
but shortens out as one returns in default,
to stare left at whiteness and wonder if salt
will hasten the melt despite the obvious rings

when a beaver Moon has Saturn eclipsed
and one looks backward with quivering lips.

Early to the Barrow Laid

Early to the chamber laid in a bloom barren bower where
the chairs are shrouded in synthetic white because bare
the long chrome legs would near and laughingly compare
to those naughty thighs pressed blackly lush in nylon sheer

the two crones chatter in cotton candy conspiracy sprays
and salivate about where the open House of Debbie lays
for all the ladies that come to see a purple weave betrayed
by felonious saliva that washes their scalps in bald hearsay.

So early to the barrow laid, unable to grasp arcing tropics south
and topics in northern ears that cannot avoid their carping mouths
even while sitting alone and still while bellied wine erases doubts,
a mind blurs behind my tortoise shells and no breath will out.

a reading from the dry ventricle

Ghosts in grey drift a room crossed lob
away, now devoid of eyeballs cloudy clear,
it's a creaky door that denies a greasy knob
not easily opened by the red pulsed fears

flowing down blank corridors, what the fuck,
into the freshness of a stem cut bouquet
standing on a high ledge and looking up 
to freeze a vertigo season where lilies lay.


Each fleshy moment passes in pedestrian motion
because of thrusts remaining safely asleep
and the question never becomes a question
of pulse when the pachysandra slowly creep


over cooked rimmed orange edges on ground
to throbbing at dawn for a Quixote in clouds.

A Canticle of Breath

With every breath is a universe expanded
and contracted the same as you breathe
endlessly in and endlessly out
but you count one breath,
if you remember to count at all.

The time you think you know is funny like that,

so is the brown flutter of a sparrow's wing
on a cold morning in late December
when your vapor is the breath of dreams
forming crystals you cannot see are silver

and this, too, is breath.

A stalactite was formed while you slept
and your dreaming drips of mineral green
gave birth to limestone runes of praise
in a tongue gone pink deciphering you

in whispers you feel are funny like this

and that, too, is breath.

prana

If you inhale many galaxies
I shall re-invent you as a god
and exhale a nebula of light.


If the exhalation decompresses
into a grave and infinite density
I shall blackly breathe your words.


If neither happens
I shall endlessly repeat myself.

in the afternoon being library spent

in the late afternoon being library spent
there is a need to grasp a shorter death
where the details are lost in lettered intent-
yellowed words and a dust gasped breath.

a bit of covered scarlet silk lipped desire
is heaving enough on a scant page turned
to a crescent bibliography of burning fire
where each citation is a reference yearned.

leaves enough in the autumn turn slowly
in an opaque blush of time's modest brush
teases the black nascent wish into frozen be
and ends with a sweet little death not rushed.

what starts with a turn into a lovely long seep
crescendos illuminated into an autumnal sleep

lily pond

a drop of water on the lily pond
is enough to create a miracle.

look into the ripples
and your face is transformed.

Li Po also died drunk.