Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Paper bag of dreams

I've never been a fan of drinking, so much pain and suffering caused by those who look too deep into the bottle. This is a poem about alcohol and someone who did look too deep, where it took them, and what thoughts may be running through ones head, in thinking of their life and its worth.

--

Garbage, all of it

Take this city

It’s like the devil’s graveyard

No one wants anything to do with it

Only the worthless live here

No living at all

No death either

That would be thanked for

Life is a man’s living hell here

Starving

Freezing

Suffering from any number of ailments

The body rotting on the vine

And there I am

once something

now nothing

Whiskey in one hand -

My paper bag of dreams

Today the sky is golden

And the sunrise bold blazing

Like wheat fields back home

Reminders of living

When death wasn’t a knock away

And life was hoped for

As being long and happy

Now I only wished so I could be content

With this life now

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Alluvial Fan


Death Valley NP Dunes

***Definition of Alluvial Fan: the alluvial deposit of a stream where it issues from a gorge upon a plain or of a tributary stream at its junction with the main stream.

On a recent trip to Death Valley, I spent time photographing the dunes, exploring the canyons, and traveling through the desert. In a place with so much rock and sand, to imagine times when it was green and verdant is natural. For me, the high flying Raven's see so much. Birds, in fact, that may live over 50 years. No wonder they appear so witty and smart! Simply lacking our own comforts of home, it is rare we lived longer as hunter-gatherers. So who's wiser? This is a story of the wandering Raven speaking to the mountains.

--

Of the desert rides a bird of flesh and bone
“Don’t think of her alone,
but far from home.”
Out from the roiling currents she is carried
to the parched Earth

“Tell her oh Dunes of these effervescent mountains
in their vivacious youth!”

In the sand the flesh of washed-out youth
“But LOOK, look up and see
the mountains.”
black and beady eyes stare upward,
as feet crane as feathers are ruffled,
and what is seen is stark cliff
slapped against pale cheeks
and brow of old and elemental mountains

“Ah, but once they were green
and sculpting creeks ran through sculpted meadows,
basic units of beauty petrified
in those moments when youth’s thundering holler
was scattered by the scions of Natures brood
that roamed these precious crests of the Sierra.”

Reaching out, the bird gathers the arid breaths
of these thirsty, weeping denizens
whose anatomy has ground down the grottoes
like the stone that turns and turns
until it has ground itself to nothing
and sees what once was the Funeral Mountains
under seas of green and gracious trees,
isles of twisting and dropping rivers,
and corridors of broad and snaking valleys

“That which appears everlastingly
is as transitory as man,
as malleable by the drifting years,
as measured as her quartered seasons,
as day is to night,
the waning moon to tides,
we are all one day driven down the canyons,
shattered rock ground to sand,
and spread outwardly, an alluvial fan
beneath the sky of the Mojave desert.”

Friday, November 6, 2009

Turquoise under the moon

The sunset is a beautiful thing. Here I try to explain it and what it means to me.

--

as
stuttering
seconds
spontaneously erupt
in every hue
spatially entwined to

even as I peer outwardly
leeringly at
fin-AL-ity
clutching at my hearts rapture

I don’t watch the bleeding
martyrdom with eyes
of sadness
but the ephemeral beauty of
birth and smiling motherhood
expressing her
happiness and love

even in night’s lunar
wakening
the drama of
that magic
hour does not collapse
spontaneously

her soul is
not red and fiery
throwing flames
and flashing light beams
on waves of turquoise

there progresses the
fleeing shadows
pushed by
her dying breaths
enlightened by providence
and rebirth