Red Bird

"You are the dark
   Scars, we made of healing,
  An image reforming . . .
  becomes love.
     meets demons,
        resists temptations."

So I made my offering,
  And pour it into your heart.
    How could you not notice?

You turn,
I look,
   at the fire in front of me.

Sparks fly up
   and like a red bird,
     become lost.

Be Like Water

Freedom from time that's being released.
Outside it, like water, to go where I please.

Fire

Saturn showered works of Man

     on Mercury's five-petaled Flower,
Venus healed the wounds of Christ,
     with Psalms to Jupiter's Tower.
Mars aspired to join Islam,
  a minaret might take him higher.
The Sun gave away one Lunar day,
    And made it rain in Fire.

Mountains

Storms might dark the earth,
Rains might soak the sea,
Some might even doubt their worth,
And ask, Why now? Why me?

Faraway Pond

On the top of a faraway mountain

There's a drop of a faraway pond.

Some say it's a magic fountain,

That wells like a phantasm of God.

I've hiked to this spring many times,

Swum in its waters cold.

I wonder if the water or climb,

Could keep one from getting old.

Tube for Sasquatch

I gave a tube of Shoepatch to a Sasquatch that I knew,
It wasn't for any rubber shoes, I knew he had none to glue.
He put it on his inner tube, that he used for floating through,
The wild Wasatch waters, with their foamy rapids blue.

All of Us

Some are hot from a stove,

Or specks of sand on a beach

Others rocks in a cove,

Mumbling seawater speech.

Some take mass in a bowl,

Food from a hungry plate.

Others are hot and angry,

Waiting for a check from the state.

Some write lead from a pencil,

Bright as an perpetual flame,

Others are ink from a pen,

Blacker than lines in your name.

A bit of mud from a puddle,

Drips from the soul of my shoes,

Some are cops in a fuddle,

Who skipped on their union dues.

Me I'm a berg from a glacier,

Birthed with a terrible boom,

All but drops in a river,

Who fall towards eventual doom.

Cosmic Virus

We set dreams in our mind's
protein coat.
agents for cosmic truth,
are we viruses?
souls born
before the mind is hatched.
the problem is how to go back
into dreams,
to the mountain pool
of our origins.

The Fish

No longer clear, the stream got clogged,
Hills around it, trees cut bare . .
The sky in town's now foul air,
The fish I caught, I remember.

Send a Fire, Send a Rain

Send a fire
send a hot scorching fire
a fire to burn . . .
a hot blasphemous fire . . .

A fire to outrun the devil and pale him
and turn him into black ash.

A fire to leap from roof to roof
set the jail-masters and burgers on fire and follow their hot leaping till not a drop of water remains

Burn it dry burn it hot
drive out dew moisture sweat blood
boil till it all cracks and blackens and becomes ash
black, white, burn, run sinners
the needles are burning, the sap is burning, the limbs are burning.

Send a fire to purify skin, hair, fingers,
make us warm again before we become ash.
drive the chill from our schools, our streets,
make the sewers conduits of fire
red fire flames torching fire from spigots
set rats on fire the mice on fire the cockroaches on fire
put everything to fire.

Oh, we must want that fire.

Burn the engines the oil, the junkyards, the airports the cities the trains the cars the libraries
send the efforts of a million poets up in smoke vanished,
raged by your fire!

Your knowing fire, set it all ablaze!

Torch the houses, burst apart the walls with fire shards
shrapnel hot metal burning scorching through flesh, set the earth on fire.
send a fire send a hot blasphemous fire
eradicate everything with flame.

Stop the fire.

Send a rain
a warm pulverizing rain.

To purify the stones and make mountains into sand again.
sand sand into silt
wash down forests, wash down rivers, dredge out the foul bottom,
send it all down with water.

Send a rain a driving hot dissolving rain that tears leaves away and softens skin and loosens hair, a never ending rain
fill up the cavities in the earth, loosen the mantle of the earth, gouge the crust of the earth with rain
split apart the head of the earth and float it away
drown the creatures of the sea.

Oh we must want that rain.

Drown the fish drown the whales, drown the people, drown the sky itself, drown the raindrops with more rain, send rain till the whole world is washed to the bottom of the Universe send a warm pulverizing rain put happiness on my forehead before turning me to clay.

Shake the earth split it open break the spine of the land
break the mountains in two
terrify the continents and crash them together take your axe and show no mercy
send hot lava into the settlements encrust us in burning lava
send plateaus, whole continents into the sea
take a billion years and compress it beneath your terrible weight
make us into the stones of the future.

Shake it Kali shake it. We want you to shake it.

Send a wind
an eerie escalating wind
to flail the trees and make a hailstorm of twigs and branches
then snatch the leaves away
lift the houses and dash them against the cliffs
send skyscrapers crashing
tornadoes of broken glass
into the vortex every little manmade thing.
blow a hail of daggers, ripped apart, groaning, screaming, torn in two
and then grab the oceans and lift them up and chop them to a fury never again to settle,
condemn them to an age of razor droplets.

Flatten everything with your wind
consume every soul with your moan
blow it down, flatten it, blow it down.

Shake 'till it splits
break us in two with your laughter and mirth.

Oh, we must want that wind.

Shake it hard Kali, shake it hard.

The Whale

Roars of cetacean breath asunder,

. . .  he walks on water, dives under.
Beneath deep pleated folds of skin . . .
. . .  black tie, an elegant gentleman.

Elf on a mushroom, wet in spring,
. . .  wizard of a giant sea.
Master of ceremonies,
. . .  frolicking on land that's his and watery.

Through Kansas

There's a rocky stream, called the Arkansas,
From mountain peaks, where Colorado snows have thawed.
I followed her down through Kansas, stopped at an old cafe.
I asked for a cup of coffee, and a piece of pie to stay.
The choice was peach or apple, they also had rhubarb and bean.
I never heard of bean pie, but this was country I'd never seen.
I drove pn down continent, to a slow brown river bed,
Shaded by cottonwoods, it bore cottonmouths instead.
It was the Arkansas River, near its living end,
I floated its slow brown waters, to look around the bend.

This Fish . . .

At riptide in a town that was tawdry and dark,
   I met an old fish with a guitar made of bark.
I pulled him aside and asked gently,
   If he really was a pirate, from the bloody Red Sea.

“I raided the merchants with letters of marque,
    I robbed them by day, and killed them by dark.
 Once all the stealing and robbing was done,
    No living was made by the point of a gun."

 This fish wore scales, that shimmered like day,
 Without fail he had money, that he wished he could play.



In a sack by his side this fish held his gun,
And a little gold cricket who kept time to his fun.
The cricket got chirping the old fish's rhyme . . .
"This fish keeps on singing,
 . . . This fish keeps up time."

“Lie still and be quiet, wait till she stinks,
See the whites of their eyes, . .
  . . . Blast away 'till she sinks.”


“Aim at the mainmast, hack the crew into stew,
    Let rip with a cannonball – run the officers through.
 Not a fighter can survive . . take your good time,"
    Kill the last man alive, . . . grab every last dime."

This fish tore the Moon,
 . . . from the streets of the town.
He ripped out its belly,
 . . . He tore out its arm.

This fish yanked the planets,
 . . . out from under the night.
He pulled them so hard,
 . . . the Sun didn’t fight.

At riptide in a town that was tawdry and dark,
   I met an old fish with a guitar made of bark.
I bought him a drink and asked gently,
   About life as a pirate, on the bloody Red Sea.

"I raided the merchants with letters of marque,
    I robbed them by day, and killed them by dark.”