She opens her eyes
as the red glow
behind Chipeta Peak
shines for me
Dive into her bossom
Feel her warm breath
on top of my Hopi head
as light undresses
her mountain throne
Coffee, banana bread,
Telluride sangrael,
a musical bead in her bed
From afar, they are white-
capped pyramids of snow,
but these mountains
are not white at all --
they are not purple, either,
though majesty they define,
they are silver-shadowed
ribs and vertebrae,
blue stone mixed milky,
like a pearl that forgot
its roundness
Soft hollows next to
proud, broken peaks,
if whiteness means purity,
then where did the white go?
Look inside, my love, to your heart
Pointing proud and lusting up
at the belly of this paradise
A trickle of the senses
perhaps a frost-induced
hallucination
Is this what an echo looks like?
What happens when clouds
become solid?
Sweet purple pearls in a bed
afloat on dreams?
Dreams that take care
to trust
in the tossing seas
of love
Your embrace. Your trigger,
moist and alert.
In the moonlight, starlight,
your skin is alpinglow
as you sleep
Waiting for the last musket blast
to pour me out of the city
like a dry wine, aged, and restless
for drinking this desertscape,
unbecomes me quickly,
my vanity, the snow,
calls into blood
a fast pace, this tempo,
a slow burn, steadying the shifting
eddies of wind at my back,
by a mountain tree marked
and bonded to the land
through red drapes fillled
with hemoglobin, oxygen
and eros to a time
just around the bend
Sunset shoulders
across my back, a blow
peached rosy with violet
blue-seeded brightness
aflame with the glory
of the day as it passes
to bray at the moon
from afar
The sun sets in a skin
so vain, so knowing,
like the dark flowers
of sunset, in bloom,
closing to the tides
of right watchfulness
a gaze sets, too,
on her brow
The Sun Ra comes and goes,
the heart remains true
Song of songs,
Song of Solomon
He who by twin angel
cast the dice
The way of love
is the way of climbing
up the truer chambers
of the soul
The harvest of the spirit
looms like that moon
Mellow mountain,
music a melody
John Denver's yoddle
down the highway
Winter's western dreamtime
sings your name
Western dreamtime,
San Diego, Kansas,
Cleveland and Maine
Eastern star,
order of the Golden Dawn
These are the haunts
we're hunting down
Slow going,
by the window,
strength in tires
water over
the brotherland
Navajo beauty beings
along the golden path,
a snake in the water,
born in the earth,
a cool shuffle of cards,
a smile
Water born in the desert,
died again in a flutter
of ecstasies and denial
Come winter, snow rises
on the high country,
your country,
where your histories unfurl
like long flags
symbolic and won
through sacrifice
I am aged past knowing
upon the bride of a bold
new dawn, when my
circle of the night
wraps around our sleeping
cold lands
The perfect stasis
is the yearning of the years
In turning, the winter
comes to spring
Joy, a fountain, under ice,
waits for our warmth
to come
The sky, as interpreted
by Stevie Ray Vaughan,
says so
II
Birds, sounding their song,
in a tree by the city
center of consumer America,
where a cool breeze
winds through the corridors
sighing by shop windows
through which hundreds
and thousands of bodies pass,
eyes wide open, stoic, blank,
or perhaps they are shut blearily,
seeking a stimulant mind bath
to improve
the sense's perceptions
Density soars, like those birds,
on air
Late fall, light behind shades,
winter's unequal
is a desert season
when warmed light
fuses with the muse
Plato's power is temporary
but true
The information we seek
is within me,
within you
Baubles hanging from trees,
red, almost fluorescent dangling things
defying gravity, they wait
for a gust of wind,
to rise on a blanket of air
to vibrate with currents,
sound, undulating eddies,
defying pavement, flickering
in the twinkling ebb of the new
evening ...
The somber wail made me glad,
alive, at brightness, lingering
in the dark while the white-winged
angel hovers over the city,
the air currents
as comfortable to those
feathers as the land
we walk upon,
hot waters from beneath
the surface
to percolate
into a dream of you
The water is blue,
the sun, light red,
tinged in rosy glass,
orange blossom scents
in the open passages,
mingling with honeysuckle,
sickening sweetness,
absorbed essence into ether,
beyond time, in space, beyond
temporal, spatial coherence
to bring pollen to you, old bee,
signs of springtime,
in this winter of the desert,
which is more like fall
in Iowa, the sweet smoke
of life burning the eye
Can't keep me from feeling you
Intimacy inside this tree house
is just beginning
In justice, trust,
simple phantoms of light
cross these eyes, these nights,
when the Scorpio moon is full
She tires when the city closes in
The course womb of technological
chains sap the strength
The clock ticks off time
with Zen patience,
wild escape ...
One is for frame,
the other, wings
Doubts are just stars
passing in the sky
At these times
one must remember
to keep the eyes
focused on the ground,
the thing that doesn't move,
your own deceived dreams
The question of standing solid
is eternal
since the world is ever
in flux, and love, the binding
energy,
goes hand in hand
with being ever present:
The head resting on me,
the perfume of tender,
temporary embrace,
the lock on love
is breezy and free
to challenge the atoms
The space is sad and true,
the welling up in the poisoned eyes
is moisture misspent
in the fullest expression
of tossed trials of us
Within this scattering
of principle fact,
the flower
as the highest vibration
of perfection,
folds and dies
Then the rules
of unity are a secret,
leaving just reasons
and no role,
no well-beaten path,
no free will,
just heaviness, loneliness,
a vacant presence,
unwound by a mere moon
that's bigger than me,
bolder than you
Fatherless
How is it possible
William Blake
had no children?
How is it possible
I no longer miss
lost treasures?
How is it possible
I've come so far
but feel so short
How are Santa Claus
and Jesus Christ?
Only poets shape
religion now
Hiding Place
Beneath the stairs
the chair
On the steps to the stairs
cusps of dog hair,
hair of the dog
By necessity
the form follows function,
the words fill in as needed,
but why debate?
Sagittarian answers
anticipate Capricorn
doubts to follow,
and so the star chart
is sewn into the sky
She cooks a Martian meal
as acid rock rolls overhead
making a bead
toward a Spaniard sea,
rolling home, a teal green
reason to roam
The bowels, thrown out
of Promethean Safeway aisles
swim the the Hummers,
as a million bits of music
stop at the coast, suddenly
Betrayal of the Senses
Rehearsal night
wound up tight
Hiding from the light
She puts on a dreadful fight
Laughing till it's right
One moment in her light
The traffic trough
is thrown aloft
The tossing game
is in the wrist,
the choice, the gift,
the rift and lift
Sweet sensations bend
our insides, the morning
is a shadow wide
as the time creatures we are
Burned purple, burned into glories,
abounding with starlight,
dead as pearls, the shimmering
medleys of open space,
the snaky road, the river canyons,
the shifting sea
Get out of the children's way,
she cried, the hibiscus
blooming beneath the sun,
powered by the sun, seems
to be awake, but necklaced ladies
in the city street sweeper scene
roll on toes of lost dust, memories
of great barbecue bins
of baby blue ribs
We are the icy fires
of cigarette stares
Man with the Book
next to us just don't care
Come summer, maybe even before,
the creature comforts will become
barren, a lizard's breath
of contagious fumes
and furies
High heat, pressure, will rush
across this desert floor
and the ungainly winds
of the dust devil,
foul of feeling and terminal,
the terminous, the gate,
the gate through the imperfect
primrose path
Prometheus seeks the light,
then gasps for friends,
associates, who, for lack of
a better purpose,
shatter their wine glasses
and move on
To be lost in all of this glory
parts well with this story:
She's cross-legged in a chair,
in blue jeans, lost in a Valley
of pizza boxes, neon, tortolini
and light
-Ridgway, Colorado,
co-written with Jaimie Ondrea Dunn
