burning the miles catching up on months and relations missed as we head deeper into the rain-shrouded night for hidden places out of nowhere, resurfacing from long-trodden hours of sleep to morning mountain mists and birdsong and the dear circle of friend, bright beauty rippling outward in all directions, thinking deep about plant slavery while trying to appreciate the beautifully warped specimens in their cages grown for profit and abuse and the sickness felt in them to not be cared and husbanded and loved for their gifts and how many ways we feed ourselves on processes like this without ever thinking of the truths we are ingesting from all the hands involved, talking of Oakland and deserts and betrayals and misunderstandings and New Orleans and heartache and kittens and people we know and pilates or pirates, but not in Somalia, venturing into the land of Buddha to be reminded the treasure is in the practice and the trappings will only weigh you down, peacocks are just svelte exotic turkeys, don’t sell yourself so short dear and for the love of everything you should laugh so easily and often, and onward burning over and through these dear deathly dinosaurs for madcap adventures, returning to rainbow quicksilver skies and seas and a cascade of numbers and skills over this delightfully foreign avenue in the land of don’t know mind future and now past me, still wishing I could just see you and hug you because there’s no real way for words to convey the depth of all this feeling and I want you to know

Even these stained sidewalks
can look beautiful and full of promise
in the bright, unfiltered
light of morning.

Here now,
see how your unrestrained love
can make everything golden and new
like days just beginning?

Don’t hold back now.

It happens more often & easily now,
this sideways slip-shift
of space & time,
and I can see it dancing
through this (il)logical reality.
It comes in senses,
and colors,
and songs,
showing me
the magic hidden
everywhere.
To try & describe it,
it sounds on the edge
of crazy,
though if crazy is
a viewpoint from outside
the box,
then yes,
there is truth there.
Truth resounding
in beautiful waves
and rainbows
from the breath
of
every thing.
I am flying high
on aetherous wings
of poetry today.

I looked at my body in the mirror this morning
and I could see the deep fertile whisper of nurturance
in it’s curves and hollows,
could see the possibility
that in some different future
this vessel would bloom & swell & shine
with two soul’s worth of light,
cradled safe in the arms of love
with nothing but golden
peaceful days
stretching out ahead.

Twelve crows raucously circling,
dancing dervish loops against the cornflower sky,
drawing attention to the redwood heights.
Suddenly,
a hawk shoots into the air!
easily twice the size of the largest harrier,
easily it flows forth
breaking through their agitation.
Swooping and calling,
the crowd follows,
diving and taunting
in the wake of the
calm & steady figure
powerfully flying forward
on a course
unswerving and true.

The whole world
is calling out to you
“Like this!”
it goes,
“Like this!”…

Death,
my jesting friend,
come,
delight and feast
on the past behind me,
make it so
that I am called to break free
from hiding,
make it so
that there is no
going back.

The morning is suddenly turned
on the ringing cry of a gull
and the clear call to see
that we are all commanding the prows of
way-faring ships
rising toward shifting horizons.
Be-ware, Captain, be aware.

The prelude turns the corner and
suddenly I am taken back
to that road trip to New Orleans
Valentine’s and Mardi Gras and
dancing monkeys all weekend
and searching for hidden alligators with
my first love and two of my oldest
friends and a sister
all crammed in to
that tiny car
for six hours each way
and I turn and see the marine layer
roiling over the top of the hill
with the swiftness and impending weight of
an advancing army
and the words come sing song
and I want to howl them
into the layers of mist,
but not Ginsberg’s Howl,
my howl,
this magic,
this now,
this song,
this summery unsummer
of peeling away the layers
digging deep, deeper
leaving the confusion behind
for this solid shining knowing

there are mornings I can still feel
the diamond-like air
the wide clear brightness
sparkling along the edges
and the sharp and immediate sense
that things are changing

The degradation of money is made beautiful in your skin,
the bright breadth of imagination, hopes and dreams,
vividly colored and singing to me
across the train.
Here is one way to flaunt wealth,
to make true clothes of it,
a brilliant quilt of accumulated tales and years,
how,
unlike the precious metals and gems of ancestral ranks,
it cannot be melted down and sold
or traded for other resources to “own”.
A thumb in the face of their grand mythos of money,
the imaginary god so many worship,
but few will acknowledge,
even to admit the truth
to themselves.