14 Saturday Jun 2025
Posted in approaching, change, community, connection, dissolution, generations, heart, Life, movement, poems, poetry, world
≈ Comments Off on Wannabe king
Wannabe king parades in,
bare butt flapping in the wind, saying,
My clothes are the finest in the world–
in all the worlds–
simply gaze upon them,
My apparel line, starting price 10 million,
will launch this fall.
The people hear, but more, they
see
his paunch of arrogance and delusion
while the gun salutes shoot off,
polluting collective sky.
The people march, no king, the people gather,
no thanks, no king for us today.
23 Wednesday Oct 2024
Posted in change, community, continuance, poems, poetry
≈ Comments Off on Looking across the way
Looking across the way,
a sleepy two-lane mountain main street,
to the gas station-gone-corporate-pharmacy,
high clouds pinking in sunrise glow down
on four peaks, none yet dusted with snow.
One of the girls working behind the coffee shop counter
speaks of monks and warlocks,
mysterious doorways, to the other.
I glimpse over at the red traffic light,
a rainbow dashes straight into the sky.
Town wakes from swishing maple to diesel 4×4 truck.
30 Saturday Dec 2023
The limitations of our fathers,
they are not ours to live by. See
and be done.
Do
and live beyond.
The next generations are here to end
that which came before.
16 Wednesday Aug 2023
Mimosa blossoms are falling,
pink stars upon the ground.
A greatest turning point has arrived,
no fighting it.
But Beauty tumbles on; Steller’s jay pecks
into the plump dense seed of a hazelnut
still wrapped in its ruffly green,
his strong feet holding it against a branch.
I hear him, though now he’s standing
on the arm of a towering black oak.
A man living on the streets sings
while he walks the sidewalk along the fence.
Triple digits again today, most will be hiding
indoors
as long as air conditioning holds out.
Nothing’s the same.
That’s alright,
Same was a comfortable illusion anyway.
11 Friday Aug 2023
Through repeated actions taken
by others you learned
you’re expendable.
Expendable.
.
Stay there.
Hold it,
wait,
hold yourself dear.
Dear.
And open the door to that being–
swing it wide…
Hello, Expendable.
How are you this day?
And,
who are you really?
Really.
07 Monday Aug 2023
I gave up pretty for a greater feast,
potato chips and jellybeans turned in.
Wrinkles declare descents into primal deserts,
splotches and patches and spots imprints
of the boot crush of heartbreak,
greys the stories of the non-forgotten.
Pretty hasn’t much to offer
and with it comes trails of trouble,
trials of the kind modern fairy tales
simply can’t grok.
27 Saturday May 2023
Posted in abundance, approaching, change, history, honoring, movement, poems, poetry, transition, violence
≈ Comments Off on These are the last days
These are the last days
of watching the valley open slowly
her soft green eyes,
of waiting for jackrabbit to come for breakfast,
of the coyote pack ushering in each full moon
with choral rhapsodies,
of tarantula pilgrims crossing the sagebrush mesa.
These are the last days of grit and clay dust flying
through any open window,
last of the sheriffs far more dangerous than the criminals,
of dried chiles and turquoise sky
against pink hills,
of churches holding centuries of prayer deep
in adobe walls,
of a boiling pot of cultural conflict
passed generation to generation to generation
onward making anyone arriving
within their own lifetime
a tourist.
Listen to the wildflowers and thunder, though,
and it becomes obvious–
they don’t care about endless strife.
They celebrate life and sing upward to our supportive sun.
These are the last days preceeding
the very first…
30 Sunday Apr 2023
Had I never entered this country
dark magic would have remained part
of fairy tales.
But tales are born of happenings,
not purely imagination.
What can be directed towards light can also
be twisted black.
Centuries of pain does that
to people’s souls,
leading them to avenge this blessed world.
Living amongst the workings,
talk will be talk, suspicion
suspicion,
and yet what I’ve seen
turns firm ground to putty.
You’d best not leave any hair behind.
Still, the cruelty that fuels and fires does,
in the end, destroy
those who’ve let ghosts poison them.
And the original curse
rolling through the generations lives on
until someone down the line breaks it
by gathering up their own light.
27 Thursday Apr 2023
Shaving my head on the mesa,
white sun rising behind juniper hills,
I became myself again.
I did not know I’d been gone.
With each new song of bird, new ray of light
and dropping hair,
freedom lifted, heaviness fell.
I did not know I’d been gone.
Voicing thanks to Sun
and all goodness that surrounds,
I also fell,
fell fully into the arms of Spirit.
25 Tuesday Apr 2023
A wall of slow spiraling cloud,
a great grey hand,
comes in low against the skin of the earth
swallowing the mesa,
sky, and all that proceeds it–
the West has sent its claim for the mountain.
And as first rain drops heavy and loud,
smell of December bursts full into the air,
only here, here artemisia sings strongest
not in early clutch of winter
but, like now,
in spring.
I drink desert storm
and laugh at the strangeness of time,
dusting of snow on far hills while
a flowering plum turns pink.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 