it is all space and flux

change comes around
shakes us up
we avoid it at nearly every turn
changes comes around
every single fluctuating moment
and gently pushes us this way or that
unavoidable and almost unnoticeable
we are no better than suffering patients
who, worse than simply ignoring the doctor's advice
deny we are sick at all, let alone possibly terminal
ignoring every symptom
just going on and about our lives
as if each day were the same as the day before
as if each day we are the same person we were the day before
left struggling to fulfill the unsatisfying dreams of a stranger
with the cure found
in the empty hands we have thrust bored into empty pockets

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wishard

the light was smoky
jaundiced
as your unmoving face
mostly, by their eyes
already gone
bone beads slipping slowly
through stained and shaking fingers
in the few words i knew
i said goodbye

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unsleeping and undreaming in the snowing and late night

thin clouds pull into thin gauzy shapes as they drag across the south side of Pilot Butte
like bluish specters haunting the landscape
as a pink push of refracted city light rises in the east, a false sunrise
lights flash hazy up on Pine Mountain and i can scarcely imagine their source
the snow is thick and struggles to survive the advance of the rain among its own ranks
the world is silent and indecisive
speaking only in a hushed lullaby tone
but rather than acquiesce, like the snow melting into crystal lit rivulets on my study pane
i take notes on the song
ponder its origin
over sweet and black winter ale, antique keys passed from skeleton to skeleton
like blind men strung apart over 70 years trying to describe the same elephant
while the more important things sleep in the rooms below them,
the rumble of electric heaters through their walls and the wind against their window
dreaming never of elephants
sometimes giraffes or lions
but mostly things that mean things
only to themselves
as we all do
those of us that sleep
or dream

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notes on a bluff road liquor store

the wind and rain put me in the mind of old songs about
the wind and rain, dreadful
songs that put me in the mind of
cold days along the muddy river, snow clinging to the dikes and covering the creeks that run off into the lowland neighborhoods
short cut side street memories
memories stalled along the bluff as trains pause to take on loads of cargo
huge iron arrows aimed at the heart of the city but veering at the last moment
as if cast aside by some magical spell of protection
an invocation i wish i knew
band saw monkey wrench mantras that fall silent as the brick crumbles and smokestacks are stifled
junkyard memories and iron bridge memories
still painted at the edges with green days and golden autumns
scented with the foulness of the pharmaceutical factory

this are the sort of memories that only crescent moons seem to bring out
big old chevy memories
cheap gas and loud music, empty streets and black ice
we tore through the west side as we tore through each day
as the years have torn through us
the simplicity of the promise that lay unfulfilled before us
when we thought the magical barrier did not exist for us
that we could pass through it at will
never knowing we were but tourist, no better than the hayseeds and yokels, staring up at the angels, obelisks, and steel and glass towers
allowed only to pass through in passing
but to be expelled eventually from long term sanctuary within its confines

it was an odd time to be and an odd place to be in
in the fringe and shadow no-man's land between the city and the suburbs
and the constant battle and shifting lines of each
not just encroachment and retreat
but more than a few times
they completely traded places
(not so much a trade as one side picking whichever turf best suited it at any particular time, sending the other to take up residence in its former location until it changed its mind again, which it guaranteed would)

not in that white slum strip though, where the castaway trash of the city blows southward and sticks between the river and the warehouses
never making it any further south
where the green hills and limestone cliffs are the norm
in neighborhoods that will never be what they once were
but they try, try to become better or at least escape the pull of gravity
that drag them downwards ever and more
and the saddest part
really
is that i could name a hundred streets
just like this one

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if ever i had a doubt, arizona erased it

the night was crawling toward dawn
a highway just outside of Flagstaff
two inches of desert chill
blowing through a window that won't close all the way
on the road since midnight
you are fast asleep beside me
bare legs and arms
covered in the blankets from our studio apartment murphy bed
warm in the blow of the dash heat
i flip the cassette over
again
the same one i've listened to for hours now
everything we have fits inside this tiny japanese import
secondhand
like everything we have
but us
in Albuquerque i find a talk radio show clear enough
to tolerate
as the mesas and buttes slip by in the darkness
you stir in your sleep beside me
a gentle sigh that is more content than it should be
the road
night
grows colder still
but you are warm and sleeping well
so i push onward

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toward a dharmic infrarealistic layman's manifesto

we are not literati
nor monks
and need to behave as such, to approach the world in the way we must
we must meet it halfway and seek to understand the clues it gives us
in the context of our dirty fingernails and creative outbursts
as well as the bone dry seasons and champagne hot tub nights
we are sitting cushions stole from couches
royal deluxe page aspirations
with some offbeat cracker ass circadian rhythms
we are thrift store tweed and hats found in trees on windy samhain nights
dog eared hand me down inspiration and the repetitive dreams of the rut stuck and struggling to stay alive crowd
boys pretending to be fathers
fathers pretending to be boys
without what we want but holding firm and shaky to what we need
(remember what Tsongkhapa did without his mandala? red and raw wristed he improvised and did what needed done with whatever washed ashore (like gilligan said))
settle down and settle in and don't pretend to be anything more than you are positive to achieve
it's one thing to aspire
another to bullshit your self
why waste words from your mouth
when the blank paper could use them more?
work
write
sit
repeat
could be that easy if your ideas of how to accomplish all of those things weren't so complicated, dependent on circumstances like a table or magician's illusion
like a carter family song that has shades of heavenly beauty and filthy truth
grimy hand's clasped in fervent and boozy prayer
but prayer is prayer
and a drunkards prayers have an urgency and poetry that rival that of more pure and holy men
from the cornfields to the light polluted smog sunsets (yet awe inspiring)
to the bardo between the graveyard and university
to the sun falling behind the mountains, to hiss and die in the western ocean
a lay practitioner's best excuse is that he could never gather as much righteousness as a monk
but he is better placed than the highborn in some respects
if he were to open his eyes
open his hands and see the riches within
and simply
seek
even if the thing sought is not to be found
seek

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a question of corners

things are pushing, moving us toward that strange crossworlds
songs and situations and the urgings of close advisors
photographs that have found us
photographs of ourselves that we know nothing of, that linger and fade in the albums of friends long forgotten

woodruff place, out by the fountains that haven't seen more than rain water in sixty years, round from where my father rented a a guesthouse that was once a servant's quarters after he left my mother, to where my mother's grandmother once lived across the street from a sandy brick grocery store

but really, what could wait there in yesterday and dead places where the high priestess of gentrification starbucks has exorcised the restless native ghosts and spirits of individuality?

and neither my hat nor my coats fit the city nor the weather
(maybe my habits are in the twilight area somewhere between)
but home is never a fixed fucking point
just a set of ever shifting variables in an equation that describe a fleeting and relative position
sitting on the side of a mountain
dreaming
staring eastward and trying to decide what to decide upon

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