
Depot Bay, Oregon
My body is sending information to your body
In winter
When intelligence is stored
underground
The decayed
leaves of Fall now rotten
But the earth
smells potent with life
and the trees
are communicating
wisdom through their roots
to the saplings and the sea
I love my jewel-colored winter scarf
and the way it floats
in the gray air— a reflection
in the store window along
the promenade—all closed up now
my breath on the glass
warm and fertile
like a greenhouse grower
soft like ruffles
and sea algae
the color of my eyes
Communicating
to you

The Season of Silver (Hopi Myth #21)
It’s my feet; they hear the call from the Black Mountains
There’s a great light drifting down from the sky
or from a star’s corona that I step towards
It was a hot summer
In the Season of Silver
I walk past the wild herd of horses
In the distance, Santa Fe, with its flat tar roofs
Fourwing saltbrush scratch against the fabric of my pants
Carrion birds soar near the pueblo
Those little mouths
hungry for abundance
The creosote bush under
My burnt brown boots
I smell mesquite
And step on the crunchy black charcoal
For a while I just roam
It’s my feet, they want to walk the edge of the Black Mountains
Above, on the long slender horizon
Blinding triangles of dizzying light
I see women each in their own regalia, all different
They stepped out of the dazzling flying city
And now they are moving like dancing kachinas
With crashing feet that pound upon the land
They dance on the crest of the Black Mountains
In the Season of Silver

ASSASSIN
The blinds are beautiful
with the light shining through
I sit in front
of my Guru
The quiet is surrounding me
and is me
It flows
in awake
of abundance
as I imagine
the walk
up to the
corpse of a material existence
Assassin
I don’t want to move
The stillness is so peaceful

Chaco Canyon
I am up early for my drive to Chaco Canyon. The silence of the mesa before me, dignified, eloquent, as if a goddess spilled her soul across the horizon. The mountain black, void of color. This sky before dawn widened–a floating splatter of biomorphic art. I drive into the sky emerging. Drive into the stretching plateaus of solitude. I drive through the desert as the sun breaks through the unfathomable indigo, like an iris I cannot imagine. Like the iris in a dream indescribable. Like an iris circled in orange. I drive, and I feel like I am receding into the landscape–and now I am distance. And a bridge says seventeen feet two inches. And I think horizontal only, compelled by horizontal and the view is beyond all such calculations. The mountains now watermelon from the orange sky, and they call to me with their black seeds and their watermelon bodies. And I drive, I drive, I drive under the 17′ 2″ bridge which means nothing to me as I speed to the land of the ancients, where the ancients built their temples to the stars and gazed upon the body of the eternal. I pass the adobe huts, the cracked mud, the stone, the ground, the gravel. I raise my arms to the sky, a pink sky that blazed across the crow-winged mountains. I follow in the ancient footsteps with clay on my boots. And the windows of Chaco Canyon once filled with sky now filled with stars.

Pronto? (Hello)
Inspired by Robert Rossellini’s film L’Amore
Cold water on lips
Eating, sleeping, why?
Exotic hell in the mirror
Black phone on white pillow
Eyes broken listen
Expectantly
Disheveled hours of waiting
It rings
A storm on a trembling mouth
“I told you not to speak; I’d accept anything.”
“You sound distant, how strange.”
“Hearts and stars, I can see with my ears.”
“The telephone is making strange sounds.”
“Pronto? Pronto?”

I Dreamed About Snow
I dreamed about snow again
Only I can know what that means
As much as you may want to know
You can never know
I dreamed about snow
I told myself to, I told myself to
I made my mind communicate to my Mind
in dream
The answer I wanted, I wanted, I wanted to know
Again, I dreamed about snow
This time it was different
Do you want to know how or why?
Thick-thick, blue-white, deep
snow beautiful surrounding-all- homes- snow
Thick, deep, white, blue, everywhere
Evening
Homes
Snow everywhere
Virgin, untouched, evening blue
White, beautiful, quiet
Dove white
White everywhere
Thick
Solid white
I thought, will I disturb this?
Will I fall through?
Break through?
Sink deep into the knee-deep thick snow?
I put my foot upon the top
Brown-gray, fur-gray, new-gray, warm-gray Boot
Boot up on top
waiting for the crunch and punch of foot to sink into its beauty
but I rose
surprisingly
it held
Support
I rose
I walked above, on top of the snow-covered ground
white snow puff steps
I walked on top of the hard snow
the white blue everywhere snow
I looked around and saw it everywhere
It wasn’t until I woke up and said,
I dreamed about snow
that the answer-dream
I told my mind to tell me, (and here it did so obediently)
telling me what the other Mind knows
Dread dream of snow
Sadness
It tells me the answer
The minds do that
You will never leave because
I dreamed about snow
That you and I will never be together
Snow/white/snow/blue/snow
thick everywhere
white
snow
Cold and vast and beautiful
Separation

Dog with a Club Foot
Dog with a club foot
Innkeeper OK
Dog with a club foot
Innkeeper OK
Just because it’s true
Doesn’t mean it’s interesting
Said the dog

When Angie Speaks
When Angie speaks
It’s not words I hear
It’s the clack of a pool ball mouth
When Angie speaks
It’s the burn of whiskey on a dry throat
It’s crushed cigarettes
Buried deep in the sand
On some Corpus Christi beach
When Angie speaks
I hear agony in Texas grit
Nightmares exploding in her mind
When Angie speaks
I hear her head bashed in
I hear her feet
Wildly trampling over the grass
When Angie speaks
With lowered eyes
I hear caskets shut
I hear the flowers cry
I hear Angie’s joy die
It’s not words I hear
When Angie speaks

For Jack Albee He could sling the funniest sarcastic observations, but he was never cruel. He called our mutual friend Steve Berman, The Maniacal Crayon, Steve, an artist, had his art doodles stuck all over the walls of his Hollywood apartment. And I mean, there wasn’t even any space left to stick on a wad of gum. Albee was a member of the Albee theater family. He was a mime, an artist, a prankster, and one of the most in-the-moment people I have ever known. Jack would come up from LA to see me in Northern California, and we would spend the day in Sausalito. Jack introduced me to the Renaissance Faire, where he used to perform in his younger years. Jack Albee, my friend, I dedicate this poem to you.
He’s a Troubled Maker
It’s time for Joyce
And Joyce is time
For Ireland
My own mind
Honesty-certainty
And Dubliners
Is doubling
Doppelt
Doble
Duppio
Double
It’s time for William’s will
Deliver
Liver
De
Liver
Ah it’s time for Bergman
And hypersensitivity
Hyper-viper
Flashback of Katrina’s
Flashback of Katrina’s
And then there’s Albee
Not Edward—not that one own
But he knew dirty Gertie
That’s what they called her
He’s a troubled maker

Seen
Farther farther out
beyond all time-space continuum
beyond all circumstance
Where
beyond linguistically structured thought
Down into the energetic source, The sound of stillness
The stillness of sound
The lower octave of one’s vibratory field
that field that ONe is in and of but separate
That which happens without thought
breathing
shedding blinking did you know
that
the
smallest particle is so small it only comes into being when it is
gazed upon
what is without what is within
Seen
Seen
Seen
Seen
Dear LA

“Aren’t you glad you left?”
“That place is (fill in the blank)”
“I was there once, I hated it”
“Everyone there is so (fill in the blank)
So much hatred
So much prejudice
But let me ask you this?
Did you watch a movie last year?
Do you listen to music?
Some day a big Santa Ana wind will come and blow all the scum off the street.
Dear LA,
It hurt my feelings
They didn’t even know you
Everyone put you down
Said you were phony
Said you were sleazy
I remember going to your triple feature at thirteen for a dollar
Putting my hands in Marilyn’s at the Grauman’s
Standing in line at ABC to see the tapings
Walking down Fountain Avenue
The smell of blooming jasmine
Hopping on the freeway to the Valley
Urban sprawl, screen doors, and BBQ
Or I’d take Wilshire to the beach
Western to the Airport (little known way to avoid the gridlock)
Ah your view from Mulholland
Low riders crawling down Whittier Boulevard
East LA the shine of the classic clean machine
Bouncing shocks
Bulging muscles
Pachuca flair
Alvarado Street
New religions
Firsts of firsts
Langer and The Pantry
The Ambassador as old and in decay as you were then
I felt I was a part of old Hollywood when I drank my cognac on your lawn
The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Joni weaves me through Laurel Canyon
To Joan Crawford’s Pacific Coast Highway
Raymond Chandler’s neon streets
Gloria’s Sunset Boulevard to the Valley’s Boogie Nights
James Dean’s Deadman’s curve
Petty’s Free falling
Everyone craves sunshine
And a boy’s whistle
PS Miss you
S

LA Riots
Seconds before that sudden feeling that it’s all a dream, we rolled down Sunset. Through the overdosed city of LA. A fuck you angel dangling in the night. Erotic LA. Full and empty Eras. Vintage stores, billboards, the Pacific Ocean. (We rolled on)
Different configurations
Below the powdered skyline
The city burns
We play music
Finely tuned instruments
It burns
(We rolled on)
The city raging with violence. In the twilight, helicopters. 50-ton steel-armored vehicles. Riot rear. Pepper spray. Curfews.
I turned in my seat to look. Roadblocks. Black sky. Only floodlights on the scrutinizing street. We’re ordered to go back. We’re not far from the Pantages.
We turn the car around.
Hit the 101
It burns
(We rolled on)
(c) Shirley Obitz All Rights Reserved