Prose

LOOKING OUT

I am nothing

but thoughts and

feelings housed

in a body looking

out

doing things no one has

ever done before

doing things everyone has

done

Expanding like

paint spilled

over

on the floor

never to return

to the

container again

but now being

uncontained

in a larger

container

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

The mesa’s dignified, eloquence. A silent goddess spilled her soul across the horizon. Refined and mysterious is she. I was up early for my drive to Chaco Canyon. The mountain so black, void of color that day. This sky widens up before dawn, floating splatter, biomorphic art. Idriveintotheskyemerging. Drive into the plateaus stretching beyond 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 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

Ah it’s time for Bergman

And hypersensitivity

Hyper-viper

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