tonight tequila, you feel like an old friend
swelling in the back of my throat
sending familliar warm cozy shivers throughout

So we died without music
night blind and at the foot
of the mountains
and the way the stars they looked
with no atmosphere
like ashes burning through the night

fragments of light peaking through the passenger side curtains
speckling our faces with the days anticipation

the smell of your morning maté fix

tiny flower picking

days spent tripping on each other

learning Her curves and secrets

a late lunch a fine dark porter and a crisp cool cider

bolder nights on mountain sides

bending toward untouchable skies

grabing tails of shooting stars

to view each end of the rainbow

surviving through each other

roll-over towns and the fuzzybuzz stumble back home

sleeping through a monsoon

and in my eyes fragments of light, peaking through the passenger side curtains speckling our faces with the days anticipation

roadways

Of my life discoveries,

amongst the many i have made, in comparison, i am so amazingly small, like the tiny black ant on my leg i stand amongst mighty Sequoias head back eyes wide mouth gaping...dizzy

as are you



On the subject of maps,

i have found, that pesky plotted linear mess, highways by-ways interstates, the whole country a webbed net of confusion, every illuminated number less appealing than having absolutely no idea where you're going

like you and yer night blindness



To speak a bit about rest-stops,

Quirkville for sure and quiet possibly sketched out but most simply, free...remember that. Every folk needs to be kept on their toes anyhow

even you child



A piece of human nature,

i am of this earth, and i dance with the wind, from my cloud i have watched you in your frustration, tangled in thoughts of sacrifice, your comforts disturbed, rapid nerve endings frayed, and i wonder now, did my leisurely ways bring you patience, have my deep breaths, sighs if you will, been caught in your chest, will you ever pause to blink and recognize your flaws, for child you are fire hot bright and alive but to survive every flame needs to take the time and breathe

to be humbled

Boomerang Lines

What do you do without the threat of the Road
at your back that constant drive
whether going home or forever on your way there, perhaps finding you've arrived already, right there in your dreams, to draw boomerang lines around her waste, across this switch-back country

She is brutal and calling
I could tell her for you, that you're not far off
fiddling still, caressing the stocking seams up Jersey's firm long legs,
pleading through her tension.
I could relay your stories and glories to this worlds children, the ones mad or hungry enough to take the Time and truly listen with it, to learn a folk or two.

I think, at this age, where the world spins fast
almost it seems, shaking, like we're fleas upon a great beasts back
I lose myself, be-still my limbs to find the light to set the right foot upon the path again, and at dawn's break my souls pure in content, enough to know the restless road runs on throughout the night.

It's every moment you spend dreaming, and every road you haven't tread down
It's the hours spent wasted, lazily mistaken for boredom or the speed of the breakneck fly-by face slaps, the sparks that light the fire, and the air, the breath of wind that fuels her dancing flames with laughter.

Spaces between the blurs, paused streams of energies, from point A to B and Z, the fine fibers measuring ages, trailing away, wet feet upon black hot pavement, glacier feed rainbow waters, strange piling lava lands, the towering majesty of a redwood forest, the desert rolled out like a dusty carpet, Orion stalking my Skys and the holy North an eternal guide.

All Sisters and Brothers, broken and mended, flawed in outstanding ways, all picking up pieces, laying out roots, clinging to mountain faces, falling with grace and searching for fireflies out at sea, connecting or rejecting like magnetic waves, humble lightning, blackened fingernails, tough weathered soles and fire-lit smiles with a bite behind 'em.

I could wake this land up screaming, babbling with the river about the noise we can create, rile her all up, leave her rushing in excitement, I'll tell the Sun she can keep on shinning, there ain't a face I want left out of the light, even the ones with clouds over their eyes, or the brave dynamite souls under city skylines…

I could let America know, but all I have are whispers, cigarette smoke signals, dusty wheels screeching, the kickback particles, refractions dreaming, old world mirror images, exaggerated tales of true heart and raw soul, tip-toe memories, a great long winds worth of flashback heart attacks, all your drops rippling on...

I could give the 'ol gal a heads up, sure I could, but I rather ya'll tell her yerselves, pump sa' more Jersey through her blood...remind her she is strong willed, driven and witty, soft and deserving, and that she has a beautiful boisterous voice and you yearn to listen.

three beats of the heart

for Patti,



The mad ones flowing
through this countries veins
kick its eyes open
and from behind those stunned lids
and wide wide corneas
lets take it all in

truth in words
scratched in tile
and the dust on yr shoes
after

across the road
brownstone bodhisattvas
sit tossing photographs
into the fire
sit
holding onto stories
ending
with the pulll of the Earth

river bank, lonely and
barely lapping at the shore,
he dipped a toe in the winter water
and then carved into the sand,
kicking up dust on his way out

On a far, far, far away calendar

I want to die in mid November

When the ground is most

Prepared to take care

Of me

Even though a poem be a thousand words,
but made up of senseless words, one
word of a poem is better, which, if a man
hears, he becomes quiet

-The Dhammapada

I wanna be moved 
  the way continents are moved
dragging gravity behind
remaking the shape of the earth

I want what fuels mountains
  diving into valleys
scraping along a divide
and shearing off oceans

give me streams to drink from
  and float down, give me
the thick delta mud, deposits
of the land washed away

Yeah
  I wanna be the landscape
stretching far away
and a horizon on either end
chasing the opposite side of the world

McIntyre!
Fuck.

just a quick high from Austin
and on and on and on..............

Touse and TeePee's await...
and Rabula bleeds
on and on and on and..........

Bewildered

every time you whisper
in my ear
I only end up more
bewildered

pictures of Lebanese coast
with its gem like sea
and crumbling bricks

and an old couple
speaking in Arabic,
only pausing in English

long enough to sigh
about the warm air
they left back home