Dream Poem 2

We had planned for a river,
but the tide was not in our favor.
Fearing you will quit the journey,
I push the raft and giggle madly,
to assure you that I am pleased.
You will not look at me,
your face is everyone’s face,
we have become indifferent.
My ankles tingle as I imagine
alligator tooth, and cottonmouth fang.
The sand bank teems with puddles
in these mirrors I watch the sunset.
It is a glorious display of orange
but I dare not lift my eyes from the ground.
We stop at a giant sand dune
in the middle of a boreal forest.
a crowd has gathered to chant om.
I leave the raft and try to join.
Peaceful eyes turn angry and ugly,
burning hands turn to ice.
The people shout in unison–
You don’t resonate with us,
look at your energy…
pushed into the center of the circle,
alone and shamed with attention,
I eye the dark forest and sigh,
I never intended to rest here…
I push through chains of linked hands
with a frantic hunger for solitude.
I am called to the forest by the
distant murmur of mountains.

Dream Poem 1

Death Valley perches atop Mount Everest,
here there are no gentle breezes or lazy clouds–
just a stillness that echoes in sounds of
shifting golden grains of sand,
bending blades of yellowed grass,
and the occasional scuttle of insect feet.
I peer down at a desiccated valley.
I have no sweat, no scratch, no struggle
with which to claim my place
on the mountain.

Technology transported me here with a camera
to document the features needed to brave scarcity.
To stream the intelligent design of reptile and insect
across the internet with labels like cute and unusual.

Black and white is bold against
so much yellow and gray–
a cat comes and rubs his ribs on my leg.
His bulging green eyes are hungry.
I will adopt you I exclaim
but my mother comes and
peels back his gums–

each tooth is tainted with decay.
Think about the vet bill she says.
We love only the things that do
not cost us.

The ranger’s sun lined face will not emote.
She tells the story of the first mountaineers
who died disgracefully, awkwardly even,
in search of glory. She holds up a battered photo.
One man meant to leave his mother’s photo
on the summit, her photo almost made it,
his body was never found.

I look out at the horizon and see
boulders leap and fall, the mountain is heaving,
yet I feel no tremble beneath my feet.
I take pictures and know my purpose–
I exist to document natural disasters.

The crowd screams.
The ranger pushes us to cower
in mile high cement cylinders.

For our safety.
We are each given a pie shaped cell,
separated by sheets of metal.
The mountain is falling, but we
can no longer see the sky.

The cat is outside–I cannot breathe.
On my cell wall scrawled in red it says–
pretend you aren’t here, imagine you are in your special place.

I want to be outside cradling that damn worthless cat–
loving what I can, what I choose, as the boulders
pummel my body, and I earn the mountain’s pain.

48/365

Quijada
Greater once than just a jawbone–the last
sun bleached piece of you now trembles
in his sun browned hand.
Rough agrarian hands do not remember
that your milk once filled Cleopatra’s baths,
or that Hippocrates boasted of your alimentary assets–
Now you are crudely adorned with a rainbow band
dividing incisor and molar, it matches
the swirling skirts of natives.
Hips move to the ancient rhythm of
your rattling teeth as if tracing
eternity above a cloud of red dust.
His apt fingers are lusted for
as he strokes and pounds you,
and perhaps carnality and carnage
are not so different–
you who slew a thousand men
now bring thousands more to dance before you–
yet all you remember is blood coursing warm
beneath your skin, and the glory of
that last blade of grass.