There was no way the world could be a stage when my back was held by rocks of sand eroding native faces patient caught me pressing me quiet to the mass then when I stood I hated how I swayed chortling tides too familiar taunts of acts and lines. The nearer I bent even to the earth I left rotating skies. Then or new it doesn’t matter because a brilliant particle impervious to those circles that orbit you through time around and back again to re-find again fear she who quiets your limits. Or is she, fear, borne from the acquaintance of limit? Either way, the green spark it drifting somewhere above from below like cotton over mammoth lake and the red eroding mountain— it found me on the rock and welcomed me

〰️

There was no way the world could be a stage when my back was held by rocks of sand eroding native faces patient caught me pressing me quiet to the mass then when I stood I hated how I swayed chortling tides too familiar taunts of acts and lines. The nearer I bent even to the earth I left rotating skies. Then or new it doesn’t matter because a brilliant particle impervious to those circles that orbit you through time around and back again to re-find again fear she who quiets your limits. Or is she, fear, borne from the acquaintance of limit? Either way, the green spark it drifting somewhere above from below like cotton over mammoth lake and the red eroding mountain— it found me on the rock and welcomed me 〰️

Why are the Beatles so gosh dang
good at themselves
and why does age make
their sound so much
louder without even doing
anything else in life they grow
bigger. And why is
Whitney’s mouth and her teeth
the rattle and quiver
changing my whole
reason for staying
on this planet. And why is
there a pain inside
when I quiet everyone
and shhhh turn it up Judy
Garland and her bangs
lamenting that best Christmas
now hymn—
And how is it my
heart has been healed
by certain called
Killers
and their dustlands.
And how can a
marriage
family
town
nation
disagree on
every dang thing
but drop all of it
when the Schuyler
Sisters suddenly work work
even Peggy does
the work and we suddenly all
stop hating
and start singing. Somebody
please tell me
what is this bright magic
standing my frantic
still
til ingested
then dark dust blows
off and the
damned blood flows?
I was born in the chest of an ancient woman
and when I had the courage
to look up
at her I saw she was jagged
and intense but
shrouded safely
too in bristles of tree
and bush and almost
always snow but never
in late summer and early
fall where Timpanogos stood
and still
still will stand bare.
But when it is May the bleach
tipped mountain is varnished in
glowing spring green
from the near
top down to the bottom and she
is smooth and all
her ligaments and bones and
riffs and rocks blur
into one homologous slope and I
have the strongest
urge to run
to the top
as if my Lady
were a small bermish
English hill and then
slide down her
effacement as if
a plaything—
and most bizarre of all is
I size up
her corrugated spine
and imagine it possible.
Where are you going
my little one
Gail Wood sang to me in an
alto vibrato mom of
my mom mostly gentle
always generous there
at the base of Timpanogos
she sang to me both she
and the mountain
bastion to the cold
desert’s discordant climate.
And at their breast time flowed
at the pace nature
grows and the earth and our pulse
seemed to sync in steady
balance and the way
from there was plain
and straight just one
neat single breath up.
Turn around turn around
and the way is dizzy
with twiggy detritus in
the dead growth there
is no trail and on and
on the sole I move on
scorns blisters there are gashes
on haranguing both
occupied outstretched
arms my face
is mocked by
mulish wind— never from
the sitting the waiting
no. But always
from the procession on
fervently on moving toward—
I don’t even imagine I am on
anymore any
longer chasing the summit
I am hunting for vestiges now
of her
her alluvial vibration they
once stabled me I am haunted
by Gail Wood’s words the
dolorous melody
the plaintive phrase
Where are you going
only when my boughs are silenced
by pugnacious wear when
forced to be stayed—
I hear other noises less ghostly
on her waist-high ledges
they are not ringing
from the top they
do not echo from the
base but there
with me on the mountain
in between— somewhere
near I hear voices.
There was no way the world
could be a stage
when my back was held by
rocks of sand
eroding
native faces patient
caught me pressing me
quiet to the mass
then when I stood
I hated how I swayed
chortling tides too familiar
taunts of acts and lines.
The nearer I bent
even to the earth I left
rotating skies.
Then or new
it doesn’t matter because
a brilliant particle
impervious to those circles that orbit you
through time around and back again
to re-find again
fear
she who quiets your limits.
Or is she,
fear,
borne from the acquaintance of limit?
Either way, the green spark it
drifting somewhere above
from below
like cotton
over mammoth lake and the
red eroding mountain— it found me
on the rock and welcomed me
— Of all the loud minds
never exhumed of
all the neurons’
in confluence roaring in
transmission making paunchy
maps and reveries that
wandered down constellations
no one has ever connected
and the dot to dot
sequences of seas
that lead to an ocean
where depth in fathoms
are unfathomable and
impalpable space furnishes leviathans
down to the piddling life alive
and under the surface
landmarks no human eye
in vision
will touch
worlds without number
in one head are made
and the one star seen in satellite maps
where life can live
never listens
but maybe she would hear
if synaptic shouts weren’t
stuck building up
distended
behind tacit tongues
brilliance in billions uncharted
and I wait— I’ve been waiting for
so long for the place
where all the domains real
and unseen bear down—
down so hard all the
brain cosmos no longer
remain barred and then
will never never stop birthing
We came on a boat
of cocktail sauce the eternal shrimp
all us choke
insatiable we come to inhale your earth and consume the air of your people
mmmmmmmm ahhhhhhhhh
your people who’s sweat wets ancient clod fertilized with the iron of layered blood
stored
and storied
still dusting the quiet countertops and tables of your children
and we come for a nibble of you
your story and we pay you
to fill us
please fill us
with what we eat for and sail and consume
but can never land on
Even though we land on your land
leave our waste at your door
take take
your natural wonder your nurtured history your way
and we make it ours to play and pounce on
and then we sail away clutching a once noble emblem of yours’
years of loving years
of laboring dissolved now
to kitsch & capitol
Arrivederci!

〰️

why are the Beatles so gosh dang good at themselves?

TIMPANOGOS

RED MOUNTAIN LAKE

WITHOUT NUMBER

WE CAME ON A BOAT