TRAIL
prelude
this age our era i can correctly say this an era of exile
this satiny desert
on this trail of a thousand years there is us amidst misfits & assiduous trees
we have walked
over sand sick with evening of words spilling
what is the remedy for momentum for mania a deciduous heart?
loitering now i speak of nothing no ideas just viet nam motherland inside us
& between us the air the arizona sun magnanimous accepting everything
an ear of deaths in a polaroid photo & the killing
this age of hyper awareness this time of blue moons
of the year nineteen hundred ninety nine on the seventh day
the ocean the past we touch
inside our skin a sterling sound
we who have walked alone will no longer
through woods red with evening of dreams spilling
growing old a california sequoia green &
sage as the saguaro branching
1
a crab crawls sideways into a polaroid photo tangled you loiter & now you
speak of nothing no ideas pushed into hole the fabric mice-chewed
you have been going back & forth from the border of . . . what was it?
when upon seeing a person with alzheimer's on tv when a flippant offer
of someone buying you something when after a family dinner in which
the main conversation was having desires versus shutting them off you
wander into the streets eyes wet while you notice how roseate the sky is
how demure the heat is not its usual how you should be enjoying such a
night but nevertheless you go wherever your blind feet take you places
well-acquainted see cars pass & wonder if the headlights expose & wonder
if any will stop
2
wild-eyed
next to your border a different dialect spoke
in the corridor your fingers pressed
listening monk this laughing buddha belly & shoulders twitter a gurgle of ears
listening pressed to palm
when the mood strikes
strike!
when i begin
& drown in salt
the buddha's my own or lao tsze's in this mesmer
following the folds in robe
a boy dies saving another from suicide
on the suicide isle are mist gargantuan in deceptions
words spilled the throat a babe on motorcycle rolls onto street
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