Carlos State Park in the Spring

Inside the wet rotting wood
Slowly aging and breaking apart
The insects infect and destroy
What was art.

My foot is the future
The pressure is now
That the forest is full and grows
To be all that it knows
Is the nature of things.

The trail must be cleared.

For all that endears is not
On the ground buried under
What fell and needs to be found.

The nail isn't here.

Stop looking for lies in the dust
And the dirt. The word is not wood
For the good of the eye.
What was composed makes nature alive

Not dead.

The Road to Riverside

Rage looks strange so close to your face
And inside this Buick you look sick
With red fever. Your eyes still echo
In my ears and tell lies that
You will take back later.

The chorus behind us, mouths open
Singing nothing we could hear
Or hate to be near. While passing eyes
Turn and turn back
Nearly breaking their necks.

When the chamber was empty the silence
Bled out on the seats, and out
On the streets when we opened the door.
But I didn't look
And you didn't look

So that car never drove quite the same anymore.

A Time Capsule

Humming and moving but not moving
A steady whisper, a lullaby
Takes you and I into the future

Your face glows a bright green
And seems to speak of all
That means everything to me

My sanctuary moves us now
From square to square
But I don't dare to ask you how

Inside the pause we stop to smell
What propels and makes us move
As we march under the moon

And now I wonder what he thought
As he became what I was not

Bring Down the Days

A gentle sleeping giant
Dreams in black and white and red
And feels dead inside the sun
Like some that wait for turns
To tell the world what no one
Wants to hear

So bring down the days of open books

Colorless men close doors to those
Creatures who ache to be seen
And scream in torture for terrible things
Will only end when the river runs
Clear and clean

So bring down the days of broken glass

Silent sparrows that look like loons
Are doomed to wait on those
Dead ducks that dive and bury
What's left in the depths of despair.
They care even less then
You are aware

So bring down the days of empty chairs

Dry blades of grass in the call
Of the wind will bend
But not break
And when it's the end
It's the end

So bring down the days of marking grades

The thinker is posed
Positioned for prank by a horse
On his trail. The equestrian saint
Is pulled by his reins
But knows not his name
Unwilling to fail

So bring down the days of ending games

My Mother The Quarterback

The broken bastard boy, stirred by sirens
Half awake all night but half asleep
For most of his life is
Sleeping on a concrete stagecoach
Counting the sound of the crowd
As they make their way
To the show.

They huddled around her like a football team
Waiting to hear her call the play
And tell the team
Or at least tell me.

No one knew he could run so fast
Or even thought he could last
As long as he did.

A Flock, A Herd, A Broken Word

Enter the man in the dressing gown
Showered in bright white shawls
Marked like the stain of a butcher
With hooves for hands

He speaks of the call of the wild
The animalistic act
Guided by pleasureless purpose
Like nature, we are

Clouded is mothers milk
As clear as the scientific truth
Uttering confusion
Turning boys into beasts

Only those with souls are sacred
And the way of life
Is the way of the knife
No difference, except difference

Mate for life, not love
Like the ones that graze
For the end of their days
Inside of a delicate box

He calls it a glorious gift
With no receipt to return
Then takes his broken arm
To a doctor with none

And far away in the field
Nature is truly revealed

Somewhere Near Sentinel Butte

Riding on rust and waves of road
We go west under blankets
Of not quite white or black
At this hour dakota is dead
Even the man who sits in his chair
Somewhere near Sentinel Butte

We'd slept in seats some nights before
But something led me to the door

A pair of legs reclined but not relaxed
Rigid under an orange hue
Spoke to me so high and shrill
No movement meant nothing for him
If he was even really there
The reality was only me