Sometimes I realize that my poems are simply ways to praise others, whatever form they take.  I am so blessed to witness the existence of my fellow beings.  You all are so beautiful as you dance your lives through your years, over the land and sky and waters.  I'm in love with the lot of you.

my dream
receives a visitor
fascinating spirit
you walk into the gloaming land of my sleep
you glide forth, from behind me

you always surprise me
now how can that be true when both your arrival and my response are so predictable?

here it is, though, here I am in my dream prostration doing my thing
and wham, a you-walked-on-my-grave drumroll of recognition rides up my spine
as you arrive in your humility
your gorgeous sumptuous attitude of tender, of firelight 
of honey gathered, of bloom and seed

and you kneel on my right, gliding down to this plane I’m on
joining my prayer or my worship or what am I doing here in this dream?
anyway you descend and join my kneeling my bowing my laying low

and see,
oh look, 
oh my stars

you come robed in the thickening blue purity 
of a clear-day sky 
that has found itself in the mood for evening's dark thoughts

oh fascinating one
as you kneel with me in common cause
you are clothed both in heaven’s blue
and the kind, sweet-hot light of open eyes

your two eyes that kindle what they see
your eyes that set fires where they wish
oh reckless sky being
please be careful where you aim them

oh, never mind
you know me, I am already beyond ashes
I am combusted long since
I am smoke
I am powder, carbon soft as silk
you know the beautiful old line: I am stardust

so just breathe me 
as I commit to the prayers dreamed
by a mote of dust, an ex-ember, a handful of soot

with thanks to Jonathan, to Jewel, to Alain

again
I’m watching this world 
unfold itself too fast for me

I'm watching the world 
become a hard hand
quickly deciding to offer 
a rapid series of slaps

rattling my cage

yes, now that I think of it: 
a cage

I want one to crawl into, and
perhaps it could have

a) water bowl
b) blanket
c) coherent, defensible world-view

oh yeah I want that
but I know 
I shall promptly upset my bowl, shred my blankie, and cower away from good sense

right about the time I realize I am without tools
and without tool kit
and without empty pockets, even

then
I shall hunker down and feed myself 
on a discarded heap of my own heart muscle
wrapped, as it is, around empty space

I shall crouch and feed
until I am fed
right up

I will not turn over
or circle inside my bars 
or scratch at my floor
until I have wrathfully, savagely eaten my nothingness heart out,
fully completely irreversibly

until I am quite sick on it
stuffed with my nothing heart
and in too deep
all the way in, in well over my head

then
remembering that it’s the wild beasts who get put into cages,
my wild blood, made homeless by my heart-eating,
will finally boil

and it will be time to rattle and roar
from within my without

and my howl
shall not cease
until you all break out
before me

come on
come on
come on

jail break

show me how it’s done

Listen, hand, let go.
Peace like snow will sift into
your new-emptied palm.


Listen, heart, open.
Swing your door wide to this not-
easy-seeming thing.


Rescued yet again.
By deer's ear seal's eye tree's arms
flick of lizard's dance