Spiral

The mystery appears to have been settled for now
The cold is speckled and the fire has been burning all day
The silence and quiet and persistent drone create a wall of light for
impenetrable infinite space & judgement asleep in the arm of the sea


To build ones house upon the rock in splendid isolation &
meet out the measure of a year without the knowledge of human time
To sleep in the grass and wait for the cloud to pass
the light to change a day
empty mind of nothing I accept thee


Somewhere far away from this quiet city lies a big place
where the desert air is soft and tinkles with a broken mouse skull
and the night has no eyes staring at the blue glow of the little screens
The new scrolls without weight or substance, text of the hollow man


Now nothing made sense again and it was clear and alive and possible
The blue sky waved out into the hills of hard land and the wind caught
a child's sign stuck in sagebrush
"Please come to peace", it said to the bugs scattered in the dust &
a hawk perched on the edge of the red leather tree
watching the day make no mistakes


The writer was a cliche and repeated himself endlessly but so what
he said to the stones that held the air
and the cold cracked throat of sharp edges
caves, crevices, shadows and draws breaking the land
into a broken old sidewalk &
what wasn't visible always seemed to speak loudest
threatening with quiet contained violence


Fear prickled electric in the cold dead air
and pink dots flittered across his vision
King of the mystics, at war with no one
all became woo and he was ready to die
"so shoot me", said the echo across old coins
caught in the curve of the moving gun
Waves of freedom and white blindness
like like tubes of chattering metal giving a buzz


Thrown stones blew the wind &
nothing spoke or whispered or screamed &
there was a persistent buzz in the dome of blue space
like a train wreck
Unlocated, omnipresent and paranoid
the sound was available on you tube &
in the dark waited fangs, stingers and teeth
claws wearing the unbearable moon


Calls from the cool earth, hunger, and the  truth of water
The hand felt the rocks in their totality, a rainbow vibration
Heat, texture, mass, and endless time that never began
nails scratched nervously in the center of this giant nothing


Spears of light broke in waves
while somewhere somebody ran a vacuum
Pollution filled the world, starfish died,
and cars sat idling on granite freeways
Back in the desert, sage and rocks and junipers
flowed outward in all directions &
coyotes prepared their plans
while dirt circled in the dust of new miracles


An airplane etched a slow line miles above
with a faint rumble of life
It was the one event, the one thing passing slowly by
as the earth turned &
breathed out her silent presence
before the big open swallowed her whole
and the day dawned and the children rejoiced
and the people loved


The old woman hiding in the writer lifted up
and squatted on the rock and spit
Hands on her knees, she bounced a little
and squinted through her sunglasses
Teeth bared, she was the cartoon grin
of a bottled jaguar in heels
She saw the time and sound
in a room of her being
hollow and one


This endless story and filled with the calm
she thought of her old friend
Honed to a sharp point from days of watching
reading and learning the signs
Walking and waiting and watching the breath
in the stilled mind of it all
The pulse of life like blood
in the crack of the fire
or in a beautiful new day
when one finally knows