halloween

with the fog he
could smell east van from miles
its gunpowder pungency
seasoning this cold thick soup.
with his ears he
could hear fighting past
the dusty orchards of normandy
cracks pops whistles a
patternless ceaseless cacophony
to match a war's meaning.
maybe at least the ducks
found cover somewhere
in the black of the north shore
in the blacker shadows of the
towering doug fir. they could
wait it out with the geese.
still the unquiet youth are here
swallowing processed sugar gobs
smashing pumpkin globes
beneath the flash glory of
roman's candles and
witch's whistles and
forever night shades
of a city's yellows cast.

of Kenko-ji

Shunmyo Masuno came here
to speak of zen dryland gardens
and of beauty in imperfection.
robe black sandles white
head shaved and bright to match
his graciousness. he spoke read
with english broken. yet
answered our queries with
eloquence foreign to our
assumed mastery of a tongue
barely second to him. we listened
with hearts eager to soak up the
purity of his practice but
left the belly of the planetarium
knowing only more of our greater selves.
I am my creations, he said.

welted with spikes

despite his embrace too slim
to secure half an armhold about her trunk
he would take her down. he would
given days of patience or much less
with his brothers of sleeveless gusto.
---
they would pull her to the earth and deliver her
wet and horizontal and on rails
mirrored steel glass laid yesterday.
a double seam of silver it snakes still
mid slope through the passes.
they rode here as cattle
and still are
nights ago in the echoes of a steel can.
---
a true dubstep cut was all their ears knew
for two days in the dark. a rhythm granted only
a shadow of life to the chorus of cicada and cricket
and grasshopper
present in memories of east.
---
occasional lines of brilliance would flicker
attention away from the audible gaps in the rails
and frame the long doors to either their sides.
doors shut to movement
the only company to keep flesh and skulls
from greeting bleached basalt ballast. 
---
she was here in the valley. quiet
for centuries
nine total.
she believed in the pace of the trickle
and drank generously
until they erected their thin walled camp
alongside the opaque rapids of screaming glacial melt.
above the constant rounding of stone under water
their glass and their metal
brought out by nightly spirits
sang her absence that would be and is still. 
---
they are here deeper and again to bring her in
for pulp and planks and pay for one more day
while hope lingers on the breath of the silent planters
who will follow with long shadows
again to begin with haste
what for millennia knew only the balance
of eagle and bear and the musk of salmon carcass.

new river

a future myth past

my thoughts leap
out of the blocks
there is no pistol
---
the images i know of you
are mostly still
yet i walk with them
across ancient lawns
now a dim cedar sea
---
i was here before
when we blinked existence
and believed in myths
of progress and apocalypse
of buying and fixing things
---
i was here before
when we were
relearning love
and all that is all
---
we were still unsoaked
with boundlessness then
and bet on a dog named death

why it's men who frequent bars alone

you flutter like a shapeshifter flirting with shadows
here as your best only when i don't want you. and
this city your home moves along countless elusive horizons
unsynchronized ceaseless conveyors
manned by infinite gears greased with silence.
this might be for each a playground if only for the glass
all the clean green glass reflecting a northern expanse
swept under before remembering it will shatter again.
–––
i once knew art and walking about barefoot
and waiting for sunrise to sleep
and i now ponder life breathed into
half versions of me
to again afford discovery of a chance
for everything again for the first time.
i want to be there when it finds its last wildness
so i can reassure the beauty without:
the light we don't see in between stars
the sounds wide enough to find harmony only
with moving crust and a massive wall of
opaque water.
–––
you are here before me plenty these days
offering that half (to me) or to any other joe
finding this sidewalk solid this hour.
you have my apologies but i am the light of myself
and you are of a spectrum i cannot yet see.
i am sorry but it still glows back east
i can see this as its valleys are the oldest.
yet the rains here have ceased
and the western dogwood blossomed 
white once only. here.

dwelling portably

thank you for the spot
of english red bush miss
and yes, i prefer milk
and honey. and
if not for it i might
hadn't the time to think
and drift (eventually and)
knowingly and grinning
into the world of
thrice hidden bridges
and candied salmon.

reefer ridge

the trinketmaster

brilliance paints facade geometry a bit taller and facing east as hope crawls from its dens edged by dreamless sleep and hollow belly. an indigenous carving with china-made odds sits on sale amongst brittle wind-up detritus ordered upon a cardboard welcome mat.
---
we stroll through lost in thought of the girth of childbearing and tiny toe morsels so unbelievably alive.
---
we without thought cast lunch into the crumpled cap of the trinketmaster. he is asleep faceless and sunken into the shade of his chest and heavy concrete while the carving ungiven yet dances on one paw. it shrugs rare sun or common rain with dreams of altitude and shaping stone and clean forms of stories that outlast their vessels.
---
but we forget these stories. we forget their weight upon the life of the next born and the trinketmaster still sleeps and we still stroll feckless.

swollen pink

of it

full moon rising
three billion ways it
lifted and shrunk along
its arc. through silhouettes
of spring reaching branches and
in the soft falls of vacant dunes and
beyond apartment building shells
half but never asleep. though it
              was not these parts
these views from its kin
that compose it.
rather the earth gives
each their role to share
                together whole.

cherry blossom dream

i washed roots from plates
and called upon distant fights
and loved everyone 

naomi went out
seeking used white plastic bags
and returned with kites

SUPERMOON

air clean warm

windows open to the milk moon
breezes bid budding adieu. the
skin of this air is a random grid
of fruit cellars holding upright
their flagpoles in the wind.
a forest of indistinguishable hairs
grasping for paltry light they
sway in delighted unison and
whisper memories of deer spotting
and back seats' windows rolled
fully down for chin and left forearm.
my eyes would close to the pace
quickened while on roads between
picnic bench grounds and open
to quieted air and dissipated
momentum and to the occasional
odocoileus white tail spy i would
speak to silently and grin-tinged.

the north shore

three moons would
at least
rope six tides. these
hours after the february incessance
quit i could still hear
rivers lost to the underground
crashing ceaseless glacial falls. three
north shore beacons brought cold
glow
to the heavy air
that prepared for its morning descent
upon the city
a blanket falling in slow motion. three
beacons perch as kings
asleep atop thrones gilded. bats
and birds come summer
might know them for navigation as
young upwardmoving flock to
their factory powder come winter. three
peaks
soft guards to the crags and bluffs beyond
too tall and windswept for
their roots to ever adorn boots. this 
very wind is what battered
these peaks
open to open water
and to the unpatterned 
torment of ocean. water flows
and blows with the immortal workers
molecules of radon 
breathed and rebreathed by all life
this thin photosynthetic
skin
has ever known.