winter song

there is a low howling here

that comes from the sun.

listen to the wind chimes

and how they’re possessed.

their hollow tones ringing through the neighborhoods

about something invisible.

look at how the trees bend and sway

as if under water

waiving in slow motion

at something invisible.

this valley is unified

by the thick red light

that paints the grasses and the cliff faces

that paints the Indian blood, the red earth.

things are stained and there’s a song about it

droning on in the background

behind the movements of our machines

and the movements of the wind splitters

the people walking over sidewalks to their lives.

we think there’s something more than walking

with the song and seeing the trees dance

but there’s not.

we think there’s something more we’ve got to do

other than feel the valley’s breath

that comes down from the red cliffs

to the winter grasses

but there’s not.

The Impossible Future

There was a series of unfortunate events
and the world passed us by in a flurry.

Before we knew it, we looked around
and didn’t recognize a thing.

We see trees and buildings and fenced yards
with cats slinking through them.

We see lonely houses with elongated towers
and crows waiting in the trees nearby.

We see rows of little birds on telephone wires
and the sun glowing red behind their black figures
and the neighborhoods growing dim.

The dark rising from where dark rises from
with the sun sinking in.

We slink through the shadows in a world
going to shadow, and don’t know how we got here.

These are the neighborhoods that turn
with the deepening dusk in a foreign language.

As we slip by invisibly because we’re not
from around here and never will be
from around here even though we live
down the street.

The town has a consciousness
that we cannot penetrate, as we slide
past the fences, the yards and the gargoyles,
the cats hurrying from bush to bush,
and the crows eying driveways.

This is all part of a story not meant for us.

This is our impossible future.

Passing Through

I do know that I was sitting alone.

There was a distinct feeling
that I was waiting for a bus.

I wasn’t really waiting
for a bus, but for death,
or for my eternal life
which was all around me.

I didn’t know if I’d
ever write again,
or who I’d be without
my writing.

Death comes as a feeling of passing through,
when we see that we’re not
from around here.

We are always passing through.

We are always not
from around here.

I am a solitary bird, I forgot
to tell you.

Watching the newspapers flap against the buildings
and then fall still.

Listening to the newspapers rustle between fingers
and the background music.

I forgot to tell you
I’m not lonely
even though I spend
my mornings in silence.

I forgot to tell you
I’ll never be lonely again.

Because I found where I belong
where everything’s moving
and I’m still, or
where I’m moving
and everything’s still,
or where we’re all moving or still
together, with only the bus
to think about
that never comes,
only the feeling of it coming comes,
only the feeling of an eminent departure
of never arriving
flapping around like the newspapers
and watching ourselves.

Sometimes it’s obvious,
that we’re all ghosts.

Our bodies phantoms
in the café light
while the gray day grows
outside despite.

Drinking our phantom coffees, with our
phantom voices echoing.

We’ve been a lot of places
and have forgotten most of them.

We’ve been a lot of people
and have forgotten most of them.

Even though they’re as close to us
as our breath, as familiar as our warmth that glows.

This will all crumble someday
and we’ll be somewhere else,
having passed through,
waiting for a bus somewhere else.

Another bus stop full of ghosts
sitting with our steaming coffees
and our gourmet treats, and our breath
vanishing just like before,
but with a few different thoughts.

I forgot to tell you,
I like my aloneness
in the company of everything
that’s passing through, just
as I am.

I forgot to tell you
that I’m at the bus station
but I’m not leaving.

Someday, I’ll scribble
a few sentences that will last,
and then even those will perish.

Walk with me later
after I’ve been alone,
and we’ll watch the day pass
and we’ll rustle the papers
between our fingers
like a couple of ghosts
who don’t know they’re ghosts.

Until the Ice Melts

Snow falls, and the town is dressed up
in its new thoughts.

All of the upward surfaces
are dusted with evidence.

Everyone knows something fell last night,
that there was a communion between
the heavens and the streets.

The rooftops looking up with a brightness.
The mountains having put on their white robes.

“The angels have visited!”
“The day has been made holy!”

Are the thoughts we almost think,
feeling them as a silent celebration
when we get our coffee, or look out
to see the white crowns.

Our cars and trucks transformed into chariots.

Our houses into temples, our neighborhoods,
part of a kingdom.

For a few hours we are royalty,
until the ice melts.

The Giant Eye

There is something suspicious
about the cloud formations here.

We find ourselves glancing up.

The way their tentacles creep over the mountains.
Groping over the dark forests
like giant blind insects
who are always searching the Earth.

Or how they can suddenly open up
as endless terrains.

As if, for a few hours,
there’s a great kingdom,
and the sun participates.

Setting off the golden columns,
painting the arches and illuminating
the temples.

But mostly, it’s the constant promise
that at any moment
they’ll reveal
a great mystery
that was always there
like an alien ship
or a giant eye.

Headlines in the Background

The headlines read:
“BLOOD EVERYWHERE!”
and I continued walking.

The day went on as it should.
Cars seemed not to notice.
None of us saw an ounce of blood.

Except, there was something in the background.

It was a day heavy with dreams
from the night before
that we couldn’t quite remember.

None of the details could be remembered.
I didn’t stop to read the story,
and continued to walk around
with all the blood in the background.

Blood everywhere—on the walls of buildings,
arms and legs, cement, smeared and darkening.

The fog was there, when I woke up.
Covering the mountains, hovering
just above the town.

It was a scene after a tragedy
that we knew took place
but didn’t quite know what.

“NATURE HAS BEEN VIOLATED!”
might have well have been
the headlines for that day.

But we continued walking
trying to figure out
things for ourselves.

Trying to push forward
into a clean future
but seeing only blood.

Two Red Balloons

We close our eyes
in order to close
and open ourselves.

The slightest rustling,
a child’s voice,
the river over its stones.

These are the sounds of things
busy being themselves.

Our bodies becoming the pastures and the winds
sprawled out across the grass.

A couple of lazy dogs
that don’t know any better
cradled in the slightest sound,
the sky’s breath.

Even the dark thoughts
we don’t push back
knowing it’s as useless
as pushing back the clouds,
the storm front.

Tomorrow ice will descend again
and the warm winds will have visited
for only a single day.

We were two red balloons
set loose on the warm currents
over the green meadows.

We were a couple of kites turning circles
over the tiny town,
that sun patch.

Backdrop of the Fled

It’s Colorado, it’s winter.
The trees have been deserted.
Standing as statues to their former selves.
Their spirits having been sucked back to the caverns
of introversion, down into the earth, hovering
around the roots and their fungi. Or having fluttered off
with the migrating birds, only to return when life returns,
when the flowers stretch, and the leaves burst, but until then…
The houses will be lined up as they are in single file, on either side
of the wide streets—rows of empty skulls, as spiritless
as the trees, this town,
with only the appearance of life, cars moving like zombies
in caravans, then groaning to nothing in the distance,
a man’s silhouette, crossing down the road,
in the corners of our eyes, from the grocery store, a shadow passing
over asphalt. There is a desolation
in how it all adds up, something emptier than a wasteland, the people
in their living rooms half asleep in TV patterns, having fluttered off
into fantasies of the past, regret configurations, families having failed,
the once passionate having failed to live, the houses: monuments to lives
not lived, to lives living on in imaginations…Walk down these streets
where the crows perch in empty branches, and then fly off…Walk down
these streets, where there’s a great hollowness that floods the plain and
all of the street lamps and the city building façades and the ambulances
and the grocery store clerks, their shadowy prospects, a hollowness
drowning everything that we can’t speak, that everything speaks,
so we take solace in each other when we can, playing ping pong
in the basement at midnight, hoping for a moment that feels right,
to remember, against the backdrop of the fled, its endless winter.