Over the next hill
Over over over
I drive until
I realize there's no frontier.

Here in the prarie lands, all the rolling hills and cactus and post oak and gnarled mesquite and other thorny tangles that you could ever wish for, I am alone. I sit and dream of all those things that I can never know: the names of snakes in their own toungue, the words to songs that jays and robins sing - "chip chip...chip chip" and all that jazz, the paths that bring the deer and coyote and armadillo and road runner and quail and all those other things that I don't know the name for but that I'm sure have a name for a beastly creature such as myself. I am alone. All these things that move about me watching, watching until I finally - to their relief? - go on my way and disappear across the top of the next hill. Do they miss me? Will their sleep be filled with swirling images of my face and ways? Or nightmares of the noise and smoke and axes and guns and all the things that my coming and that of my bretheren surely mean to these creatures?

Do they dream as I will surely dream of them?

T-TAGS

The sweat seeps

Through the cotton

(breathable...

If you are prone to believe

Those things that tags claim)

Of my yellow-thrift-store-tee.

(wash on cold,

with LIKE colors

Use ONLY color-safe-bleach

When necessary, Dry on medium heat.....

....Bullshit)

On the Chisolm trail,

Up from Texas Oklahoma,

Somewhere over that horizon

West West

A blue-eyed-Betty

Waits in that house of the rising sun.

While lonesome strangers on horseback,

Searching always watching

Are Working overtime for back pay.

The trail ends here.

Gone the way of the old saloon,

Or maybe Geronimo and Sittingbull,

All the rest....move west, move west.

We're starving for just one more,

Another chance to live.

Progress.

Someone traded Iron horses for outlaws,

Fences for Range,

Small Beads and Small pox

For far more than land...

Indian givers one and all.

West 2

Here amongst the trees and spiders and streams and leaves and grasses and squirrels and all of the invisible little things that go on about me lightly moving with but the faintest noise through the trees, I feel very very small. As I walk on, the trail becoming ever harder to see beneath my feet, I begin to lose myself to my surroundings as if I were no more substantial than the light breeze that drifts down to me through the limbs of pecan and post oak.
What a glorious thing, that breeze. Such a thing that comes slowly winding along the edge of the stream seeking only to move, unrestrained, unrelenting, never pausing - in passing, kisses moist skin, cooling, soothing. Oh that breeze...you can hear it coming if you listen for it, hear it whispering, smell it, all those things that the animals do. And then it's upon you and it is barely there and yet so substantial, so real. That wind is more real than you or I or anyone else could ever be in this forest, amongst these trees, walking beside this creek. I am glad to meet it.
I walk on, over a gentle rise in the land only to slowly descend again down the other side and into a dry creek bed lined with the fallen leaves of last winter - the sickly sweet smell of rotting leaves floods my senses. I am content.
I walk on, down along this creek bed, stopping occasionally to observe a spider weaving it's intricate web round and round and round or to watch as a small fly struggles to escape, not knowing his doom, only the desire to fly and eat and mate and buzz buzz buzz.... or maybe this little fly knows such terror.....such terror. In this, a land in which I am both stranger and native son, I cannot afford to make such assumptions, to be so rash as to think that with my big brain I must surely know the inner workings of the cluster of nerves - so small - contained within the head of the little fly which already now is being wound tight into a silk coffin. Such things are far too substantial for anything but the most uneducated guess to be made about them, I will leave them at that.
I walk on down past the stream bed and past the little pond into which it dumps its precious cargo of minnows and tadpoles and various little insect larvae in a myriad of shapes and forms, a celebration of life in all its glory....so fragile. It is in this pond that they will grow and eat and breathe - some water, some air - until they become bass or catfish or bullfrogs or mosquitoes or any other number of animals far more at home in this forest than me. They belong here, I do not. But it is early yet. A night has not fallen in which I have shared the sounds and the fear with all the small things that go about under the leaves as they hear me approach. Nor have I known the brooding calm with which the bobcat goes about the forest floor, silent on his big wide padded feet, stealthily seeking out those fearful creatures on which it feeds. To know such things is to live and die and breathe and eat and all those things as they do, to know none but yourself and to sleep in peace, made whole with the knowledge that you are nothing and that there is nothing to be lost. But I am not there yet. We are not there yet. There is still so far to go.
As the sun climbs higher amongst the branches and the temperature soars and the birds begin to quiet their songs, whether due to exhaustion from the morning's outburst or out of a reverence for the heat that now bears down on the humid floor of this land I do not know, I step lightly atop the stones beneath, wanting desperately to make not a noise or rustle, to be silent as those around me. In this I fail. But it is still so early. It is still so soon.

As cicadas sing their songs,

High up in limbs of pecan, oak, ash and such,
And sun begins to grow,
Large and orange against distant horizons,
falling slowly to slumber,
Until darkness
Slowly rises on the hills .
Slowly creeps....finds me...finds me.
The choir changes keys
Crickets keeping time for stars'
Spinning dance until...
falling a light year or more,
Crashing silently in all their splendor.
Make a wish son.
Make a wish.
But, you see, the thing about wishes is....

Neal Cassidy and Me

Lightning in a little bottle

Rolled into a shirt-sleeve

Dean Moriarty cigarette-pack style

And thinking quietly to myself

Don't, for the love of God, drop it

OR FOR CERTAIN WE SHALL ALL

EXPLODE

Such was the hope: 2002

The new things like days of old

Just hold your mouth right:

Little left and all toothy grin

Just the way I've always been

Maybe not....Maybe newer

Maybe too weird and wired to live

Longing to see and ride a little furthur

Always west and always faster

1/46th of a second or so

Crest of a wave, bound to come crashing

Bound to go bouncing along the shore

Of course all busted knees and elbows

Red eyed and in need of a bed

Mixed up in a movement / Out of my head

In your fragile arms
"So thin" I think as they wrap around
My body against yours
An embrace. Remember
All that could have been
"I love you"
And a sadness in her eyes
And in mine a knowing
A longing for the past and for a chance.