Prickly pear. Shanty towns, oil fields, rattling in the distance. It's sky country out here. Watercolor palettes were born in this place. Every painting feels like plagiarism. God's work, flattened into pale reproductions. By the time the brush hits the page the colors have shifted. Nothing keeps still. Clouds race wild horses. No referee needed. They do it for fun. Mushroom hills, like ice cream cones melting as the wind licks around, tasting their sweet, slow time. Wearing

Rounded curve of a Question Mark. She does not reveal herself on command. She carries the tension without closure. She holds space. Assesses. Gathers. Listens. Waits for the Exclamation Mark, descending like a spear, to gather himself. To cool the rocket heat pulsing inside him. There will be an eventual period at both their ends. But their paths differ. She bends herself, sways, searches, almost circles the moment, but stops herself short of circular thinking. She moves, rel

My greatest ambition for self realization is to be as still as a stone. No. My greatest ambition is to be a stone. At the very minimal, a tree. A tall grass? Moss, leaf, seed, acorn? A shell on the beach? Clay, in an ancient river bed, baked by the desert sun. I do not wish to be an animal. If pressed, I'd take a tree, though it would not be my first choice. The mind is a restless place. Where does one hide when one wants to rest? Chatter, deafening chatter. Verbal chatter, h

What am I doing here? Why did you drop me off? When are you picking me up, Mom? Everyone else here is asking the same questions. We are all just walking, sometimes sprinting, in a state of feverish delirium, exchanging clues found by the side of the road or in labor and delivery wards. Some of us surrendered to confusion, others utterly convinced by an explanation they heard at a campfire in Babylon. No one knows shit, though. And more importantly, the ones who might don't wa

Everything I want to say has been said, written, painted, sung, danced, hummed, puked up, regurgitated, birthed, killed, cooked, chopped, screamed, and whispered. I want to say nothing new. I only want to speak things you already know so that you keep saying, "Yes. That's right. Yeah, me too. Okay, cool. You feel that too?" I want to be relatable and understood. I keep reaching for some grand idea, some twist of phrase, something unique and insightful and sexy. Stretching and

Walk along the narrow path. East of Hamptons Beach. Sheriff's lights on the road ahead. Foreign body in the bush. Why do you stand and gawk? Have you not seen the moon? Quite a commotion out here tonight. Neighbors quite confused. They say things like that never happen here. Angel fish, electric blue, fell from the sky last night. That must have been a strange sight, but they cooked it by moonlight. Another thing they never say is that around here forty-three great tortoises

Orphaned cloud, transient, traversing. Long deluge of shaped beings overcoming the speed of light. I walked with you last week in Kansas. Shape-shifting energy, transform me. But you don't. You greedy cosmic interlopers. I stand here waiting till the armadillo loses his armor and decides he has a better chance as a domesticated rat. What fortune awaits us on the moon? We will mine the dust 'cause the dust in Kansas isn't enough. I figure let them have the moon and be done wit

White sweet nectar, splattered on the hay. Source unknown. Feral fly sipping away at its plunder, framed by the side of the horse. A relentless siege. Hoping for liberation. But accepting retribution. The sensitive, succumbed to the fall. Comfort hard to come by these days. Just noise out here by the stables. Long breath. Pungent odor. Toe, ankle, knee, thigh, deep in fertilized lament. Oh noble simpleton. Let's change places for a day, an hour, a minute. I'll need steel jaws

Speeding through impossible bridges you want to arrive at your pearly gates premature. What suffering are you postponing? Natural talent. The quick and dirty. That's fine, you spoiled child. Sit at your desk and bleed. Collect the blood in a bowl so you can pour it back into your eye or ear and try again. Easy breezy, instant meal you crave. But I brought you carrots to chop with a spoon. Spend what you have on shoes you have many miles to walk. This is not a punishment. This

Slow, shifting sands. Over and above the fold, I look out beyond the shadow wall. I seek all that I don't find and in the seeking I am forever unquenched. My thirst growing by the minute. Engulfing. Tranquil. Dear time, my friend, my foe, my hindrance. I tremble when I am near you. I scream silently when you are away. You whisper sweet nonsense in my ear and I melt in your dance. Sweet yearning, my comfort, my dignity. Sing with me, my sweet destruction. I take each turn and

Does the ocean know I am here? This morning a wave arrived beneath the boat and lifted me. Another took over before the first had finished. Then another. Then another. Like a relay race with no finish line. The horizon remained exactly where I left it yesterday. Or where it left me. The strange thing about living at sea is that the scale eventually begins to leak into you. At first you admire it. Then you become accustomed to it. Then one day you realize it has quietly rearra

On the far left end of the immovable bench sat an old man. Gray, disheveled, dismal. Investigating the young couple that had just entered the park. He was there every day. Except for the days when it rained hard. On those days he sat under the roof overhang by the basement door of the building. Today it did not rain, so he was at his bench. He had no phone with him, no book, no newspaper. No seeds or cigarette. Nothing but his warm coat. Brown with a checkered lining and a wo

Days are passing. Ticking of the clock. Calendar. Bingo card. Keeping count. Tracking. Organizing time as if it actually exists. I'll meet you in the eternal now. Over by that corner of the Milky Way. Is it helpful? To hear the ticking? Like Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Time following you around in the belly of a crocodile. Tick. Tick. Tick. Judging you. Reminding you. Nagging you. How would it feel to live in the eternal now? Here. Here. Here. Now. Now. Now. I know smarter be

Sometimes we force things into existence because we want them to exist. Then they are born sick. A premature baby ripped from the warmth of her mother's womb. Or a deformed creature. A sideshow act displayed at the local Reptiles Believe It Or Not. A fleece for unsuspecting tourists to gawk at between the snake woman and the two-headed calf. To will you into existence. To mold and beat and crush and shape. To saw and sand and weld and fold. I want you now. I don't want to be

There was a rumor that the gods had died, but nobody remembered when. No funeral. No announcement. No last thunderbolt. People just stopped noticing. The ocean god went first. Not because the ocean disappeared. The ocean was still there doing ocean things. Swallowing boats. Throwing tantrums. Rearranging coastlines when it felt like it. But people stopped speaking to her. Stopped negotiating. Stopped bringing gifts. Stopped asking permission. The carved names of the dead sail