Smith Rock State Park, Oregon.

Highway 126 – Cougar Lake, Oregon.

Some of us hay wired, our connections poisoned often and early,

corroded by the sense that time is going to steal from us once and for all.

We cannot bathe often enough to cleanse

ourselves of who we are.


The bloodless saints we bow to in the wake of

a bad moment about to turn pure give us the emotional immediacy of belief.

Everything glass to the touch.

Which of us is afraid?

God is knocking at the door to ask for a sit down cup of coffee

and all you have is decaf. All he wants is a chance to set the record straight.


Hope has left the building and flown

up to pierce the beating heart of a white hot afternoon.


I stare down a carnivore so powerfully able, tumbling end over end.

Blown into bits that fall forgotten amongst the small, underfoot rocks

that serve, in this instance, as earth’s outermost crust, I am.

There is nothing to offer the sky except an iced and awed humility;

purity a suite it has in spades [sic].


Too many with sight do not see the blindness that rages across

the geography of their face. Attempting, while they still can,

to tell time to go fuck itself, we will not be mastered.


At dusk, the mountains are bluer than you’ll ever be so why bother?

We invoke the single western deity we were born next to —

bassinets knocking together like small harbored boats

in the wake of The Great Dawn,

asking for a little help up and out of the well.


The days lodge like read then forgotten  (or is it forgotten then read)

complaints on the men’s room wall.

Looking for an instant to believe for a lifetime,

we dance ‘round the room like wailing sirens hoping to be heard,

hoping to somehow find a listening set of ears.