and in my dream I plunge deep
into a magic cauldron
it is not a pot, vat, or tank
not a vessel of any kind
but a turquois ocean
where blue waves crash over me
I plummet and vanish
down, down to swim with pretty fish
swallowing a sweet elixir
a powerful liquid and potion
magically warming my body
I feel enchantment and fascination
rising to the surface I float
on the vastness of the ocean
under a wide azure sky
I notice sea birds gliding
land must be close
and it is . . .
an island lush and green appears
swimming to the sandy shore
I am struck by singing bird
a thousand voices loud
filled with an illusion of peace
and tranquility
I submerge myself into a jungle
and the sounds and scents
the flower blooms and hues of greens
and oh, those birds, divine
I linger there
until ... I wake in my bed
to dawn birds chirping
Upon the open plain,
they're free and happy
purity of their heart drum
beats for the scarcity
of black powdered sins
the abundance of peace.
Rouged snowflakes descend
the buffalo are running thin
the great spirit is in the empty bellies
of the earth kissed children...
The timepiece is king of predation...
that three-clawed master of all things.
Everything arising bears witness to its fall.
A reservation wears the echo of black caw.
As the 4th Reich is nearing full bloom
Jesus will guide a battered white buffalo
back in time -placing a crown of light
upon the head of the harvest moon.
I stare at the nostalgic art
It is straight out of the fifties
When women were dying thei hair
Turquois to match their turquoise car and luggage
Or pink to match their pink car and luggage
I stare at the art; remembering my youth
Thinking pink hair made sense
it did in the fifties.
Emotional colors
I wish I was red
No I wish I were purple
I wish I was green
How I wish it were true
I wish I were pink
No I wish I was yellow
I wish I were gold
Then I’d know what to do
I wish I were tan
No I wish I was orange
I wish I were black
It would be something new
I wish I were gray
No I wish I was turquois
But I’m none of them
For you see I am blue
I have walked on fiery morning clouds.
My hair like shooting stars behind me.
I have chased lightning and whirlwinds in Hell,
then drunk the nectar of Spring rain.
I have stood at the edge of death,
and felt peace.
My children do not believe me.
Having ridden in silver airplanes and thinking themselves wise.
They say I am a crazy old man.
I ask them, "if I have done it, how can it not be done?"
I ask them, "if it cannot be done, how have I done it?"
My children put feathers in their hair,
and wear turquois jewelry.
They drink all the liquor in the house,
put on their faces as if going to war,
then go and paint the town red.
Still they call me crazy.
But I have ridden in silver airplanes too.
E.G. Maynard.
46 & 2.
3.
The beach gathers its dead. Thousands of horseshoe crabs
come home on the full moon’s tide. Their courting dances,
scrawled with claw and carapace in the wet sand, leave
with the ghost hands of nursing Autumn wave.
Their nests of jewel-colored eggs, covered and soothed
seasoned in salt sea, gestate beneath a slurry of debris.
Right side up each skin colored husk with its barbed tail
rocks in the bubbling broth of Cape Cod’s bay.
Belly up, they appear as an open invitation to the plovers
who flock overhead and arrow down en masse to dine.
Piping plovers, masked in black, hopscotch through the
detritus, connoisseurs of this turquois egg-like caviar.
Among the life and death of sea we walk, barefoot, and
cautious wary of the scramble, the jutting barbs, the bits
of un-soothed glass, the desecrated cairn which barricades
the dying life from the living sea.
Published First in Sounding Review 2015
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