34

All the little ways of justifying we've come to commit to memory as necessary purpose, the ways things move here and now and perhaps have always, there was a time before when these patterns were being created, why did that age stop. The age of absolute creation. I am warmed by the remembrance of a cave, within it the flame darting with loving lustful eyes in the dark the two were loving were playing and held and wrought by a fit of momentary expression was the flame struck up by man now held, now witness to the loving in the dark And there I am we all are walking ever deeper, wearing nothing, bare, we walk deeper the temperature colder and colder though we in the amorous warmth within and held go deeper so joyful, the love making only growing with this depth, deeper and deeper more and more joyful that primal joy that ancient joy. Iwe now make sound with our throat and move it about, in other words without words we create direction, with the compass of our throats we invent direction, we make a song, and nothing is crude now, there is no such thing, this is a timeless moment and that is why it is so important, remember? There was no such thing as permission, it all was, that we were a glorious something where there wasn't nothing, was so thrilling and reason enough, for there was no reason, now deeper , the song we sing growing stronger influenced by something greater and ourselves, then suddenly it is cast, this song, and though we stop our sound it continues, and we remember that the cave did open up in this moment, and only could we tell by our sound, and so were able to then render the world larger in that moment, a song became our sense our reassurance our permission our warning to an instantly bigger world. The flame falters, and so does our song, guided in some way by this previous expression of permission, the making of the flame, we remember that we are still responsive, and that we do not know until it has come to pass, but part of us, now willing, considers there is end to every flame, wrought by man, and that we have to witnessed an end to inner man to man, wrought by man, that everything we create does end, including ourselves, and fixated we become on the lasting of that note in the wider cavern after we had stopped making our sound, what was that, why now hold fear, that we might have moments cast into and by space, that we might put some energy into a space some bigger space and that gesture may continue on, that energy might continue to power, to swim, to live, so we create. The rocks beneath our feet turn to wet sand and cake our feet. They were here before we think and would be after, our bodies remain after, that is the song of the voice of our loins, the expression the decay, should we box them then? Or submit them to a larger space to decay there and slower, an expression remained, remains, to the earth and rocks in caves might turn. We took then, in an effort to better feel the rocks upon the floor in hand, and we take it to the flame to better see it is blood red, we squeeze it with our hand and see it melt, it cake in the same way as upon our feet, and see it stains the body, the body might remain, after whatever in us now does leave, we might sing a song then through this color applied, change the way our voices did when we found direction, might make some direction in this way, so we rubbed some lines tracing our bones upon our flesh, and soon to be a rock, we move our hand and trace the bones of the cave beside us. What song might we sing. This song does not move in the same way, we might have it remain much longer, a much slower decay, for it is of the body, anchored in the substance of this cave and of these bones.

33

To ask me to justify my creating, to ask me to justify my creation, is to ask me to justify the meaning of my life. I honestly could not tell you my meaning, just that something draws me out, that something beyond what I am consciously driven to do does permeate me constantly, does tell me in that way the moon does sea, to move here to do this, play this note, write this phrase, the meaning of my life I suppose is to allow this force to always move through me, to keep myself as clear enough so I might allow this force to clearly ring me like a bell, and I am grateful for the room's reverberations. So for me, the word volume is all it's meanings all at once and life.

32

The tension is viscerally felt in this part of the world in this part of the time. Were I to describe to you the sensation of staring in the reflection of a window would then you understand what I mean, what it is like to feel so utterly of a particular moment that you can sense the past in all of it, that you might look out in front of you and see behind, all that is behind and realize that your sense of forward comes not just from the eyes and the world but that sight in sleep the song in sleep the places that might be explored in the darkness where there is obscurity, but now, since I am so keen to find shadow even in the day and able to trace with my finger their beginning, I can too use this sleeping eye beneath the sun to see the future mapped on the face of buildings from straight line to curved and more. Just now, through my many lenses, I see the world turned to sandcastles, that they might be gone by the next tide and what a relief that would be, the system that would result form such a constructive practice, that it would be known that our buildings would degrade that there would be no word for that but 'day' and 'night.' We all build sandcastles of the mind, but attempt, just like our buildings, to keep them from the tide! Why keep them from the tide, there will be many opportunities to construct, and we needn't only build once, for in the act of building is the execution of hope! The construction is the manifestation of our desire to live, we might think to continue to build, to enliven and enlighten ourselves through overcoming destruction, what would be gained by loss of fear in destruction? I say, so much. I speak to you now, with one dollar to my name, and have been struggling to eat, but no matter, confronting the destruction of my body has led me to praise the hope in rebuilding. That if I could eat, I would, that when this tide would pass, I would rebuild with excitement and pleasure. Loss is tide, and tides ebb and flow, extreme and tame, the weather changes, but sand, though moved, does still together form the beds the beaches. Stand in the shallows, feel the way it works, always shifting, this was you. This is you still. See the sand within. The little to the many make us love, the impossibility of that construction, were we to build so great a castle as all the earth.

I took time off - 31

Who dares to question God in such a way but only the most devout secure enough that there is something there having sensed it, that is why I ask, I do so feel the presence of the invisible, that is why I ask where you perceive our differences lay, and does that definition not, at least in some fundamental part, come from the realm of the invisible? That we have found a way to make the invisible visible and then to draw some definitive and separating principle from that man-made manifest. In this way our words become our flesh, when yet they spawn from the same great force the engine of the universe of which we all spin and fly fast so fast beyond our feeling. That is a force greater than is felt, and we do not find difference in so big a thing, yet, perhaps no bigger thing in terms of importance is there. Can we find a way to fear that forward motion without eachother's hands. I think the Lord's words are written everywhere but mostly in the things in life I do not understand, and fundamentally, I feel so close to them, and fundamentally I think it my responsibility to contemplate them with mine own mind, for my mind too is one of the larger amorphous yet defined, expressions of that greater plane in the realm of divine symbols, the same realm I consider our differences to be, the impossibility of my understanding the breadth of your life all the moments you consider to be important to you. You might tell me, but I rely on my reverence to the greater plane in you, I will always worship those parts of you I do not understand for that reason, you are certainly of god to me.

30

Called upon by flame to grow 

asked to move upward 

closer the gravity of the gods 

to pull from the earth a life 

to spin it with the wind and make more always 

spinning always 

 building always 

 pulling always 

tugging into life cords and stems.

29

Of this line of thinking comes a reckoning of time.

I am to die, 

and have more than once now seen the rigor mortice of my body

and have come to look upon a vast room of strangers 

and contemplate the transient space they hold.

In such moments I see it not as dark, as sad, as tragic, but as phenomenal:

That our allegories are united in our births and in our deaths 

and what we have chosen to celebrate.

28

Gunpowder was discovered in the concocting of an elixir for immortality desperately desired by a Chinese Emperor.

Perhaps it is our want to manifest beauty in such grave terms, 

A misunderstanding of the raising of the stakes: 

for making death more eminent,

surely gives rise to the importance of recognizing the momentary beauties,

of which we are one.

27

In a grander way - the calculus of the world might issue some decree of inherent and necessary separation,

The explosion of connection too great for love
and somehow not for evil;

That we relegate and discover the radical power of connection under the guise of destruction.

26

I wonder how it comes to exist: that what exists does in my mind, 

that the reality far beyond my body may inhabit it 

and in moments swell and overcome it, 

for I touch the earth and it touches me, 

I am not touched by a single thought, 

or I am only touched by thought. 

25

I look tired because I am.

24

Katie Shoer and her childlike charm would woo that part of you that wished never to move on, the seduction of suspension, the same feeling of an ant stuck in sugar water, such people make death sweet, there's that to thank them for. She didn't know, or care.

23

Collar color on the riverbed sand like stones, 

rounded beneath the heavy sky, clear then cloudy, 

in the masted bits, in the spiracles in the rounded melts, 

in the deep sea where cast upon the back of dead lay freezing, 

lay the brown to silt never stirred never stirring still, and loose, 

and yet, 

together underneath the rock and stony crabs, 

and the way they all would scuttle about, the sound, 

of seacaves:

when as a little boy I’d shout just to hear the muffle of the algeaic walls,

 these are the colors of our sphere, our dot,

and though the light may not touch us in the same way twice it's still a million years old,

and that we have mirrors to conceive it's bouncing,

the bouncing of light light and water,

playing on the surface of that river,

that river bedded with rocks rounded by time the muse

the muse is time the muse is water 

themselves lovers so eternal they've worn down all the edges of their beds with their love making

so too the sky the wind with rock 

no harder lover is there than the rock and yet, 

the shapes the make together! 

The things the wind can get the rock to do! 

So beautiful so intimate so wonderful so glorious bright and bending.

22

What are you doing here?! 

Go stand out in the wind, go let the elements carry you off.

You've always had a desire to travel.

21

Water that it might flow in a way down from on high for that is the want of god for that is the will of god to show in such a casual way that the heights are not so great that even if we fall we are returned to some greater course always becoming some greater force a part of the larger and this is the gift; that when all else is perceived to fail in the mind of man there are basic truths that give us purpose, that in the end we are fuel of some sort that is eventually and always used to advance the cause of earth. There is a built-in fail-safe for this reason there is always some greater place and that greater place is ever-present.

20

This is all of us -
bits of metal spinning around
bits of metal spinning around
metropolis.

Light from outside window breaks the tapping fingers of ferns on glass.

19

A wise mind is a mind that sees in story and has patience for the world's telling.

18

East of the Salton Sea an old Chevy Pickup - a 1953 - is long since rusted out.
Once owned and operated by the Allways (who left a pound or so of skin in the plaid cab single-seat) long since gone.
It's there - right now -
breathing with Santa Ana lungs -
sometimes whistling through it's many rusted-out lips -windchime melodies -
It's there staring right into your minds' eyes -

And then -
it's gone.