Creation, curved like an egg, opens with
gilded golden wings. They call you

Khepera.

You move close to the earth, eat bits
of old. An amulet allowing ascension

adorning the deceased with spells
written on cool stone: prayers balanced

against a feather. You push the sun across
the sky and motion the moon to do the same.

Your image, carved

on earthen walls, watches my wrapped body
lowered into the sand. There I dissolve

into the womb of your child

and am reborn.

Delving deep
into iron-red rock,
the swell of San Rafael,
Bodies become
canyon,
pebbles,
sand,
dust.

Whispers:
primordial language
of water.
Juniper and sage
spice thin air.

Scent and sound
discordant
coexistence
with a harsh,
gracefully broken land.

Persistent sunlight
grazes a shear
rock face,
ghosts twist
between crevices
and emerge
as ancient art
carved
onto ancient walls.

We open our palms,
touch cool red rock,
delicate skin
exposed and painted
with muddy earth,
blending with sandstone,

and it is sudden,
the understanding of
vulnerability.

rain meets the ground
soaking down
filling up
the deep thirst
of the earth

And I lay in wait.
Hundreds, thousands
of tiny droplets
fall around my head
each echoing
the cyclical nature of things we want
versus things we need:

a constant ebb and flow
of desire and temperament
racing within
causing my deepest sighs
as I reconcile
which one you are
how to temper you

but on this soft soaked ground
surrounded by the sound
of raindrops,
who have seen more
than we all have seen:
like the deserts
turning into sea
and back again

I know there is no taming
what was always there

I am a thief of words

Rhythms and syncopations
Falling from open mouths
Like flowers kissed
With seasonal demarcation

I am a thief of time

Obligations, chaining red wrists,
Lay broken
I run into the sun
Under arcing blue transparencies
The great magnet stealing me
From daily chicaneries

I am a ruffian

Cloaked with skins of predators
Blending with the wild day
You do not know my intentions

Take heed poets

For I am here with my pen
Reading your thoughts

I dreamed that I died.

chalk boned
carrion
picked over
the feast
long gone

gaping
hollowed windows
persistant
half-opened
mouths
snarled

a sufeit of emptiness

it hovers
the
liquid melted
sun

an alchemy
of rippled heat

evaporation’s reflection

once
a bucolic scene
now
eclipses into stark
barren
godless
stone

burning
glittering
sand
cactus stand
on their knees
at confession

the last water
curling
whisping
into infinitude

wait
wait
wait
dear one

for something

anything

there it is…
it is
the last echo

your heart’s poverty
receiving grace

can you hear it?

Waves move
hidden
beneath the glassy surface
build swiftly
and meet with crashing voices
the willing boulders

They move
down
gently
return to their watery home;
energies contrasting
the wave
the stone
yet connecting

a complementary construct…

This is how you came to me.

An ephemeral form
leaving your mark
upon my obsidian skin

we crashed in the sun
my skin glistened
prisms
of you

I:
motionless
resisting
close-fisted
stoic

yet still, you came

You:
energy
voice
a rumbling
roaring
soothing syncopation

enough to make the stones succumb