Abundant Life

Passing through nameless West Texas towns
The neon sign of a motel flashes vacant
Inside a reprieve from the cold road
The endless asphalt stretching forward like a jet trail through the dark
sea of land
Inside warm myself by the heater listening to tv evangelists sermonizing
apocalypse across the electrified airwaves
Sitting in the motel restaurant I dig into thick hamburgers
Listening to Hank Williams crooning, your cheatin heart
Walking across the parking lot, a teenage couple are leaning against an
old buick  making out
My thoughts wander to childhood
Limitless territories to explore
Abundant life spreading across the world, a green revolution
The bright sun of justice reigning over our troubled land
Smiling faces looking out of store windows
People simply living, as though it were enough
I hear a man cursing, a woman screaming invectives through the motel
room wall
As I lay silently in my bed
Myriad thoughts unwinding in my head
Hungers, dreams, regrets
The flotsam and jetsam of a life
Slowly the screaming dies down
Leaving only the beating of my heart to keep me company
 

Dixie

Antebellum memories glimmer
in mirrored halls of eternity
Resurrected soldiers congregate
in suburban battlefields
Restless spirits transfigured through karmic wheel

Passion reaching escape velocity
Soaring in timeless illusion
Misbegotten desire flowering in crimson rage

Ghost riders galloping
through interstate highways
Gathering speed for the final descent
Into endless dreamtime

 

Ruins

The lark sings a sad song
As the December winds whistle over the volcanic ash
Dreams come fleetingly now
A whisper, a shadow then nothing
The sun of truth is so bright my mind dilates
The barren branches reach out to comfort me
But my emptiness is complete
Swallows return to San Juan Capistrano every year
I hear they fly thousands of mile from South America
But I have never left these ghostly ruins
To hear their songs of joy
Once I set out for an endless journey of life
Now I wander in nomadic bliss
Seeking oblivion in the caverns of my mind
The corpuscles of my blood cry to heaven
For release from the cycle of death and rebirth
But their cries fall on deaf ears
Only the moaning wind is heard
And the purple sunset echoes my lost vision
Of what life could be

 

             Quiet Surrender                   

Cold pavement against my delicate skin
As I lay silently, shirt in tatters
People step around my fallen body
As though I were a dead pigeon
I am nameless, without identity,
A stranger in their midst, an alien
Having no possessions I am free
The architecture of my body is my only substance
Without human form I walk ghostlike through the shadows of life
My emaciated body is a husk of withered cells
Even hunger has evaporated in the dry recesses of my body
Beyond care, or worry, I am unshackled
No longer will I have to attend to bodily functions
They occur naturally without effort or need for control
The end will not be glorious or painful
Rather a lapsing into sleep
A sinking into torpid stillness
As the sun sinks over the concrete canyon
The cold seeps into my bones
The sounds of the city lull me to sleep
And night falls casting me into endless dreams
Quietly I surrender

 

Rummaging

I go rummaging for beauty
Through flea market goodies
Looking for the perfect bauble
To decorate my plain room
Fondling an embroidered pillow
With fingers trembling in anticipation
Feminine lace
And pink velvet cloth
Enticing me to touch
A treasure to fill my empty days
With sentimental contemplation
In moments of quiet desperation
As the clock ticks ominously
Piercing the silence
With prophetic urgency
Shadows enfolding me
Like angel's wings