The courtesy of eye contact
with people I pass on the street
was not a reason to assume
I wanted beneath your sheets.

The choice of a certain seat
where beauty was next to me
was not because I wanted you
bent over or on your knees.

The haze of inebriation frees
to buy beauty a drink at the bar,
but this was never an attempt
to stain the backseat of my car.

The magic of making love is far
from putting my penis in you as you call it,
it seems you think I need all beauty
conquered in order to enjoy it.

that the cause of all suffering and sorrow
is our attachment to the things of this world.
Transfixed by the light from her eyes,
I imagined a world free from attachment.
An earthly Kingdom without walls or wars,
without hunger or the desire for food.
Without the shame of winos and overdoses.
Without the clouds of smog or corruption.
Where there’s no greed or jealousy.
Where there are no tears to fall on graves.
Where the sun neither sets nor cast shadows.

Where there’s no darkness to reveal the light.
Where lovers find substitutes for each other daily.
Where children have neither toys nor games to play.
Without the nurturing of umbilical cords.
Without the passion of electricity or gravity.
Without any force whatsoever, save apathy
for someone else, fairest mystic, I want no part
of your one-sided detachment. I embrace the pendulum
as it swings from misery to felicity and back again—
or even push it towards the side I see fit—
but I will never deny it and retreat to a cave.

Beneath the southern sky in a forgotten valley,
a creek crawls and carves through a field.
The mountains stand there, firm in the ground,
over the blue peaks a breeze seeks its way home.

A house of decaying spruce and cold granite, trapped
by an overgrowth of ivy and neglected bushes.
The house wears a bland white coat, the colorless door
has been slammed too many times to close properly.

Through the cracked window I see my mother’s collections
of antique tins, glass bottles, cigar boxes. Confined
on shelves next to fist-sized holes in the drywall.
Years of dust blanket those motionless relics.

In the back yard there is a pine that towers above.
We weren’t allowed to climb it but we did anyway.
When they yelled, we yelled, y’all look like ants.
And they were as powerless as ants to stop us.

Beneath the southern sky in a forgotten valley,
a crawling creek carved through the field.
I remember the mountains standing firm in the ground
but over those peaks a breeze found its way home.

The ritual of gathering around a keg
as children play duck-duck goose
by ears of corn, green beans, egg salad,
and a pig roasting over a flame.

The meeting of eyes across a crowd
as strangers are pulled together
the magnetism can almost be seen
while the moon waxes in the milky sky.

The chanting of voices forms a circle,
as conversations fill Nature’s gaps.
New ideas are born and others die
while laughter echoes from the trees.

The beating of drums by the bonfire
as flames sway in a trance, bodies
rub together and sweat drips
from the limbs of dancing women.

Thank the Goddess, it’s Friday.

A branch cracks and falls,
worn by the weather and time,
striking eager Earth.

A foe in the leaves
or just imagination?
Maybe it is both.

The steep trail I choose
is covered with rocks and roots
ready to trip me.

I let mosquitoes
bite and feed ecosystems
one pest at a time.

There they were, as if hatched from our dream,
a chattering of starlings in this indifferent oak.
Beneath the city sky’s electrical gleam
the sleepless stars are swept behind a cloak.

As restless as the waxing crescent moon,
a bittersweet song slashes their flight.
As music and laughter lurk in their tune
they worship every sound of the night.

This dissonance is as abrasive as emery.
I would rather they be silent and praise
the stars, who with only orbits for memory,
sit and shine in silence for all their days.

If the dance of gravity fails, they do not mourn,
but gladly spin on the trajectory set by fate.
They will teach us of death and being born,
if we have ears to listen before it’s too late.

It’s 85.4 miles, door-to-door,
and five dollars, forty cents in gas.
At seventy six miles per hour,
it’s one hour, forty three minutes
including seven red lights.
That’s time enough to sing
nineteen songs to the breeze.
Time enough to realign perspective
with the four revolving wheels.
There are nine required turns:
four lefts and five rights
(or four rights and five lefts)
not counting three freeway exits.

It’s past twenty one gas stations,
three hotels and fourteen fast-food
restaurants. There are no rest stops.
It’s past untold amounts of litter:
cigarette butts, soda cans, plastic bags,
and only one inmate cleanup crew.
It’s past, on average, three wild
turkeys and eleven hawks that soar
past thousands of trees hugging
four lanes of heat-kissed asphalt.
It’s past one hundred and six cars,
each within reach, separated
by one imaginary line.

None of this matters.

There are two people.
One driving, one waiting,
both sharing a past
and present choice.

I see you, in your Ugg boots and your miniskirt.
It’s the middle of spring, there is no snow around.
You look confused through bug-eyed sunglasses.

I smell you, as dreadlocks mimic cartoon stench lines.
The musk of patchouli engulfs your existence.
You stink and must regard soap as unnatural.

I taste you, as parts of your lungs mix with the air.
The cancer is already beginning to take form.
You taste like the death that is stalking you.

I hear you, on your Bluetooth headset in the supermarket
You are boring and have nothing pressing to say.
You sound silly talking stocks next to pastries.

I don’t feel you, as your dangling participles fall away.
Your “verse” is an uncrafted stream of consciousness.
You feel lethargic. Our poems remain unfinished.

Para mi tesoro

We always share a bed
when we’re drunk. This time
on the sap of blue agave.
The harsh and herbaceous bite
of amber aged oaken barrels
intoxicates my fermented dreams.

Dreams of a plant resembling
a piña, shielded by spiked
leaves that stretch skyward. Grounded
in rich and henna-hued volcanic
soil, shimmering with æon old
tephra from a still active vent.

Remnants of a tectonic dance,
two stubborn bodies rubbing
against one another. The orgasmic
rupture of the Earth: a molten
mixture of devastation and life,
a fertile fusion of fate and choice.

The granjeros are tilling and reaping
but the pale-jade agave is fearless.
Fearless of the future, of drought
or attachment to the sun. Fearless
of night or the looming harvest. Fearless,
when its sword-like protection is stripped
and it’s left defenseless. Fearless,
of a two-car garage with a sink
and a library with a globe. A mortgage
and a bed we share while sober.

I don’t know how many times
I have given up on you.
Sworn you off with these words,
flicked you half used
into the heaping ashtray.
Each time promising to stop
polluting my mind and body
with your toxic caress.
The habitual spark of the lighter
burns just like my desire,
the smoke billows and dissipates
with my fleeing will. The stench
of our cancerous embrace
still lingers. I wash to rid myself
of your addictive grasp, but
each time I hear your call I answer.
This is the last time.

I have no intention of quitting you.

This poem has nothing to do with cigarettes.