rdking.net

Time wandered by, as if searching for a thing
recently prohibited from greyhounds and seraphim

in obeyance:  time and time-last, dressed as a woman
and as a seeker of refuge.  I detected no change

nor felt remorse nearing as a faint music grew
in appeal.  It did seem unkind that the mindful

would ponder what no wise thing will chastise, even
into the burning light of dusk; circling beneath

the streetlamp a popular song played on a radio.
All of the men were young and the women were pretty

with their Y chromosomes and their X chromosomes
and the naked truth sitting between them, staring
    at the bonfire.

A little wind was stumbling through the nut orchard
and a hawk rose in anticipation.  Some form

of implied consent seemed always to accompany us
like an incidental music.  There was a drum sound

or a sheet flapping on a clothesline, and the sky,
sky blue, appeared to be moving in ways that were

both exciting and melodic.  It was like finding
a clearing suddenly full with the mystery of life

and we then wished, like kids, to discover what lingered
across the drainage canal.  Evening was coming on

and this little wind was stumbling through the nut orchard
as a popular song traveled to us from a truck radio.

It surrenders as a gentle, yet disparaged rustling
in what would otherwise be viewed as robust

herbaceous forage.  It frightens you deeply
at first, but soon you convince yourself

it's only the wind's caress.  Shortly thereafter
you set off in that direction, your direction,

to pursue what you now suspect is the premise—
the exemplary exchange which benefits both forms

of persistance.  The subsequent windfall carries seed
to the site—befuddling details; it escalates from this

to a clearing, among sagebrush moving in natural patterns
away from peaks, alluvial fans, and handsome saddles.

The hills are a smoothly-weathered landscape; dullard
brown, rising behind town and running past it and down

to the river.  We watch it with distraction and a bonfire
among the gathered trucks and ephemeral tumbleweeds.

The green is the river flowing.  Some willows soften
the arroyo as it wanders through the mission canyon

and the jockeying headlights—and then, in the blackness
beyond the railroad trestle, it disappears.

Not much is revealed by the two, stoned and whirling
dancers:  you're sitting on the tailgate of a small truck

listening to what might be another beat to your life...
certainly not adobe or something you might have heard
    on the way to work.

Music drifts from the brush-scarred truck doors
like old books; it begins as an incidental music

with the light falling in sheets—a screen door
slamming.  Something is causing the quail to sing

with the occasional and captive thorns; the lone signals
of consciousness persuade the mindful to ponder

what is a pleasant view from the bunkhouse porch
this workday morning.  Horse thieves hide in the draws

to raise and display our crested dreams, the perils
and visions.  We've left the mission to be rebuilt
      by tourists
who prop their canes on the low, refurbished benches
at the piano bar, amazed at how wildly the lupine
      bloom.

A wallpaper spread in reasonable patterns
into and through the artisan's modest sequences.

Its discovery, and my interest in its discernment,
endured long before I was equipped or anxious to consider.

I let the small things be alone with their detail;
recent details from scattered newsprint spread
      adjunctly
while rain streaked the every broadening window
of our distraction.  Our love was untiring on top of us

with its assembly, celestial design, and genitalia;
hence, the nest sullied by passion—we distinguished

no shelter as it swirled behind us, pushing, prodding,
staggering ahead at a time when our munificence sometimes
      chose to diminish.

As I leaned against the porch rail and contemplated
the continuum of our days, I saw how much of it

shared an offspring with the weeds.  Quail lobbed
their indicative aspirations from simple roosts; the river

was a sun struggling to shine.  Willows softened the arroyo
where it complied with the horizon and I found them

desirable in their desire to be near a river
or an empty meadow, as if this were a just consequence

of some thing who's jealousy I would never condone:
taunts flung themselves from the growling inconspicuousies

as some girls stood up and started to drift slowly
toward the vagaries of life's inarticulate chassis
      with ease.

It was the way spring smacked me in the face
to gather my attention; then, forced me to look

at the brilliant red bush thriving before
the white, block wall—a newly-leafed birch

rising above in a photographic panegyric,
of sorts—as I waited in the fast food franchise

drive-thru lane.  It appeared so wildly unreal
that I wondered if this was the real life

and not some errant but lovely thought
trapped in the florescent light of a tiled room:

all day the cows have drifted in twos and threes
across a pasture rolling beneath a sky staggered
      with handsomely atheletic clouds.

The astral caress begins as the troubled aspirations
of difficulty; memory is cloaked with its ability
     to remember
the astral caress beginning as a muted notion.
Near the heady edges of your elected scene

memory is cloaked as the ability to remember
the duly apparent, which does embody

a certain share of difficulty.  Memory is cloaked
as such a simple melody.  So, why a music here—

it's unnerving yet the percussion is identical
to what you discern as your heartfelt desire—

the duly apparent, which does embody its certain
share of a simple melody.  Yet why the boundless
     pounding, why here?

Can the host be imagined as X over Y and still
keep a strong bearing through the graffiti and decay?

Can the host be imagined as X raised to Y
in Oakland, California as we ride an elevated train?

While keeping a strong bearing, while holding a strong
notion desire stands disrobed as the ability to desire.

It is like all things existing before consciousness
in Oakland, California as we greet a commuter train

that you do not turn your head to listen...
While reading a magazine in the urban pseudo-beauty,

desire stands disrobed as the focus of our desire
in Oakland, California as we ride an elevated train.

Desire rows a little boat across the darkened lake
into the burning light of dusk above the bay.

Desire rows his little boat across the darkened lake
for many, many years to come.  Success falls incarnate

into the burning light of dusk above the bay.
What is prohibited the seraphim and the racing hounds

for many, many years to come is success incarnate.
Desire rows a little boat across the darkened lake

and the wake fills in.  But at night the gathered swans
reflect and diverge again; now there is a grace

which is prohibited the seraphim and the racing hounds
as desire rows a little boat across the darkened lake.

There are roofs and gunshots and the many-colored faces
of difficulty.  Yet he is cloaked with the gift to disassemble

the roofs and the gunshots and the many-colored faces
and their captive horns.  Anathema Aiakema Joseph 'Son-of-Moses'
      Ray holds a clear notion

of difficulty.  He is cloaked with the gift to disassemble
the thought hitherto unclear and a bit unnerving.  It begins

with the captive horns.  Joe Ray holds a clear notion
which gathers all things and pushes them in front;

as the darkened edges of his scene tread slowly by
a warm wind is breeching the gathered trees like

a thought hitherto unclear and a bit unnerving.  It
begins to gather all things and push them in front.

It's so unnerving the metaphor cannot be fully imagined:
desire walks among us as the common feat to desire.

It's so unnerving the metaphor cannot be fully realized:
desire rows his little boat across a darkened lake.

Desire lives among us as the common feat to desire
and a music occurs as a sudden thought is triggered:

desire rows his little boat across a darkened lake;
the light catching you square on the jaw as

you shake the coins that rest in your pants pocket.
All things long to display themselves in grace as

a music occurs and a sudden thought is triggered,
its light catching you square on the smiling jaw.

It's unnerving but the gunshots are so clean
in Oakland, California as we wait a commuter train.

It's unnerving but the music is so hard
we imagine the host as X penetrated by Y.

In Oakland, California as we wait a commuter train
patterns fall on the adobe walls.  I'm wearing a loincloth

and refer to the host as X recently penetrated by Y.
Eddying, you recline on the unjust lounge chair

of difficulty; memory is cloaked as the ability
to assemble landscape.  The hills are smoothly weathered
    like these
patterns on the adobe walls.  I'm wearing a loincloth
and eddy justly.  You're sitting on a lounge chair.

Each morning car thieves hid in the draws
as muted polygons in the growing light.

Each morning car thieves hid in the city's draws
where all things remain safe from examination

as muted polygons in the growing light.
Something slowly moves through the early umbra

where all things remain safe from examination.
A music occurs and quickly birds are roused

as a secondary metaphor.  Morning rises from bed
and bathes the streets by the mission in dull gray.

Something slowly moves through the early umbra
as a music occurs and the pigeons are roused.

First like a poem, and then like a movie
the afternoon moved on, holding its features

first like a poem and then like a movie
wandering through an empty, winter woods.

And the afternoon moved on, holding its features
as the day ended and delivered its light

to wander through an empty woods.  We walked,
soon muted by our heavy exhalations, the day's

edge, and the vestige of snow-bent weeds.
To admire these trees without the courtesy
   of leaves
as the day retired and reduced its light,
we walked quietly through snow-bent weeds.

Landscape:  the hills were smoothly weathered above
some black cottonwoods and many leafless willows.

Across the arroyo some small houses on the bluffs—
I drove while the light spread in sheets, distrusting

my ability to travel this land with such ease.  Some
thing adhered to the adobe that caused me to wish

to strike it with a cane.  The mission rising
like a postcard, I rode through the many trees

and crossed the river where I was wary and apprehensive
of the opuntia blooming above the weakened bluffs.

I stood beside them before the new tract homes
leaving the sullen beige hills to find it.

As all things existing before consciousness
persuade the timer on your neighbor's rainbirds

toward a quiet that is rather somber, but congenial,
there still remains your son's drum sounds.  You smile.

A Sunday evening in late spring where beauty is
music eternal, like angels with wings of Spanish

lavender.  Desire lives among us as the feast
of desire and what would chastise us for that?

What is prohibited the seraphim is prohibited to rainbirds
yet you're sitting on a chaise lounge, eddying about

an unclear thought which is a bit unnerving.
But the drum sound is so clean you imagine its father.

To listen to the sea is the wish to inspire it.
It transcends as a swell longing to occur

in all things discovered by extrapolation.  Melody
is exactly that.  Let's begin the adagio ourselves.

Sipping latté on a redwood deck desire pauses
as the perfect host stilled by a summer fog.

Satisfaction is a little inlet meeting the gray sea
where pines rise from rocky, yellow slopes.  Houses.

The sea licks the tanned cliffs with avarice.  Fishing boats
drift on the big swells offshore.  And the cormorants

roost in the panic of tide on the rookery—the sun
settling through the fog, odd bird, the only color
      to this.

Much like a verse suggesting an inceptive purpose
some form of courtesy seemed always to accompany us

and this unnerved those who might obstruct our wishes.
We were able to incorporate this into our happy lives;

small waves, slowly paced, broke lullingly along a thinning
beach; I listened to my child sing her part of this ceremony.

Behavior was a specific thing we opted to reaffirm
as exacting and melodic.  It was terrific

yet when I turned there was something definite
I did not sense, but could suspect:  little, elegant

notions that eddied on the bigger swells offshore
as the afternoon lessened its brilliant light.

Something which is very elegant and thin
sips from a cocktail on your dock in June—

your rainbirds circuit to on and it is unthinkable
you will not turn your head to listen.  It

distinguishes what you might discern as your oval self.
This land is familiar to those who have watched it—

the robustness, the excellence, the aerial trees
and that which first made you aware of its music.

It is like all things existing before stewardship
attempted its preservation—it was exactly that:

you cocked your head to listen, pulling your oars in.
Now there is a boat to your life from which you ponder.

Rather disputedly and near the aloof delimiters
of what you might discern as your receding desire,

all things remain safe from examination.  We try
to think of it as something else:  something

sipping iced tea on a redwood deck in June,
gazing across rooftops while gunshots are exchanged.

She reads a magazine in the pseudo-pastoral beauty
while holding a strong bearing and the notion of truth.

But even truth can lead to a sudden remorse, the sudden
wound; and it's the music that is so unnerving.

A warm wind remains, breaching the gathered trees,
leaving behind them the besieged, beige hills to plunder.

Rain having fell like applause and as brief, effusing
showers; rain, emollient, having supplanted the sun

and its sunny light.  Now, clinging as new shine
on the berried pyracantha and the weathered deck

studs and the shining, plastic, outdoor furniture.
Remnants of clouds and gray clouds in bunches

above—a sudden burst of rescue vehicle sounds
going somewhere wrought, distraught, and too needy.

Poinsettias rise in the ungainly and awkward light
and with grace, envy the upstart, unbound, new grasses

dancing in the ancient, cow pasture—oddly aloof and
beyond the recent, unfenced, commercial attractions.

It exists as a nation gathering above all other things,
repetitive, clock-wise, and with a sing-song beat—

and when the network fails its failure is ill-defined,
unrecanted.  Tragedy flows with a force quite regal

and unrestricted, taking trees down the arroyo
without care or remiss.  But the land was familiar

and once returned it blended the evening in a way
you could again reveal to yourself:  car thieves loitered

in the draws among the willows and black cottonwoods,
watching as you drove between the unyet loosened
      tumbleweeds—
safe among the abstraction of your tribal numbers, yet
still unable to escape the striking, or the plaintive lure.

How arduously he enlisted his random tasking
of quarrelsome memory!   A grain trader he knew
      named Frank
insisted on a monument to our quiet dreams—and,
there were other things he longed to suggest

with demands tendered from a treeless expanse.
Rolling across in strengthening waves, they left us

rebuked—so we gathered our assortment of packagings
and disposed of them in the appointed receptacles.

Deluged with refusal, deluged with refuge, I simply
wanted to stand close to him and feel young. Even so

a man at work propels the incendiary; he remained
stalwart, listing random memory with lithe courage.

Her light found him squarely like an excited
heart beating. As he wanted his heart to beat,

knowing it was truly powerful to appear calm
and contented. It was a short form of courtesy

to display his venerable horns and desirable
notions. He wanted to disrobe before her

and wait for a few virile reasons to begin
the lineal, loosely-structured passage beyond.
      But first
he would share some food with her. She too
would want to eat before pausing long enough,

before he could press his chest against hers
and hope to interpret this first uncertainty.

He shook his head while the likes of resource
ascended ours. He shook his head

and from it fell a resplendent love
garnered from unstable notions. There were things

Larry enjoyed as service while the rain renewed
its luster on the pavement. It fell in a deluge

like offers at his feet. The restroom was unoccupied
even as existence spooled unabated across it.

So he stood naked before its mirror and recalled
his youth. He found he could now move through life

without its usual tremblings and exascerbations;
he saw delightful things in the fey, artifical light.

Rain fell and the sky shed its lightning with thunder
on a mildly altered landscape—dark blue hills

softened with live oak where evening was struggling
and Larry was both angered and tempted with offers.

Outside the yellow rushes of ornamental grass swayed
with its associate bushes and seasonal crows.

I too am drifting and moved by life's hypnotic
motions and by chance I turn briefly to see

his beating heart beating now against the pillow
and the bathroom door left open and still lit.

I listen as his plasma enters the respective chambers
noting that even the plaintive will awaken, rested
      and astute.

His early data was disassembled and queried for bias.
What continued to take place only did so as long
      as Larry
enjoyed its service. Rain renewed many aspects
of this life, then quietly withdrew—leaving us a splendid
      crescent moon.
Again waves broke along a narrow, sheltered beach
as if this broken music could be translated anew—

and still we failed to sense what was truly powerful.
Larry knew a near mystic named Frank who insisted

this movement was meant to exist as anticipated...
The restrooms were oddly unoccupied and something

wanted to stand naked with us and feel loved
as a blowing rain fell against the piled sawlogs.

Nothing marred the thick lines of his black
leather jacket, yet when it ceased being ceremonial

was his hope to find love among the rural stations?
Smaller in scope the plaintive and the restless dream

the other is not quite revealed at the Orchid Bar. It is
as if the evidence of broken cigarettes could be translated

into a verse suggesting an original purpose—one that was
just not met. The restrooms are plainly unoccupied

and longing for a fresco of graffiti. Barring
the moot discovery that nothing has been obscured

by the evening's arpeggios, Larry quietly withdraws—
his Harley roar quickly receding into what is still
      the night.

Bounding up the canyon was a truck in which
some boys craftily inlaid themselves—what more

was there to do other than lean on the porch rail
and watch the alluvial landscape change

in ways that would never seem odd or senseless.
The opuntia vigorously impaled feckless tumbleweeds

as the first chords of  'Purple Haze'  subsided;
to get to that place where a pact could be stricken

our lives begin and expand toward something fertile.
Larry clearly enjoyed this feature as the afternoon
      moved on.
If the broken magic of high school could be assessed
he guessed it was this frail, columnar light receding
      from everything he knew.

A Sunday in late summer, dusk; shadow en regalia
as our man leans against the porch rail
      and contemplates
animate leagues of clouds glamorizing the light.
Their likenesses amused him like electric tools

and those shapes that happened also happened
to drift away. The trees reached into a sky
      that seemed
at the edge of deliverance. He suspected something
that was too deft to manifest; it was so quiet

that evening that his breath, that his pausing
to breathe, was met by something else pressing
      against his chest
like a landscape with handsome ornamentals, scattered
boulders, and a dirt road evidently leading toward
    distant arpeggios.

Their demands were flung from a concrete terrace
in the contractual language of a lengthy dispute.

So, bored, you chose a voyage on an aqua sea
of the oddly pleasant things; then found yourself

left like an offer at their feet, bereft of an alibi
as they sipped cappuccino above the summer's fog.

On shore that night you drifted through recalcitrance
toward a wharf where the moon rose above a bonfire

and in a small space across the bay a light shone.
Nothing much was revealed by anyone sober or clean.

What could assemble itself in the passage of this life
was exacting and sporadic:  in a word, it felt good.

What more was there to do other than sit in the car
and envision an associate movement beyond reflection,

worry, or truculent incentive—something small
in scope—resident, plaintive, but still restless.

Hail fell like urchins on an empty street as I assumed
it would continue to be easy for our whims to succeed.

How this had happened, or when the evidence
had been coaxed to lean toward that stable, remained

aloof.  It was spring and I noticed the stars floating
along the void hummed familiar threats and melodies;

in moving the partitions around, how benign, then
how prurient they seemed—birds screaming in the trees.

They were so wicked they could fly
and somehow they got into your dreams

and really messed you up and pushed you
around until at last you beat them violently

with an oddly long stick until you, too, shook
with fury and the birds then woke you

with their strange and shrill morning songs
—so repetitive and unnerving

that you finally got up and went to work
pausing briefly at the door to say good-bye:

the night was a grimy place where you slept
next to a beautiful, white woman.

Black pines like immense sentries in the other light...
from the naked, oak limbs the after-rain dripping.

A vapor rises from my healing tub with the hope
to assist.  Tonight a woman drifts across the sky

with stars for eyes, fleeing her cruel lover,
the half moon.  Her lips the true conciliation of
      some other desire,
I watch with wonder like the man in the womb—
weakened and unempowered as the nocturnals tangled

in the berry vines.  The moon illumines my whiteness
and then the moon is obstructed {Jascha Heifetz and Bach}

and searches in vain.  What a man can learn from
gazing upward!  See how the air traffic confounds him.

You were fortunate to distribute aspects of your life
in a binary exchange.  It was urban.  It was high-rise

and generally corporate.  Yet who knew what this meant
or where it would finally lead—the shipped product

was scintillating; the commercial options were
unusually attractive and effectual above this landscape

and its perpetual fog humming a brave, progressive
arpeggio.  The sea licked the wharved shores with avarice.

Fishing boats bobbed in friendly ways somewhat opposite
the opposite hills and the land-filled flats—and, very high

above, in splendor, you walked among an assemblage
of sofas, lamps, and chairs most deftly, admiring the sea
      and its influential presence.

Who knows what's going to happen
after you car crash or join a private club

with ideals that may come between us.
Will I still love you? And will I continue

to see the morning as a light that fills
the riffles in our bedclothes with an expression

of my being, its incorporation with yours
and whatever that other thing is

that passes as the tapestry of unbuffered life.
In this lovely place where anything can

and does happen, is it permissible to allow
these things to satisfy the longings of the self
      and its promise?

Her cheek still shining from spittle and booze,
she could not agree what it was. The wind spun,

flapped, or jerked—that slow howl—precursor to
this immensity always standing before her; she lives;
      she bears
that which abducts her attention, reaching abruptly
for her sex, money, or her cigarettes. And just after,

her own thoughts are quietly tempered, lessened, like
a sky crowded with clouds above an oddly-altered landscape

with warehouses, loading docks and fences, abandoned
cars.  She leaves them alone with their reckless details.

Instead she dares not to scratch the itch, choosing
to piss in the low weeds along the littered roadside.

On the median of the interstate enthusiastic weeds
danced, as yet uncut and still green.  Here was

a field recently tilled and still wet
brown in neat furrows.  Bush salix

leafed in ditches and beside the awkward
pylons—we passed some old men intently

driving little trucks as some milk cows fed
in this cloud-crowded and occluded April light;

beside a parcel of grape stakes just beginning
to vine, the cows had gathered quietly

as if they too were stunned and staggered by
the odd geometry and profusion of wild mustard
	radiantly swaying.

The morning assembles like so many edgeless thoughts
congealing as a strata on our sleep-weary eyes.

In your sweet, soft-spoken way you greet me
with a kiss much like the kiss our parents shared

when we were young and not yet kissing.  The peripheral
notions of our scene slowly wander by and are

the essential currency of our uncharted lives.
The passing of each warm and beckoning night

with its salmon-colored distractions and heavy air
only helps whatever this is to elude us

as we lie on the blinding sheets with an assortment
of dreams delivered like suns.  We shade our eyes
      and sometimes tremble.

The day was untiring as if it sensed the night
which seemed benign at first, a surmountable urge

to wander through an empty winter woods
or to raise a red flag from a circling boat.

When you were young you took love in ways
you could not reform, especially near a river
      or an interstate.
The sun moved in on this and its warmth herded
inside you a pastoral harmony of troubled thoughts

waiting for deliverance.  You suspected the ideas
would be interesting, clear, and informative

even to medical technicians, one of whom is combing
from your chest's shaven expanse some thin clouds.

What more was there to do
other than drift in the sway of the bunk

and ponder the imponderables
of pre-teen life:  a big wave

splashed terrifically across the deck
and took the houseboat chaperone

into the lake.  Patty saw this happen
and noted its parenthetical implications.

She pondered it; and then began
to surmise life's darker sides

and its predatory essence.  She pictured
Dad sitting quietly at the breakfast table,
      lips pursed.

You're humming a sweet tune that carries
no real words; it's simply a birdsong of notes

held in remarkable patterns; the city is perfect
in it's every detail like an Easter parade.

The young have their problems;  the moon
makes them tremble with besieging excitations,
   and
when you break you find the windshield crying
rain.  You hope her wailing is apt appreciation

of this and all else now regally encountered
as a skyline backlit by the moon, your only

patron—you toss your car keys near a lamp
and fall into a chair, too thrilled to rumple
    the evening's excellent sheets.

At a time when the light could diminish
their ill-fitting gymwear and audio headgear

the restless became lesser in scope and calmed.
My heart beat now against the thought of itself

as I conversed with my twelve-year-old daughter:
she opened the car door and left the car

in a fractal exchange that was not urban or high-rise
yet it passed easily through a windshield

surely admiring the sea and its sandy presence;
the several women strolling the palm-lined strand

may have shared a lamentable past—even their fingers
suggested scurrilous things to the boys jumping around
      in anticipation, but not yet longing.

Is it not hard to consider life's marvelous foam
churning at the edge of our visual animation

somewhat like a moth traipsing through the lemon grove?
As light elects to emigrate across this landscape

the waveband is fairly wide, unbroken, free
of scattered anomalies and the surely intrinsic;

tethered by the immovable boulders and prolifica
of brush, the rather parochial banks of the arroyo

accept the likenesses of sticks, reptiles and beer cans
now mostly buried by sand.  Why mourn the vanquished

power of the usual reign as it creates the brown
flowering abyss, smaller and dryer than the will;
      and why not?

Your St. Christopher had tangled in your chest hair
and I offered to help you free him from that.

We were playing gin and tossing the discards
like scarlet ships upon the ocean's swells.  Then

some bullies kicked sand in our faces, thus enlivening
our simple repast; the cries, the screams, the attentive

gulls.  All we wanted was to be young and to stand
naked with them all, knowing what we know now

on the uprising and gleefully animated beach—
small, pale nipples on the men, the thickened hips

the girls swung about, beach balls, and a few grains
of sand enough to satisfy our chasmed modesties.

Time unchanging and time suddenly-memorial
lean against the porch rail and share a beer.

Satisfaction is a tent camp of hard looks
which still complies with the unshaven present;

it swirls behind town yet staggers ahead
of the excited yellow cottonwood and grimaces

with its misplaced prediliction.  Are these
barflies that fall just short of the river's edge

and a fictitious time?  Their thick-bottom glasses
amuse us as do the younger men who fix themselves

with a lamentable present—who could stop
long enough to disarm them, as they're so often
    a good distance
      away.

Promise — borrows a notion from a song by Bjork (I Miss You).

Easter Parade — borrows a line from a song by The Blue Nile (Easter Parade).

Silkscreen of a Fabulous Chaparral — borrows a line from T.S. Eliot (Ash Wednesday).