lingering spirit darkness

"Compose on the tongue, not on the page." Lawrence Ferlinghetti

a great circular cloud in the shape of a donut ringed
above me with a calm eye staring from the center -
an electrically-charged halo with brilliant-white
fingerszapping from the cloudy, circular, misty mass
to the dry, desert earth - broad, massive bolts burned
afterimages onto my retinas as a snarling wind rippped
in circles around and through me, the surging current
jailed me with the sweltering, suburban, summer
night sweating salt out from the porous sand, a musty scent
of pre-rain coagulated with damp sage and juniper leaves
in the silent arc, the booming sounds of thunderclaps
radiated out from the center, deafly hushing my ears
and my blood sizzled as high-voltage juice flowed
into my crown, exciting synaptic delight with mirthful
wonder and awe, and my flesh tingled as freight trains sped,
sped down the tracks behind me with the ghost of Woody
Guthrie grinning and waving from each boxcar skidding
across the rails, screeching and careening, as a cloud
billowed directly overhead into the bust of Thor - arms
outstretched into the night, hands open, palms up - and bolt
after lightning bolt jaggedly illuminated an Andy Warhol
caricature of a Norman Rockwell portrait - Timothy Leary's
wildly grinning countenance - and I sand painted an ancient,
native night with tomorrow's lingering spirit darkness

Amid the Scent of Mescalito

Melting sedation drools down mother
superior's chin the way a child's runny nose
curls over his upper lip and dribbles snot
into his mouth, gums and tongue numbed
by his mother's lack of perspicacious
vision under midnight's cloudy haze.

Conundrums riddle through swiss cheese
gray areas like Billy Bonney's lead bullets
boring holes into his victims' gray matter
across the monsoon-gray skies of Arizonan
and New Mexican hammer-slamming-anvil,
lightning-sparked, firing-chamber, high noons.

An inauspicious chart hangs a pall from limb
warping nooses, interwoven cords skew
perceptions into pack hunting deceptions
as the distant, dry, desert sands undulate,
rolling swells ripple mirages - conjured
images from inside an inner world outside
conscious boundaries - upon solemn dusk.

Pythons slither in cold, dark alleyways,
coiling around the throats of circus barkers
beneath sunset skies the color of campfire
flames sparking and spitting into the carnival
of a night while all the rivers cease flowing,
dammed up within prismatic plexiglass.

Flashing yellow corridors' replete arcane
charade washes me in a warm rain, removing
the stains ancient talismen hand painted
upon my soul as the sun rose over the lake
of dreams, affectations slip through
grasping, clutching fingers seeking to own.

Under a street lamp, resting in the eye
of a storm, a delightful cacophony
interjects nonsense into the traffic
merging between the two-laned
asphalt hiding from the moon's
view, where sage mixes with rosemary -
haunting amid the scent of mescalito.

Kaleidoscopic Decorations

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." - William Blake

A child points a kaleidoscope directly
at the Sun, turns the telescoping
cylinders in opposite directions
facilitating fascinating fantasies
spun on the immaculate whimsey
of unbridled, limitless innocence.

The ageless infant mind discovers
from each gentle screwing
of the kaleidoscopic wheel
a unique doorway opens,
one possibility out of infinity.

Don Juan Matus told Carlos, diligently,
"... our lives originate in infinity,
and they end up wherever
they originated: infinity."

The child wonders, deliberatively,
"Why is the world fenced
with so many restrictions
when we are born free,
without any clothes?"

Mommies and daddies, dementedly,
scramble to dash expressions
of expertise, imprinting labels
they design for garments
draping the kaleidoscope's
imagery quickly, before
the final curtain falls.

Aldous Huxley announced, derisively,
"... how I longed to be left
alone with Eternity
in a flower, Infinity
in four chair legs
and the Absolute
in the folds of a pair
of flannel trousers!"

Under a maple spreading deciduously,
limbs calmly and stately accept
a tailor's seasonal alterations,
knowing: even from tapped
reservoirs, new fountains
of freshly embroidered
needlework will splash
kaleidoscopic decorations
on woody skin's aging bark.

Rarely Tapped Corridors

The cascading resonance resounding
darkly in a cave, illuminated haphazardly
by a single candle's furtive flickering
licks of light, floats harmoniously,
like a shuttlecock, blithely rambling

a nonsensical contrapuntal interjection
in the conversation shared by wave
and shore. A furtively flitting firefly
careens in the moist evening air,
sporadically blinking its luminescent,

arboreal beacon encoding recalcitrant
themes injected onto the common epistles'
veins, coursing through the dramatis personae
occupying life's succulent stage. Fascinations
fastidously fasten wholistic hermetic caprices

courageously, contemplating uncommon
theses shared by the finely-tuned,
prankster-experienced experimenters
whose acidicly altered electromagnetic
fields overlapped rarely tapped corridors

through the universally sublime fabric.
Calloused fingertips flit across
Jerry Garcia's fretboard, missing
no fingers at all, delivering mantras
to life's moonlight sonata. Caressing

the underbelly of an expectant supplicant,
teasing undulations of cozmic proportions
calculate the astonished agitation
which adulations' arrogance accumulates.
Zapping a voltaic, synaptic pathway,

marginal, mocking Meanderthals
congregate in solipstic quicksand,
while intuitive shuttlecock trails
etch irridescent, glowing patterns
through our rarely tapped corridors.

The Melting Night Carouses

The melting night carouses
through red lit backstreets
and alleys, on the discontented
shores of unrequited requirements
stolen with a wink and smile.

Beyond every fathers'
fervently imagined future,
freely conjured for favored
sons, smokey entrails emit
putrid, yet pungent
and perspicacious pugnacity,
along the river of moonlight
which creeps across the face
of a prehensile clock.

The writing is on the wall!
Only an indelible,
invisble ink can inscribe
any objective truth.

Beyond logic's portals
of sobriety, sailing on
the crest of impropriety,
electric currents zig-zag
unreliably, individual
fascinations expressing
approaches for escaping
mundanity - thoroughfares
traveled by only one.

Infinite pathways stitch
connections to the sublime -
integration with all worlds;
heated human hunger sparks
upon passion's crimson
embers and flaming tongues
into one self-perpetuating vision:
the melting night carouses.

Silent Woods

Silent woods
breathe
white, windless,
shivering air -
Dante's
sleepless nights:
dreams'
steamily exhaled
blanket.

Broad, powdered
plain yawns
arms out,
encircling
footprintless
silent woods.

Dotted islands
diaspora-like dispersal
mute howls,
shushed hushes,
involuntarily well up
primordial instincts;
oozing into every
barren tear duct,
one unending forest
breathes,
silent woods
in unison.