Art in Low Sun

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Quarryman of the dusty hours

desperate to etch on the slate of the age

with hammer and point a bit of myself

i'd do well to stand still in the sun

as my shadow swings 'round my boots

stretches across the arc of the hill

and goes.

—click here for reading music, "The Vampire of Time and Money," Queens of the Stone Age

Far from Atlanta

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No need to go

Anywhere else

But on foot

Over the hill

Happy to be here

Simply alive.

Paradise

Green Bowl Beach, Bali

As real as a memory, as if we'd been there,

For memories are mostly imagined.


As real as a lover who smiles in the dark,

For lovers are mostly imagined.

The Sting of Sunrise

Day comes pouring at you over the hill.

Hold fast to the trunks like the night

Or the light will sweep you away,

The force of it, blinding, merciless,

Cold as the judgement of peers.

Passengers

Bird in a squal with invisible wings

Carry these lines to the wake of the wind

So she knows our mistake was pure flight.

Arctic Jungle

Warm-blooded creatures on the ice shelf,

driven by extremes, search the frozen flow

for heat, their blood on fire to compensate.

Opening a space in the grey-pink dusk

for experiment and thrill in a jungle they create

with oil and flame and human touch,

shivering at the edge of the clearing they make,

they hesitate,

life shrieking vivid in the understory.

Subnivean

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We under the snow

Whisper dark

A place to breathe

Safe with the rabbits and voles

Closer to spring

Steam beings

Vented in sunrise.

Castaway

Unsteady between the sting of new snow

and habits of thought i hesitate

like a castaway standing in wreckage

stripped on the beach of a new land,

perilous and glittering.

The Fallow FIeld

Once i believed in balance,

that if i left the world alone

all things would find their level,

nature would be fair, i thought,

and then the empty chair.

I should have known,

i  won't forget,

But nature doesn't care.

Front-Runner

Regal in her reticence

Steady and strong in her fur

Queen of the high hills

Ruling by image and silence

By need and desire most basic

Direct, honest, hungry, and true.