Postcard 98

A Ranger checks in: Control one, 804 (ait, ohe, foar) Shoreline along the shore. The tide's coming in high today. The waves are chewing on the stones I fear. I fear they will rip the children away.
Control one: 804, the hills are aflame. The trees are popping like corn.
Control one (trembling): Let's all go home
Ranger: Oh no. Do not get panick crisp and hard with fear. With packs of dogs unleashed, with troops of derelicts, these commons are mine. I'm good. Well, hardly good, but here. In heavy oiled boots I stride long and light. With a broom a brush a spade I cut tight and sweet.
Control One: You are still out there. Are you still there? Do you remain, but why?
Ranger: Seeing each far slow drawn horizon, each move I make is an arc scribed perfect and complete. Control,  the earth beneath me evaporates, but if I stand or move is each as empty and complete as each season changed.
Control: But why persist? Go on?
Ranger: The slow falling trees cast shadow and leaf. The weeds push blossom and germinate seed. The sea pounds stone and pier to sand like bleached white shell; the sea in tide and wave encroaches, sours wells, and my empty actions are the song I sing. I am a ranger, so I range

Postcard 95

When I, strong armed, roll up my sleeves, Look out!

The earth, it bulges with my gravity

When I crack my eyes steel blue, beware.

I milk stones for sweetness,  draw rainbow eyes and bent teeth smiles.

Despite yourself, you see my dog, a natural beast on line

Her teeth are cat, her hackles sharp as precipice

Her joy a deathly joy. Look out!

Here come my friend all shaking like liquid stones

They truck in no poor company, My friends

 -- my many knuckled friends --move blood as quick fierce as family

Behind you, are my two sons, unknown as uncut wood

and my daughter -- a Diana-- a revealed mystery

The huntress in the woods, flushing fear like rattle-antlered deer

Kneel. Obsequiate - my wife, flesh bound, is worth but me

She draws more than space, dark night, even she is terrified

When you drown, she will be the sea

Her name is Awe

and mine is Word

When I tug at my sleeves, look out!

Postcard 94

When we ran within twilight forest, through the ruin of limitless pillar-like trees
When we caught eyes in firelight sharp, or in the slack return of horizon moon
When those moments blink by, brief phosphorescent things -- like glow-worms,
salamanders in the fire -- seen unseen, unseen and seen
When we fell for a breath, in breath-catched love,
I knew that I would later think -- this is the gilding of our mortality.

These lives shed purpose like autumn trees.
And names and words and moments too, but sound it echoes like memories.
When we ran into twilight woods, the moiling duff slipped loose beneath us, as deep and loose as meaning. Your skin is already cool where my wide hands held and pulled you up. And your silhouette, so primal to my hungry sight, is now so slight and rarefied as your downy body's moonlit hair.
When we ran through twilight, time and all was desire and loss.
It was the loss that gave truth to the ephemeral, the unprovable of want and had.

If someone bottle-captures life
If they cure mortality, here is what the cost will be --
twilight forest falling,
love and all its painful coterie,
the spike of fear in constant loss,
meaning loose without utility,
and finally, that pleasant kind forgiving glow of forever faulty memories

Postcard 79

We are always dying down in steerage -- have always been.
Here's another myth: The captain goes down with the ship.
You travel both on the backs of stevedores in sweat-black walls,
and star-eyed dreamers in sky-less holds,
fire bolted and contained,
water always finding seams.
We are down with the steam.
We are always dying down in steerage --
Hatches closed on water persistent.
Hatches closed on fire unloosed.
Hatches closed on bursting boilers.
Hatches closed on our echoing songs.
We see sky when dead on deck, when over-rail dumped.
Who are the uncounted numbers and who are the names?
We are the heartbeat down in steerage, the piston thud, the hum of driving screw.
We are whomever you call rat: the dago spic queers, the Jews, the junkies, chinks, fags the blacks.
We are the fire behind the hatch. The fluid and the flame, the artist fighters, the exposed wires.
Always dying down in steerage -- always have and always will,
but this ship is a ghost ship, and we hold sway behind hatches
where we hide your wonder and the power,
behind hatches where wanders your desire.
Behind and beneath in the coal-black fires.
While you move over waters, we move through seas.
We are always dying down in steerage -- may always be,
but we are living ripe, dying but pregnant, alive but oddly free.

Postcard 78

What am I to do? 

What am I to do? 

What are we to do in the aloneness of survive? 

Screens up, bags packed on that old tendonitis shoulder. That old to the wheel soreness. The queue wraps upon itself and its the same old faces by the time we are at the front, by the time we are at the end looking back at that old tempered glass just waiting for a blast, holding all that old energy, just waiting for a blast. 

What are we to do? 

All the pillars, reinforced, are burning slow inside with rust. It takes its toll to be alive - did that face just say? There is a final rest in being gone, but here we are moving , moving along. And that other face - is it not as tense as glass, as weak as rust? 

Us survivors we survive and wonder at reasons why, or what or how, or even who - who will survive us now? 

A bank of fire is rust sped up. A shattered glass is tension let. And these old bones must hold up skies, hold up the whole old firmament. 

What are we to do? 

Take off your shoes, you're at the front, pass through. 

These uniforms hold nothing back - each face the fractured wonder and the grief of survive and why? and why and why and why

Postcard 77

When they say danger, well what is safe? Is safety destroy-create? No, safety is sterility. And where you may say destroy-create, which is forever yes, they will say no, obliterate. Where shall we live? In something called a house? And if we must move, then we must drive. We must have drive and then success, which we know, but they will name arrival (at a wasteland), clothed, prepared and stranded. We know this dream, the lotus dream of constant invitation. We must prop open eyes and use legs unbuckling to carry them that would be us.The only dream bigger than our myths is success. When they say secure, they mean invest. Well, cash is the only lie bigger than the fictions we make with stone and gel and sound and ink and pen. The lie of the present, future-bent. An open car on a desert trip. Sometimes we are right to boo,and sometimes it is good to burn and to watch the dishonesty: When they say danger, they mean we, the honest liars. When they say secure, invest, they mean forget. When they sing praise, exalt, show up at vigil, mourn, respect -- what they mean is they are terrified of destroy-create, are terrified of terrified, of waking up and clarity and please please please forget.