Strix

Oh king of owls what do you know

In those moments of blowing snow

Oh king of owls what do you see?

Off in the distance, inside of me.

Beyond the trees beyond the light

There is a spreading world of night

Within us all there is a shade

That sees beyond this charade

In the distance machines are in motion

They rise as tides out of the ocean

They are coming, to take the trees  

To bring the forest to its knees

They come with saws, they come with fire

They come to claim some desire

But why I ask, would they do this?

There is something quite remiss

To feel whole again, in the dark

As though they have lost their spark.

They want our hearts, they want our soul

They believe that it will make them whole

King of owls speak what you know

Warn the forest of where this will go 

Would they listen, even at all?

When have they acted upon my call?

Triumphant in the silent dark

The trees stand tall and stark

Where darkness lives in all I know

There too, must the forest grow.

Within the creatures and the trees

Inside those men in those machines.

The forest grows in a space

That I know that they can’t place

It grows against them, near their heart

When they are naked in the dark

When they cannot shed their tears

When they cannot face their fears

But I know it’s there, of that I’m sure

& in that place they’ll find the cure

That it’s nothing of light and dark

It’s not about making a mark—

Where there is so much more to see

In these moments when they are free

In the shadows of our thoughts

Of all the fears that are caught

The forest lives within you and I

In the scenes when we must fly

Where all seems lost and undone

the future is, not yet won.

No matter what they take from us

Within time, the world is just

The trees will spread again and grow

Rest assured, this I know.

breach

Crippling

To me in a way that seems so unfamiliar

I want to reach out

Say the words correctly

Palatably.

Overcome

Into scenes and spectra

Where the tears rise up in me

Knowing how alone I am

Holding another,

Trying to overcome their loss

Realizing

We are all of factions

That confirm some type of thing

We are all trying to move forward

In simple steps and words

Grow

Over these wounds

Heal the places that hurt

Where the future is magnificent

As long as we are in it.

the Smell of Morning

You remember the time…

We walked through the desert

As we bounded through the sand

You, looking delicious, with your flawless

eyes locked on me

as we talked of training horses

and obsession of one another

The rising sun a fluorescent hallucination

On that freezing morning

We kissed for the first time in the New Year

Under that magnificent magenta sky—

Where the carnage of our lives melts away

To the experience we are supposed to have—

In the smell of morning

Something I have never sensed—

Before you. 

Brushfire

The wind tears across the landscape

silencing words in the spreading flames

In distant reception shouting into phones

Claiming nothing but strife

There is a veil of duplicitousness

taken as challenge

sinking the teeth of electric soul

Igniting against a backdrop of human trespass.

whispers and fragments

where some kind of communication takes hold

though not the taught high-frequency

so accustomed to 

Where reign and desire are inexplicably woven

Into the wreckage and chaos

grown into stasis reaching for the canopies of dimension

Trying to extend beyond the flames

endure

In an anguish I cannot pace

Where I know I’m not alone

But I feel so utterly isolated

And I keep lifting my head

And I keep pushing through

And I’m wondering why,

As if there is any reason to persist

Each year more anguish than the previous

Each love more draining

Each fight more savage

Where is your god now?

In the thick of it—

Dissecting us like experiments

I need to heal,

from the claws of our species

in words and language that abrades

strife, like little rocks in an open wound

in blood and salt.

I’ve trained bigger horses

Demonstrated greater power

And in this moment, restraint.

it’s thunder breaking in the distance

it’s having my brain devoured by ants.

Today it’s the electrical torpor

 of a limb falling asleep

in the numbness of pushing through chapparal

regardless of how much damage our forms endure

we will endure.

Relentless

Somewhere, we are whole.

Complete in form and function

And in places

That I cannot name

But seem familiar

I heal and center

In the cambium and the forest

In my body and soul

As they must be confined to pillars of self

…and in some cases others.

Sequestered upon the network for which we rely

And in this moment I have to ask; how are gods made?

As I have seen how gods are broken—

Like a keyboard sonata that pulls towards the center

Shearing at the dreams of self.

like a condor tearing at carrion.  

 How is this not what we are?

In the experience

Where I think I’ve aged a thousand years in a week

There is an emptiness I cannot place

Where potential and coalescence

Should have overlapped—

By now.

How remedial I feel,

 brought down by foolishness

in our weakest part

the creatures that exploit weakness.

Of poisons and talons, ideas and thought

eat them, bathe in their blood

exploit their weaknesses

As we feel the little deaths of self acutely

As if burning the boats

Relentlessly

As if the warpath

justifies the wake of chaos

Like machines taking to the sky—

It was never my role.

I am not a healer.

It is not my job to give a shit.

I sense in the deliverance

in the psychosis of our enemies.

Particular and acute and still Blunt and obvious.

They are already defeated.

As artillery of thought lays waste to their petty sense of worth

Relentlessly

These moments become all that we have and are

As if my life unfolds like a battleground before me

And must lift the weight of my soul,

 as shield and sword, liquid and crystal

to the unforeseen moments of the future.  

whatever.

reigning the horses in

&

Being torn apart on the reef

In some relentless high tide

Where I can’t get a foothold

Against moments of anxiety sickness

Pressed against the clock

Into service, against desire  

Where everything feels like piracy and corruption

Like riding atop a draught horse that forgives nothing

As everything falls beneath the gallop as ruthless empires of thought

In moments I trample over anything that could be construed as opposition

And in others, it decimates as choppy waves in an upsetting vessel  

And I press my hands to my skull and the tears I cannot hold any longer, fall.

Torrential, in a way that I cannot harness, in a sorrow I cannot name  

As the storm of myself reels out of control

to be prescient in their thoughts as the pent-up rage peels their souls from their form

to feel them as their beings pour into Hades, dragged down under the currents

I want to hold them to the fire of my form as they incinerate in strife

and still, there is no they, only me, only I remain

adrift upon an endlessness I cannot place

reigning over creatures that I cannot consolidate

broken within a form I cannot clearly sense

dreaming of a nature that has not yet come to pass

and it is the perversity of hope that keeps me at the helm

compelling me into the sequential moments that comprise a lifetime

I have these visions where it all works out

And I am left wondering how to reign them in

Beyond the veil of my own delusions

And still within the power of my own reach.