This is the place

This is the place
Where the end fell into itself

We were there as it looked back toward us
With our empty bells and our souls
Burning in the hills

We arrived in a boat made by a quivering child

Everything fallen out of our mirrors

As we taste the first days

And the last….

The place
Foggia ghetto
18july20

They sit where horsemen have passed

They sit where horsemen have passed
Moisture rising from
the hoof prints….

Owl dreams hovering above them….

on a rainy mountain road near grove Oklahoma
A dead black one lifted its glistening wing
As I passed…..

In a haunted mansion in France
I closed the bathroom mirror the limp wings
And vacant eyes behind me….

These are the ones that chose us….

And will sit with us
While only our shadows remain

and our bones have melted away….

Angels
Thursday July 16
Lesina Italy

You are not a wolf

“You are not a wolf
And this is the land of wolves now….”
Sicario the film 2015.

Long before winter these ones sent
Their tracks looking for you….

The black dog sits among you
Its crimson eyes turned toward you

They will ask you to come out
Whether by your stench of hatred or evil fear

They sit in the blackness where you sleep

They will rise as darkness to enshroud you

They know who you are…..

We are among you

Even now….

Dog soldier poem for enemies.
Mahago domiutz tsistsistas
Hotomitoneo
June 30.20

Life is not itself

It is a long journey
It is the world’s dream of us
The footprints that have led away are our own

We watched them leaving
In the silences that have taught us to be still

While the wind howled…..

It is not itself
We sit in its dampened rooms

Born so far away from ourselves
Looking back over our winged shoulders

Where the long journey began….

Painting with words
For Paul klee
From the stronghold
June13.20

 

The Bounty Hunters

Nah he in eh woh ha doh
Ehoi yah ja oh gnaw ni dot

Edo no vo oh komeh eh tista
Nah moghda Veho

Davi idon ha aht ighiv

Hoiv ay ya dnot neuts
Eyo sidon he tista

I feel them out there
They sit under a dark sky
Waiting for coyote or Indian
Or black man

Night holds its fist in their eyes

The prairie now grown darker
Turns its face away….

Dog soldier poem

For Robbie McMurtry, Chantel Moore, Sarah Circling Bear, Zachery Bear Heels,
Jacqueline Slayers, George Floyd, Mahivist Goodblanket….a list too long to publish here.

From the stronghold
Lance henson
Cheyenne nation of Oklahoma
June 6, 20

Here

Here is a place where nothing can die

Darkness that lives beneath the leaves

We bring our nights there without knowing

We bring our fear there before the singing begins

We bring our silent names there hoping we are forgiven

We bring our hands there scented of a river

We bring our prayers that hide and watch us

The landscape where we have held the loose feathers

Of a fallen bird

And awakened in the land of the unseen

Here is a place where nothing can die….

Sunday24may20

Bologna

What has seen you

What has seen you

Saw you a long time ago

It comes back to watch you

Though sometimes you are missing

It waits with its one breath 

Listening to itself so it can remember

Often when it arrives it sounds

Like smoke

Or a burning leaf

Sometimes it sounds like its hand on your window glass

The eyes in its hand closed but for one eye

The one that remembers you….

Relative 

From the dead zone texts

In continuance

Wed20may20

Dead Zone Poem One

a soft rain caresses
unmarked graves

In a field of death in the Amazon

A dark heron stands on one leg
Among the dampened toys
And feathers of prayer
left there….



dead zone poem one
Bologna Italy

Five Poems for Ritsos

I first read your words in an Oklahoma

rainstorm in 1968

Now I am here with

Drifting birds in sea wind

Water jars of clay

Cretan knives

Small poems on the handles

And a photograph

Women in black holding

Their diminished dreams

In their aprons

A mauve light upon your weathered face

In the prison where

Your bowl of watered grains

Rotted under the windowed moon

Your resistance an ochre

Color of grace

Rises again

In this troubled time

As a tolling bell

Bursting upon the eternal sea wind

My brother

Nothing can defeat the human heart…

14 july 2009

Island of Crete

At the well of solitude

At the well of solitude
Where the dead and the living link hands
At the side of an abandoned road

We see when the clouds open and the sun
shines through

They are smiling….

Whispering of windows shuttered
On an unknown plain….

The ones with ghosted eyes
stand

Within our dreamtime
to watch….

the bones melt on the window pane…



And the one song that has followed us
All this way…


Is playing….




Poem for not turning away
Bologna 14 apr 20