it would be a shame
ruining this sunny day
to settle our fate
Breathe Out The Past
Category: Arizona
Alone In The Car
skeletons pursue
when you stare through the rearview
leave them all behind
Possession
climbing through the fence
i may not come back alone
the visions follow
I Have A Story For Everywhere You’ve Been
I shot this photo in 2009 but I didn’t get it until just now.
It’s an Arizona Cardinal.
I’ve been all over the great American Southwest, to towns that time passed by.
Speeding down the mother road, a smoke in one hand and snacks littering the floor. Camera gear in the back of the car and hippie deodorant stinking since the day before.
I’ve climbed through barbed wire to explore the Lone Wolf Annex and braved the stray dogs on Backroad to watch the sunset in Madrid Cemetery.
I’ve been chased out of churches by natives with guns and told to go back where I came from.
I’ve heard the call of the void from atop Mt. Charleston. John Denver heard it too when his plane crashed into the Monterey Bay and more recently I sat inside by the window while Debbie Reynolds died of a broken heart.
I’ve been where you’ve been, down this road and that.
To every place left to wilt in the sun.
I’ve been away for awhile. Ventured to the east in the name of love but now our time here grows short and there is much to do.
Only so many days until we go back home.
Alone In The Yard
discarded in time
weeds grow on the mother road
a soliloquy
A Time To Create
“We’ll not be given time to create, we be asked to create in real time.”
Two years ago, I fled to the Sky Island Mountains to seek shelter from the turmoil and recharge my soul under the blazing sky.
In retrospect, that is why all of us were there. Why so many would travel from so far to meet on the mountain in the name of finding the flow.
Some said it was a cult, and they were probably right, but we went anyway.
Nothing was good on the day I left and I drove for a very long time.
What happened next changed everything in an instant. The lights came on and it was time to start over.
Xavier was standing on the porch at the end of the road to Oracle.
Accusations were made and some said it was contrived.
It was not.
With more unlikely details than I could possibly arrange, somethings fall outside my scope of practice and this was one of them.
But even if it was, contrived that is, I say “what of it?” and advise the inquisition to walk away peacefully while they still can.
Two years ago in a flurry of fear and hurt and desperation, I went to a retreat to study Tai Chi and drink wine with my friends.
Instead, I met a boy and we played push hands and fell in love on the couch.
We’re married now but getting married was easy. Easy compared to the force of nature it took to bring us together and break us free.
The wedding was nice but this was the day of creation.
Above The Clouds
Here at 30,000 feet the weather is below and the sun is above; hot, bright, burning her face and unchanging.
I’m not even speaking English now, she thinks in vague images.
She’s sleep deprived and hungry but sees the edge of happiness on the horizon.
Clouds like a carpet for a thousand miles and he waits for her in the land of the living.
There is so little time for thinking these days.
But we all know that thinking leads to trying, leads to striving, leads to nowhere except right here anyway.
Remember when we were young and didn’t know what we didn’t know?
We’ll not be given time to create, we’ll be asked to create in real time.
What time?
He has time now, on the road in between, navigating the weather under the clouds.
She has time now too but she looks old today. Maybe it’s because her eyes are tired.
She looks down on creation and wonders why people argue about god, like an opinion matters one way or the other.
The truth doesn’t change and nor does it care.
This road goes nowhere and everywhere.
It goes to the future, but we have to go now.
The plane turns left and the sky is only blue.
He drives.
She flies.
Soon.
Caught In The Moment
When the waves roll in
we shall not resist.
She drove through the misty mountains for what seemed like eternity,
but her face looked the same.
Clouds sat heavy in the cactus,
headlights cut the fog,
humidity soft in her chest.
It was a long drive but not because of the road.
It was a long drive because of the place.
After a lifetime at highway speed
she found the turn
and just like that
the rest of the world could not follow.
She cut the engine and saw him standing on the porch.
He’s here, she thought, and that was all.
**********
They played mind games on the lawn while the Milky Way shuffled its hand.
She sat with him on the couch in the empty house.
They spoke of water and of life.
They spoke of power and of freedom.
They spoke of fire and the way of the mind.
They spoke of everything and of nothing.
Her eyes were open and she saw the things he could not hide no matter how dim the lights.
What began as a respectable distance became no distance at all.
**********
He stood in the breeze of the window,
not anything but himself.
With no good explanation she wrapped herself around him, close, but looking away.
She felt his hand in the small of her back and the other in her hair,
“What’s on your mind, Love?”
Don’t call me that unless you mean it, she thought but did not answer.
Tears rolled down her face and there was no way to stop the breath from catching in her chest.
She knew he noticed.
She saw her life going by, conflict stung her eyes, so many angles to separate the light but not a single word that could be spoken.
She waited for him to push her away, to free himself of her embrace and go back the way he had come.
She waited but he stayed and finally she said, “Sometimes my life seems like such a fantastic mess and sometimes it seems so simple.”
He didn’t know what she meant by that but he knew he was being called so he held her.
There was nowhere else he needed to be.
**********
She slept but he didn’t.
He watched over her the way he always had.
He knew she was playing her cards close, choosing her words carefully.
He didn’t know what was left unsaid but he looked on anyway to see that she was safe in the night.
He was there when the demons approached, when her brow furrowed and her body tensed.
He reached over and put a hand on her chest.
She didn’t wake but pulled him around her like a blanket.
Peace was restored and he could never let go.
**********
He stood on the curb and watched her drive away.
She had slowed down to reach out and take his hand one more time.
He didn’t tell her goodbye, wouldn’t tell her goodbye, but the time had still come for them to part ways.
He watched her leave and went back inside.
He sat on their bed in the middle of the universe.
His heart was coming undone.
It wasn’t the first moment
and it wasn’t the last.
Home
Sometimes things don’t work out.
No, sometimes they don’t work out at all.
And, sometimes, it seems heartbreaking.
Things were not as I thought I wanted them to be.
As it turns out, I thought wrong…
Once upon a time on a mountain in the sky,
Arizona burned bright with flames a mile high.
And it waited.
It waited while a boy stood at the crossroads, asking for a sign.
Caught in a fluorescent bath of indecision, he looked at his watch, he looked back at his car, he looked at the suitcase by his feet.
It should be so easy, just get on the plane.
“I prefer to be in the plane”, he thought to himself, but his feet still didn’t move.
He thought of his dream, turbulence in crossing the Mississippi River.
A blaze of glory with a sudden stop.
Going down in flames to die a proverbial death.
Something’s gotta give.
He stood in the parking garage and considered his other dreams…
Once upon a time on a mountain in the sky,
with thorny arms and hot breath,
Arizona changed his mind.
“You don’t have to take your life at face value”, he would breath in the words from her mouth as she said it to him later, though he heard it then.
He tried to reach out and grasp the glow of her heat but it was on him already.
In him already.
Compelled his thoughts.
Already.
He didn’t know what he knew while he stood at the corner of uncertainty, not exactly, but a spider moved in it’s web and the wind stirred the surface of the water.
“What if I told you that if you get on this plane nothing will ever be the same?”
He heard the question though it too was yet to be asked.
“What if I told you that you can’t go home again?”
“What if I told you that you never left?”
Once upon a time on a mountain in the sky,
a silent creature in Arizona waited with unblinking eyes.
Warm sand against it’s belly, in the shadow of a tree.
Without worry.
Patiently.
Xavier locked his car and picked up his suitcase, this is what fate feels like.
It was time to go.
Home.
Trust The Devil You Know 