The sands are closing in on Eden
Mountains tumble into the valleys
While the oceans gnaw unhurriedly at cliff faces and seashells
Stone arches collapse into systematical boulders
Glaciers turn to rain
The horizon stretches out farther and father
The stars grow bright and the clouds less dim
Life shrinks in upon itself, into the smallness of a few forgotten puddles
Our laziness the only salvation left for those who cannot fly

The base colors of the earth are separated into their proper places
Centrifuged by war into sky, stone and sea
Simple colors, simple organisms, just one cell and no mitochondria feed on glucose
Brown glucose, red glucose, orange and pink and green glucose
Mulched into the soft brown sand and the slate-gray grains of tire and steel

It’s so pretty, this desert, these sand grains, this dry mountain air
It used to be so complicated you see, so formless and abstract
with lines and rays going all over the place for no real reason
We didn’t understand it, not one of us, but oh it was a masterpiece!
That fresco we painted upon the ceiling of the earth
That mosaic we laid under our feet, the one we walked over every day
We spend so long on it that our necks grew stiff and we could only look straight ahead
Into the darkest part of the horizon
Between the two white posts we placed to mark where the desert was supposed to end
We couldn’t see the mountains weeping trees or the rivers spewing up their stones
As if all the elements we had left to harvest decided to clump together for protection
Like the sand dollars we broke open to pluck out angel wings for our granddaughters

And the animals howled and mulled and scraped around in dry riverbeds for glass bottles
They licked the pigment from the rims, you see, the taste reminded them of us
It was like they got to consume a small part of the people who did this to them
They didn’t come to us, we had our guns and our cars and our gasoline and our twelve     inch thick fat
We drank beer and smoked meth and we burned styrofoam and plastic for heat
We literally shot the moon
We slapped that old fat bitch until her face would never heal proper again
Serves her right for looking at us that way
We never drank water, water is only meant to be looked at
We liked fountains and water-features
But a tastefully arranged zen garden was just as nice
If we sat real still and calmed out minds it looked just like the ocean
That’s how sophisticated we were
So we spent days looking out at the desert,
Watching the cloud shadows dance across the texture of the earth
We watched until our eyes started to bleed and shadows came all by themselves
And the mesas and sand started melting and the sky was screaming at us
And the poor abused moon was weeping in a corner
We stared until we knew we were going insane, and we danced!
We danced and moved out whole bodies but never moved our heads
We hoped that if we could just thrash hard enough and that our bodies and our heads would become separated
That if we could just surrender to the madness and make ourselves think
That the whole world was screaming at us and clawing at us
And trying to make us dead,
Then maybe we wouldn’t know when the real thing was happening

But we did.
You can’t sit down on a hallucination or eat a dream or have sex with a nightmare.
We opened the last can of beer and ate the last can of beans
We spent our last dollar on cigarettes, or maybe a little toy for our children
We can’t remember.
He ground up our houses and our cars and our families
We drank them, swallowed them in huge, heaving gulps that left us with hiccups
It was sweet, and cooled our insides
Instead of hot we were simply, warm
And we curled up onto the warm sand under the pleasant midday sun
And we slept and dreamed our pleasant dreams.

We planted a maple tree in the backyard for my grandmother
She was 80 years old that day
Spry, in good health
She loved to garden, to plant flowers
So we bought her a maple tree
And planted next to where she put the lounge chair in summer
It would provide her with shade and comfort
Allow her to read on the all too-common sunny days
When she couldn’t find her hat

We were told by the arborator to bind the branches in winter
That the tender boughs would snap if we let snow fall on them
But who has time for such things?
There was always too much to do to prepare for winter
And the plants always sprung back in May
My grandmother had seen to that every year

After the snows melted, we laughed at what the nursery owner had told us
The tree was growing strong, it’s branches were reaching higher
The leaves were plentiful and green
And the few shoots that died I cut off and threw into the mulch pile
It made me feel good to nurture my grandmothers maple tree
I felt as if it exonerated me from not spending more time with her

The tree had grown large and strong, it’s canopy now the home to chirping birds
And buzzing bees and chittering little squirrels that always got into our trash
The green leaves turned to ocher and auburn
And fell to a man just before the snows
I enjoyed looking out on the yard on winter days
I liked watching as the trees filled with snow
The individual flakes fluttering through the still air
Before becoming lost in the sea of flakes that had been our yard

I liked the way the maple tree stood defiant against the flurries
The way it’s thin arms refused to hold onto the snow
The way it’s slender gray trunk always seemed to keep
Just enough of the onslaught at bay
It looked so small there, at the edge of the forrest,
Flanked on all sides by giant pines and cedars
Even I was taller than it

But the little tree kept something of summer all year long
Even when looking at the house from across the dead lawn covered in snow
It seemed to beckon us outside
Seemed to fill us all with a longing for rebirth, for action
For us to stop just laying around on the couch huddled in blankets
Or poke at the fireplace while doing nothing particularly important

One day, after a heavy but routine blizzard, I looked out the sliding glass door
And I couldn’t see the maple tree.
The snow was very high that year, I figured it must have been completely engulfed
Next year I would see it again,
it’s knotted gray boughs would be shooting soft green shoots
It’s small pink flowers would bright and fragrant and filled with bees that never stung.

When the snows melted I saw that the tree was broken
I don’t know how it happened, not that it mattered,
But the trunk had split almost to the roots
The boughs had been stripped clean and broke apart in lanky, deformed clusters
We cleared away what was obviously dead and
Tried to make the tree grow anew in the summer
We’d seen plenty of trees that had recovered miraculously
Broken branches that grew back
Broken trunks that sprouted whole new trees
Even cut stumps that became so overgrown
with saplings they looked like a miniature forests.

But the tree didn’t grow back that summer
We watered the broken trunk
Spread fertilizer around it
We even coated it with citronella oil to keep insects at bay
But it remained dead all through the summer
The birds had no branches to sing from, the bees no flowers to pollinate
A few ants picked at the bark, taking what they could

In November, we uprooted the tree and threw it onto the bonfire
With the rest of the burnable refuse from our yard
It was a gray day, during the boring part of the year
I watched the fire smolder as I drank cheap beer,
I was thinking about something I’d watched on TV

She winks at me from a bed a stars
Her idealized formed languorously spread across a mostly-shadowed moon
Come a little closer, she seems to say
The sky is not truly that distant

You feel as if she has made the whole thing just for you
That she kept that figure after birthing the night
So she might lay herself upon you and feed you from her breasts
Mother night, holy night, the moon is simply a chair for a goddess
The stars specs of dust arranged into semi-patterns by apathetic divinity

She parts her long red coat and lifts her striped blouse
An invitation for you to wrap your hairy arms around her neck
And Drink. Drink. Drink till you are full
Your body is rebelling against her charity, and still you drink
Her nectar fleeting, her bleached white flesh more valuable than yours
You weep for what you will not have after you have drunk her dry.

Look upon a tiny black spec

Watch it grow. Watch it grow

Watch it overtake your peripheral vision

See, see, as it stretches behind your head

Until you feel it sneaking up on you

It will never touch you. But you know it’s there

It will always be there. Sometimes you just forget about it.

Do you think about the morning when you wake up?

How the sun seems to yawn while stretching it’s arms

Across the black sheets of pre-dawn?

Do you think about the morning dew hanging to the underside of your car

The little birds and squirrels that come to drink from your rafters?

Do you think about your house, your job, your children and spouse

Do you think, this is a good day to be alive?

Give me a sign of the nighttime sky

Some hitherto unknown constellation

That I may navigate across the dark waters of this bay

The mouth too wide to keep out the storm

Are you too normal to be a writer?
Perhaps. Your words are articulate, your sentences concise
You love myth and imagination, you love to hear and tell stories.

But you are not consumed by a passion so intense,
It must be forced down the throat of an undeserving world.
You are not arrogant
Enough
To know you understand the world better than most
That only through you can a wicked world find salvation.
You merely think that is true,
That if you were God For A Day, the world would be a much better place.

An old man was selling roses on a street-corner
A pretty young girl bought one from him, smiling
She walked away and gave it to a handsome young man
Kissing him, they went into a restaurant together
The old man sold no more roses that day

Don’t worry too much about being depressed

You’re in some pretty company

But don’t go thinking it makes you special either

It’s not a very exclusive club

Autumn leaves descend from treetop to footpath
The trail is muddy, but my feet are dry
I thank the dying of the old year,
For it eases my passage to the top of the mountain,
So I may look into the world not yet made