uncollected poems
blue mountain birds,
drop feathers to grateful hands.
blue.
is the warmest colour.
is mountain skin,
forming snowcapped songs.
call out home,
heard in the wind.
tree bark branches,
decorate the sky.
weave wooden beauty,
from our laughter.
i yearn for silent breath.
dream dandelion calm,
still growing in dead land.
not a weed.
(i am not a weed)
live in pine needle daze
mind gone walkin’
imagine fine smelling,
funny feeling,
wrapped in black pines.
skins turned to ash.
bones wait to be found.
ivory treasure.
keep the dead alive in your pocket.
a jawbone.
alive in aspen eyes.
they watched it all die.
keeper of stories.
forest calm.
fire in my heart,
burn to the ground,
rise from the ashes.
blue mountain bird sings its song
- blue bird
his name haunts the corners of my mind.
i know he has forgotten me,
but has left me with a curse,
to always remember the syllables of his name,
with a confused tongue,
tied in knots around the letters,
never able to pronounce them the same,
fearing that if I hear it,
he will come back.
i saw his eyes in every dark place for years,
waiting to attack.
me, helpless.
me, wilted.
me, defeated.
I refuse to say his name.
- names stretch through time
similkameen,
valley of wind,
tell me where you have been.
river flow fast, strong and wide.
mountains tip toe sky high.
blanket of cloud,
dotted with pine.
mountains decorated in medicines,
cleanse your soul.
trembling tree talk timid release.
where are your people buried?
tell me where do they sleep?
the stories tell stories.
willow whisper,
ancient wisdom.
river wash away trouble.
wind carry thee.
lost in a dark sea,
undertow drowning.
let it take me.
dustbowl destruction,
bring deep, dark desert.
delicate bones,
brittle and worn
find solace in sleeping words.
wake up .
forget(fullness) to dream.
tie branch bundles,
where you can reach.
drop leaves to earth,
where i buried me.
lay a heart in mountain ripples.
pine park haze,
drinking all day.
pine cone promises,
with friends you meet along the way.
“we stay free”
forever.
silly sun / green grass hair.
we will be there.
find friends in flowering plants,
sagebrush feet,
shepherd your purse,
filled with muscular sadness.
heart pump slow,
calm chamomile kindness.
dust across eyelids.
pick up stones,
find life below.
look with your heart eyes.
children of the valley,
we will come back forever.
- valley summer
there is dark,
everywhere.
vampire addiction,
dreaming of blood drinking blood,
and the long black dresses,
silken hair touching hips,
graceful flight on wings of death.
black smell of illustrious death,
buried with bewildered souls,
beneath tombstones and plastic flowers.
toes dangle from limbs of the beech tree.
ghostly wind cries through passing leaves.
organs are torn from consuming chest hole,
and heart dropped to necropolis floor.
it will grow back.
loved ones leave funeral flowers on grassy earth.
trying to lift the veil of shadows,
decorated black shield,
lace plucked into patterns of sheer protection,
weighing heavy on supple cheeks,
enough holes to shine eyes out.
tears perforate the air,
skin, wet.
trickling down neck to collar bone,
and rest in awkward pool
of marrow and flesh.
microcosmic body mirror show
bewitching blindness,
to plagues behind eyelids.
congregate with lost psyches,
to let tongues move, teeth chatter and chords of the voice box clatter.
conversations commenting on the oracular occurrence of resurrection.
rise from the dusty gloom of decomposition.
the little girl’s dream unfolds.
beneath layers of fabric and carefully tucked creases,
lies a phantasmic knowing,
ravishing in the soft glow
of twilight lucidity:
dream big, little vampire, because you bathe in pools of your own blood.
sweet juice of life giving love,
comforted by the presence
of the dead ones.
- necropolis, 1850