i, you, us, we ,me

We are light, dancing
moving on the water

We are a fire, casting
flickering shadows

We are long, hushed conversations
in the night time

We are the primal, pulsing
Nyabinghi heartbeat

We are the Earth's poems & prayers
prophets, sinners, madmen, poets, dreamers, saints

With dirt on our faces, we lift
them to the sky
to be kissed by the dew

We are a rising constellation
a distant, lonely trumpet
crying out!
We are trees, we are moss
We are oceans, VAST
We are mountains, patient
We are horses & jaguars & eagles
& kittens & crows & slugs
We are shooting stars
but we are also the sunrise

We are a soft kiss,
a sigh,
a gentle hand on yr forehead
a gentle caress on yr back

A cock crows thrice
A new day has begun
My brothers & sisters,
you cut me with silken daggers
you kill me with yr kindness
You sucked the poison from bended knee
You spit it out in a breath of glitter.

The Sweet Hereafter

Rock Gods, the time is now!
Bacchus, Dionysus, Pan
Osiris; Hail, Hail the sun!
Hail, hail the killing bullet!
Hail, hail the killing moon.

I will go where i'm called
The dark forest at night.

Douglas firs, looming
Giant spiders, looming
grooming, weaving, spinning
Spitting a marble tomb
a marble sun
Frozen, cyclical
i am honey
i am dewdrop
i am dissolving, daily

A Fender amp, a country
backbeat, greatness marching
'cross 2000 miles of open plains
but love is not a victory march
it is a cold, it is a broken
Hallelujah.

I will give you my guts
my sweat
my love
my devotion
i will tell yr future
i will tell you a story

Sometimes i'm far, far away
from any home i've ever known
and i can't even remember what it
feels like to be warm,
well-fed
Fourteener revelations by
a spectral, glowing glacier

all is ancient
all is laid bare

The old Gods, new Gods
they're calling me
calling me to a new home
beneath sun & stars & sky

I am dissolving
I am lonely
I am afraid
I want so badly to be held
to be kissed
to be reassured

But this is wild MAGICK
focused
ferocious
red in tooth & claw
walking the path of the moon
a garden variety lunatic;
prone to melancholy
delusions of grandeur;
i'm so far past caring

i lost that by the side of the road
somewhere in Kansas

Guitar player, you light me up
like Mesopotamia
i am hanging in the gardens
adorned in Spanish moss &
bougainvillea
spilling prophecy, rubies &
tears of blood

Jesse Sykes, you sing my spirit
you ease my loneliness
you steel my resolve
to do what needs to be done
I will go to the edge of the world
again and again and again
i will wander the empty spaces
the forgotten places

I will climb mountains and
burn in the sun, until i
am clean

Negrado, Negrado
yr opinions matter not
crowds are not welcome here
I left you 10,000 feet below

all is silent now
silent & blue

Michael Hurley in the Woods

Perfect Peace, absolution
benevolence rises like a cloud
to bend and float around the trees.

A choir of cherubim, erupting
from 6 thin strings,
steel,
vibrating,
stamping their hooves
shaking their wings
shaking the earth
A wake up call,
gentle.

Its all about reading
between the lines
its all about what's
not being said;
A hidden cypher, for
the initiated,
hidden in 8 tempered notes
and fairy tale fables.

Michael, i am also a wolf.
Michael, i am also wild.
Michael, i am also fierce and gentle.

You raise the light
You dispel the darkness
with yr flaming guitar.

What a perfect crucifixion
falling in slo-motion, with
a head full of sparks,
falling like a roman candle,
pierced with lavender arrows

This is God and Goddess
dancing a 2-step
A Satie Waltz in the Cistine Chapel

This is living underwater,
and learning to breathe
and learning to fly
and learning to BURN
& HOWL;

We do not fight with fists and bottles
and bricks.
We will kill you with our echoes
a subtle erosion,
until you are dancing in our conga line.
Until you have joined the ghost dance.

This is an inevitable evolution,
graceful and unavoidable,
the most beautiful dream in the world.

Mon. Night at the Royal; @ Greta Jane Quartet

A Flaming Corona;
A Woman, illuminated
like a rainbow saint, sanctified
hunched over her laptop
banjo case at her side.

An apple orgasm,
a pitcher of clear water,
a stained glass chandelier,
ruby & umber
i hide under the table,
july
tears me open like azure thunder
i hide, i run for cover
hands over my neck, i shield
and pray for the Holocaust.

A paint-splattered outlet
threatens me,
seduces me, cajoles me with
shrieks and squawks,
like a Mulligan sax,
a mulligan stew of threats, promises
psalms, esoteric lectures
on Irish Literature.

The 1920's come to life again,
wearing a Hibiscus headdress
while the '40s adorns itself in
ebony & ivory
The air smells like hairspray &
stale beer

Purity is not allowed here
Purity is always near
Purity, on the midnight clear
Purity, all that i hold dear

Midnight in the garden of
was and never, all roads tend
to roam, when you are never
here nor there;
perpetual transition
forever off the map,
off the grid,
the long dark juke joint of the soul.

Where bargains are made and struck
like silver coins,
and guitars promise moonlight,
a private beach
a warm bath.

The piano is hairy, barbarous
catches you up in a Latin snare
a salsa care in the world
a stable chair, with which to
sit and stare,
at the void.

Ring around the rosies
pocket full of samsara
pierced like St. Stephen
with Hepatitis needles
We are all martyrs to the faded romance
pressed like prim roses in the massive
tome of repressed emotion.

The motion of the ocean, springing
up with cobra fangs, a Freudian notion
Sex Death Resurrection

What would you give, to realize dreams of flight?
What would you give, for second sight?
What would you give, to lay down yr stage fright?

All this, and more, riddles the
sphinx, before he devours yr lies
for lunch.
All this, before the spiders eat
yr eyes.
All this, before you are cocooned in
serpents,
and you are resurrected as a firefly.

In A Dark Forest

A poem, by headlamp -
sitting on the roots of a giant
Evergreen tree,
couched on soft pine needles,
lost wisdom between my ears.

An elegant ritual,
drawn out like a Quiksilver orgasm,
warping, wefting, and weaving,
a tapestry of light.

Backwards, forwards,
up and down, the loom
bucks;
snatching threads from the past, hinting
at the future,
like a gypsy in Jackson Square.

In the weave, daydreams
manifest, rippling
like a desert mirage, hanging in the air.
A subtle glance, a sideways smile,
the velvet of night.
Stars taking on new forms, new
significances.
A bejewelled peacock;
A clockwork mechanism;
An archangel, wings unfurled, flaming sword
held high.

Here beneath the canopy,
here on the damp
undergrowth,
Here, perched on the
precipice, i can see
the graceful trajectory.

I can see the succession of successes
and failures:
endless, sleepless nights
heart full of wordless prayers and silent tears.

Yearning for my self,
Yearning for the beloved, like
a sailor, mourning his lost limb.
Yearning for the sincerity of youth,
and the ability to stand on my own two feet.

Incidentally, my eyes sprung open, wide.
Miraculously, the angels heard my cries.
Eyes flown wide, to Paradise.

I remembered black lakes at night;
I remembered the dark desert;
I remembered driving miles and miles and miles,
thousands of miles.

I remembered surging, muddy rivers, powerful
as bulls;
I remembered mountains and peaks, gleaming
skeletal in the moonlight.
I remembered mountain meadows, full of tiny
wildflowers, and thousands of creeks, tinkling
like silver bells.

I remembered hushed conversations beside
the hallucinogenic embers of dying fire.
I remembered voices joined in song.

I remembered train tracks,
and graffiti.
I remembered fallen soldiers,
fallen by the wayside.
I remembered 5 years of Death staring me down,
in the red-rimmed gaze of my own reflection.

I remembered night after night after night after night
of Music;
Dancing;
Sweating,
Ears ringing.
Eyes Blackened, eyeliner
running,
a melted harlequin on the beach at sunrise.

I remembered the boy that i used to be
I remembered the Man that i have suddenly
become
I remembered myself,
my vastness
Dwarfing oceans,
containing them, surrounding them,
Breathing, like spiral galaxies,
nebulae, my numinous
possibilities.

Pyramids were built
to commemorate this moment
a soul coming awake to itself.

Sitting here, surrounded by chirping cicadas
and whooping owls,
i tip my hat
to all the hobo prophets
and heavy-metal heroes,
that helped bring me here.
The sainted farmers
and martyred junkies.

Here's to the marble giants,
whose footsteps have been too large to fill.

I sing a song, to myself, here
in the quiet;
ears ringing
heart singing
A Beethoven Crescendo,
A Satie refrain.
Singing like Yardbird,
but dark and blue, like Robert Johnson
like the ocean.

Here, and forever,
I AM FREE

The bars of the invisible cage
have sprung

I step out of the darkness
into actual daylight.