Category: Poems

Way off in those mountains,
Phantoms are better left unknown.

The sun descends beneath the large red mesa,
The clouds soak the sunset glare.
It is silent, except for the thunderstorm.
A beautiful purple thunderhead expands,
Blue lightning ignites and echoes.

Hear the wind, and the rain falling
On the sandstone mesa. Smell the sage.

In the foothills, the wind whips the juniper jungle.
There is a feast; an unearthly celebration going on.
They are busy, tonight, somewhere in those hills.
They dance and shift in dark caves.
In cobweb networks they sing.

Bottomless mountains rise
above the Virgin River Gorge
It is a strange day on top of Sullivan Canyon.
Thick white crystalline ledges dive into precambrian hell.
Pegmatite yields pomegranate beads of rich garnet.
Teethy shadows cling to desert oak with fingernails.
Manzanita grows exceptionally thick in twisty stands,
hard to push my sweaty body through.
Winged phantoms fear not my approach.
From the bowels something growls with enchantment.
Somewhere among the whispering Juniper forests
hides a tunnel leading to another place,
a vortex that radiates with unknown passions.
I turn on the headlamp, looking for treasure,
cities full of creatures and monsters of long ago.
I’ve dared the Earths gaping mouth.
so don’t tease this face or make smiles.
I’ve pitied the demons that deserved heaven.
Some demons were better then human.
In the wind, Grandma’s chimes dance,
and the canyon grows heavy on my mind.
I explore the talking night after my excursion.
Someday the unknown will unlock me some answers.
I dream of Precambrian hell.

The mountains are calling you brother
Come, they are waiting.
Come, there is a secret waiting.
You must go to the crossing

A child in dream
visits the mountains
converses with bears.
There is no fear.

Voices dance in shadows,
deep below luminous peaks
beneath the candled skies.

Yonder
the little mountain people dance
they dance and glow.
In the dark earth
they weave their cobwebs.

Come, says the the wailing wind.

It is windy tonight.
The fiery sun sinks into
the mountains of burnished slopes.
Stars flood the heavens deep.

The canyon voice
whips through the Pinion and Juniper.
The basin below is cold and dusty.

The mountains are singing all night.
Come to me, say the mountains,
travel far into the wild
where the unknown waits.
The Tree Man will care for you…

It is in me.
I’m walking through a deep forest,
of gigantic pines.
I can see myself moving about
in the dream.

I’m a tree.
My arms are branches.
My feet are the roots.
I grow tall beside a
small mountain cabin.

A soft spoken meadowlark
moves from a fence post,
up into a Blue Spruce…
This spruce is growing in the desert!
It doesn’t look like other steepled evergreens.
It’s all bent out of shape
growing right up from the sage.
It stands alone.
Where’s the others?
Hmm…

She will confuse her companion,
test his might, and his will.
Her insecurity kills dreams.
She’s clouded, worried, and faithless.
Then she stops, and changes course.
All is happy again.
Everything is without manipulation.
A few days go by,
and then she’s worried and judgmental.
Then, she’s happy again,
and becomes afraid.
She washes the dishes
with deep sorrows.
The husband watches her
from the kitchen table.
He’s uncertain.
His muscles are sulking,
his feet feel heavy on the linoleum.
The woman is quiet.
Her conspiracy is planted.
There’s an escape,
and she will vanish.
He cannot place a finger on her sorrows,
or the grief on the dishes.
All he can hear
is her footsteps moving restlessly
through the corridors
of the noisy farm house.
Later, he’s sitting in his study,
reading the latest in world affairs.
While sipping on hot coffee,
and eating Swedish Fish.
The television is buzzing
in the background.
The tree outside, is violent with
wind from the desert.
It’s clashing the chimes,
and rapping the unpainted picket fence.
Off in the distance
a windmill swiftly turns
in the face of the oncoming storm.
He hears a sudden noise.
The wife has vanished.
He walks slowly upstairs.
He knew she struggled,
and wanted someone new.
She wanted to twist
his feelings into a tight ball,
that she could knit.
Her misery belonged to him.
It was his fault.
He was the villain.

I usually don’t write fictional story poems like this. I was also challenged to write something a bit more dark.

Somebody blew out all the windows
in that ragged saloon.
You know that
old ghost town,
on the edge of town?

The building still stands,
with broken glass
on creaky floor boards.
I feel deep, complex memories
associated with that
old western ruin.

I can hear sounds from inside;
something dances…
a beating ghost heart…
a wicked shadow
still carrying two persuaders!

With this type of poetry:

When it came to woman,
I never saw a thing, until you,
walking up and down
the halls of my mind.
And how I would dance to you.
Maybe I’m succumbing
to your deep, intrusive gaze?

The fire ignites the oily wood
cracking and echoing
into the forest.

Infinite candled stars
glitter in the black staircase
above the trees.

There are whispers
in the Quaking Aspen
in the dark grass.

Faraway from the settlements
A Great Horned Owl
sings in the tallest Ponderosa.

With every hoot
he becomes a shadow.
The ghost soon stops?

as I enter
into the darkness.
I hear the fire behind…

Eating the pitch,
snapping and casting
orange ribbons of light.

Deeper and deeper
my footsteps go
into the black labyrinth?

creating excitement
mystery, courage,
tears, and dreams.

This was long ago.
It is still here.
Forever it remains.

There in the sky’s cathedral, in the white painted aspens, where the land is still untouched; is a place where I can go to get away from the ignorance of the world. In this space is the space in which I tick. This miraculous landscape is alien to its own existence. It’s unlike anywhere else. Like the song of the hidden valley, where no one ever goes. I sit beneath a living tree, below the foot of a large sleeping hill. Now from this place, the Earth Mother speaks to me in dreams. In the sun soaked clouds, those dreams of old, speak to me. Hiding themselves as when I hide myself in prospective touch. All the materials of life are burning like a steady day inside me. Behold, in the extremity, I was threshed away into this still silence. And there, I thought of far more intelligent things. And my might, gazed at reality, giving me its music. I stared into my own existence, as a person would stare at his own reflection in the water. What a rich time it is, feeling nothing but the corners of God’s imagination.

I’d been hiking through sage, and sand for hours. The sky was blue and calm, but small clouds soon grew thunderous. I brought my two dogs with me on that afternoon excursion in July. The wind wailed, and whistled through stone crevices. The cloud shadows began to merge, and soon rain was falling. I was hours away from my vehicle parked on the highway’s edge.

After spending time at a petroglyph site, I was able to find a small cave, to wait out the storm. Lightning clapped and echoed through the canyon…

As I reached the entrance of the cave, hollering for my dogs to follow; out of the dark came an unknown beast. On two giant wings and large talons stretched forth, a Great-Horned Owl almost crashed into me, but managed to land on a rock near the entrance. Completely startled, he stared at me in violation.

I scared the hell out of that poor bird! In confusion it flew off into the canyon, into some shaded cliff overhangs.

I hold a blue mineral
colored as the turquoise sky
like an azurite dawn before sunrise.
or even the deep blue night
holding a silver moon.

A polished cabochon
of Chrysocolla emanates
the early spring morning glow
or a dreamlike trance
that clouds traverse.

My grandmother’s oxidized
silver ring, is inlaid with
Robin’s Egg Turquoise.
She purchased it in Kingman
back when Highway 66 was in its prime.
The blue of the turquoise resonates
her own beauty, and her age.

Pieces of Chrysocolla
Turquoise, and Azurite
unite shades of dense blue minerals.
The earth painted them
from her soul of desolate
rolling desert hills.

I wonder the lonely electric, internet abyss
twisting with uncertainty
while sifting through uncanny piles
of restless information.
Raw data wants to reach sheltered minds.
Screams are muted
in the static of internet space
choked by joyous or horrible manifestations.
Religious or progressive fanatics
stretch forth leery hands
to offer weary hopes.
In a shattered world,
tangled up in magic power lines
nothing is really safe.
Cities sit next to dark oceans
towns next to old landscapes.
The internet motor continues to purr.
I am waiting for the lights to go out.
For the story-telling TV to shut down.
For the quietness of the howling wind.
For shape-shifting shadows that
haunt human existence.

I’m the sandstone cliffs,
that overshadow cottonwood trees.
I’m the dark basin valley
that engulfs your little cabin.

The shrieking wind is my soul.
I am the wasteland
that gives you access
to sleepless dreams.

My age will outlast human eras.
My heart will sustain life forever.
My wisdom will never die.
My grace is endless, eternal beauty.

Rusty, painted figures
animate on yellow sandstone pallets-
made from red ochre
that endured forty centuries.
These supernatural beings
dance across the pallet.
They are living, breathing souls.
Trees grow from finger tips,
Antennas and tangled hair
sprout from alien heads
I feel the beating heart of the canyon.
I can feel their ghostly patterns.
What are they doing when nobody draws near?
They look without eyes,
Whisper at night.

Painted humans travel
across the rocks.
Headless human beings
hold hands, or connect feet.

I leave a gift, a coin,
Or something.

Eddie was the old banchee-like man
with a twisted, hairy face.
From town to town he went-
singing quiet to himself
along yellow grasses and highway.
Eddie says he’s the Bigfoot Man.
At night-time he sings,
while watching the ancient moon rise.
Over each belt of cloud,
and dark mesa dream.

An elderly woman sits above a sandstone canyon,
looking at the moon, in the shape of a cow’s horn.
Thin and silver, its rests behind clouds.
She deserted her home, before her children arrived
to haul her away to the rest home.
Looking into the darkness of cottonwoods below,
She listens to the tireless flow of the river,
traversing an ageless path towards the sea.
Her own children betrayed her.
They ignored her dreams,
with their busy cell-phone lives.

This canyon overlaps her age,
or the wrinkles of her skin.
Her mind became wise
from listening to the wind.
She sings a lullaby, she used to
sing her children to sleep.
Now she sings softly to the sandstone canyon.
Her rusty Studebaker is parked
near the scenic overlook sign.

She wants the silence and beauty, one last time?
before those blind bats take her away,
to the place you go to die, a junk yard,
where society dumps your useless days.
They forget to acknowledge your long journey.
Nobody listens to the
Deepness of Rivers anymore…

I WILL NOT accept the things I cannot change.
I’ll break the windows of everything I know!
I’ll listen to passionate dissidents.
I want to deconstruct civilization.

I’m tired of frivolous squares
forcing circles to become squares.
I’m sick of Uncle Sam
the greedy pig, smoking
his cigar on top of Mother Earth.

I’m sad, because I’m
sick of the beast.
Squeezed by the left and right
to follow their political lead.

All I want,
Is the safety of thunderstorms
and gentle rains
and windswept red deserts.

Give me a horse, or a mule.
I’ll become an old hermit
With beauty in his life
and the wasteland in his soul.

I know that the first three segments of my poem are a little cliche But I deleted this poem at first, because I received a negative reaction from both parents. Why should I hide or sugarcoat anything that inevitably doesn’t go well with some?

I’m waiting in autumn for you.
I’m freezing in the snow,
waiting for the unknown to dissipate,
so I can witness a dream untold.
Somewhere in canyon country, you are waiting.

I see your crystal eyes reflect
off canyon pools in summer,
but nothing is there…
It rouses me, like weeping.
Only the howling wind is heard.

Sharpened trees, slice the wind.
Sunglow illuminates their flickering leaves.
The earth pads my tired feet.
Everything on the outside,
is stirring inside.

Something sensual and dark
hides in the bushes and rocks,
in the infrared clouds.
Deep from within Mother Earth,
the ancient shadow sings.

Chipmunks eat Starburst’sweet, fruity, and sour.
It’s not quite like regular seed! They enjoy the hiker.
But shy of humans, ravens plane the cliffs
looking down on the hiker in suspicion.
Junipers yield naked bluish berries,
hard like steel between the teeth.
The sandy creek winds its way
cutting through banks of fine sediment.
Boulders sit in rock slide piles,
coming in endless shapes.
Some without faces. Some frown, or smile,
to show glittering, sandstone teeth.
There’s the canyon’s shadowy ghost,
it doesn’t mind the human, either.
Clouds travel the September skies.
The hiker shouts while finishing lunch,
his voice echoes off canyon walls.

Deep in the harmony of painted labyrinths,
and steeply slanted canyons-hidden in time,
I feel condemned or exalted in the silence.
As I traverse blue mountain ranges,
The lure of Canyon Country is very strong.
If absent from its stark beauty,
The desert intensifies within my mind.
I feel safe with loneliness, my curse.
Between Earth and sky, my wandering shadow moves.
Clouds shadows creep over gnarled plateaus, dreaming.
The wind softly sweeping, sings to my soul.
The desert hears my song, my spirit.
The murmur of sleepless coyotes shakes me with delight.
The darkness of the wilderness
quenches my ghostly sorrows.

The clock’s ticking; crickets singing
Monsoon rains are outside
eating August away.
Rivers flow down streets.

The town at night illuminates
cloud systems in dark purple and pink.
There are no stars out.
Dense humidity smells up the house,
making everything unbearable,
sleepless, hot.

Lightning slams the earth
scaring neighborhood dogs,
whining and pawing
at midnight doors.

…I remember those early silent films
of the twentieth century,
playing to music and captions;
the music always weeping
along with muted actors…

Humans know nothing
of their existence.

…I love the antiquity of flickering,
and voiceless motion pictures.
The art was waged against
newly pioneered camera eyes…

We experiment and explore
because we feel alone in the futility
of our inscrutable universe.

…I can see true human dreams and excitement
escaping through every frozen frame…

We can only speculate,
and have faith to believe
we know where to venture.