Like a flock of dying birds

The crane obscures the skyline, looming, like
the handle of some blade plunged into the land.
Capital letters blocked out:
C
A
M
C
O
C
O
N
S
T

Its tower rises, beam by straight steel beam, each day
edging out the Wells Fargo and Marriott buildings,
occupying space where oldfashioned street-level stores once stood.

This lattice of rust-colored, slotted metal
coagulates skyward--
a mounting illness, redeemed only
by the wooden walkway bypass below,
draped in ephemeral idealist artwork.

The hook at the crane's end like a
lost shipwreck anchor sways oblivious
in the dead night air,
oblivious to we who walk below, we who'd rather not
look above and stare

except to watch the clouds gathering
over the little city
like a flock of dying birds.

--- ---

This is me outside

I'm lying on shorn grass,
sloping down longside a manmade river
with amaretto brackish water
but there are tall shoreside weeds
and the greyblue sky
and unwoven strands of clouds
like veins of milk
above.

Cut short, the grass prickles
the backs of my knees and neck;
it is stiff and unforgiving--
a bed of thin nails,
why we call them blades
(an insect's bite would be indiscernible).
But I feel I could roll through it
down the sloping hillside
and still somehow be cushioned,
that it's soft regardless of
appearances.

A small spider,
yellow and black with a pattern
of white on its abdomen--
like a spider-bumblebee--
climbs near my eye.
It's a droplet of sweat--
I brush it away, expecting liquid,
but that spider climbs on my finger
and waits, pauses, plays its
stout hairless legs across my skin,
then leaps to the grass,
gone.

I want to look high into the
sun's orangegolden brightness,
the small stretch of sky
that is off-limits--
would being blinded by the sun have its
benefits?

Once, we weren't so afraid
of the sun--sunscreen and air-conditioning
and hatred of its heat--
we played in it,
let ourselves sweat,
let it bathe our bodies
without fear of UV-induced skin cancer.
We were fearless and young and loved
the sun.

But now I will pick myself up
off this sticky-wet grass
and wipe my still-(always)-perspiring body
with an old pink and white towel,
and walk through two sets of doors
using a keycard,
up one floor through another door or two,
into a climate-controlled office lit by sunlight,
leisurely dripping in through
two spotless tinted windows,
like enormous sunglasses facing
the mountains.

Passage of a recovering gasoline addict

I remember how I intended never to pay more than
two dollars a gallon,
then it was three,
then four.

Yesterday I drove to a lonely station,
seeking the cheapest purchase--
but it was deserted, forever advertising at $3.09.
Inside, lights from a Pepsi refrigerator still blazed
and half-empty paperboard boxes held
solitary packages of M&Ms and Snickers bars.
Wooden "For Lease" signs propped against the windows outside,
set in the barren auburn dirt above breaking concrete,
and the bloodred roof shingles were covered in dust,
as if a hot desert wind had flown over them for decades.

At home I untangled my bike from next to the washing machine.
I wiped off layers of lint,
inflated the tires, added a small aluminum rack
with bungee cords and carabiners to secure my things.
I rode out into the streets in the early morning,
felt leg muscles crackling and straining
from inexperience.
I felt the sun's subtle heat as it crested mountain peaks
and touched across my cheek and neck,
impelling me to propel myself further forward,
past pavement and exhaust, intersections and blaring horns.

I rode up through the canyon,
heavy dry mouth heaving from canine panting, thirst.
The motorway sounds faded to a dull growl,
a humming roar drifting backward and
behind me with every passing meter.
I stopped near the small park
where ornamental maples overhang the walkway,
riverside ferns grow along their trunks
and a waterfall plunges lazily upstream--
all of it vacant like the gas station. I sat atop a wellworn
picnic bench, its wood still damp with morning dew.

And with the summer sun now sparkling and clear to the east
I turned about to look over
my journey, down into the valley--
to watch gasoline stations withering in the distance,
their monetary marquees like neon flags
or blinking communication towers.
Insectile vehicles crawl on all fours,
desperately attracted to them, starving, needing them;
without them they see no other way, no alternative:
mechanical moths to a bonfire flame.

Tantrum after the results

I shut the office door--past six and it looks like rain--
and lay down on the turf-carpet with my face up on it all flush up against it;
it smelled of socks and sunflower seed shells and scalp flakes.
I know my weaknesses, and I'm too logical, too
levelheaded for this tantrum.

I spoke clumsily in whispers and chants like some mantra of "I don't believe" gets me anywhere.

I curled up and in a daydream with my fingers clenched digging my palms
I thought of an old woman holding a mirror up to her withered face
and gasping at the sight of herself she dropped it into the dingy porcelain of the tub
where it shattered and broke, that old family heirloom,
and she said "good."

It's just that I wanted to be the best, I didn't want no comeuppance. I needed,
face to the floor like this.
Now I want to cut my hair and starve myself, to change to be different to be
better. Or just to be.
Always acting so serious, so deep ostensibly steeped in meaning I try to fill
it all in. I guess I try to mean in everything.
But isn't, there isn't meaning in everything./? (<--even in this)
Some things are just pointless. I know my weaknesses.
I'm too clearheaded and I can't cry when I try
or when I need.
But enough's enough. So I sat up.

Then on the way home,
in an old rusted white Taurus wagon with a maroon hood,
a small boy--River Phoenix in Stand By Me--
cranked his window down next to me and set his small hand
on the glass, stared at me and lifted two fingers, waved.
I stared ahead at the road and the pillow blanket of thick pregnant clouds
and lifted two of my own, waved back.

Chainsaw

I saw this mighty elm in a field,
next to new highway contstruction,
and the small man holding a chainsaw underneath it,
eating into the outstretched lower limbs,
the pale, wet wood.

And I thought of mankind mining ore in the earth,
learning to purify it, melt it mold it sharpen it,
place it into that circular metal ring
then power it black with oil,
extracted up from the depths of the earth--
remains of the living, prehistoric matter.

Cut into them mighty living trees,
tear them to the ground, limb by limb, uproot the stump;
make way for an empty stretch of highway, roadway,
noxious hardened black tar set in straight lines,
inorganic, coating the soil:

an unwanted armored shell
to transport us to highrises and complexes,
to tear us off like crooked elm limbs
and then straighten us out like roads.

Unbrowning

Those hills weren't so beautiful.
They know the truth.

Just tall tan grasses making waves with the wind,
sprawling over the round stepped foothills.
The land was too barren, too dead, too far.
Too unsculpted--these promised land hills.

Spring rains once made them green--shining green
like holly leaves--and in groups the cattle grazed.
But this is not farmland.
This is no orchard.

One-hundred feet from freeway,
stifling, choking emptiness--
Think of the need! Imagine the people, the roads,
the homes: so artfully built!

Perfect square monuments made with concrete and tar,
unsplintering faux-wood and petroleum-carpetry.
Now we have porchside overlooks, views of
the vast expanses of other porches.

Row upon row of dual garages,
eighth-acre backyards and two-inch lawns;
lined up with their patterned paint and streetlight aisles,
cul-de-sacs stained near the curb with drips of oil.

The crown of the city, they call it.
Because you breach the top of the highway, and
you see them: the homes--jewels in a crown--
alive and aparkling and further than those hills once were.

They are colorful;
they are not so brown;
they will never turn green.
The cows are gone.

This is beauty among the hills.
They know the truth.

Each day will still end with a settling sun

The full moon sky fills with fractured clouds,
and they ripple in streaks and wander about,
making empty ruts seem like welcoming soil
on a hot desert night spent protecting the oil
in the sands of a desperate foreign town:
the outskirts of Baghdad, a policed crowd,
where sounds that deafen and strike at the heart
invade the flesh, create camouflage art.

Downtown the merchants are setting up shop
and a lineup of victims is met, shot by shot,
with their backs against brick, by a firing squad,
left to be loved by a nameless god--
be it Allah or Vishnu, Jehovah or Jah,
they all fall the same: face frozen in awe.
And the leaders keep laughing, keep lapping along
with their mouths open wide. Their great thirsty tongues
form the pipeline, the drills in their desert holes.
Petroleum's taste seduces the soul,
like a boy in a sweetshop, what does he do?--
if the money runs out, just pocket a few
and you have all you want by the end of the day;
it's just politics, the American way.

Some march in a uniform, some in a robe;
the color of skin marks a friend or a foe.
The roads are plowed by the tank as it treads,
aims and then focuses, cross colored red:
It rests on a boy, guns strapped to his chest--
he knows he is right, he soon will be blessed.
The tank-gunner knows that the boy is corrupt;
his hand's on the trigger, the sanddunes erupt
and the boy-threat is gone--his guns are no more.
'Didn't know who he was--oh, the fortunes of war!
Eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth.
It's not playing sides, it's a matter of truth!'
The tank-gunner knows that his side will win,
and the young boy's friends will swear their revenge
and know that their cause is for life and for love--
all anyone wants is a mansion above.

So which way is right? Which way is wrong?
Just follow your leaders, just play along.
Because US or Sunni or Shiite or none,
each day will still end with a settling sun.

My sister said

[This was selected to be read at BYU's September 11th 5th Anniversary Commemorative Service remembrance (is the name really that long?) on 09/11/06. 13 poems were selected overall, but only two of those were selected to be read. Just thought I'd boast.]

If you had seen it, she said,
you'd have cried--
how the sun is blotted out
and everyone wears a mask.
They gave me one, but I gave it up to the couple
standing near the mound of brick and glass.

I did see it, I said,
all over television.
We watched it for hours at work,
didn't do a thing, because we couldn't--
just stared at the tumbling images
over and over, all day long,
sitting in shock--everyone cried, made phone calls.

Everything's a mess, she said,
you can't get anywhere.
None of the phones work,
(except payphones like this).
And people search your face as they pass;
sometimes they walk past again, just to make sure.

Everyone's so glad you're safe, I said,
Can you imagine? Could you ever imagine?

Yes, she said,
I can imagine.
And we should be thankful for life—

Because you should see it, she said,
how everyone's lost, everyone is family.
A woman came up to me and hugged me,
buried her face in my shawl
and wept
little muffled I'm sorrys into my shoulder.

We embraced there for a moment,
while the people streamed past
and dust clogged our throats and nostrils,
both telling each other it would be okay.

And everything will be okay
we have newfound unity;
we have newfound love.

Ravens

Swarming, impeccable, feather-tipped by evening,
in their dark suits with straightened ties,
at their empty mahogany tables spread across floors of glass,
with leathery wings tucked neatly into leathered belts,
they smile sincere beaked smiles--

revealing fresh stains left by juicy red pith--
that widen when I reach into my pockets.
They are crouched at the edge of their chairs,
feet and hands placed intricately, prepared and ready to pounce,
to smile and always devour--

always hungry,

never limping, never lame, always wishing for the same,
if there were enough it would never be,
because they are hungry
and they feed upon me.

Assimilation

As the day grows to a close
and the sinking sun saps every last ounce of my strength
and the grass is still damp
(and I wish I'd taken that paper route)
I am a void---unfilled

But I can imitate and perpetuate
and follow like the lambs
whose woolen clouds cloud the last dusted remnants of daylight,
and I am one of them,

secretly believing that within
I am perfect
I am better, above,
beyond their words and their ways--
their passive attempts at assimilation.

So with love in my head,
I walk softly and listen carefully
and gently I find my way back into the migrating herd.

Here

Here
in the alleyways, the temples, the fire escapes
the newspaper shelters, of mansions, of paradise

Her hand holds her skirt up to a pale thigh
betraying bruises and pockmarks--
so round, like that haggard stare
as desperate as the desert skies

Lain on the business brick another corpse,
embalmed in the sunlight remains--
an old army bag against cocoa skin
casts a shadow of contrast

Gravel boots and stolen steel carts
slalom through nightsticks and sirens
and the pole-supported, transplanted trees--
nurtured growth or a jungle of failure

Bedlam on a Tuesday night
and a family of strangers
between spiral attractions of colored light,
and they gather, magnetic

There
in their hideaways, the train tracks, the stairways
the monument benches, of judgment, of ignorance

Captive while we watch
In their cells they stray
and dissipate
until the appeal disappears

Our synthetic souls

Disconnected,
we suckle at invisible airwaves,
latching onto plastics and metals and information constructs.
Our bodies rely on that cherished electricity
and its latticework that spreads and frames the earth:
black cables beneath the soil,
hovering panels and capsules between us and the moon,
towers and wires out in the wind--
supported by once-trees made naked by factories.

Avaricious,
we always want and never need.
Our fancy boats coat lakes with a film of oil and exhaust,
but are parked on spotless-white carport concrete 361 days a year.
We walk in synthetic soles and fabrics
that are weaved of fake fiber by calloused, impoverished hands--
theirs is a place where asbestos fairy dust grants humble wishes
and our indifference executes a death sentence.

Egomaniacal,
we somehow become clinically depressed,
our diagnoses a product of unfulfilling lives.
We tote our problems as small typewritten medicine labels
pinned up against our shirts like badges,
next to our poisoned, wrinkle-free skin.
More proud than ashamed, we laugh and drink it off every night,
only to see if it will ever feel any different.

Destructive,
we take a valley (not home) and turn it into a city (home).
Every patch of grass intricately placed,
every block of broken concrete intentional,
every building some sort of sanctuary
or celebration of our supposed success.
The people are merely numbers, and the mayors rejoice
while nearby farmlands are forgotten next to cloned homes.

Spiteful,
we are each other's mules.
We refuse burden, lessen it with gestures and fingers,
wishing our pockets lined with litigious spoils.
Then we chuckle at primetime newscasts
while watching handcuffed executives
holding up briefcases to shield their faces
as they are escorted to blinking blue and white taxis.

Ignorant,
We horde consumer-end commodities
like they were apples freshly harvested from the orchard.
We are unaware of process or consequence,
only gleeful moments of self-gratification
that end up gracing carefully-selected entries in our diaries.
Then in standing lines at amusement parks
we check our wrists, visibly impatient
as our blood runs pink with cotton candy,
and we devour hot dogs made of thousands of bits
of the lives we line up to needlessly slaughter,
in a weak attempt to satiate our collective gluttony--

But there, in the end,
are our own lives really so different?
Or have we been dying so slowly,
so persistently over all these years,
that this world is the world we truly want--
the world we truly love?

Commercial sunrise

Spilled from a leaky oil barrel--
a choking black with orange dots of all-night lighting--
the cities lie along the freeway lanes,
a concrete Styx with aluminum ships.
And the trucks shake like small earthquakes,
rumbling in aural competition
with the incessant nighttime trumpeting of the trains
as they cross over each intersection.
Overhead the planes, ever-indefatigable, are thrown
like massive darts at perfect targets,
and everyone's destination
is more important than the rest.
They never seem to empty,
those bottomless underground fuel tanks
at the 24-hour gas stations
(upon which the fervor of the new dawn
relies so unhesitatingly).
Not yet sunrise and already the masses gather,
with automobiles stretching and testing their cylinders,
lined up single-file to start the fleeting journey
that begins another fleeting day.

In the city of celebrity [v.2]

[This is a poetically-reworked version of a post I made in February regarding our little stint into Park City. See, I wanted to submit some poems to this contest, but all mine were so normal. So I took this one , a journal-y entry thing, and upgraded it into a more poetic form. I also changed the content slightly, and then I called it a poem. Maybe it's not much better. Probably not. But here it is anyoldway.]

Snow is the culprit, dirtier of windows, icer of atmosphere.
Field and clearing surrounds us,
en route to the city in the mountain mist.
Canyon roads lay as fractures spilling across white foreign land,
and these vehicles, these ubiquitous vehicles--
spouting fumes into the freeze--are just insects,
burdensome, mosquitoes in the summer.

Scaling the plateau, up one level from below,
against the backdrop of frosted tips and glazed peaks.
Somehow we are led unscathed by the unrelenting winter,
by the beacon of the valleys, the roads that connect one with another,
stairstepping up and up until the temperature's drops are unnoticeable--
the cold imperative--it chaps lips and eyelids,
renders road signs almost completely illegible.

We are welcomed by the fashionistas,
they who tout the utmost in class,
opportunity and demeanor, expense and desirability.
The lives of the stars. The upward spiraling of the significant.
We do not belong, our vehicles glare filthily; it doesn't matter.
Our presence is one of mistake, but we've as much claim here
as say, he: There, in the blue sweatshirt,
shaking hands, signing autographs, smiling self-assuredly,
ostensibly reluctant or embarrassed by recognition.
"I love your work." "I'm such a fan."
"Job well done. Job well done. Congratulations. Excellence."

The forever-eyes search, calculate, with each passing group they stare
into your deepest, densest self. Some continue on, glancing backward,
curiosities unsatisfied, still seeking, searching.
And we all do this; there is no end in sight.
A human zoo or attraction of sorts.
We all may be celebrity, or none of us may be.
But sight deceives, for we are one and the same,
yet we inexplicably walk in awe of one another.

But the cold!, the shameful, conspiring cold!
It would find nothing more joyous
than the sight of thousands of preserved, frozen bodies
lying prostrate in the street gutters,
torn from their sickly-sweet enjoyments
with smiles of indifference or gaping gasps of shock
still engraved across their cheeks.
"They never saw it coming. They had no idea!"

Never make war with / The warrior

We raise the walls to the wind, standing tall
Striving still to survive in the hills with our wives
And the children are spent in the dens of our tents
While we take to the battlements, take to the battlements

Dust-swallowed air, hallowed earth, ruddy glare
Bearing down on their gowns fallen fast to the ground
And the trampled and few stampede slow to their pews
Spewing prayer to the blasphemy, prayer to the blasphemy

Scream, scatter quick! past the scorched, burning wicks
Fighting tears near the haze where the bodies lie splayed
And the earth in disguise, giving birth to the fires
Eyelids close, silent chest, eyelids close, silent chest

A theist's lurching blasphemy

When I last spoke with God round a table of tea,
He berated unjustly the life that I lead.
"My son, you've forgotten, forsaken... you fraud!
How darest you betray the infinite God!
I've shown you the ways of the meek and the might,
so woe your seduction and traitorous slight!"
With a sip and wink I replied with a calm
way about my impressions and steadied of palm.
Then audacious as Caesar I commenced to tell
(with the lurching tides of abysm to quell).
"You're not Him," I derided, "You're packaged and sleek.
You've no sense of purpose, a crutch for the weak.
You're vengeful and shameless and not quite the same
as the people would will You. Their despondent shame
heaps the walls that contain You with rubbage and grief,
and off with their souls! - such a gluttonous thief!
Let the people be - can't You see that they're starved? -
for reason and purpose, not prisoner's bars!
So resign Yourself from this false masquerade
and remove Your facade that implements fate."
(Certainly concurrence alone could tell
of the lurching tides of abysm to quell.)
Then in guileless prose, the worst I bequeathed,
"Antithetically spoken, your place is Beneath!"
Set unabashed, I narrowed my eyes
and that blundering fool of a god lost his guise.
While there in his stead not a tatter remained,
for when left disenchanted - God's nature explained -
the denied unbeliever's cynical pose
is resumed, I assume - a violate rose.
Still the steady in mind and the valiant in deed
know more than's determined by dogma or creed,
and take what is given - tradition or no -
as fodder that feathers the quaint status quo.

The peasant

You. You are a craven
in a monarch's prison.
You reek of requiem;
your self-sufficient song
lays roses of guilt
on the casket throng.

You. You are no king.
You seem to think,
but we see no such thing.
We watch a wounded conceit,
and a slithering tongue
beguiling deceit.

You. You seek to use.
We have paid our dues.
We do not welcome you
with any fleck of honesty
or fervor or integrity.
We see through transparency.

You. Your gaveling hand
espouses no command.
No, not from us. Across the land
we've tilled, you've taken
from the weak. But now
our defiance has awakened.

You. Your crumbling walls
of rotted castle fall.
The sun's midday shawl
is spread; we shall fight,
and our foolish bodies will mark
the season of changing might.

The monarch

Approach on knee, and bend, and swoon
toward ha'penny feet, or his of doubloon.
Then stand, so soon - to throne and moon!
Oh, crown of gems with lustered kiss,
against the gnarl of knuckled fist.
His will should bear the marks of this,
the hand of servile labored sin.
His lineage stands as next of kin.
For a king's command the reign begins
with a feast fit for an unruly crowd.
While peasants starve and farm the ground,
he merely wishes more had bowed.

Cemetery symmetry

Lie, they lay in spotted plots, intricately spaced,
where quarried stones bear the epigraphs of
the lives they confess. Stretching miles past flower
and tree, enclosed within the white picket wood of the
departed American dream - that which existed only
while asleep, when waking life was a misconstrued blur.

And fancy, they're treated courageously while blocked
and choreographed into exquisite oak, casually intended to
nurture the soil - that same soil which in turn only
welcomes more of their discarded kin, used for
nothing more than coins on eyes, formaldehyde.

Eight by six they stay, perfectly placed, as loved ones' tears
sodden the earth where weedy clover sprouts. These green
unwanted blossoms - the last remnant of a body misplaced, on
an occupied slat of decay; a desolate companion for earth's great
pockmarked face, all arranged in orderly fashion.

Misery loves

Oh, the joy of being a human. We get to deal with the real world, interacting as part of a hopeful social harmonic, engaged in politics and commerce and life, strung along by some unwritten and unsigned contract that we're figured to abide by. We ritualistically awaken each morning, prep our appearances and stomachs, deaden our thoughts and hearts, and then head out for an oh-so-trying day of good, honest, pointless labor, coming back home later in the day to get some much-needed, restful sleep; the cycle starts again the following morning.

We scoff at the less intelligent, the homeless and unfortunate, and at that which inconveniences us or doesn't add noticeably to the enjoyment and spectacle of our day. In this egocentric, circular existence we continue on, walking the virtually endless plank toward the bitter end that eventually beckons for us all.

And as the hobo paces his lonely streets and gathers the forgotten discarded clothing that we have left for him to run across, we pace our own streets, minds indifferently framed, sometimes hardly distinct from his own. We'll make merry and laugh and tell tall tales while other scrounge and scavenge for sustenance, but all the while we scrounge and scavenge ourselves! We're the same! It's a joke for which few know the punchline. There is no black and white, there's simply a mess of gray that is crammed on an endless jungle continent. Every square inch is removed from reality. And we want it that way.

We've got our mastery of circuits, electricity, and day and night. We've got our scientifically manufactured beds to better our sleep patterns. We've got chemically altered food sources - plants, animals, production facilities - so that we can eat and fatten up and enjoy the marvelous predictability of our blessed sense of taste. We're the mowers of man - the reapers of reality, wielding scythes of faked ignorance. We drape ourselves in sheets of debt and reliance upon a world and society that we're not so sure of. But we don't really want to be what we are. We just simply "are", living day to day, looking to those who reside in the mystical upper decks of magazine, television, celebrity and cliché. "We don't want to wake up!" we shout, "Let's go back to sleep; it's peaceful there!"

But live we must. And one day perhaps we'll find a better world, one that we may accurately compare to our own, and we'll notice the true existential faults that have always plagued us like little hidden leeches, stuck behind our ears where we could never see but always hear as they whispered fatalistic sweet nothings and suckled the energy from our minds, domesticating us and preparing us for slaughter in the same way that we chemically alter and numb the lives of the cattle that we liquidate and process into packages of pseudo-life-giving nutrients to be fed to soulless, emptied shells of plastic human bodies in mass quantities, promoting sickness and waste, a paradox to the initial purpose of sustaining and providing fuel to prompt the bountiful, wondrous creations mankind was once known to concoct. "The sun doesn't shine here, it's just photonic bombardment." It's misery, that's what it is! - thinly threaded into lines, weaving as stitches do, connecting the whole of humanity into frivolous, absurd acts of daily behavior and so-called character. Misery. Either real or contrived, but misery nonetheless. Humanity has become a virus, patrolling its wasteland, stimulating it by removing the flourishing and replacing it with landfill, reactor, plastic, decay, chemical, death, explanation, ourselves, waste, waste, waste, waste.

It's. All. Unavoidable.

I, for one, am going back to sleep.