Unfinished Bridge

I decide to relentlessly examine the voices which hold me back.
A powerful thaw is released in the clueless winter.
My depression is a simple ditty that has been played many times.
My consciousness is a groove that sticks to Nothingness.
My voice recalls the anger but this time with authority.
The unbearable afternoon sparkles between a raindrop and a candle.
Belongings, from fingernail to bicycle pedal, are given up.

I'm trying to sell this gingerbread house
to the man locked inside the gingerbread man's head.
He runs so far only to cross a river that is not on the map.
He is shaped by a cutter that is not in the alphabet.
He has sworn an oath that this will be the last time,
but he cannot get used to something old and something new.

I calm my mind, broken and shattered, somewhere on the desolate,
new freeway road where I stretch out and forgive myself.
Far off in the distance, I see the unfinished bridge.
My drink is balanced on a train descending into Nothingness.
Soon I will be free of these voices with little left save my dining car
and a conductor.
He punches the tickets as the train climbs out again into Being.
The canyon is flashing by outside my dining car.
Soon I will walk back to my old seat if time permits,
if time is even a passenger in this new drink.

Outside Bells

The truth is still simmering so let's not speak about it.
We will get a taste of it when we lose our posture
and are formed by outside bells. They ring even now
as we blunder our way through the Scriptures.
The preacher is weaving in and out some story
about a car and its mechanic. Cars were created
on the fifth day just before the weekend.
We are meant to use cars lightly in the exploration
of the great desert.

There is a silence in the desert strengthening
the resolve to break stones in half.
A little water is hidden in the rock.
I am carving out hollow places in my soul
for the exhaust of the two great teachings.
I let the car steer where it wills to go.
I find a historian to sit in the passenger seat.
The two of us drive all over the galaxy,
riding the highways presented to us.

As a game, we both write down the mileage and the dates.
Our notes differ, and in the difference the historian
finds the missing link between prayer and vibration.
His model of the universe is one centering on a great debate.
How much is asked for and how much is given?
The car is actually a stone broken in half.
The drivers are honesty and passion.
The broth is the exhaust of their travels.

Between the Words

A nubile nothingness laps at my shores.
The writer exposes himself past the limits of logic
onto the slippery footing and experiences of perception.
Perhaps something between the words is responsible.
     Happiness is not in words but their echo.
Voice is a wise and pervasive calling.
Voices is the treatment once you have lost your footing
on the edge of the cliff.
A wizened tree clings to the rock's edge.
All good things, health, momentum, and busyness,
lead to illusion. Another word, subjective,
I push off the edge of my stopping place making a loud splash
in the lake that may be at the bottom of my soul.

Darting Mind

Each darting mind, falcon or bald eagle,
waits, watches, working with time.
We are patient and more patient protectors
waiting for our sight to heal.
The injured wildlife perches on a new kind of psychoanalysis.
Our places, our enclosures, are not cages.
They are homes where our backs have stopped being turned.
Even the couch has knotholes.
Recovery becomes mutual in the heat of association.
The partners face each other.
It is a hot day. 
Carl Jung wipes the sweat from his brow with a cloth.
He is farming potatoes dirty with the grubs of freedom.
"Stop," he hollers to you.
"I found these five potatoes in your unconscious."
He hands the cloth to you.
You wipe memories into the wings of your need.
You turn back toward the garden.
He hands you a burlap bag.

The sun slanting through the dormers
multiplies the stairs as I climb and carry the potatoes
back to the attic.
The root of sleep is in these five potatoes.
Fifty eyes flash below in the basement of my reserve.
Our talk, like the falcon, dives two hundred feet at a time.
I fight the feeling of living on an island.
The house, left open, exposes a mind.
The dirt on the floor is interpreted in different ways.
The redundancy of spring cleaning
grows powerful in the land of make believe.
It is humorous downstream from the shock of recognition.

Memory is best arranged in a house,
maybe a city, always a diamond.
I am obedient to the pressure of punctuation.
History begins to give me only a slight headache.
I wonder when you too
will notice the gravel in the margins.
I rake the gravel into families of roads.
Their reunion is the sweetest thing in Zen.

Darkness of Noon

There is an unfortunate room by the seaside
where I read Crime and Punishment.
This is my analysis.
The room has barely space for a couch, yet it has dignity.
It is a college where I meet the best men and women
of my generation.
The atmosphere is thick with the heat of discussion.
The disease, unchecked, hurries to expose a wound
that needs time.
The robins are policing the neighborhood again.
The purposeful spontaneity of my crime is thrilling.
The love of my sister stops them
from taking my theories seriously.
The water of this new novel will be in my weeping.
I meet my bride in the break between heaven and hell.
She is never far from my solitude.
Angels appear in my leg chains.
     A speech in a prisoner's mouth is perfect.
     A letter in a lover's hand is good.
     A drop of water in my cup is best.

This is my vision of the Brothers Karamazov at Calvary.
Christ is silent while Mitya
takes the thorns from his crown.
Alyosha invites the soldiers to a tax collector's house.
Pilate stands on the deck of a frontier.
     The darkness of noon drives Peter to the sea.
In the distance the abstract expressionists are motioning
the sheep into congregations.
The two ships are countries in Sarah's mind.
Rachel has taught her how to navigate
the stormy waters of Israel's soul.
Wonder Woman sits on the Statue of Liberty.
Her wrists are slit in a thousand places,
but she has never killed herself.
She is the saint of the American dream.

I walk through the narrow gate
and unfold in the shepherd's pasture.
I make an appointment with Him,
but He is always available.
He bubbles up in my thoughts
and surfaces in my speech.
We hang a child's drawing that reminds us
more of our answers than the stroke of a master.
Your characters are grazing
beyond your kitchen window.
Guide them through the harness of their invention.
Let them seduce you with the flexibility of their hearts.
I am finally ankle deep in prosperity.
The bread breaks on the beach
in waves of concentration.