THE HORSE

for Jere Martin

Actually clamoring
open here
the mere fact
of walking away
from oneself to edge
like horse minus rider
or is it the opposite
or is it a map
of us learning how to turn
itself on? I suppose I could
say anything in the vibration
between selves a crude rippling
how by breath it conspires
with greatnesses not our own
one small and suffocating
which duly loses itself
in the coarse rush
just to appear
what it needs
what it needs
actually clamoring
open here
this horseless
panic made frank
like a hand
breaking forth tendrils
of new scarlet readiness
to lunge against solemnity
like a horseless rider
leaves the desert of aiming
somewhere to rush everywhere simultaneously
red tendrils softly tearing off
in gaping chasms of summer thought
nothing now if not more intermissions
between the pattern of self-light
which strobes across the body
tricking every last stillness cinematic
from the jilting red depths
of a lonely hibernation
a desperate maroon sleep
under dusty stalagmite trees
a horseless rider
whose every direction
screams home

THE NEWSPAPERS

for Brandon Best

Disembeded
from life
through language
only to return
snagging the throat
most are thrill offenders
goading day into shape
or rescuing flotillas of peril
before they go safe again
I wake a little less here
in the predawn dash of scavengers
blubbering on for virtue or
just checking box scores
red neck sick again
as currency passes through
parceling whatever thought
condenses pill-size
for swallowing
for love
of the uncertain
let’s go hungry
as the newspapers say
most are thrill offenders
sunk down in the force
like a flaw keeping sacred
some otherwise rock-steady Navajo weave
fuck yeah I like long walks
resuscitating the earth with song
that’s why I called you
my dark Pleistocene tremolo
my stillness thrumming open
for thrill offenders
and old friends
just someone
thrumming open
on some sacred
mountain flaw shit
pass me the newspaper
almost less here already
so I can torch a path
not exactly forwards but away