in his almanac, Aldo left a ghost –
a gamete, a gambit, a gamut
of green eyes, bat barks, blue bodies: slipshod stones
shedding their straight-jacketed page placements
to barter for light! there is existence,
a gamete, a gambit, a gamut
of green eyes, bat barks, blue bodies: slipshod stones
shedding their straight-jacketed page placements
to barter for light! there is existence,
murky as the poems and pontoon boats,
paddling like Coyote and his kin
of tricksters upriver into the dark
lanternless Octobers. I remember
my own grandmother’s wilderness through this
eruption of cherry-red ants, seeds, and gold
tamaracks deified in the dawn.
desperation is a medium for presence
pleading to the grief-laden tracks encased
as diamond corpses, decorating the peat
with bruised bites of spiritual language
that disperses like black buckshot smoke
when the orange-sentenced sun arises.
those reckless boys donning skulls and bone-cold
tapestries called pelts parade their warm lives
under the bleak guidance of dissonance:
distance from the present and bright granite
rainbowberry brambles. we learn from fire
infused with the willow moans, plover tones,
fiddler crabs and cricket masses playing
nocturnes for the amethyst afternoons.
and this inferno’s heavenly staircase
leads to our lookout towers! summiting
like mist chasing a corporeal form,
we witness the wild prismatic phantoms
escaping their husky words.