Theater of the Painted Story

I have been before words
Facing one another
I have seen their meanings
Caught in the middle
Without beginning or end

I have been between words
Hoping life would fill the blank page
Hoping they would go away
Or fall out of order

In their service
Over their riff frontier
In their house of mind tissue
In windows hoping to break free
Of reflection

I attached worlds in their fierce making
And now retreat in words as simple souls
And let them free inside me

A book of wind
Poems of empty space
It takes a whole tribe to feel them
To fulfill who they are

I leave behind these poem shells
Sculptured layers from the sea
I pick them up again
At the shores edge
You can hear the vibration
In the ear of this one
Rearing in the star net

I keep casting in the waves
Haiku mind bee wax heart
Ice slowly melting
Cold fictions of the soul

I walk on the long thin ear of the sea
Where the beginning of vast moving mystery
Is the light greeting clouds
With the theater of my painted stories
With my eagle head of flame
And its memory of forged light
Spirals of my nomadic life
Sing in my palm like a giant
Keep growing in the waves
My names, my many names
I cleanse through the body
Carving my mast
In the terrarium
Of my ancestors

All worlds inside me
My paint blood miracles
And honey jar
For the weight of things
I perch in the fork of birch
Shiver silver branches
Alters space and object with thought

Leave for the unknown shore
Where angels with mirror wings
Rotate galaxies on the sea
Inside me

Womb of scared water
I listen hard for plantings
Surging gestations
Little wings at my door
Purifying rhythm of the old crows
Holding the moon in prayer
In the monastery sea light
I do the feather dance wonder

My space angels know me
As the holy one
With power bundle of antler and stone
Falling out of this world
Into another
This stranger’s strange story
Is our own
Story we can’t see inside us

You might find these words
When I am dead
I am never dead as most
Expressionless missing parts of me go through
My frozen mouth and busy thoughts

Spring snake
With twig I make
The tongue come out
Of the drifting stars

Shed news of our deeds
Tell us what we need
Bearing the earth’s crossroads
Into consciousness
On the brink of god
Cicadas in one song
Rain when you ride
In one drop of them all

Reach, touch, express
Acceleration of heart
Maps blaze in the tea belly
Traffic of stars inside
Glittering pieces of the world
In tender exaltation
Land flow through me
Beyond the hedge world
Rip ride the wind
Stretch my presence
Into blossom

Invisible branch on the window
Moving child to a new world
Remnants of an awkward beauty
Rustle inside us my friend
Labor of a head grown wing
To the nectar of heart

To be more than this
Hopeful awaiting god
And reverse this sentence
For greater wonder than this
Yes, yes
In the electric current
To keep me wanting more

Passage in your floral dress
Dance moves
Of fire and fog
Wind in each leaf
One tree at a time
Single address
Contained in it all

All we know is enough
For where we’re going
You dream you
And learn where you’re meant to

A rodeo of zeros
It is everything
It is nothing
Stringed to vibration
Many selves
In many worlds
My lessons thunder
Thousands of clear visions
I am home far away
Where the entrance keeps going
To be an entrance
Body veins sparkle
Near the vanished state
All edges of life leap
When you are about to be free in life
Stars pass
As floating ships of prophecy.