Western ode
The sound of water drying through these porous buttes,
how desert nude erections, craggy, wrinkly rock
from which they grow in sage and brush,
their landscaped, manscaped rabbit bush,
from the lakes that once were views
from the sea men see but hues
of orange dirt, of life inert.
I cannot breathe in H2O,
I cannot see through trees that grow,
so here on flat horizons go,
my lungs expanding, breathing slow,
the space between is peace within,
the sound of cacti paying rent.
Is this my fondness for the West,
this ratio of new life to death,
the nine part sky to one part earth,
the freedom from my future birth,
that in my life it's not what's next,
but with love her heifer effervescentness,
the thought of mother haven't yet become
the effulgence of the noonday sun,
the watery sounds of things to do,
escapes into the altitudes,
big skies and winds, the chalk of bones,
the smell of rose, the bleeding from my arid nose,
the hose that knows the river slows,
our ribs bemoan from whence the water used to flow.
The opposites of USA,
that east is west and west is play,
that peace has left, the east bereft,
upon the good of all that's left,
and despite spite and despite fight,
the sights of west are not a blight.
They stand to save us from our plight,
that despite all that isn't right,
the west stays open, grounded, light,
inviting us while we incite
the forces of obdurate might,
and despite night and muscles tight,
the greed to take another bite,
this height we've reached is not all right,
and in due time the kite will fall,
and despite, despite, despite it all,
western ways will catch our fall,
western ways will fell our wall,
that life is not lines in sand,
that all of this is all our land,
that easier is it to see
from the vantage of the free,
that forest east is forest good
for growing food and chopping wood,
but save our plates, carcinogens,
it's time for east to fast again,
to recall all that we are man,
to sit wide open in I am.