Behind me, the world caved in. There it goes, I thought. There it goes at last. I emptied my pockets and threw my hands over my shoulders. I remember the sun was descending but the moon was so bright the day wouldn't leave. Night whined and nudged but the day wouldn't surrender. You are confused, moon, I yelled over my shoulder. Fade out, lady, I shouted over my other shoulder. Another ending of another world.

Pollution is an artist
and poison is a poet

Death is the brightest of colors
Noise is the sweetest song

Pollution won a grant
and poison won a fellowship

We're meeting for drinks downtown
to celebrate their well-deserved
recognition.

the birds on the telephone line have heard me talking
the birds on the power line have felt me typing
one bird two bird
the wind that bristles the oily feathers
the light off the moon through the black air
have all heard me

I can't remember what I've said
I've said so much

but the crows
I hear
don't forget a thing.

Your blood is the light in the sky and the night is the new blood replacing the old.
That darker blood you receive each day is the sweat of the earth swallowing itself with huge, heavy gulps.
Sure, time is running out, but it always comes running back in.
Time, blood, day, night.
Everything new is old again.
Isn't that the song?
Isn't that a song!
Thick dusk is coming,
whetting the waves
with you,
whetting the waves
with you.

Darling, I have done this to you
but I've done this to the rivers, too
I have ravaged mountainsides and
leveled acres of forest

I have seen your look before
in the wildlife of the eroding canyon
in the shattered shy, the moon and sun
sharing the shrinking space.

Find something to do
and do it
before I ruin that,
too

Above the open road
Below the open sky
Away from the clouds of crowds
Shadowed in the close of crows
Below the open sky

Summer is a sifter
Separating the go from the gone

Write an open story
Above the open road

Call it youth or freedom
Call it the future or America

Be above or below
Get out and go.

I waited on the corner of Drake Street and Something. I shielded my eyes from the bright gray to see the paintings on the panes.

I waited a few feet from the corner of Drake Street and Something and could not see the rain puddles hug the curbs in passing.

I waited on the wrong corner of Drake Street. We all waited on the wrong corner of Drake Street. It was so quiet on the right street, we could have heard a pin drop into a rain puddle and rush ahead of us into the future.

I waited on the...

My great-grandfather was an explorer, an occupation prevalent when one had more to explore. On the the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, he learned to speak Haush, a language near extinction since the 1920s. He taught the language to his son, who passed it on to my father. While we played catch on the front lawn, my father taught it to me, a word relayed with each pitch, returned with each throw.

Three generations dead, I exited the train at Buenos Aires.

It would be a long walk. To no where. Ending some where. A where long off. Tulle of mist. Footage of stage. A wide glow of white pixels condensing to green. Corridors of sparkling black. A long walk but he took it.

Maybe we all do. Maybe we all did. Precious things like our youth framed by handle bars, the hole dug beside the roots.

When I first got the hang of whistling, I sang at the birds. But I was just the needle through which they thread. Winter was rolling down those cooling autumn hills. The flocks were heading south for those mountains.

There was gold in those mountains, precious like the air between a frame.