Across the weary river,
a ragged stand stands silent
sentinel to the current turning backward,
and shallows that grow by the day.
Pilgrims, driven by craving,
migrate from moribund districts,
and fight their way up concrete streams
to half-remembered city streets.
Soon, all will gladly grant gold
for a single drink. Even foaming dogs
know the word for the fear of water;
what shall we call the trepidation
That the rains are not coming back;
or upon returning, might wash us all out to sea?
Thirst-mad and searching for refuge,
we dream of where rivers still
Rail and carve at the primeval gorge.
Clawing at the dry veins of the continent,
diviners attack the ground with the intensity
of steam-driven machines.
Our future now rests and depends
on the indifference of clouds,
that they may suffer us a shower;
The unearned forgiveness of forest;
and an eternal vigilance
against the persistence
of dust.
Photo/Ray Larsen
She wears the movement of stars
Around her neck and beads
Of luminous earth fashioned
By her own hand
She speaks of autumn and how the beast
Should not be made to stand down
In green pastures awaiting
The huntsman’s breath hot
Against its leather scruff
Enough’s enough
She says, gathering her skirts
About her and leaving her wits
To dry like butterfly wings
Dewy in their newfound freedom
Whatever you say m’dear
Of course I was listening
I was only taught not to speak
With my mouth full
Photo/Ray Larsen
In the absence of the spirit
A dusty crucifix hangs
And throws its shadow unnoticed
Across the shifting images
On the wall
In the absence of the sacred
Profanities amass
And we, the fallen, bow down
In numbed subscription
At the altar
As pale enlightenment plays
Upon our faces of cracked plaster
While our hearts atrophy
And blacken
Like rotten nutmeat
In the absence of the will
Redemption has been preempted
Please stand by
Do not adjust your set
We will return after these messages
Idle hands…
Photo/Ray Larsen
We wait and watch as course changes are wrought
The past is past and now begins to fade
This is what we called down and what we sought
Upon the new man’s head we have all laid
Hopes and dreams of the way we want to be
Having wrested control from captains poor
Drunk in the wheelhouse and headed to sea
We now take the till and steer back toward shore
A banner of hope from the mast now flies
O Captain! May we now embrace our fate?
A beacon of truth melts the fog of lies
We pray that sight has not come far too late
This our moment true; this our proving time
This our standing part; this our anchor line
Photo/Ray Larsen
Tell me old conjurer
Where in your spherical
Studies and vague philosophies
Is explained the complex movement
Of a woman?
What math applies
To the mysteries of a silken thigh?
Each a taut universe to be pondered
Do any of your dusty volumes open
As willingly
As the lowliest weed flower?
Do they reveal as much of the true
way
The world was made?
The future is not cut
Dried and pressed between pages
But rather steams
With jungle heat and teems
With lush forest possibilities
That is what sets us apart
Each on separate ends
Of eternity—I defy you
To teach me
Differently
Photo/Ray Larsen
Strange quiet
the hustled mad City traffics
are replaced
ramble-shackle clankings of old American
trucks on muddy tracks
ghost bangings of lumber
trains in the silver
silent background and growing things rising
so fast you can almost hear them
greening
stretching so hard they’re likely to split wide
open and spill humid inner secrets
To grow is pain but necessary
above all else
To grow that fast must be religious and Christ
the lawn needs mowing again
Photo/Ray Larsen
Published in Toyon, Humboldt State University, Vol. 40
I awoke at my contracted hour.
I’m a union man, after all. Checking
the weather and my resolve, I threw a
spanner into the gears of the day still
lurching to life; and went back to my bed.
I realize that it takes more than that
to kill the machine, but today let it
grind away without me. I’ll take to the
watershed with a new translation of
Virgil and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.
Let me sit upon a tectonically
exposed bit of bedrock as guiltless as
a blue-belly lizard in the warm sun,
and hear the whispering of the trees. And
hear the whispering of the trees. They whisper:
“Truant.” I’ll have to sit there and take it.
Carrying no lion pelt, no holy
images, I’ll wash my hands in running
streams regardless. I’ll breathe in, breathe out, and
receive the trees’ gentle admonishment.
Photo/Ray Larsen
Published in the White Pelican Review, Vol. 10, No. 1
An overturned water glass catches white
Smoke from the prick of a pin driven through
The thick cardboard of an album cover
Any old Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin,
Or BÖC will do—Hurry! Hurry!
It’s burning and you don’t want to waste it
Hours spent stalking the used bins for gold
The pervading smell of mold and incense
Belies the dreams of rock glory hidden
Within torn paper sleeves printed with ads
For music you’ve never heard of—a trail
Of dead clues leading back to the ’50s
It’s the little things that can’t be captured
By ones and zeros—by on and not on
Nature prefers an encompassing arc
The Devil is in the details and he floats
Between the absolutes—Listen! Listen!
He’s talking and you don’t want to miss it
Photo/Judi Sagami-Smith
Where were you when the lines went down?
Errant energies linger
Like perfume gone rogue
In the eddies of the places you have passed
And me with my feet
In a bucket of saltwater
Is there anything more conductive?
I’ve taken your dead poetry
And built myself a dim fire
to enlighten this room
And to keep myself from being shocked
By anything I might have forgotten
Ashes make a poorer ground
Photo/Ray Larsen
I walk the serpentine
Path where dust settles
Late and yellowjackets prey
On bones left standing in
The middle of the road
I walk the ages
Past where Gypsies camp
Back in the pale shadows
Of summer slowly turning to
The harvest downwind
I walk beside you
Now and do not profess
To know the mystery of days
Caught in amber or what happens
Next; I wonder myself
Sometimes
Photo/Ray Larsen
In this narrow valley
We are surrounded
Smokestacks stand like Indians
An assembly of whisperers
Their stories stated and immediately stolen
Taken by the relentless wind
Through the heart of it
The lifeblood of the land
Runs out westward to mingle
Once again with Mother Ocean
To be subsumed
To be welcomed home
Across the straits
The hills stand silent much as they did
One hundred years ago
A thousand?
Twenty thousand?
Surely not a million
On these shores
The shell mounds of the Karkin are lost
Covered by condominiums, the latest in a parade of indignities
From here you could walk out on the water a fair distance
Keeping those hills in sight, but I wouldn’t
At least not barefoot
Was it always like this?
Do we stand on the mired remains
Of gentle granite giants
Washed down from the interior
Or are we merely caught in an eddy
Of slack tide and time?
Photo/Ray Larsen
I don’t hear voices
But sometimes when it’s quiet
I hear faint swing jazz
A radio plays
Benny Goodman and Chick Webb
In another room
A haunting refrain
A particular madness
I don’t hear voices
Photo/Ray Larsen
I turned off the fire road
Where I saw two foxes cavorting
Among the chaparral and metamorphic rocks
Slipping on schist I dropped
Into the green, grey, and remaining garnet
And heard the canyon breathing
Countless hidden feeder creeks singing
Along with naked aspens and pines in their breezes
In the background, ever present
Growing louder with each now careful step
The falls crack precipitation
Into mist, into pieces, into peace
Photo/Ray Larsen
Tuesday morning the rain stops.
Underneath the swinging bridge, the creek
was awake all night and now
runs rampant. Cross to the parlor where
cool hands have built a roaring
welcome. After endless summer days
spent steeped in light, oak-bound heat
is now released and supplants the gray.
On the porch, the old men speak
with tongues of fire, both spirited
and holy. Inside, the wood
relates the original story—
an old celestial game of
telephone. The message started out
in violence—a roiling
furnace burning since the sky began.
Today, sitting by the hearth,
the word has turned to love—and two hearts
that were embers—are now suns.
Photo/Ray Larsen
Even as children, we suspected our world
was broken—as if our hometown had been lifted
and dropped from a much higher place.
Everyday during the long summers we explored
the edges of the pieces—the spots
where the pattern no longer matched up.
Thirty years later, it’s harder to get up
the motivation to get out and map the world,
to find the forgotten corners and secret spots.
The veil of mystery has been lifted,
and the edge of the continent explored.
The great unknown now muffled by a sense of place.
From Yerba Buena to Eureka, I thought I had found the place
to put down roots—and as many times—I pulled them up.
A privateer, up and down the coast I wandered,
only to miss the hidden parts of the world.
No longer lost, my spirits are still lifted
when I think about those magic spots.
Days spent in rapture until our eyes saw spots,
we rode from place to place.
As we grew, our dreams were lifted,
until too soon—we just grew up.
It’s every man’s destiny to make his way in the world,
and every boy’s to forget the land he conquered.
Down in the creeks and ravines we explored,
searching for those perfect spots
away from the bustle of the world.
We were driven to find a mystic place,
somewhere where the rules were not put up,
and our pirate banner could be lifted.
With found bits of lumber are battlements yet lifted
into treetops no longer noticed or surveyed?
The old men below don’t bother to look up,
knowing that gazing into the sun pays nothing but blindness.
With everything marked and in its proper place,
wonder fades into the background of the world.
If only the veil of maturity could be lifted up,
and we could again see the world as an enchanted place.
The places we knew as youth could provide asylum
even for the grown.
Published in The Hot Air Quarterly, Number Sixteen
Photo/Ray Larsen
We are not standing still
We sail the slender edge of a sphere
Spinning through space
At a thousand miles an hour
What if when we die our spirits are merely flung
Like a stone into the sky?
Like feathers from a hawk ascending
Like fireworks marking an epoch ending
Like rockets, their trajectory bending
Ultimately back to ground
Photo/Ray Larsen
The shattered granite banks of the Klamath
have been rounded by time—more time
than I can imagine, though I try—and water.
If the steelhead would show and were
in a talkative mood, they would tell me
something about patience, although perhaps
through their absence, they are still trying to teach.
This, I have down. I could stand in this cold
current all day, all year, forever; what
else could be this perfect? As an eagle
flies overhead and a pair of black bears
roam the far shore; all I am missing are things
that don’t matter, and you. Where are you?
How could days be so sublime and disconsolate?
I still have a lot to learn from this river.
The sharp edges of where whole escarpments
have sheared off from my heart have yet to be
smoothed over. Landslides neither foreseen
or witnessed, but devastating in their force, await
the healing touch of water. Meanwhile, distant stars
are my cold companions.
Photo/Ray Larsen
The black cars are already on their way
I can hear tires screeching in the distance
Staying tight in the corners and dead sticking the gears
This one is driven by your friend’s mom
High on gin and tonics, the way she looked back in the day
When she still had a sense of humor and a great ass
That one is driven by your first girlfriend’s father
Looking like he’d just as soon kill you as breathe
I would not climb in if I were you
There’s one driven by cancer, that son-of-a-bitch
The interior filled with nicotine as a bony finger points
At the No Smoking sign with a tight fucking smile
Do me a favor and call the dispatcher back
Cancel my ride if it’s not too late
I think I would rather walk the miles that I have left
Photo/Ray Larsen
She gets a text while sitting across from me
Her device buzzes like a doorbell and demands
“Ask him if he’s hungry enough to be a poet”
Am I willing to commit to the last, best hope?
That’s what we are going to address…
While self-anointed apostles, solemn and monkish
Are spiritually saturated with triviality?
Is it not obvious by now that in secret moments
They are dreaming of ravishing magnificent pumpkins?
We can discuss whether or not I’ve got the juice…
But to our right, there is a phalanx of bleach-haired women
Scheming behind a six-foot wall of shrill dissonance
Their deadened eyes reflect the same old news
While on the live stream, a fire creeps across the horizon
Why not ask if I’m hungry enough…
To boil an oil oligarch while achieving viral visibility?
Or to cook the books to mine own liking—still pink in the middle
Without this rapacity, I would be busy dancing
And following the scent of burning money
All the way to the bank, laughing
Photo/Ray Larsen
Román Leão 