I

Here is the dawn: a pearl, gauze and gingham.
She can never stay long; incandescence
Drapes the Mesa in platinum vapor,
Transient as a gown of lily tongues:
All things young thrive in love for an instant.

II

The light of the room
where you first awoke: the light of the room
that wakes all first things:
the noxious mirage of cartoon colors
threading moment to
moment; idiot elves and princesses
infiltrating our
“living” room where part of what wakes still sleeps,
as the day, outside,
uncloaks each atom to it’s origin,

we rehearse the mute
crystal, mute yet still babbling, blaring
(Is the day painting
on the flowers’ shawls? How real is her light?)
a mindless trumpet
for all the other geese- violet, pink,
electrode azure,
pathetic mauve and cold, screen-vacant green-
to join in chorus,
permeating Now with the less-than-here.

I apologize,
but Cohen, Nicolai, and Boots I see
no other way out,
for every door in this house leads either
to lunacy or
The Desert, itself just a physical
manifestation
of The Universe’s mental illness
(Perfect Sadhana?)
seeming more often locusts than honey,

till the rain strings us
with your stars, Leo and Aquarius,
Capricorn’s necklace
of milk the web that entwines our fortunes-
I must remember
this, read the artificial generic
as a joke with eyes
anagogic: all is changeless, a soul
cannot be tainted
or cleansed; all is passing: a soul is healed

or hurt already,
so where, Na, Scrumptious, do we lay the blame?
Karma? DNA?
Cartoons? The dawn reveals that each atom
has no origin,
is neither here nor there (are those bruises
or chocolate palm
prints crossing your ribs like wolf or squirrel
tracks until your heart?).
This Valley is an inverted mesa.

III

Yawn: orange diaphanous: dusk-etched cloud-sighs.

IV

Close
your eyes:
a
curtain of
fingerprints.

V

A part of me
Apart from me;
dreaming your own
ciphers, nested
against my ribs,
despite how I
contort myself,
bed and futon
support only
one acrobat
a night
(Yes, I
am well
aware
that this
is what
the next
twenty
years will
comprise).