What would it feel like to have your neck in my lips
Your skin so close to my heartbeat.
Would your eyes look up at mine
From the top of your conscious gaze?
Would it be your fingertips or mine
Tracing entangled veins, tender areas
Upon a dreamscape of freckles and moles
A back opening up like hidden pages of a precious diary.
Would we’d twist and roll
Like two logs in a well kept fire
Burning as slow as we could
So each new ember could linger upon our tongues?
Would sensations erupt here?
Down our traced spines
While our roots began to slowly grow tighter
In a full surrender to our nature.
Tag: skin
Night Air (day 2356)
I sit here in the back
Imagining I smoke
Feeling the night air
Curse through my mind
Lazy with a faint desire
To hold my body close
Skin
Presence
Ache with a consistency
That turns red
Beneath my nails
Crawling like breath
Upon night air
Consumed (day 2343)
Take you as I desire now,
Consume you as you cannot quite know.
Greedily I behave –
To passion I’m only a slave.
From collar bone to exposed breast
Melting in my mouth,
I wait for you to to turn around
Whence I find your naked shoulder,
Which leans into
My aroused embrace
– Skin into my breath –
And around your stomach
As we bend forward
My arm pulls all of you to me.
A closeness we can only find
As your soul intwines with mine
And fire begins to penetrate
The confinement of our souls
Where ecstasy envelopes our essence
That lingers where we’ve become.
No More Trees, Money’s For Me (day 2064)
It’s ok that we cut down these trees for warmth
Let’s not get upset about our mountain
Turned crater, shipped to the moon,
Our water is a good memory, a clean memory
A clean memory for my dry lips
Afraid of this purple water
Maybe my dinosaur bones will take me home
To a land full of ten year old trees
Where water flushes the land clean
No more dirty top soil: eroded,
Home where the magical golden clouds
Hover just above the skyline, stinking
And water is just slightly brown
Mycelia? No, my bill fold needs more dinosaur bones
To sink into these fresh water lakes
Chopsticks, chopsticks, chopsticks trees
Get these poles off to the mill
Down that road of rubber and oil
More dinosaur bones and I’m ready to kill
Floating at 70 miles an hour
In plastic rocket ships, towing plastic bricks
And you there, strange looking person
How many toes do you have? You’re not one of us
Your skin is funny and your smell’s different
Let me see your papers that say many things
I don’t believe you can grow your beans here
See, my dead trees and stretched metal rings
Say: ‘NO TRESPASSING’
Get out, leave us alone
You’re filling us with lies
Unless you’ve got tits, beers, football, and guns
Money’s for me, and less of you.
Moon at Midnight – Part XXXXXVIII (day 2032)
I felt like I was getting pretty good at identifying plants
It was really enjoyable for me
To go out looking for medicine and herbs
With Willow
It was incredibly peaceful with her
Walking lightly through the forest
Listening to birds
And waiting for animals to do their things
Before we did ours
This was a beautiful life,
I kept thinking to myself
How I had been so lucky to have
Met Moon Cow so many moons ago now
As they stopped me while I was walking
East from Amy and Frank’s house
After leaving them for the first time,
One day while the two of us
Were stopped along a brook
I asked Willow if she wanted more children
She looked at me and smiled
And said that she had always dreamed
Of having four children
I guess I had kind of already known her answer
Before I had asked it
But was looking for some kind of affirmation
I felt at home with her
I knew that much for certain
I knew that my lonely heart
That had set me out on the road
So many moons ago
Was no longer lonely
That Willow and Lily and Moon Cow
Were the family I really never knew
I was missing.
I held her close
And kissed her deeply
I could feel the gentle squeeze
Her strong hands made
Upon the small of my back
As she let me know with her hands
How she felt about me
Her love was like the sun on my skin
Her touch burned me
With complete satisfaction
Right to my soul
In a way that I had never felt before
Every moment with her
She taught me how to be a more kind human.
We spent the remainder of the warm but late
Summer day tangled in each other
Rolling in each others ecstasy
Rising and flowing
As we taught each other
The flow of the river
With our hands and noses
With our gentle kisses
And passion.
Moon at Midnight – Part XXXXVII (day 2021)
“I am not going anywhere,”
I swooned to my love as she lay beside me
My fingers slowly playing with her hair,
“But should you decide we should go
I would be there right with you, dear,
I would be with you to the stars
I would climb with you each jagged cliff
I would help, my hand a ladder
And send you the lightness
My heart stole from you near.
“If you should want to walk to the end
I would not tire of the steps we would take
Beside you, I would gather fuel
For each night’s fire I should tend
I would count every star we would see
In the dark night’s blossom
From the distance here on earth
Upon camp I would make for you.
“And if you wanted to be close
I would strip my very skin for you
To open up and climb within
My fingers play for you
My heart beats for you
My legs would cover you
In those close thoughts of the night
As your desirous heart beckoned to become one
Like our fingers entwined
Like trees amidst forest
Like She-Wolf and He-Wolf
I’d be your every movement, repeat,
I’d be every moment your grace.
“Should you want the moon in your eyes
I’d climb every tree up high
To find that old man so gray
I’d coax him over to stand bright
Proud to glow as he did show
Should I bring him home just to you
With a lasso I’d have him packed
For each time I looked in your eyes
You, me, and the moon,
Sail forever in every swoon.
“And as you want to stay every day
Right here, beside me,
Upon this very hide here
I savor every breath I take
Of the aura you shower so
I begin every sentence
With your name on my tongue
With your skin upon my fingers dancing
With your warmth taking me
Past the sun and past the sea
Ten thousand dreams and back
And every moment of your desire
My dreams to be for thee
Till my bones can be for you
Support for everything you do
Like the support you are for me.
Moon at Midnight – Part XXVII (day 2001)
Around noon three U.S. Army men on horseback
Came into camp
They acted as if they owned this land
With their rifles in their hands
They set up a makeshift desk
And began taking down everybody’s name
And asking some of the weirdest questions
I’d ever heard people get asked
Especially for no apparent reason
And without consulting Mountain Chief
About the appropriateness of the whole ordeal
Mountain Chief I could see was confused
And really not sure what to do
He was a smart Chief
Not wanting to start a war with the U.S. Army
But he was a proud man too.
Nobody made too much fuss
But nobody was really too excited
To see men in uniforms there
They each had heard stories
Their suspicions only grew
As the tension grew from these army men
It was very hard for me to sit by
And watch as these U.S. Army men
Clearly disrespected my family
For no reason other then the colour of their skin
And their history.
They left peacefully
Giving little logical reasoning for the interrogation
And also no real thanks for everybody’s cooperation
I saw people looking at me afterwards
Hoping that I had some sort of answer
But I had no idea either
I sat with Mountain Chief and Moon Cow
And other elders of the tribe
Discussing what this meant
What rumors they had already heard
And what we would do
Mountain Chief said he would consult the other tribes again
See how they had been treated
I knew he didn’t want to align with either army
Canadian or U.S. or even Sioux or
Other Blackfoot that had started fighting
But I knew that he could sense change
Something that would change their lives forever
A change that he couldn’t control
No matter how many buffalo hides he had
Or how much water ran past his feet.
I sat up for a long time that night
With Willow by my side
I didn’t really know what to ask
Or how to answer anything
So I just sat silently
Watching our small fire burn away
Outside of our teepee
In the blanket that wrapped us together.
Moon at Midnight – Part XXIII (day 1997)
The land Mountain Chief had decided to camp at for the winter
Was full of buffalo and other small game
Looking for cover in the trees for the cold season
The flat land wasn’t too nice for them
We teamed up the neighboring camp of Blackfoot
Who’s chief took Mountain Chief’s sister to bed
Seeing all of the riders together
Gave me a chill up and down my spine
But it was beautiful to watch the skilled riders
Chase the buffalo down a buffalo run
Jumping to their deaths
Must have been houndreds of them
To skin and to smoke.
Moon Cow and I set to work at once building as many
Smoke houses as we could
In the fashion that I had first built with him
A few moons ago now
Some of the other people dug giant but shallow holes
Which they then put sticks beneath
Then a makeshift frame structure
That they layered buffalo onto
And on top of this
They lay the hides they had just skinned.
It was a massive undertaking and some days
I would ride up to the top of the cliff
And just look at all the people below working
Imagine how the buffalo had jumped with the stampede
Each day I would do at least three loads of newly smoked meat
Back to the camp we had
Wild Willow had set a home close by
Open air but many hides and blankets to keep us warm
Through the whole night
That we lived in while we were working
It was nice to have her warm body
To sleep next to every night
It was food for my soul.
Every night both of our people
Would get together around a large fire
And celebrate the harvest
The bounty we were all so thankful for
To keep us through the winter
Everybody was happy, laughing, dancing
I would watch Willow and Lily
Dance around with all their sisters
As the drums kept beating into the fresh night air
When she would come find me
She would be covered in a fine layer of sweat
And exhilarated by the night
I would join her at times
Trying to watch the other men
To see how they danced
So I could learn and feel like I belonged more.
When I would wake
There would still be smoke coming from the fires
But more importantly
Smoke would still be inside our smoke houses
That Moon Cow and I had stoked
Before we had gone to our beds
I would add more logs to each one
And when I returned to camp
Willow had special tea for me
With fried buffalo and eggs.
It was a lot of work
But methodical
Which I enjoyed
I definitely wasn’t as skilled as the others
At cutting and skinning
But I was good, and fairly quick
And my good knife definitely helped me
Some of the others used modified axes
That seemed to work fairly good
It was a city for those long days
Bustling with people here and there
Trading and helping
And I met many relatives
Ever curious who the white man was with Willow
It was clear that she was loved by many
And I could also see a few jealous Blackfoot
Looking at me, dressed in a mix of leather and cotton clothes
Wondering what I had that they didn’t
But Willow had told me this is just their way
That she had turned down some widowed elders
After Lily’s father had passed,
Content to help her brother and care for Lily
I wondered which ones.
Moon at Midnight – Part I (day 1975)
There was no moon at midnight
And my road was clambering on
I saw what appeared to be shadows
But from what direction I could not see the source
Nor could I understand their movement
For my breath was beating strongly
Inside my mind that couldn’t sit still.
They say whenever you’re lonely
To hug a tree in the woods,
That everything will be better
Once you listen to the wind through leaves.
But my footsteps weren’t taking me there
My trees were full of eyes
That growled when I got too close
My fire had died down to a whisper
Which danced away upon every breath
That beat so wildly inside.
I tried turning my back to the fire
So I could let my eyes adjust to darkness
Cold dampness swept into my chest
That left my fingers clinching at the dirt
I sat cross-legged on ash
That was surely trying to make it’s way
Up the inside of my leg
Like slowly crawling worms
With no direction home.
My fingers felt like dust
Long gone into a night with no end.
Slowly my eyes began to make out a hue of indigo
Through the trees that crept ever closer
With a faint scent of a silhouette
That began to sing me a song
Reminding me of Joan Baez singing acapella
Which always led me to Bob Dylan
And one of his nearly alarming harmonica solos.
Stars began to blink at me
Through gusting fog that sped
As fast as the dying harmonica sounds.
I could begin to see markings
Upon the bark of the nearest Douglas Fir trees
Bark so thick that my hands impulsively
Rubbed each other
Acutely feeling dusty skin on the back of my hands
As life began to seep back into them,
Shocked one too many times
From the dark night that lay behind.
I pulled my wool blanket closer
Remembering I am a warrior
I am made of two hard feet
That carry me on through a winding
Needle covered path
Weaving past lagoons and over boulders
Over roots and upon grass
Sometimes lost and always home
And rusty feathers settled beside me
Wishing me goodnight, so I fell asleep.
Drunken Sun (day 1973)
Wisdom shocked the senses
Into thinking of a way out.
Too many goblins chatting
At the back door, closing soon.
Laying sun in crimson skin
Knicked at the very tips
Of mirth and exposed bits,
Beneath a woven scarf
Tied much to tight;
Killed in a drunken sun.