Why are the Beatles so gosh dang

good at themselves

and why does age make

their sound so much

louder without even doing

anything else in life they grow

bigger. And why is

Whitney’s mouth and her teeth

the rattle and quiver

changing my whole

reason for staying

on this planet. And why is

there a pain inside

when I quiet everyone

and shhhh turn it up Judy

Garland and her bangs

lamenting that best Christmas

now hymn—

And how is it my

heart has been healed

by certain called

Killers

and their dustlands.

And how can a

marriage

family

town

nation

disagree on

every dang thing

but drop all of it

when the Schuyler

Sisters suddenly work work

even Peggy does

the work and we suddenly all

stop hating

and start singing. Somebody

please tell me

what is this bright magic

standing my frantic

still

til ingested

then dark dust blows

off and the

damned blood flows?

I was born in the chest of an ancient woman

and when I had the courage

to look up

at her I saw she was jagged

and intense but

shrouded safely

too in bristles of tree

and bush and almost

always snow but never

in late summer and early

fall where Timpanogos stood

and still

still will stand bare.

But when it is May the bleach

tipped mountain is varnished in

glowing spring green

from the near

top down to the bottom and she

is smooth and all

her ligaments and bones and

riffs and rocks blur

into one homologous slope and I

have the strongest

urge to run

to the top

as if my Lady

were a small bermish

English hill and then

slide down her

effacement as if

a plaything—

and most bizarre of all is

I size up

her corrugated spine

and imagine it possible.

Where are you going

my little one

Gail Wood sang to me in an

alto vibrato mom of

my mom mostly gentle

always generous there

at the base of Timpanogos

she sang to me both she

and the mountain

bastion to the cold

desert’s discordant climate.

And at their breast time flowed

at the pace nature

grows and the earth and our pulse

seemed to sync in steady

balance and the way

from there was plain

and straight just one

neat single breath up.

Turn around turn around

and the way is dizzy

with twiggy detritus in

the dead growth there

is no trail and on and

on the sole I move on

scorns blisters there are gashes

on haranguing both

occupied outstretched

arms my face

is mocked by

mulish wind— never from

the sitting the waiting

no. But always

from the procession on

fervently on moving toward—

I don’t even imagine I am on

anymore any

longer chasing the summit

I am hunting for vestiges now

of her

her alluvial vibration they

once stabled me I am haunted

by Gail Wood’s words the

dolorous melody

the plaintive phrase

Where are you going

only when my boughs are silenced

by pugnacious wear when

forced to be stayed—

I hear other noises less ghostly

on her waist-high ledges

they are not ringing

from the top they

do not echo from the

base but there

with me on the mountain

in between— somewhere

near I hear voices.

There was no way the world

could be a stage

when my back was held by

rocks of sand

eroding

native faces patient

caught me pressing me

quiet to the mass

then when I stood

I hated how I swayed

chortling tides too familiar

taunts of acts and lines.

The nearer I bent

even to the earth I left

rotating skies.

Then or new

it doesn’t matter because

a brilliant particle

impervious to those circles that orbit you

through time around and back again

to re-find again

fear

she who quiets your limits.

Or is she,

fear,

borne from the acquaintance of limit?

Either way, the green spark it

drifting somewhere above

from below

like cotton

over mammoth lake and the

red eroding mountain— it found me

on the rock and welcomed me

— Of all the loud minds

never exhumed of

all the neurons’

in confluence roaring in

transmission making paunchy

maps and reveries that

wandered down constellations

no one has ever connected

and the dot to dot

sequences of seas

that lead to an ocean

where depth in fathoms

are unfathomable and

impalpable space furnishes leviathans

down to the piddling life alive

and under the surface

landmarks no human eye

in vision

will touch

worlds without number

in one head are made

and the one star seen in satellite maps

where life can live

never listens

but maybe she would hear

if synaptic shouts weren’t

stuck building up

distended

behind tacit tongues

brilliance in billions uncharted

and I wait— I’ve been waiting for

so long for the place

where all the domains real

and unseen bear down—

down so hard all the

brain cosmos no longer

remain barred and then

will never never stop birthing

We came on a boat

of cocktail sauce the eternal shrimp

all us choke

insatiable we come to inhale your earth and consume the air of your people

mmmmmmmm ahhhhhhhhh

your people who’s sweat wets ancient clod fertilized with the iron of layered blood

stored

and storied

still dusting the quiet countertops and tables of your children

and we come for a nibble of you

your story and we pay you

to fill us

please fill us

with what we eat for and sail and consume

but can never land on

Even though we land on your land

leave our waste at your door

take take

your natural wonder your nurtured history your way

and we make it ours to play and pounce on

and then we sail away clutching a once noble emblem of yours’

years of loving years

of laboring dissolved now

to kitsch & capitol

Arrivederci!

why are the Beatles so gosh dang good at themselves?

TIMPANOGOS

RED MOUNTAIN LAKE

WITHOUT NUMBER

WE CAME ON A BOAT