Holy Lap

lay here like a child
letting go of burdens
looking up at eyes 
that already wept
for you
              but now
they
search your face
for the source
of your lament
to
be a part of the
foundation 
                      two as one
together 
stacking 
                 love
over grief
placing the sacred 
bonds above all
quieting the fears
for the moment
saying the last
things that might
ever be said
                        between 
                        us
as we melt
                     back
             into the 
    primordial 
goo 
we were
born from

Now, many will say that ‘the veil is thin this time of year’, & I tend to feel they are right in this estimation. I can’t prove nothing, but it clicks intuitively for my whole life. My first initiation into the concept of mortality & the fragile brevity of life was when I was about 4 yrs old. My uncles bred, raised & showed American Pit Bull Terriers, as my grandfather & great grandfather had. Dogs that were famous over 100 yrs ago as champion steer herders & fighting dogs that made money on weekends in pasture lands where dog fights & cock fights were held & money was waged & changed hands. I would hang out in their kennel at their ‘clubhouse’ in San Bernardino. On Sundays after fight nights I would witness bloodied dogs getting stitches & patched up. I didn’t fully understand it all at 4, but I was starting to feel like the dogs were not enjoying it. There was a female dog, Mama Blue, who had been impregnated by Staghorn, the champion male at the time. Staghorn had a reddish brown & purple brindle coat & a black patch over one eye. I called him Petey because of the Our Gang/Lil’ Rascals reruns I would watch on tv. He was viscious to other animals, but was very friendly to me. Mama Blue was my favorite, tho, & I always wanted to be in her cage with her when I was being punished & told ‘kids should be seen & not heard, so pick a cage to go into & stay there’. I was playing in the backyard at my folks house when one of my uncles came by with his old lady on the back of his chopper & told me that Mama Blue was about to throw her litter. I got excited & ran the whole 4 blocks to the clubhouse. Mama Ruth, who babysat me often back then, was in the kennel cage with Mama Blue & she was yelling at one of my uncle’s homeboys to go get some more towels, another pup was coming. I slid in between a couple of guys who were watching from the doorway & went to the gate of the cage. Mama Ruth signaled me to come into the cage & I slowly crept forward to get a closer look at the scene. Mama Blue was panting heavily & she was trying to get up, but Mama Ruth kept her down & kept an eye on her butt. There were already 2 pups on the ground & they were wriggling around like lil’ blind worms with tiny paws. Mama Ruth was saying something to Mr. Ricky about the pup that was coming being ‘breeched’. I didn’t know what was going on, but it was exciting & scary at the same time. I began to feel like Mama Blue was in some bad pain. She yelped several times very loudly. That other dogs could hear her, but not see her, so they began barking loudly as well. The pup finally came out & Mama Ruth tried to bring it over to the other pups, but Mama Blue was trying to turn away from them. Mama Ruth pulled her head around & forced it down towards the pups & Mama Blue began to lap at them & swipe away the afterbirth with her tongue. I was mesmerized by the scene & took it all in as best I could as 3 more pups came in the next hour. Finally, Mama Blue was nursing 4 pups on her fifths she seemed to collapse from exhaustion for a moment. There was 2 pups missing & I began to look for them, I saw one by the rags that were piled up from wiping at the Mama dog while the breech birth happened. It was still & not moving. Then I spotted another one in the area between that pup & where Mama Blue was laying down & nursing while her side lowered & raised in big heaves. Mama Ruth grabbed up both the pups in a towel & handed them to me.

“Take these outta here. pronto.” she whispered as she stuffed the wet bundle into my hands.

I froze.

“Hurry up, boy, get out of here now.”

I finally moved my wavering legs & scampered out of the cage then out of the door to the kennel & into the open yard. I looked down at the bundle & opened the towel. The 2 pups were silent & still, eyes completely shut. I rocked them like a baby doll I had played with sometimes that my older cousin had left at my house. My uncle came up & put his hand on my shoulder to turn me toward him.

“Sorry, son, they are dead. Not all the puppies make it.”

He took the bundle out of my arms & headed away with them as I chortled out a meager ‘No, please.”

My uncle turned around & motioned for me to follow him into the house. Once inside the kitchen he placed the towel on the table & I looked hard at the lifeless bodies while he disappeared down a hallway. He returned with a big cigar box & he placed the 2 dead pups into the box & closed the lid.

“These pups didn’t get much of a chance, but since you were their witness to being born & a witness to their passing, you should honor them with a burial, so lets go out into the front yard & I’ll show you where you can dig a hole.”

I followed him out front & his homeboy must’ve seen what was going on because he joined us with a military trenching shovel. He handed it to me after unfolding into working position & my uncle told me to dig out a hole beneath the edge of the hedge that grew under one of the front windows to the clubhouse. I cried tears as I dug & my uncle stopped me & told me not to ever cry until the grave is finished, as your work is an ‘honor’ to be done, not a hardship. I dried it up & dug harder, trying to get the hole big & deep enough. My uncle took the shovel & squared the hole for the cigar box. He then handed it to me & told me to put it down into the hole. Then I was instructed to bury it with the loose dirt pile I had created. I was then told I had done a god job of honoring the sacrifice the pups had given in their only shot at life they would ever get.

‘Not all the puppies make it.’

That was my first experience & understanding of mortality in a way that I experienced life being given & taken away in the same moment & it rolled around in my head as I went on from there. It made the movies like ‘Old Yeller’ & ‘Black Beauty’ have more depth & meaning. It made the images on the evening news of the riots, assassinations & the war in a far away place more visceral & thought provoking. I felt us all as mortal beings, myself included, more motivated to not end up in the wet towel & then getting placed in the cigar box for burial. Or burned up like the buddhist monks who lit themselves on fire that I saw on the evening news. Or the numbers on the tv screen that indicate how many had died that week in the war or the kids who got shot by the cops at the protest or my neighbor who wasn’t coming home from Vietnam or my grandfather who passed away a few years later, it always echoed in the back of my mind, ‘Not all the puppies make it.’

Many years later, in 1980, I had been to many funerals, I had seen people die, I had held my friend close as he bled out after we got caught in a drive-by shooting & I had seen many more puppies born & dogs die from fighting sometimes, but mostly old age. I had been back & forth from home in San Bernardino to Hollywood to an old bungalow I had been staying in behind a house on 7th & Brooks in Venice Beach. The old woman I rented the bungalow from gave me permission to have a dog. I went to Berdoo & stole 2 dogs from my uncle’s clubhouse & brought them out to Venice. It was a male & a female dog that I allowed to breed & sold the pups to other folks in the hood (with the agreement that if I heard they tried to use the dogs for fighting I would take them back) & my foundation as a breeder & seller of American Pit Bull puppies was begun. My dogs were from papered lines & I had learned much about keeping the paperwork going & attending shows where I could get awards for my dogs that would garner me a high price when I sold the pups. It was a side hustle for my growing & selling of cannabis & it paralleled it in its growth. Razor Pit Bulls became sought after, as I expanded my sales to customers up north to the Bay Area & out east to Brooklyn & the Lower East Side. I traveled to places like East Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas & Georgia to trade dogs or facilitate matings. I sold dogs to Snoop Dog’s auntie’s dude on Cherry Ave in Long Beach & years later to Snoop himself. I sold dogs to Tiny at the Hells Angels clubhouse on 3rd St in NYC & to Fernie of the Latin Kings off of 14th St & A. Dogs I had helped buying into this world were on the boardwalk in Venice Beach & in the Lower Haight & the Mission in San Francisco, as well as on many farms in the Emerald Triangle. They were shipped to Kona on the Big Island to help cull the feral pigs that were destroying the rainforest & they created many luaus that fed many people. They were working dogs, providing security & companionship & they hunted pigs 5 times their size with no problems.

By the 90s I was getting worn thin by the boom & bust of my hustle. In 1986, in a raid on one of my stash pads in Venice, the deputies shot one of my sleeping mama dogs as she snored away on the back porch. They killed her in her sleep. No warning, just ‘bang!’ & she was gone. The gunfire alerted me & I grabbed a hefty bag full of elbows of weed & jumped out the window next door & crawled thru the bushes as the cops swarmed the pad behind me. I felt her sacrifice had saved me, but I was torn up at how she went. It was not the last dog that the authorities would kill of mine. That is what you take on when you breed these dogs. Most folks consider you filth. They think you & the dogs should be destroyed. I always felt like I had let the dogs down whenever they died like that. I also felt like I was the only one looking out for them. I didn’t want to breed & sell them anymore as the 90s came to an end, but I didn’t know another way. It weighed heavy on me over time & after my arrest in 2004 I was done. I had given away all of my dogs to friends & family before I surrendered myself in court in Marin County near the end of that year & began serving my sentence. I would visit my dogs every chance I got, take them on walks if I could, check up on folks who had purchased dogs from me & were breeding them now themselves. I was done with it all for good, or so I thought, until one day I got a call from a guy I had known since he was a youngster, whose pops I had sold a dog to in the early 90s & who I had sold a couple of pups to himself over the years.

He went by Freaky Fred, or Freak L from the TL, he was a rapper in a group called Bored Stiff from Frisco. He had been in some trouble with the cops for a couple of years recently to that call & like many folks who had been born in the Sco below the poverty level & in the way of the new tech overlords, he had been pushed out & was living in North Richmond, across the bay from the city in CoCo County. It was 2016, I had served my time, completed my parole & supposedly expunged the cannabis convictions from my record & I had just wrangled a deal for a fully licensed & legal cannabis farm in Sonoma County, up on Porter Creek. El Niño was in effect & the rains had been non-stop for a couple of weeks. I had moved into the farm with my new girlfriend who I had known as a friend for some years before that, but I had to do business at my hashish/rosin lab in Oakland every couple of days, so she was being left at the farm alone for a few days at a time. She asked me if we could get a dog to keep her company & give her a sense of security & I agreed. I was thinking maybe a shepherd or a dog of that stature. Fred tells me his kennel has been flooded & a litter of 12 pups is in dire straits. He said he has 2 pups that he thinks I should have, a yin & yang male & female pair, & that the only problem is they are from an inbreeding, so they cannot be papered. I tell him I don’t think I can help, I am not looking to take something like that on. The blue ribbon male sire that was the son of the dog I had sold him was the father of the litter. The mother was that dog’s granddaughter. It sounded horrible. He said he couldn’t help it, she is in heat & the male got thru the fence while he was sleeping, new kennel wasn’t dialed in enough, apparently. A couple of nights later during an especially nasty daylong of downpour & flooding, he called again. This time it was to say that if I didn’t come all his dogs would die. I drove thru the storm down the 101 & across the Richmond Bridge & arrived to a scene of total chaos. He ran thru the rain to my car & handed a laundry basket with 2 pups in it thru the window of the car. I put them in the backseat & he told me to take of them, he didn’t think any of others would make it.

He was right, they didn’t. These 2 pups were the last survivors of the litter & even their mother died. They had parvo & me & my girlfriend nursed them back to health. They had some obvious issues from inbreeding, but I was not gonna let them die. We named them Disa & Loki (disa is a Norse divine feminine spirit & loki is a trixter). They took to the life on the weed farm during the first ‘legal’ experience of my life growing the plant that had gotten me thru so much, but cost me everything so many times in life. There were big cats on our mountain & these pups thought they could compete, there was more than a few times they ran off & I thought they were goners. They were damn near impossible to train, they just ran off & roamed the mountain every chance they got. They were puppies, so they played with some of the other dogs on the neighboring grow operation, we were on 120 acres, the next property over was 90 acres, there was a big granite quarry on the other side of us & the Petrified Forest on the Napa County line was just passed that, so there was room for them to roam, they grew into it quickly. I worked every day on the farm, trying to build it out & make it into a legitimate success. I wanted to use the place to tell the story of the decades I had been involved with the plant & pass on the things I had learned. Eventually I had hoped to create a destination similar to the way vineyards had visitors & restaurants & events. It was a naive plan, looking back on it, but it was a hopeful time up until the beginning of October in 2017.

That October the hot, dry winds that blow from the central valley of California, the Santa Ana winds we had called them since my youth in San Bernardino & the Mojave, were as relentless as the rain had been during the winter. Everything dried out & the hillsides around us turned light brown, the only green was the outdoor cannabis plants around the property & the grandmother oaks & redwood trees near the springs & the creek. At sunset, on the evening of October 8th, my girlfriend (soon to be my life partner as we would be married by fire that evening) said she had a bad feeling about how dry it had gotten as I took a shot of one of the plants in then upper garden I called “Kush Mountain’ with the sunset backlighting it. By 10pm we were frantically loading up the vehicles to get everybody off of the mountain as a 100’ wall of flames was creating its own winds & looking like someone had left a blowtorch on its side just behind the top of the mountain behind our house. We escaped with nothing but the dogs & a few items we grabbed in haste. The whole area was scorched earth for miles & miles afterwards. We were refugees for a while until they let us back up to the property where we saw the devastation, we had lost everything & then we spent the winter in an old cabin on the Russian River & began to try & rebuild in the spring while living in an RV on the burned out property. After a year of that futility & me almost getting trapped by the Paradise fire, we had decided to get the hell away from potential wildfires by going to a place I had known about since I was a youngster.

Wonder Valley is a quaint little outpost a few miles past 29 Palms on Amboy Rd. on a pathway my parents had used to go to Las Vegas back when I was kid. It was one of those desert outposts back then with a roadside burger joint & not much else while on your way to intersect with Route 66 after a jaunt thru Sheep Hole Pass to Amboy & the road to damnation after that. We moved to a 5 acre plot that we rented based on photos & because it had a fence around the property & that was a requirement with the temperament of the dogs we had, which now were on their way to 2 yr olds & were not socialized or well trained from running around the forests of East Sonoma County. We were all frazzled from the fires, but the dogs were coming into their own & they had endless amounts of energy & vigor. They were down to chase anything & I just knew it would be a disaster if we didn’t have a high fence & no real neighbors nearby. A few miles down the road was the old burger stop that had been turned into a roadside dive bar in recent years with an eclectic music scene called The Palms. We quickly became regulars there & there were more than a few people I had known from other different places I had lived or visited in my nomadic past who had also found a reason to skeedaddle to the high desert in order to escape an ever more menacing reality in the world. They we were, not a flammable forest in sight, 2 crazy people with 2 crazy dogs, alone in the desert, refugees who had lost everything, but willing to make music & art with our neighbors as long as we could keep the dogs from escaping & running after the massive coyote packs or feral dogs that hunted at night. We eventually befriended the owners of The Palms & rented a house right across the road from the roadhouse after a couple of months. It was another fenced 5 acre lot, but it had a clump of old tamarisk trees that made it a little nicer than the first spot we rented & even tho it was full of scorpions, we appreciated the closeness to The Palms & the Friday Night Open Mic & the Sunday Deathstar Waffle Brunch. It was simple times & we were licking our wounds, broke as fuck, wondering what to do next.

The dogs were constantly a source of panic, as they became 3 yr olds they were impossible to call off of prey if they saw something moving. I had to reinforce every aspect of the perimeter fence to insure there were no accidents with other dogs that ran wild out in the desert. The coyotes were always a potential problem as well. Plenty of rabbits, birds & reptiles regretted moving thru the yard. If we could find willing dog sitters, we could travel for a quick spell here & there, but the dogs had to have supervision constantly. It was a big stressor, but we managed, & then after working a summer in Ventura County while my partner stayed with the dogs in Wonder Valley & me getting burned after overseeing the cultivation of 600 acres of USDA approved Hemp, I took a job in Desert Hot Springs at a massive cannabis grow operation that was run by some shady characters. I commuted from Wonder Valley to DHS & back 6 days a week. Then, by the beginning of 2020, I started to hear about a virus in China that was a problem. Then my wife started working with me out in DHS, so we had to leave the dogs during the day & hope my reinforcing job did the trick. After a week of that my wife discovered she was pregnant. Then the lockdowns hit, but almost immediately after the lockdowns were announced, cannabis workers were deemed necessary, so we got a pass to go to work & back to keep making money. After another month & the world getting more desperate all around I was able to negotiate a partnership with the biggest grow in DHS & it afforded me the ability to move out to a mid-century modern with a saltwater water swimming pool & hot tub. Loki & Disa had pitbulls on the other side of the fence & it was not even an 1/2 an acre to run around in back there. It was a tough summer, the job fell apart, my mother’s health declined & I couldn’t go see her, we prepared for an at home birth as November approached after another long, hot summer. November 9th Eva Wonder Mae Riot was born & the dogs finally seemed to calm for the first time in years. My mother passed away shortly after Eva was born. I went to the funeral in Boulder City NV at the Southern Nevada Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery. She was a nurse in the VA & my pops was a Korea War vet. It was strange to watch the lowering of the casket from my vehicle because of the Covid situation. On the 4 hr drive back to my one month old & wife in DHS I started to feel like I was coming down with something. By the time I got back I quarantined myself in the guest bedroom & began my first battle with Covid. I ended up in the hospital in Palm Springs. It was about as fun as it sounds, but I just barely lived thru it.

Things began to go really bad after the Covid infection. I lost my company in a hostile takeover from the investment partners. I was not positive about the cannabis industry at all anymore. I had long covid symptoms & I was running out of money, I got raided by a SWAT team & charged with ridiculous felonies after the wealthiest partner set me up, so back to Wonder Valley we went. The dogs were relieved to have 5 acres back. I was making a plan to move to New Mexico, where my mom was from & where I had visited a few times as a very young child. I had to fight the court case first. Loki was stung by a scorpion & almost died. He just fell out on the ground & could barely breathe. I thought he was a goner, but after about 6 hours he finally stood back up with shaky legs. My wife’s father agreed to stay at our Wonder Valley spot & watch the dogs while we went to see a place in New Mexico. It was a quick week long road trip, but it made the desire to move there final. I began scheming on how to do it on the way back to Wonder Valley. After a few months fighting the court case & getting the felonies dropped & pleading guilty to a misdemeanor & then receiving a 30 day ankle bracelet sentence I concocted a plan with my baby mama to get a lil’ spread in La Tewa NM with her mom carrying the note on the place & me making the payments. I had enough time to move the family out to New Mexico & to reinforce the yard fence on the new property to hold the dogs (they shoot dogs that look like they might eat a chicken out there on sight). On the day I was going to go to the airport to fly back to Cali & do my 30 days on an ankle bracelet, I saw a plume of smoke about 2 miles away from our new spot. I called it in & the US Forestry Service told me it was a controlled burn, nothing to worry about. I knew that it was toward Hermit’s Peak, not far from our place at all. It didn’t feel right. It did not seem like a good day for a controlled burn at all.

When my wife returned from the 5 hr drive to the airport to Albuquerque & back, she was receiving evacuation orders. She told me this when I landed in Palm Springs & I called her. Nothing I could do, unless I wanted to become a fugitive once again in my life, so I proceeded with the scheduled plan & I got a ride from the airport to a truck I had left behind so I could have some wheels to deal with this last court stipulation. I went & got fitted for the ankle bracelet & had it set for the Wonder Valley property. I did my 30 days all while my wife & now 1 yr old & the 2 dogs were all fire refugees together in a 2 bedroom apartment in Santa Fe with her mom. I ran back just in time to get an evacuation notice as well after we tried to go back to the property. The Hermit’s Peak fire burned for months, threatening the ridge next to us multiple times. We’ve been hanging on up in the Sangre de Christo ever since then, 2022, until I went & busted my ribs on Thanksgiving Day in 2024 playing football with my grandsons in Phoenix. I was hospitalized for a while & they found an ascending aortic aneurysm while I was there. My wife had to bring the dogs out & we stayed in a friend of a friend’s air bnb for a month by the airport near Tempe. I could barely move & the thought of dying became a preoccupation as the doctors couldn’t resolve my condition. I started this Substack during that time. When I was cleared to travel & we returned to New Mexico in January of 2025 & I was told that I needed to be within 15 minutes of a heart specialty surgery center in case my aneurysm dissected. We rented a spot in Albuquerque for a year, but before we could move Loki developed stomach cancer that quickly spread & he had bleeding sores & bulging tumors all across his stomach soon. He did not make it & I buried him on a five acre plot of land I had purchased with what was left of my money. We moved to the city with just Disa & she began to show signs of spinal issues & we had her x-rayed & it showed a severe arthritic condition with painful inflammation issues so she was put on steroids. She did not like being in the backyard of Albuquerque, but we were stuck there, as I developed some painful prostate issues & it was determined I needed surgery to remove growths that were expanding my prostate more than 10 times its normal size. The surgery was not fun, but the good news was all the growth that was removed was benign. The size of my aneurysm held for a year, which allowed me to move back up to the property with the familia last June. Disa started to deteriorate, but she loved the open space. She went all summer being a gentle nanny to Eva, who was now 5. She had been there for Eva since she was born & Eva was starting to be able to really handle her. We no longer had to put Disa on a line or make sure the fencing could hold her. She was still overtly prey obsessed, but she was unable to chase or hunt anymore. As the summer ended, I could see her light fading & the pain plains over.

On Tuesday we had to drop Eva off at school & take Disa to the vet, who immediately concurred she should suffer no more. Her journey ended & we brought her back to the farm. I had already dug her grave next to Loki’s the night before. I was pretty certain this was going to be the outcome, my wife was certain as well. Disa had always been closer to her than Loki in many ways. She loved them both, in her words they had prepared her to be a mother, but Disa was always at her side & consoled her if she was upset. The loss of Disa hit pretty hard. The way her life hung the edge & she didn’t let go for nothing until it all just hit her at once. It was not a hard decision, really, to end our dog’s suffering, but it has been hard to let go of the energy these dogs brought into our lives. The chaos, the imminent sense that a calamity could happen if we were not vigilant at all times. having a creature that you felt might fight to the death for you, but not wanting to put that to the test because you wanted them to be safe, you would rather protect them than risk them protecting you. It’s been almost 10 years with these dogs, dogs that were part of a lineage of dogs I was connected to since I was a small child. Dogs that taught me how to stand & walk as a developing infant by allowing me to grab onto their haunches. Dogs that taught me birth of life & the loss thru mortality as my first real life lesson that sometimes haunts me late at night now.

‘Not all the puppies make it.’

That is the way it is. You got to love while you still have time anyway you can.

You have to remember to cherish the moments, honor those who honor you. Look out for those who need looking out for & try not to make it too difficult for those who are looking out for you.

There is a balance there sometimes. If you can find it try to examine your life for as long as you can in the wonder that it deserves. Look to the sky, then to the horizon, then look at all the detail that surrounds you in any given moment & behold the wonder of it all, try to never lose that wonder.

‘Not all the puppies make it.’

But, maybe you can make it for now.

The Cold Prairie Wind that Finds Me Shielded by Technology for Now

this is not the first 
or the last time
we used each
other
           for a means
of
survival
although 
it would seem
neither 
               of us
survived
that well
so maybe
we should
disengage 
& try to
figure out
a better 
solution
for the
both of us
                    for a change

i sold my soul to walk
on the ceiling
because sales were lagging
as god had risen the day before
in the form of a murphy bed
still a little bit rusty
yet, holy nonetheless
i’ve got texture dust
raining up my nostrils
& now i am an angelic white
erupting with twelve heads
as the polished maidens will be dancing
in the courtyard at noon
& the oak tree will play
an angry concerto on the E flute
i will be in attendance along with many
who will remain immortal everlastic
blessed be our utensils &
the public address system
that will serve as an early
warning device
i have taken the opportunity
to get my business cards ready
when they signal for 
the first accident
to occur
randomly
(self-fulfilling prophecy has always been my specialty
as i raise a boast to the toasted imperials)
we are imposed
for business

 The Quiet Between the Storm Fronts

it all falls as it falls, then it stops
gravity always at the ready, to
bring about the wringing
of all the heavens above &
splash it down across the
drought stricken lands
hydrophobic as they
cry out for more
even though 
they can’t
drink
enough
to stop the 
floods from 
spreading out
like fingers of death
in order to bring back 
whatever life can muster
up inside of the raging sheets 
of terrified water
                                 none of it certain
if this is the right 
progression of seasonal change
or if this is how it all ends for
the misguided patterns that
cannot find the pathway 
toward what used to 
pass as life forms 
on a schedule 
ever adapted 
to survival 
thinking 
to ourselves 
we have broken 
what cannot be fixed
maybe we should just
blow it all up & see how
the pieces fall back together 
(If it even still includes ‘us’)
& we take a deep breath 
as we look skyward
for an answer
                            that 
never comes
but, 
we know
that the next front
is coming for us
just the same

Process #1

let in the fullness of it all
fear may block the necessary
so let go completely with all
the dizzying effects that
come with that

layer overwhelming joy over fear
over hope over anger over love
over grief over heat over pain
over cold over sex over piss
over hurt over burn over lust
over think over blood over hunger
over lost over wander over all over lovers
over war over birth over murders over sick
over spasm over tears over semen over egg
over feast over over famine over shit over hugs
over moans over groans over laughter over cries
again & again & again & again & again & again
until       until      until     until      until      until

work with the words in essence
work with the sound in assonance
work with the tempo in time & edit
rewind edit rewind edit rewind
until the reels smoke from 
spinning 
               wildly in your mind

now focus hard on it macro in thought
 now step back to a wide shot of the big picture

grab a hold of something that you hate
   keep it close
let go of something that you love &
   never get it back
push out demons & angels alike
invite whatever walks by in the darkness
  to come into your light
    let it examine you
       as much as
          you will
           examine
                          it
      truncate &
expand
             simultaneously
with an
assured vision
that is your truth in all total
every word in line in break in pause
in running thought as it slows to dripping
ceasaura
forming into droplets of sounds of phonetics of languages
acutely desire of itself as it is yours in truth & in style
as it should bbe at this point of no return

pass it on like this if you can & be ready to take it
back in a moments notice on the chin
to run it through the raw breakdown 
of the constantly turning mill
in your mind
once more
to work it into something more accurate
 for the next moment
to be more mathematically correct in its estimation
  of your
unguarded soul as it sits in the center of your body
somewhere between your mind & your heart
telling on your truth as if to snitch you
out to the last bit of love you can
find along the terrible road
to creation

now
get to work
make something else
before you get caught
waiting on praise that
never meant shit to
the source of your truth
in the first place
_   _


Process #2

bang into the fragile
smash all that is fake
break all that can be 
broken
for the sake of it
bring them back
with honeyed words
chosen wisely
send them running
with vinegar venom
spit it out in anger
lament the loss
in sadness so 
deep it echoes
bring them back
with lust so hot
it burns like flame
a raging fire
lit as last resort
to keep from
freezing 
to death

stand alone
for a moment
to acknowledge
what you have done
without forgiveness
to take it all in
then wait for a sign
to move forward
into a new beginning
you must create
through an amends
that you must live out
no matter how much pain
you will suffer

_    _    _

Process #3

sing in celebration
dance in celebration
love in celebration

the same way
you once 
fucked for lustful glory
fucked for all it was worth
fucked like you might
get paid for it
if you were good
if you were a whore for it
it doesn’t matter
if you needed to do it
& you did it, then
you did it
the way a blade is
sharpened against 
a stone
cooled &
lubricated
by the water 
of eternal life 

even though
you once
killed to be righteous
killed to be glorified
killed to eliminate
the basest fears
of living
of dying
of being 
discovered
as unworthy
in the face
of your enemies
relentless charge

spare money to make the world more thrifty
spare lives to make mercy your creed
spare attention to detail in order
to preserve a basic truth
about yourself
guard all of this sparingly
as it will serve you in times of famine
when the muse no longer seems to care
to guide you further
when her hand is missing from your heart
when nothing can be conjured
on the coldest nights alone
or in the hottest drought
of a burning sun
drying up
blistering
scorching
  the last 
essence
of your
evaporating life
as it become sand & dust
to be blown away by the breath
of a laughing muse
who is now
& finally
  done
with you

the approaching equinox & edged patterns unfolding 


a tear travels down a cheek
fleas slowly abandon a dead 
                                                             mouse
lightning strikes the horizon as
hail pounds the meager harvest
meant to stave off the famine as
the moon bathed in shades of blood 
& we dreamt of falling into dark pits of
nothingness where light will fade from view
& there is something coming closer that we
cannot comprehend in this state of 
                                                mindlessness
      that pulls at our jagged 
                     heart strings 
           which are
dangling
    just above 
                 the empty space we once
                                                             knew as love

Subverted Perspective 

how long ago now
hard to count
things being
what they
are
       life has 
  gone on
one
       step
              after
              another 
into an
unknown 
                  with less
            & less
                        predictability 
       as if that
ever really 
                     was
                possible 
aside from
the safe bets 
& random 
outcomes
                    that were sold
to us all
                as
                providence 
divine &
                 otherwise 
still, 
          it can be
said
         a stance was
                       always
                 taken
        against 
  this
whatever
                   it may be
          to you
       just
  at least
know this
                   much
that
it has been 
                      resisted
even when
                      it was 
                pushed
         down on
   us by
brutal 
            force
those 
of us
           who never
            broke
                        deep
                                  inside 
we have something 
that sets us apart 
that most of you
who went along
for whatever
                         reason 
in whatever 
                       fashion
will never
                    understand 
no matter
how much
explaining 
you ask me
                       to do

The concept of death entered the conversation with my 5 yr old daughter a week ago in a most profound way. I had decided to take her into Las Vegas (the OG Las Vegas in New Mexico) for a Sunday breakfast at Charlie’s Spic & Span, christmas salsa on the huevos & all that, while my daughter opted for the sopapilla con honey, she has a real sweet tooth. On the way back to the ranchito we rolled along the 518 thru the hills & trees that demarcated the Sangre de Christo from the prairies. As we pulled into the last town on our way, I saw two sheriff’s vehicles with lights flashing blocking the road, so I diverted to the dirt road that ran along the Mora River & dropped into town at its only crossroads. I then encountered another blocked road, this time by two game warden trucks, as the militarized Federal agents stood in alert positions around a perimeter that, as I looked closer, held what appeared to be a body of some kind toward the right side of the road, covered in what appeared to be a tarp of some kind. The vehicle in front of me made an immediate u-turn & I was at the edge of the perimeter with a game warden in full combat regalia & an M4 at his chest resting on his body armor while he was standing to my left fender. I immediately thought it must be the body of a bear underneath the tarp that had come into town & had been threatening in a way that they felt they had to dispatch it right there in the road. The bears have not had a good summer at all & they have been coming into properties & homes & there have been folks getting injured, even a couple of fatalities. As I sat there behind the wheel & placed my vehicle in park, a chilling realization hit me. That was not a bear underneath that tarp in the road. It was a person & we were at the edge of a murder scene. My daughter began to ask me what was going on & I told her that there was some kind of accident, but I didn’t know what it was, we might be here for a moment. I was not sure what to say, but she is very good at her inquisitory skills at this point, so she began assessing the scene herself & noticed the tarp in the road. She was questioning it & I was juggling the best way to respond in my head when I saw the tamale lady on the passenger side of my vehicle & I rolled down my window to ask her if she noticed what had transpired from her roadside perch.

“Qué onda, jefíta?”

I immediately observed she was about to start crying. She choked out a wavering, “Mi sobrina”, as her voice skipped, then “murió trágicamente.”

I held my hand out & she grabbed it, “Lamento mucho so pérdida, más sentido pésame.”

My spanish is not the greatest, but the words came the same as I heard them spoken many times before in my life. It was her niece under the tarp in the road with the heat beating down all around us. As she let go of my hand to dry her eyes, three statey vehicles showed up to relieve the federal game agents. The ‘staties’, as they are referred to locally, have black SUV’s with distinct white roofs on them & wear the ‘Smokey the Bear’ campaign hats with piping down the side of their pants. Very over dressed for the occasion, but more welcome vitally than the current militarized version of police officers everywhere these days. My daughter has now begun to ask about the person who died, not so much ‘who is it’, but, ‘what did they feel in their last moment?’ ‘where is their spirit going to?’ (thanks, Ghibli) ‘can they see us now?’ ‘are they near us as a ghost now?’ I tried to be as gentle as possible with each answer. I had known this day was coming since one of our dogs died last year & she has even asked me about my own mortality since then. Having a father as old as I am makes her more curious about the subject. I want to respect her curiosity & be as thoughtful as possible with my answers. The questions have been coming on like an avalanche since that day, so it has been a recurring topic in our talks. Now I have just received word that Dolly Parton has passed on. My daughter was in Dolly Parton’s book club for kids since she was a year old until the cut off after she turned 5. She loves her Dolly Parton books, she recounts every month she received one. A little over a year ago she had taken to creating ‘thank you’ messages to Dolly for the books & all she does for the other kids, too. I am writing this knowing there will be more talks when she gets picked up from her school today.

So, the driest, hottest summer in the Sangre de Christo is coming to an end. The beginning of that end has been marked by a severe hailstorm. It destroyed a lot of crops & all of our vehicles & equipment that was exposed. Even my oldest neighbor, maybe 101, I don’t know for sure, she says it is the biggest hail she has ever seen up here in her lifetime. I am dealing with the aftermath & trying to save as much of my three sisters garden as I can. Most of the corn has developed, it is just finishing, so it hurts when whole stalks get taken out & it takes the bean plant with it before both are ready for harvest. I am trying to feed myself & my family with this crop, as I am out of money, & any setback to it means less food for the next couple of months. Riding the climate dragon as it sails up & down the last 10 years has been difficult to experience & even harder to watch so many people these days faced with the same circumstances we faced almost 9 yrs ago when we lost everything in the Santa Rosa wildfires in California. We have been on a long trip of what has been shifting of various degrees of refugee status ever since. It is only since June that we have finally ended up on this small parcel that I was able to purchase a few years ago. We live in a tiny home on wheels situation that has been an adjustment, but not having to pay a rent or mortgage for the first time in a long, long time has been a relief, especially with me not being able to work. I have not had a lot of time to write as much as I would like, several novel manuscripts languishing, a collection of poems & a collection of short stories completed, but needing a final edit by me before I send them to the editor that will bring them home. I want to finish as much writing as I can, but I also don’t feel any anxious pressure about writing anymore. I figure I just have to have it put together enough & saved in back up (a painful lesson the wildfires taught me 9 yrs ago) so that it can be used by my family posthumously if they wish to try & get it published. I don’t have any life insurance so that might be the only potential payout to help ease the absence of this hustler. Either way, it is beyond my control these days. I got enough on my plate trying to bring this food harvest in & preparing for the winter ahead.

I will say, regarding the death of the woman on the road that day, that my instincts were confirmed later in when I was told how the young woman had been shot by a man driving a vehicle she was a passenger in as it left the gas station (which was across the street from where we were stopped by the roadblock) & then she was pushed out onto the road & hit by oncoming traffic in the opposite direction lane. It happened just moments before I encountered the closed road by the sheriff’s vehicles further down the road. It turns out the deputies had chased the man who shot & dumped the woman into oncoming traffic & in turn shot him about a 1/2 mile down the road. That was the scene I had driven into with my daughter that afternoon. We were held for 4 hours at that road stop & then had to backtrack thru Angel Fire & then back down to Taos & then up to Sipapu & back down into Mora Valley to access the dirt road to our ranchito. It was almost 8 hours of driving & answering questions about life & death with my 5 yr old & trying to find a delicate way to explain to her that she should never get into a vehicle with a stranger, especially a man, all while thinking about how someone had lost a daughter, sister, mother in such a tragic way & that I had to do everything I could with whatever life I had left to make sure my daughter would not end up under a tarp on the road after giving her last breath after such trauma as this woman had endured. The next day we went to the road where the woman’s body had laid in front of us for hours. My daughter had a makeshift bouquet of flowers in her hand that she had picked from the flower garden. There was already a descanso set up on the curb next to where the woman’s body had lain the day before. I let my daughter go place her shorts under the photograph & flower arrangements already there. We stood in a long moment of silence while daughter looked at the woman’s picture.

“She is beautiful, papa, I hope she won’t feel pain anymore.”

I took her hand & led her back to my truck. That night I wept before I went to sleep for the woman & for my daughter & for all the children I have ever let down & not been able to protect in this life, my own & anyone else’s.

~ ~ ~

My partner in publishing, , has finished editing & putting out a book written by Nicca Ray that has been a true labor of love while she went thru a lot of ups & downs trying to keep Punk Hostage Press going on her own the last few years. My incapacitation has made it a full time job for her, while she is already working a full time job & navigating plenty of family dilemmas in the mean time. My hat definitely goes off to her for this effort & this untimely book, written by Nicca Ray, daughter of film director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) & dancer Betty Uitti, which focuses on Nicca’s relationship with her mother & the tumultuous times of her Hollywood upbringing. It’s a well crafted memoir that has a noir feel to it & showcases Nicca’s writing abilities very well. There is a Q&A with Allison Anders in Santa Monica at the Ruskin Group Theater on September 13th @ 7pm hosted by Library Girl founder .

You can find Nicca Ray’s new book & peruse other titles here: Punk Hostage Press

~ ~ ~

Keep Keeping On…Peace…

sustenance from dirt & rare spring water

poke holes in the caliche with fingers

feel the grit go under the fingernail

place a different seed in each hole

in the ancient grandmother pattern

these three sisters will work together

even in the most arid of desolate times

carry water from the spring every morning

the earlier you arise, the less you fight the sun

make prayers from stones you form around them

these sisters all working together in an ancient dance

building up to a harvest in a ceremonial transaction of life

granted by a creator that does not know you if you cannot

follow the path laid out so simple as these seeds planted with

only the intention to bring together three living daughters that will

only sacrifice as much as you are willing to sacrifice to be one with them

Bemused by Ecological Relationalism

the fight has always been 
to find a new way to
reckon a new course
to balance the scales

while so much is 
being weighed 
so much 
heaviness 
that we realize 

in moments, simultaneous 
there are not enough 
scales or 
                  fulcrum
                  points 
not right
now
         when we need them 
so
so
      desperately 
to
be
functional 
as a life form 
again
             to return
             to a course
where
we might
reconnect 
with our species
as we become 
a new species 

& who would we fault
if we cannot find it in
ourselves 
                    in the place it
was left
                 by
                 all of
                 the last
                 species 
that it 
took
to
get us
             all of us
       this far
just
so

we might be able to
struggle together 
& move this love
into the next dimension 

where it will become 
a new love that we could
never dream was possible 

before
now

the force that we look upon every day

we bare witness 
over & over
every night
every day

we see the infliction
spreading 
as we look down
at our own scars

we see the slow motion
breaking apart
of reality 
the neglected reason
the hybrid 
untruthfulness 
the absence of 
many things
we can all feel
is missing 

we see it over & over
again & again
each time
we go on
another ride
down our own
collective rabbit holes

they lay it out for us
neatly packaged 
news infotainment 
we feel informed 
in shallow 
emotional 
blackmail 
with every bite
that is fed out
into the electronic
social oblivion machine 

we lose our senses
we lose our way
maybe even
we lose our souls
that we barely can
recognize 
after all this 
barrage 

sometimes we shake
uncontrollably 
when no one
can see

sometimes we weep
& we are not sure
why

sometimes we feel like
we might all be able
to come together 
& end this
as a whole
people

but, then we see it
the cosmic joke
that in clear
moments 
we realize 
is on us

& we don’t know 
what to do about it
aside from looking
for an escape plan
that has never really 
gotten us away
from this

& we see it
over & over
again & again 
& we know it
won’t stop

so we know
we can never
stop
either

but, we see it
we keep seeing it
& by the natural
process 
of elimination 
as much as we
keep seeing it 

we keep feeling 
it
as well

_ _ _

The sunset was beautiful, dropping down behind the clouds, just above the fog bank, out past the Farallones as I watched from that part of the California coast line I had come to know so well in my lifetime.

The thought that I was never going to see it again was hard to digest right then. I was torn inside over my plans to leave this place and never return, if I could help it.

The main reason this was so discomforting, was because I was the only person that knew what my true intention would be when I boarded the plane at Oakland International Airport the following morning.

I had decided it would be the only way I stood a chance in making it out of here and getting a head start on what was quickly becoming an imploding existence.

I had to make my move now, or face the consequences of a lifetime of crime. Mainly the crime that I could never agree with against a plant that was only a threat to an oppressive social order which I had been at odds with my whole life. But, I had picked up a few other criminal behaviors along the way to get to the point where I was standing during the glorious sunset I was beholding as it shimmered off the ocean beyond the sea cliff I was standing on.

It had come to this, as I always knew it might, and now that I was faced with the prospect of leaving my homeland and never returning, living the rest of my life as an expatriate fugitive, I was finding it difficult to embrace this fate without an amplified internal pain and anguish.

It was the eve of the first day of July, in 2004, the last of June had been too severe inside my head and I was trying to keep moving through it as best I could. I had been trying to do damage control on my life since early in the morning on March 22, when I had been arrested in Marin County for a multitude of offenses and was released on bail the next day. I had been trying to mount a defense to the charges, which could bring about a possible three strikes conviction, and continue to make enough money to keep my life and my business moving forward. I had retained a renowned Attorney-at-Law to help with my defense, but even his prognostics were that I would do 10 years before parole would be allowed on a 20-year sentence. It was a difficult outcome to accept. I had done it to myself. I had been sloppy and distracted on the night in question. I got caught slipping, as they say.

I had made the selling of contraband, first and foremost the products of the cannabis plant, but along the way every other mind-altering substance imaginable, my number one achievement in life. I had started slow, as a kid in San Bernardino, CA, (Berdoo or Verdugo, depending on your prison affiliation) and worked my way up, on my terms, taking every opportunity that felt right, by my guidelines, until it had taken me all over the world and been about the only thing I had to show for a whole lifetime. It was a lifetime that seemed about to be over, either in a last stand, or on a lonely prison yard, or, if I could pull off one last escape and vanish into another existence, an erasure of everything I had done, good or bad, as i lived out the rest of my life in some distant place where no one would ever know who I had been before.

Anyway it was sliced, life, as I had known it, was over. I could go no further as myself, except to certain death. Ten years in prison meant a commitment to put in the work necessary to make it there. I had been in before for briefer periods and I knew what would be required of me. I would either be killed for the slightest mistake, or I would have to kill and assure that my stay was permanent in order to survive. I was going to walk away from my life and who I was and the world I knew just to be able to survive without going to prison. It was steep consequences, but I had cheated death and life in prison for a long time; my path had become finite, I was certain this was the end of the road. Fleeing now and living life on the run forever was my only chance, my last chance, at any hope for any kind of freedom, no matter if it was a guarded freedom for a fake persona I would have to assume. I knew it was a slim chance, which was why it had to be executed with the utmost discipline possible.

I drove back to my humble compound on the sea cliff above Drake’s Bay, north of the Golden Gate, to begin my last preparations without tipping off anyone as to my intentions. I had made plans to go to Las Vegas for the 4th of July weekend, where I would meet with an old associate who had obtained a new identity and a fake Canadian passport that would get me passage anywhere I needed to go. I planned on driving from Vegas down through Arizona and into Mexico with the paperwork and flying out of Mexico to Amsterdam, where I had some cash reserves and the opportunity to slip into a new ID and even deeper into obscurity.

None of it would matter if I did not make it to the airport in the morning and slip onto the plane for Vegas undetected and without raising the suspicions of my friends, family and colleagues as well. No one could know so there would be no chance of any information being given to any questions that authorities might ask that would help them trace my movements. I would not only be skipping out on the indictment of charges, but a substantial bail amount that had no real collateral. I knew that taking flight would lead to bounty hunters that would want to collect the quarter-million as well as the State automatically filing conspiracy charges on top of the current indictment. This would also interest the Feds, who had previously had me in their grasp, and enable them to launch a RICO investigation that they could easily make stick in my absence. Once I was on the plane to Vegas I was violating every agreement with the court and the bail bondsmen. There was no going back, as I would be an international fugitive the moment the plane taxied. The only thing in my favor was that I would be the first to know, the only one to know, at least, until I failed to appear in court that Tuesday in the space age courthouse of Marin County designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

I had come to hate that building and all it symbolized to me. It was haunting my nightmares along with all the ghosts of friends and enemies who had not escaped the fate that had set upon me. I was especially tormented those last few days up until now and I had given to remedy the torment in my usual, familiar fashion. A mixture of weed wrapped in tobacco leaf, cognac, cocaine, heroin to steady my nerves. I chewed family size bottles of Tums every couple of days. I couldn’t sleep well, and waking anxiety was too much, so I needed to go from one state of intoxication to the next to keep up the front that I was doing what I had to do to get by. I downplayed as much as possible, if I was too uncomfortable I went for the next thing that would work. Needless to say, packing was difficult under those circumstances.

Candi had been staying at my place Venice Beach, CA when I had been pinched by the Sherriff with a trunk full of drugs and a loaded weapon back in March. She had come back to Marin County and helped coordinate the bail with my friends and spent time with me while I was going to court appearances and talking to lawyers. I think she sensed something was a bit awkward about my sudden plan to go to Vegas for the weekend right before a court date, but I was not the most stable person to judge, mostly by design, to begin with.

She was going along with helping me pack and agreed to drive me to the airport. I figured she was getting a car out of it and she would probably get something out of my business associates, so it wouldn’t be all bad for her.

I reasoned it all out as best I could and was clumsily trying to decide what I would take for the trip to Vegas. I had some very excellent MDMA that I would want to do with the two women from NYC that were picking me up at McCarran Airport. They were going to have coke and hop at the room they had reserved at the MGM Grand, but I didn’t want to be without at any point, so I was bringing an eight-ball of blow and 3 grams of tar to make sure I always had something and never had to wait on anything. The idea of waiting or going without was unacceptable to me: I had seen this happen to many others and the results were never positive.

I had been making my own hashish for many years and had mastered a technique called “bubble bag” using cold water, ice and several layers of mesh screens that produce a high quality hash that was more akin to chunks of compressed kif. This was like the champagne of cannabis products and I wanted to take the last two grams of my best batch with me to smoke in Mexico, after I crossed the border. It was some sentimental consolation prize I had sold myself on and anything that felt uplifting was useful in that moment, so I clung to it like a life preserver as dark waves were trying to take me under inside my mind.

I hid the MDMA and the hash in the bag I was going to check. It was a Southwest afternoon flight to Las vegas from Oakland, not the most scrutinized flight in the airport, usually more than a couple of rowdy revelers on their way to go blow their retirement and their children’s college fund into oblivion, along with as many brain cells as possible, I should not stand out at all. I picked out some clothes and packed them as well. I picked out what I would wear to the airport, making sure the shorts had cargo pockets that I could fit a half ounce of weed in. I knew all I had to do was stay in line and be patient as it moved along so as to not attract attention and I could carry the coke, heroin and weed on my person. The hype kit I would hide in a metal sunglass case that I would put through the x- ray with my cell phone, belt buckle, change, pen, lighter and keys all right next to it.

The hype kit was just a couple of cotton swabs, bent spoon and 2 syringes. Laid on its side it would not look any different than wire rimmed sunglasses.

I proceeded to spend most of the night in a bathrobe and thick socks, listening to music, taking showers after sex with Candi, looking at pictures of loved ones and then watching porn on the big screen. I had a couple of anxiety attacks while dwelling on the idea that my ex-wife might see me in Vegas, which were complete delusion, but I still had to make heroin-heavy speed balls each time to combat the anxiety. I couldn’t let Candi know there was anything too out of the ordinary. It was like Moses trying to pretend to be Mohammed at a Jesus party.

At 5:30 am, Candi and I got into the shower the last time and by 6:00 am I was packed into the car with her and ready to go. We drove out of town and along the edge of the placid lagoon while it was still dark, with the slight aurora of dawn’s first trickle above the mountains silhouette. I was trying to keep my concentration as best I could on the road as I drove up the winding mountain road. The drive was hard to do and I couldn’t climax getting road head as we drove over the mountain. “It’s just the drugs, baby, it’s not you.” I told her.

At the 7-11 on the other side, before we got on the freeway, I let her take the wheel and I conceded to the passenger seat. One last stop in the gas station bathroom at Tam Junction, before the freeway entrance was upon me, to get one last fix in Marin County. I had to so I could stay calm on the ride to the airport. I had one full syringe for my airport arrival. I would not be able to fix again until I got onto the Southwest jet plane headed for Las Vegas at 9:15 am.

As we drove over the bridge I suppressed every emotion I was feeling and just sat motionless. I looked out the passenger window at the San Francisco Bay one last time as we drove over the Richmond Bridge. The sun was just coming up and the currents in the water were like deep slashes into obsidian flesh; they moved and undulated like some mating of psychedelic snakes rolling through a pool of oil. It was sadly beautiful. I had to not feel it at all; I had to act as if I would be back Monday. I would be in Vegas by noon if everything went as planned. Then, hopefully, I would be in Mexico by Monday night, never to return again, forever and ever.

The car was getting close to the Oakland International Airport terminal, so I pulled out my last syringe. The Southwest Terminal was the last one on the right. I knew, from experience, that if she pulled past the Terminal, there was an area just to the right that she could pull over and I could fix real quick, then bounce out of the car and into the line for baggage check. The line was out the door. It was very crowded with people this morning. There was a huge amount of security as well. The terror alert was high that weekend. I was locked into what I was doing, no turning back now.

I kissed Candi good-bye without giving away that something was different from all the airport turnarounds she had previously dropped me off on.

“I’ll see you on Monday when you come to pick me up, have a great time at the beach party, I gonna miss you.”

The urge to be sentimental was there, behind every word, but I played it cool enough, she winked at me and revved the engine.

I rushed over to the line with the bags and was grateful the sun was up high enough to warrant sunglasses. The line snaked around and was full of impatient and cranky people. It was a good cover for me, at least, or so I hoped. I made it through and then checked the bags and received my gate number. I recognized it as one of the farthest gates on the concourse. I proceeded over to the security check line to gain access to the concourse and all of the gates for boarding. As I approached the x-ray scan I placed all my metal items into the plastic bin and waited to be instructed to slide it into the machine. I then slowly walked through the metal detectors and was waived on. I picked up my bin as it came down the rolling wheels and put all my effects back together.

It had been so excruciatingly long of period of time that I even considered going into the bathroom to do a shot. I looked at the clock and knew that my plane was boarding. I would have to do my next shot at altitude on the way to Las Vegas in the tiny mile high lavatory. I was planning on that anyway. I walked a brisk pace to the gate where my plane was boarding and presented my boarding pass. The girl looked at me for a brief moment and then went to scan the bar code on the boarding pass. As she did so, I looked down into the gangway that led onto the jet and I could see the inside of the plane through the portal that I would soon be walking into for my final escape. People were entering the open door and being greeted by the stewardesses. I was almost there.

I turned back to the girl who had just scanned the pass and I began to notice a change in her demeanor as she looked up at me with an instantly quixotic look and then looked down as she scanned it again.

On the second scan I noticed that the beep was significantly different that the other beeps coming from other scanners around us. I looked into the changing expression on her face and was about to ask her what was wrong went I noticed that she began to slowly shrink away as everything began to go into slow motion. I could feel adrenaline hit my bloodstream. Time was moving in fractions of seconds. I was assessing the moment, I had to not panic, but I could feel a surge of blood and clarity. The next fraction I realized that this was not anger at her inability, but that my perception had picked up something behind me. The next moment I realized her reaction confirmed it. I instinctively spun on my heel to confront whatever was closing in behind me.

The butt of an M-4 caught me in the chest as I made the turn into it. The slow motion almost stopped completely as everything went dim. The shock of pain and the sudden loss of air was so intense, I did not notice that I had crumpled onto the carpet until a moment later when I could finally take my first gasp for air. The shooting pain in my right wrist and both ankles was evidence that I was being stood on with boots. I could not move, anyway. I was done in and was like a rag doll in the hands that grabbed at me as commands were yelled at me. I could not make out the words. I was limp, unable to move anything. I could see the spiral grooves of the muzzle closest to my head. They disappeared up into the barrel that elongated into a man in desert fatigues and a black beret. “Don’t you fucking move a finger!” was what he seemed to say. I just laid there staring up at him as manacles were being ratcheted to my wrists and ankles. It finally hit me. I was caught. It was over, but how? I was reeling in my head. This could not be real. How did they know? Then I remembered the girl moments before. The boarding pass wouldn’t scan. They had made me from a distance somehow. Then the thought hit me just as the Homeland Security officer told me I had violated the Patriot Act and that I was a “detainee” of the U.S. Military.

I was hoisted up in the chains and forced to march in the chains back down the long concourse I had just come down to get to the final departure point. I began to realize I was in the kind of trouble you never get out of. It was game over, no escape, no more hope. I was done in at last.

They paraded me past all the 4th of July passengers who moved out of the way of my military entourage and I met the judgment in their stare with a beaten look that just seemed to draw more contempt. I saw parents draw their children closer; I saw the fear in the children’s eyes as they clutched at their parents’ bodies. I looked back up at the faces of the parents and adults. They would have easily started their Independence Day weekend with a lynching right there in the airport.

I was trying to march, overwhelmed inside with a building shame that was beginning to drown out the physical pain. I thought of what a failure I had been as a parent up until then. These children all had eyes like my own children had. My children that I was not known to, that I was abandoning twice over. I felt the emotions of my own inequities hit me with a landslide.

I was captured in an airport in a way that I would not or could not escape. I had failed in every lie I had told to get that far, every subterfuge I had implemented, I was not going to make it, so it all became a lie in that moment. Every promise I had ever made to anyone, even to myself, was undone and made into a lie. I had not made it through the one thing I had known was the most important thing I had ever committed to. The endgame that had hovered over my life for many years, the last exit, was closed and finished. The hardest sacrifice I thought I would ever make was snatched from the jaws of certainty in my blurred tunnel vision of reality. I was unable to cope with the feeling, but I could not let them see me cry, not now, not like this. I had to keep something for myself to hold onto. I was losing everything. I had lost; I was lost. For good, this time.

A. Razor reads ‘Patriotic’ circa 1991

https://youtu.be/O1TL-cBltfs?is=3xfdh-FZ2AWBT6EM

every little particle illuminates 
the entirety of a lifetime 
as it flickers behind
eyes that have
seen the
whole
of it
extruded
thru soul shaking
revelations spiraling
downward upon us from
an adversarial plateau that
orbits around our celestial spirit
as it glides across the silver shadowed
glycerine dreams of what was & what might
yet to be, 
with all the missing pieces accounted for
as we move forward, darkness just being
one more contrast that we tearfully 
embrace as a steward of our soul
that rockets thru the cosmos
thinking of us, alone against
a world 
of smashed rock & oceans
meeting somewhere 
in a distance
we’ve been to
but still, this blued
hued desert
is our reckoning
on a lunar wind
lost in time

Petroleum

I can remember the smell
of industry
on my father’s clothes
the smell of petroleum
that lingered
in the air of the room
when he would return home
from a long day of work

that smell
that strong odor
that burning stench
it meant our family would 
eat, live and survive

but, I remember the feeling 
that odorous vapors
would always be with him
like an invisible demon
that kept him captive
as though its 
flammable capability 
wanted him never to forget
his schedule
his duties
his indentured servitude 

I can remember having 
nightmares 
since i was very young
where I would picture my father
trying to escape the petroleum 
monstrosity 
by climbing to the top 
of a high mountain peak 
but, the monstrosity followed him
closely as always
I knew in these visions
it would never let him 
out of its invisible grasp

and as he reached the top 
and stood up to touch the sky
he let out a loud scream
of tumultuous agony 
and began tearing off
his company uniform
completely disrobing
and screaming out
for an absent god’s help

his yells seemed to ignite 
the monstrous vapor

huge flames leapt skyward
above his head and outstretched arms
completely engulfing his shape
everything becoming flames

I climbed as close as I could 
as close as the heat would allow 
and when i could go no further
I saw on the ground before me
my father’s steel toed work shoes
they were all that was left of him
and I picked them up, cradling them
in my arms as they burned my flesh
and I noticed how they still stank 
of sweat and hard labor
but, no more of petroleum

he had purged the demon
with his own life
and I knew in this
nightmarish vision 
it was the only way 
he would ever escape it

it was the only way
he would ever be free

it was out of this fear
that I was forced to love
the smell of petroleum
but, never as much
as I loved my father

that old song plays inside the mind
hum along to it, make your way to
it, let it fill your ears with unheard
sounds for anyone but you__let
yourself go with the rhythm of
the winding path that takes 
you deep down inside to
a place you once were
where it was peaceful
& painless__where it
all floated along on
sunbeams & gentle
breeze that came 
from just behind
you__blowing
straight off-
shore as the
path turned
up ahead
into some
trees &
the sun
slowly 
sank
into
the
sea