Spotlight turning in the desert
An unnamed mountain range, or at least I don’t know it,
dark shoulder against the blue felt flannel sky
Stray white wool in the sky
Desert wine leave a gritty chalk
against the teeth
Scorched minerals, sandstone and shale
on the tongue

There was a pack of dogs padlocked
in a squat run of chicken wire
and listing plywood
They scrabbled and growled and yelped against each other
a deeper bass than the coyotes
squealing in the dirt of 29 Palms
Stray barks, stray shots from the range
A muffled pop and echoing cracks
And the stars thickening like curdled milk
Like waves frothing over the drowned moon.

And here will hang your entrance arm
bent grotesque against a dizzied and melting spine
The Sun was too high to spill your diamond-tipped, quasimodo shadow
along the starved concrete
Mesa and Mountain and horizon were rendered flat in the shadowless air
dimensionless and enclosed save the gaping maw

The sickening gorge spun below rust-gnawed steel
nothing holds up the bridge but span itself
Below, brown tongue licks banks of broken teeth
rows of them as deep as great whites’
Froth and spittle
pool amongst the raw bores and crags, the rotten gums,
which the slavered tongue probes with silver lace
before it flows beyond cracked lips rouged with ochre and grey.

Black satin nooses slipped in the rail-slit wind
The bars were too low for some

Where could love flutter above suspense of such ravenous, tectonic jaws
a rift that does not abide foot-borne crossing
hand-in-hand or single file
The new-aged, New-Made Man should have left it impassable
what defeat in the long way round
as long as we make it

I feel wasted by this life
I feel faded in this life
I feel this kid adrift in his time
Feelin’ like he’s drifting away from his core tip
Caught up in the hustle of some adultishness
Feeling like some adult shift on the horizon, but not quite glimpsed
and I don’t feel quite convinced
Perhaps that’s a mast and patched sail just breaking the surface
But I don’t see enough of it to know if it’s worth lashing my soul to it
Waves still big enough to bury with each crest and fall
Am I crestfallen, or just not in my right depth?
Is this the current I want to roll with if this is the one wild life I’ll get?

I feel like putting in notice
I feel like heading in from the coast to land that stays frozen
Build a rig from scratch with bare hands
Feel it’s rough slivers slip within skin
Perhaps sin to chase such childish dreams
But I would be in it and it would be in me
Rough-hewn edges hewn in turn to hands
Calluses rising to make the mark of a worldly man
Capable of not only keeping, but literally crafting a roof over head
Rig ready to hitch up and trail wherever snow storms dictate
Chasing the white waves of an endless winter
The province of northern-born wild child who can’t cop sufficient soul-satisfying fix stuck in tech offices or commuter train trips for eighty percent of the breaths his chest will rise and fall with
I feel that weight is wrong
I feel the time hasn’t gone to right the wrong, but it is going
Only so much time to make a life soul can stretch and stand to full height within

And right now, I don’t stand tall
I feel hunched and bent
Less than 6’7″ and then some.
In most self-pitying moments, I feel like Ben Hur chained to his oar
Quantum son breaking his back against lash and brutal drum
Burning down soul to drive the warship of legacy at ramming speed
Towards what?
The approval of some legionnaire
Don’t waste the fire in your eyes to catch approval from any one, supposed authority
Give it back to the universe in emanating joy that picks no particular target
Luminous charcoals glowing in the steady breath of a full life.

Perhaps there’s a shred of wisdom in that approach
Perhaps a shred of plan worth pursuing in this deluge
But shit, get honest before the end.

Yet again I feel like I’ve slipped back into the self-indulgent, wonton flow of privilege
All these words that amount to nothing more than thumb-sucking, self-congratulatory, hell I’d go so far as masturbatory, to describe this flimsy tirade
I feel more like Pablo than Kendrick
Supposing (emphasis on posing) I could dredge up something worthwhile in this white-boy mimicry
I sure hope nobody praying for my rap career
One more white boy lucky enough to be living too deep in his feels.

Get out!
Micro-dose with gratitude, daily
Keep on balance in a life of thrills afforded by diligent turns of honest work, on that Melvillian hustle
The hard-scrabble hustle of ghost-pale ancestors etched in blacks and whites
Carving out bleak Americana from nothing more than the knee-deep topsoil of Western Minnesota
Life looked hard, but their eyes gleam in every photo I’ve seen.
Fill up days, with work, with writing, with clean turns whenever they can be got.
I feel like that’d be a good life.

Left alone beneath the whirring fan
Sleep nothing but a chapped throat
Broken with the screech and snare
Of rotor misaligned
Dried beer mank a shade beneath toothpaste sheen
Eaten with each breath
A film receding in oily pooled blots from the onslaught of unaired flames