sitting on a high elevation ledge,

sierra nevada, california

wondering about right amiss, far down below

back to - in the wilderNest

where i belong

wanna join me?

blue sky above,

i promise you

wanna see the earth curve?

from high above?

feel the cold chill of frosty air

on your naked cheek?

the moaning, low frequency sound

flowing past your noise-traumatized ear?

.. .. .. .. .. .. ..

he stood around a raging fire

far from the city,

holding a hard carried bottle

sipping whiskey, no chaser

except some he was running from,

at least trying to outrun -

his pursuers

a painted bird in a hostile land

didn’t know who he was,

just like me

and maybe you if you care to listen -

he never found out even to his last breath

‘cause he was taken by a rough rock’ impact

flew off his motorbike at 70 miles per hour

onto the cold uncaring, brittle heartless ground

no one to hold up his head,

no one to softly comfort him

no one to hold him,

no woman to coo his weary, scared frame,

no one to wipe his tired brow

he died alone

hopefully, instantly

he never found himself, or who he really was

anymore than you or me

abruptly ejected from our world

i miss him

he died of a broken neck to the outward observer,

a broken heart to my observation

though i hadn’t seen him, 

hadn’t talked to him since 1976

he started as a child

ejected into the world

inherited his edge of its hard ass system,

its chew-you-up, spit-you-out portion

like he were a cheap-chaw-tobacco wad

the world spat him out

as if he were scum-chum-chased, shark bait

always on the run,

no place to rest his head,

the head that knew me long ago

and got lost in the chase,

of bewilderment in the human wilderness

i miss him much,

wish i could have been there,

i would have helped him,

hide him from preying eyes

who just took him

and spoiled him

i would have cradled him again,

this time from the world’s blows, not his own

wish i could have held him

and rocked him ’til his last breath

a tow headed child

born into the system, corrupted by it

sweet face looking up once a time,

to the face high above, beyond the clouds

he then became hard all the time,

learned to un-feel

chased, persecuted, looking for relief

then stopped looking

and began chasing things,

chasing away his shadow,

breaking his mothers heart

making his hard ass, loving father, mad crazy

with the things he didn’t do,

never enough for dad,

no time to talk

only business

he was a tall blond, with a norseman’s falling hair

lean, not mean, just stoic

he had a roman’s statuesque, latin nose

he my friend beginning to end

he ended hard

i don’t/won’t/ever forget him

thirty five years are gone past now

with his haunted face, sad, haunting

and scared behind a granite front

i can hear the wolves howling

for his name

whispered on his mom’s lips

but nothing comes out

he is far beyond the shimmering sea

she cannot touch him

his dad buried himself to him

long before he buried his son

what do you do besides scream at the horizon’s top,

empty hard sky?

where do you scream your frustration?

are you looking for a yelling pistol, shooting range?

nobody’s ever built one, so we all hold it inside

’til someone cracks

they want us to squelch it with pharmaceuticals

and concrete walls

as you yell it out

it hits the dome,

bounces back -

no answer

to the tin top sound from above the ground and back

returning empty,

reverberating ’til it exhausts itself and you to oblivion

like a slowly bouncing ping pong ball

on hard existence,

coming to its final vibratory stop,

lying static spent

i miss you my fellow painted bird

you fought back but didn’t know how

you lost every time, ended up here

down on the ground, your final round,

took the final punch

far from me and those you outran -

fell alone

but i’m here even long years after you died

finally, i’m here

your memory lives in my spirit

the sound of your machine roars

vibrates loud like steady thunder

in my ear

you might have smiled sometime in your life,

i think inside,

but outside - the shell of your face was always hard

like the rock your head smashed against

and killed you,

smashed your skull, spilled your beautiful brains

on this filthy world’s seat

i hurt, i weep,

hard cry tremble

no place to weep

always chased at every turn

everything wants something from me

everyone wants it too,

and a piece of me

you tried to keep up with the plastic ones,

the worldly ones

partly that is what did you in,

i find no fault,

just like the rest of us my roman friend,

you would laugh inside and cry inside,

your face like rock,

i understand it now,

never back then

i was like you my altar boy,

my golden, my loving friend

my friend,

my friend!

is see now, how

you were driven hard by your father,

whipped to make you submit

but you were bored

he couldn't tame you,

and he couldn't cure you

your mind always drifted

to other’s pulls and years,

was the way you were made

no satisfaction for you,

you never got it, outside of the bottle

and long sips of your fast machines

ode to you Andy

i knew you well,

but i stopped knowing you;

you went your way,

me, i went mine,

you tried to change me to the world you followed

i was sent on another path, lost connection,

the ones that took you made you helpless,

they led you astray,

we loved each other close at one time

too long ago though and with a damn,

12 foot thick, brick window between us,

i could never knock it down!

you loved me as i loved you

like jonathan and david,

both of us painted birds,

if we had chosen our persecutors’ weapons

they would have been wasted, gone,

but birds don’t always fight back,

they fly to different lands wanting peace,

solitude

to just be left the fuck alone,

but the persecutors, the crows and the vultures

predators suck up innocents’ entrails, always do

users, abusers, world’s full of them,

the crows pecked,

their sharp thick, crooked beaks decimated,

the vultures well,

you know what they do,

they with vile guile, feed on road kill

don’t even wipe their tool,

they would have been gone

we would have wasted them

if we had chosen our persecutors’ weapons

we would have jacked them up,

feels satisfying just sayin’ it

but nothing would have been solved,

the world spawns them,

and God forbid, we would have been part of them

they rise like plague,

like multiplying bacteria’s virus ooze

you knew no other path,

you fought back in your own way,

but you succumbed to their toys

rather than those you could have used,

and in the end, they didn’t win,

they just took you in,

you not only kept up with them

you surpassed them with speed and coolness,

you left them humiliated in the dust,

behind you,

they tried to keep up and couldn’t,

they respected you, only because of it

because you became like them

you kicked their ass,

you won at their own game

but lost yourself in the end

and i lost you, so long ago,

i saw it, you didn’t,

you had to go your own way,

strong willed and all,

was in your own nature,

and me, mine

i hope to see you again

i can’t regather your atoms or molecules,

i can go to your grave and search there

but already know,

all i’ll find is bones and dust

i’d like to reassemble them

but even the cern particle accelerator can’t help me,

gluons, nutrinos lepiquarks are of no avail

einstein and the essence of matter,

its very construct forever in futility

will never advance, always succumb

to the vanity of man’s attempt

to cure death and dying’

even dr. einstein, slept his final one,

carl sagan gone,

oodles of stars like collective sand particles

of all the worlds beaches,

couldn’t/can’t bring you back,

i can’t regather your dna,

a higher platform,

your substance is not graspable by my hands,

it slipped through my fleshly, coarse fingers

crippled twisted, weakened by sun’s radiation

cursed heat upon dried, drier, drying earth,

no matter the rainfall,

it won’t fall upon my soul

or cure its ills

in hollow absence of you, Andy,

only in the recesses

somewhere there right beside the memory

of my long gone memories of us in the sun,

years ago - friends,

only in those places will i find you,

within my own mortal, yet eternal soul,

this is how i understand, perceive,

get and accept it,

in unprovable truth, that’s were i will find you,

somehow i know,

i know, though i cannot prove it to my mind,

i shall see you again

now i see your face smiling

it’s not hard anymore

your hair white, with a bit of yellow gold,

downward flows; it falls like silken strands

smoothly down to your mid neck line,

your nose, your dad’s and mom’s eyes, i see

you truly happy now, forever

shhhh, go back to sleep!

my sweet, hush darling

i shall see you soon and again

first comes the dawn and then the dark

the utter dark,

then comes the midnight;

it stays and then

the brilliant;

the shining sun dawn’s eternity

i shall see all of you

this glimpse of time where it doesn’t shine;

will not stay a night’s terror,

in the world’s wilderness

o pain, conflict,

respite at times

good and evil, combined

i shall see you again

see you in the recesses of my mind,

will see you in lonely fields lit up by the sun

far from humanity, its roars, its rush, its push

its pull, its blows, its mockery, its ambitions,

it’s incurable pride,

i shall see you in the pages we wrote together,

you turned them,

you collected them,

you treasured them,

you said you would,

i wonder if your mother kept them,

our pages

or your sister irene,

or your brother patrick,

or your dad dominic,

or your uncle john,

i don’t know,

but i don’t want to ask them,

don’t want to talk to them

even though i love them for your gone’s sake

i just want to remember them,

i want to remember you in the same way,

i don’t want to see you ’til then,

i don't want a pre-surprise,

i want to wait,

i want it to be perfect/ complete,

with no turning back

no looking back to the sordid dead.

blackish dark past,

never want to go back

slowly softly swirling, floating lightly above the ground

in the flow of anti gravity, carried suspended

by the music in the meantime,

tall of form angelic altar boy

i hope you breathed your last instantly,

i don’t need phony violins to play you a dirge

i hear the melody of sweet violins and the voice of moon river

playing in a chamber of my mind,

playing the eulogy you never received

the one you were never given,

you took me in to your home where nobody else would,

you greeted me in with your, leave it to beaver family

no matter, we are facades, none of us can help having a phony side

it's all part of survival; its part of living,

you took me in, i felt like the rest of them, confidence because of it;

it didn’t last, too bad Andy; it took 35 years to say goodbye,

i don’t know why, but i do,

its because i’m just like you,

only that i’m still dead on this world, 

in it, but not of it

trying hard, maybe too hard, at times,

i’m still here, though i wanna be and i don’t,

but i’m here for you and everyone like you

i’m carrying a load of salt on my back trying to keep it dry,

sometimes i want to pour it into open wounds

but i can’t, even if i was given permission, i don’t think i could

i gotta keep it dry and fresh for you and everything i believe in

35 years to say goodbye, and it just hit me,

i didn’t even cry,

i feel it inside - the tears, but they don’t flow inside or outside

they're just there, like a placid pond of salty tears,

no ripples, no air movement, nothing to stir them,

but they are there Andy,

someday they will flow i’m sure, i know,

all for you, though i’ve not cried, even now as i think and type

this eulogy to you on electronic paper, stuff you never dreamed about

i still cannot cry,

i don’t feel bad about it,

i never saw you cry, not once, not one time,

did you ever cry when you were alone?

God, my heart is ripped now,

i’m in hellish pain,

the realization you never cried

but you did a good job when you died

you never cried

You deserve my tears this moment because of this, but they won’t flow; they won’t go. I won’t try to let them go. The world doesn’t deserve them. I know you wouldn’t cry them for me.

Nope you were always stoic-looking, into the distance, through things. You were blank; you walked; you talked, but you didn’t feel.

You went; you came.

You did. You just did, a walking lonely, as lonely can ever possibly be. No one could be as lonely as you though surrounded by things. Money was no object; you had everything. Now you are no more.

What would it have taken to make you feel?

What love, what kind of love would it have taken to awaken you to feel?

What stirred your heart?

You performed; you participated, but you were just there, doing, performing - being.

You were some kind of being.

I don’t cry because i feel nothing, just deepest sorrow.

Nothing can come of it. I am like you now; i am become sorrow for this

moment. I am simply performing on a memory, a thought, a feeling, a love of a different kind.

I am participating for a best friend, no friend - empty friend,

a friend in a walking sleep always going here, there, everywhere, but nowhere from my view point.

Here, on this ledge, on this high, elevated granite rock, on the brink of a jump.

In the heart of this immense sierra nevada range.

Now comes the time to close the sound; the thought, the feel, the impulse, the sorrow, the futility.

Now it is time to close the page of the pages you turned so many years ago for me and then closed the short book.

And then you died on a lonely foothill road’s shoulder, 

like road kill, no place to lay your weary head, 

no place, 

no one to hold you 

except for the angel of Almighty God

goodbye my golden haired, roman statured, italian friend

i miss your so,

so, indefinably much

i miss you

goodbye!

while i wait for the last beginning,

for the flow of the first last tear

i should have wept for you

i wish for that moment to come,

to see, to feel the tears,

all of them,

’til the pond is empty

and the salt no longer required,

for that those you hung-out with,

who always took and never replaced

i am looking for that moment,

for them to confess and apologize,

for them to shed their tears too,

’cause they never did

Chava my friend, I met you in the fields of California, land of spanish mission. And so were you mi amigo. You crossed the Sonoran desert with 3 others. Just like Neil Armstrong. One in that harsh hell, fell, to the bite of a viper born of an egg, destined to strike at your cousin who died. By a rock under half moonlight. First he went blind, then raving mad, spittle and eyes flashing and spewing in every direction, his arms and wild hair flailing, crying, Mama, Mami, Mamma! Is what you told me.

Pinche culebra, F...king snake, you said, it was cursed for the day it was born, killing Pablito, only 15 years old.

Your wit, your humor, could not be extinguished even by your railroad boxcar incident with you gasping for air. Sandwiched together with squeezed tight pack of fellow human sardines. For your love of familia in ’ol mejico, one and a half thousand miles from home.

Evading the aliens who sought out your life, persecuted by copter and loud barking dogs. The times they had caught you, you could count past the fingers on your hand, giving you bread and cheese with a free ride back to the border, “la frontera.”

You headed for la jaola de oro, (the cage of gold), where gold was reputed to be swept off the street, (“las monedas de oro se recojen del piso,” you and myriads like you, to me would proclaim.

In poorness you came to the human built caves of twisted wood and corrugated tin. Sanctioned a slave for el norte’s bread. You sacrificed love of your passion, lonely for them, women you’d left, including your wife. Lived like a hermit worked your hands raw, in the fields by day, a man without a country, all work and no play.

Around a midday fire, rustic with beans, in old crooked pot. You gestured to me with a sweep of your arm and outstretched fingers offered the ash stained tortilla with generosity. “Andale, comete otra.” We ate together. Lazy smoke rising slow upward in winter’s air, with adjacent fields of skeletal limbed vineyard and ghost leafless trees in the tule fog. A brief respite from labor, muttered tones reminiscent of the land of maguey, nopal and arroyo you so missed.

Your beautiful silver toothed smile trademark of yours I will never forget. Smacking your lips as you spoke of that land. Sharing your stories of family and friends, riding the burros in canyons of black lava rock. Never believing you’d come now so far, as sitting with me, a pocho, (americanized mexican) so kind.

Your last day in this foreign land once yours I will never forget. A long trail left by your tractor tires staining the dirt of a high banked levee running for a mile. Straight except for the last 400 feet, gradually swooning, curved as it led. The trail disappears at the brink of the razor edge of crumbled earth, sending you and tractor tumbling to your death.

What were you thinking as your last moments neared? Wondering about your sweet ones as you stared at the pale blue sky above your head? Were you singing one of the melodies I’d so often heard, the voice of the tunes like Antonio Aguilar’s?

The horror of that maldito, (damned) tractor crushing your nobel crown in an empty canal. Your eyes staring blankly at me. The cursed, shameless earth, sucking your red black coagulated blood around your head. Your ribs imploded by 2 tons of steel, cruelly destroying a good friend I’d made. You traveled so far to die so far away.

Here is to the knowledge of knowing you Chava, Chavita my friend

Chava de los Chavas, Compadre.

where have you recluded, secluded?

perhaps escape, self imposed isolation 

banishment for pro tem, 

due the crushes of the world's vice,

its squeeze of human soul?

you must know of pristine places

accessible but difficult to reach with all their beauty

may as well be on mars rather than on this earth 

perhaps its there you've gone

given our fleshly limitations, including those barriers,

walls erected by vicious men, steel and trench

guns and dogs, bureaucracy and detention camps

barbed wire and starvation in every border crossing nation

is it possible you've dared to cross and reached your goal?

those pristine places on every hemisphere

those riches of candy jewels of this biosphere to the eye should be ours

we be human, born into this earth, inheritors, but kept at bay

by the jealous greed in the poison atmosphere

i hope you've made it there somehow

candy jewels to your eye, untasted but by few of human tongues,

all upon the earth our sphere of birth, everywhere exist 

their gleaming beams of light, i hope you might fully behold

most of us, we're stuck at jobs and imposed pursuits, 

forced by hunger pangs

those sweet jewels, we can only imagine,

hold in our sleep, our dreams, yet forever out of reach

due our weakness, harsh fallen, softened tortured state

cannot fully access, never will 

those candied gems may as well be outside our solar system

nature's treasures belong to us, but we can't ever have them now

our lives too short, temporal breaths and aspirations almost nil

death awaits at every bend, hostage held

another bomb went off in the world today 

made me want to rocket off, rid of this place

trapped as victims, 

we tame nature, create habitats with technology

most earth's teeming millions, most in poverty live 

escape is outside ourselves

so, my friend, like you I seek the peace of nature, 

himalayas perhaps, are where you've gone, 

frigid cold for me, not as easy to survive and so i rather seek

a dry desert, hostile place no doubt

cactus thorns, poison plants, animals that kill you, 

scorching heat, torrid barren, mammalian body is no match

just like bombs out of the sky, 

just like bullets, by surprise, 

not by reason or by rhyme, 

at any given time, nonetheless can kill you

this desert biome albeit deadly barren 

sports candied jeweled landscapes that the eyes bedazzle 

albeit in short order, will torment and kill you, 

but in the least, before i go, i'll view 

the colored sunset of her blazing, setting sun

there is peace of mind there that cannot die

escape is there from fellow mankind,

escape from myself

let the poison plants and animals kill me then

the shards of vitreous rock are sharp, as i trek across them,

my synthetic soles cause their forms to clash, giving sound 

like breaking pottery in this quiet place

like puzzle pieces, shapes oblong, all flat, 

with colors of pewtered dishware, 

if i were to take a fall, my body's weight, backpack an' all, 

i'd no doubt cut one or the other, forearms' flesh, gashed to the bone,

bleed profusely, tourniquet time, up to dan my stalward friend, 

to twist and bind, abort the climb, head back down, eschew gangrene

but in the meantime no such thing has happened yet, 

owing to nimbleness of twists and turns of my ankles, 

combined in harmony with shins' muscles, 

calves an' thighs working in tandem, rhythmically, 

sweet motion of body and brain,

over this other worldly like terrain, 

but it's really here on earth, mineral king, california, 

sky's so blue, 

besides it's high altitude, 

dizzies my senses due it's beauty, 

carries me aloft to other platitudes, 

aptly named region place, part of spine of high sierra, 

mesmerized, i return to the sound of clashing's impacting,

mixed with some crunch at times of loose grains of rocky bits below, 

tinking somewhat muffled tunes of volcanic geologic strains of music, 

to my silence starved inner ear that seeks fragments of nature's lovely voice

devoid of our machines that grind their raucous din everywhere down below

each step over these broken brittle rocks on upward slant of plane

brings ever closer of higher gain of ground to very top of summit

and there as before, we'll build an air starved, small of fire,

with bits of scanty rare and ancient pine

we'll burn its skeletal twisted form; its precious wood to turn to burn 

smoking molecules rise in red, bring back its spirit long gone ago

glowing sparks back to life, rise up even higher, 

to mix with the thin, low pressure air there and give life again

to trees long dead, come alive again by our combustion's ire

high atop this mountain plain, band of remoteness few gain,

for the height and heat is no child's play

i light my cigar and sip my wine, carried high, 

worth every bit of worth their weight,

dan, my friend, does his own partake, 

lights it almost religiously and deeply draws 

for his to mix with mine,

from the same bottle we drink, 

into the same breath we partake and exhale slow and long

we stare at rock mountain foundations with summit peaks all around

as fade of day and dusk draws near, 

its shadowing veil, subtly wisps itself surrounds

brings us back at everything we've seen and taken in,

by our senses to the journey here, thus far

our camp, first night, so high, and then, 

back at each other's eyes

we stare deeply taking in

each other's souls, 

no words exchanged but smiles, 

smirks of quiet solitude,

the tobacco's smoke like rare and precious incense,

the wine, like elixir to tired flesh and bone 

infusing every pore 

the two combined work their magic, 

make us one with each other and this wild place