twisting, folding, fans and fronds
bending, shaping birds of long
feathers and wildflowers to sing at dawn
fragments of words pronounced wrong
and, and, peaches, and, and, pears of the trees
odd spirits joining the red canaries
thrown wildly at shapes such as these
escaping into the gelatinous sky
wings frantically beating below clouds up high
from desert palms
I have fallen asleep under my threadbare blanket
My dream begins in an austere land
Faraway, brass horns blow with the many winds
as the gold sun races by
And in the distance, slowly approaching,
the timpani drums beat louder with every breath
The clouds roll and roil in conflicting emotion
I find my feet have left the ground
I fly into the solace of being unremembered.
.
.
w.feller
Saltating sands
Fluvial braids
Eolian curves
Beauty, of course.
Lightly veiled; delicate and delicate
intricate and complex
set in a silver mantle
beneath blue upon blue
blue within blue
deep and forgetful
changing ever so gradually
extended wings
cupping the sky
lift
lifted
and aloft
in flight . . .
feathers like fingers
fanning in flight
a single feather loosens and falls
twisting, circling, swirling,
and falling in the anonymous wind.
soaring above the mountain cirque
not a cloud can be seen
and always below
hot-headed leopard lizard
trees with warbonnets
snakes eat rats
then chase their tails
coyotes eat rabbits
then chase their tails
the desert lizards
eat bugs and each other
and wildflowers
Saltating sands
Fluvial curves
Eolian twists
—~ W. Feller
in a vaguely woven forest
greens and grays
white and black
silver, of course.
a wayward band,
small birds, sparrows of some kind,
or tits perhaps.
flitting and fluttering in silence
from branch to branch to branch
their busy order
securing their place
briefly holding court
then disappearing
into a vaguely woven forest
.
.
Garund sat on a stone sneering at Garamond. “Go through the door, Garamond,” Garund taunted. Before Garamond could respond, Garund was eaten by many insects. However, Garamond had already gone through the door and did not hear Garund’s muffled screaming and screaming and screaming for help. Even if Garamond could have heard this racket, he would not have been able to go back through because it was a one-way doorway and he had already chosen which way he wanted to go through. It would not have made sense for Garamond to go through the other way.
Now, the next thing not to make any sense was that Garamond was holding a small ceramic box. He removed the lid and inside the was a little man playing a little piano. His name, in fact, was Don Piano. There was a little piano, a miniature candelabra, and Senor Piano was wearing tiny little cufflinks. Don Piano leaned close as to smile and show his exceptionally white teeth. They, his teeth, were impressive. Don Piano played on while the gorgeous Yolo Wednesday sang simple sweet soft swaying songs with her beautiful whispering lisp. . . “Do you realize you were just hypnotized?” asked Don Piano.
As Don Piano played on bluebirds and blue butterflies emerged from the ceramic box of which it has been purposely unmentioned that the box was also blue. There are reasons for everything under the sun, including the shade.
Garamond closed the box.
Ringo floated above the plain
lying
on his back, of course.
sparkling dark stars singing in hum and motion
the pack of coyotes executed their plan
poorly, however,
and in a frenzy, they ate themselves next half-moon
Wide, deep blue ribbons wave lazily in the echoes of evening
these are events sworn to in an Affidavit
in the Land of Null and Nothing.
Glodon had a problem with spontaneous pixelation. Glodon didn’t tell anyone. No one knew. Not a soul.
One day, while raking the colorful autumn leaves, Glodon slipped around the corner for a smoke, pixelated, and then just disappeared.
No one knew where Glodon went. No one looked because no one cared.
Meanwhile, Glodon had slipped into a place where there was no space. Glodon’s conscience defined his existence. At any given moment in a universe without time anyplace becomes every place if there is an awareness of space.
Glodon liked it. It made his nonexistent heart go fast.
Glodon learned to control his pixelation. All he had to do was slip around the corner to have a smoke while raking colorful autumn leaves–flash-flash- he was pixelated.
Glodon would do things while he was pixelated. He was there. He was in a space within a space that used no space inside of the space it was in. In a place where everyplace is everywhere anywhere can easily lead to anyplace. Time is just a place where time is all the time all at once.
Glodon would create poetry while he was in this pixelated state. Here he could be a poet. He would write poorly contrived and awkward little rhymes;
Blue
Not blue
Blue
Not blue
. . . and he was happy.
.
.
This is a strange and jagged land. Its motives are clear; to do this and that. That always has been the purpose–this always will be the purpose.
While you are here – To be. To exist. Which means also to flow, this way and that, as needs and forces dictate. This will always be the purpose in this strange and jagged life.
W.Feller/J. Wilkendorf
This red thing
This arrhythmic thing
This beating heart
Pounding and pounding, pounding
Torn from the chest and held high
in infrangible grasp
in wild eccentricity
Uncontrolled
Sacrifice
unbalanced
This beating heart
erratically pulsing wave after wave of deep, red light
& silver, dull gray, ungreen
under these painted skies
Pounding, pounding, and pounding
in wild eccentricity
This Chaotic Heart
This arrhythmic thing
This red thing
Slip quietly through every woodland.
There is the wind which may swirl through saplings and their parents
and the tall grasses and dried flowers.
Bird wings flutter, mostly away.
Scratchings and rustling beneath the lowest branches and in the thick brier.
Delicate colors as in a painter’s palette, aside, muted and subdued in a landscape held back.
The memory flutters.
The words choke well before reaching the tongue.
So say nothing.
~ Walter
There are those memories of the autumnal winds when seasons turn upside down and the icy drama of the silver winter threads through the hollows between trees stirring last year’s brown leaves into a low ruckus and crackle. Thin and bare sycamore branches, delicate and bony, trace low and lonely moans in their dark choir. Pink sand from the nearby riverbed salted everywhere and anywhere; grit flecked in your hair, in your shoes, in your eyes. These are the days. These were the days. These are the heartfelt and kind memories of these days.
The shape of the Mojave is formed by everything that is not Mojave.
Ocean Woman rose naked from the sea. She became the mountains and valleys and glistened as she slept under the moon. She became awake as the sun rose and warmed her. That is what I heard.
Clouds pass by here, everything passes by; shadows, people. It is just desert. discord, strife, conflict, contention, Jangled trees in discord, sticks, twigs, gray plants that are most likely dead, not that they ever had a chance, or did they?
Patience, Brother. Listen to the raging and eroding wind–with its grit and dust–it will help you to know peace–that anger has no use for ascent.
We come to the desert by different paths at different times for various reasons, this is how the weaving begins. The weaving. The constant weaving and braiding and twisting and tying of stories and realities and things in between.
This is the land, too. One place becomes another gradually or immediately or maybe something or somehow in between. Everything is the same and everything is different and sometimes that is just by a little bit–little by little–until everything is different. The geology, the plants, and animals–the rare raindrops scattered about on the playa surface attacking the bare earth in numbers so large the washes do not understand the burden they are about to hide beneath. This is the desert.
Coyotes laughing. Rats that are cannibals. Lizards that spit venom. Carnivorous insects — I wish!
This is transformation upon transformation. Metamorphosis.
Painful youth with poignant memories newly scarred, not forgotten, but pushed aside. Here, however, one may clear themselves of the entanglements others twist around us, to distract us, to hamper us. We grow within our chosen realities here.
Time is multidimensional and multidirectional. We have our own time and we are within our time and be inside and outside at the same time. Our time is our time and others try to take that time from you for themselves. Each falls into and overlaps with the others.
We learn to leave it all behind. Luckily enough, alone.
There is the final question, I calculate–Really?
It seems to be a thousand years, now.
Laughing coyotes, brotherhood.
Observe the puzzle pieces we are assembled of, each moment of us can be examined from each particle separate or in context within the pieces that are made up of groups of pieces in a gradient fabric made in context within those around us and without. The bighorn sheep are also gregarious beasts.
All the while, the desert is art.
Break it all into pieces and look at the pieces.
Possibly unnoticed, we change and become a different creature, a different being.
You have to grow. There is no choice if you indeed exist. There will be two paths and you will take one, however, even if you took the other path you would end up where the first would go; over there.
At least you know that if not directly, there will be some kind of connection between this way and that way over there. There is nothing that says you will end up better if you go one way or the other–one way is neither right nor wrong–possibly–you will, however, end up where you are meant to be. That can be a horrible shame.
And over there, either way, will be the same thing repeated, only in a slightly different light
Jagged shards of odd gray clouds fall from shattered skies–puzzling, spinning, whirling, tumbling in the wind.
Echoes upon echoes and echoes within echoes within echoes as they may be.
Near the edge
On the edge
Over the edge
Emotions
Worthless things.
Over the edge, they go
emotional avulsion
hollow anxiety
Aloneness.
Over the edge
On the edge
Near the edge
One lump or two?
the Hostess asked.
That is not a snake. That is an omen.
–
August is the month of the long mornings.
Starting before sunrise Sol burns the air to the east sending it here in thick slow-rolling waves.
It is not at all unpleasant,
the effect is comforting in its ambient beauty.
Subtle.
Sustained.
There is a degree of perfection in this rounded nexus–a timelessness in time–in a singular day before the flat-heat whiteness begins.
All of this is August the month of long mornings.
Thin clouds of purest white streaked through the crystalline sky miles above the dune as it glistened and glittered in the morning’s golden sunlight. The ever-present wind swirled out of its invisibility high above grazing the crests of each swell, placing a yellow halo at the crown of each and every rise. Soon, these phenomena broadened and covered everything leeward. Never just one grain but nearly an infinite amount of particles bouncing and flying over the top. The sandscape vibrating and flirting with focus and vision. Wave after wave, all as if it were applauding itself, this audience of at least trillions upon trillions upon trillions of its own. This is the way sand dunes travel and comfort themselves.
There is no apparent grand purpose other than subtle providence, yet, that is grand in itself.
After all the commotion, Bug, the darkling beetle, emerged from its hiding place an inch below the surface. Rat, arrived first, however, and it ate Bug. Then Hawk also swirled out of its invisibility high above in the crystal sky and snatched Rat with bloody talons flying off home to its ravenous brood.
Rat knew he had come to his end, for all rats die as does everything else that lives. Rat was pleased that it was Hawk that would consume him. Coyote or Snake would not honor him with such an aerial showing of the vast world he lived in before he was killed.
END
w.feller
END
w.feller
Through the thin window, I watch the torn-away sky
clouds shredded and stolen as sharpened winds howl by
Spinning wildflowers and tumbling weeds
frantically, frantically spreading their seeds
Two birds in a bush warbling in trills and quavers
it is the lopsided melody the garbled song favors
Trade rats somersaulting across the bare ground
cartwheeling badgers angrily claw as they wheel round and round
Stiff-legged coyotes hobnobbing in play
catching jackrabbits and cottontails that can only jump up, not away
and dust swirls into dust devils then dispersed above
All of this, all of this, lonely, barren, wind-scarred, and loved.
They were brothers, airborne, spiraling to earth together. Brothers as brothers can be, they remained brothers until they fell on the divide together; one splashed toward the ocean, and the larger of the two trickled toward the desert. That large raindrop would do fine; however, the small one would have to find its own invent an ocean. Until then, the little raindrop did what most other raindrops do, and that is to fall.
At this point, many raindrops would soak into the earth joining the stormwater underground. These rainshadow renegades would travel to the aquifers deep into the earth below to ancient, private, and murky waters.
From sticks and dead leaves and rocks and out of crevices other little raindrops dripped to trickle together in intricate alpine streams hastily making way through a myriad of delicate and fragile waterfalls, into pools, then resting a few moments before being pushed out by the increasing deluge behind them.
From these streams to creeks the raindrops gathered rushing rather blindly through boulders and fallen trees in the narrow canyon joined by other smaller canyons and joining itself to larger creeks coming from larger canyons until swirling and twisting, colored with mud and dirty foam, all of a sudden coming together to become a river.
“Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice,” thought the little raindrop. It had found its way–to a river that should by all accounts transport it to the sea.
That didn’t happen, though. The river fell into the quicksands and disappeared into an eerie underworld layered below the clouded skies, under the sands of the empty river, and above the dark and mysterious aquifer.
Later, there was the bright and sunny sky overhead when the raindrop, risking evaporation, surfaced for a breath then soaked back into the safety of the shallows.
Again and one more time again this happened. Finally, there is no finally. The little raindrop simply never came back. After all, it was just a raindrop, and this river in the desert never reaches the sea.
The end.
I like to watch the very end of the day–the last slivers of light seen while everyone has gone home to have their dinner and watch the television. Those last shreds of light must be mine, at least as far as my eyes can see. I see how lovely this light is, nearly, nearly an invisible veil as shear as color. There are final bits of sunlight delicately pulled away from jagged edges in order to begin the evening properly. And here, especially where rainbows once beautiful and bold, now faded and wicked, tear the low light trying to hold on to the day, these olden days past . . .
Sometimes you get out there to do what you do whatever it is you do when you are there but it just doesn’t look real and something is not quite right. Well, you are correct because nothing is quite right or real 100%, but what are you going to do? Cry?
The scribbled road escapes through a broken gate tearing across the rumpled and scratchy desert.
Zig-zagging hastily along the narrow and dusty trail.
Traversing the rise, and disappearing, then a cloud of dust and disappearing again into the far horizon.
Under the dull gray-white skies of this heartless Mojave valley
Nothing moves and stands fast until dark.
Mike was alone now. It was just him and the wind in the desert. He wasn’t scared. He would listen to Nature. It would speak to him–tell him what he needed to do. In fact, the wind was trying to touch base with Mike at that very moment. It was saying, “Hey Mike? Mike? Can you hear me, Mike? Mike?” Mike, however, was preoccupied with trying to get a signal. Without water or shelter, Mike was a goner. Too bad for Mike.
There is a broken land where mountain ranges rise like angry tidal waves in turbulent, slow-motion seas, senselessly wrestling in convection.
Occasionally, countless battalions of clouds march briskly right to left without leaving a drop of water, all saved for a brutal assault on a faraway fire.
adapt or die–that is all that can be said.
Broken animals and plants living in uneven symbiosis.
and above; thrown into the wind, birds fly incorrectly and confused
and tumble from the sky in mid-breath.
tiny fish in the broken river’s warm water quietly dance an intricately choreographed ballet.
Trees are not trees . . .
and the rabbit is not in charge as he would have you believe.
remember that.
Bragging coyotes arrogantly bark and yap after a kill
Then they eat.
I believe it misleading when looking out over the broad plains and shallow valleys; that it appears nearly lifeless. This, however, is how survival looks. A lot is going on out there; birds, lizards, rats, rabbits, and snakes. It depends on the season. Some varmints only come out at night. All come out to eat–some to be eaten. The tussles and killings are kept discrete and as quiet as possible so as not to disturb the next meal, now searching for its food in the crevices between the rocks and hollows of the cactus plants. Every single thing dies. Out there, every single thing dies bravely, without fear–we imagine.
Kelso Wash
https://digital-desert.com/ecosections/322ai.htm
Mojave National Preserve
