The 101 slopes like a spine bent too long.
Camarillo yawns wide in the morning hush,
valley stretching slow, hills bare-shouldered,
fields glistening, half-asleep, half-prayer.

Lemon trees blink slow, bruised gold in the mist.
Figtrees call a name behind a rusted gate.
Sagebrush whispers gossip through chainlink,
its breath full of stories that outlive the tellers.

To the east, the nursery stirs,
plastic sheeting *****,
row tags flutter in the wind.
A thermos, abandoned, rests by a wheelbarrow.
Mud boots, discarded,
wait beside the shed
like questions against wood planks.
No footsteps follow.
I never asked where they went.

I was here with them,
but only as a pair of eyes,
that never opened wide enough.

I worked inside this valley with my back.
With my knees.
With the same hands,
now soft on the wheel,
muscle memory steering roads
as if nothing ever left,
as if the ghosts still ride along.

I pass a strawberry field, stitched in silence,
no voices rising in laughter today,
no corrido escaping from a shirt pocket radio,
no teasing between the furrows,
no calloused hands tossing tools,
only the soft ticking of irrigation
and the hush of work
that now waits for no one.
This silence has been swept, labeled,
nothing out of place but sadness.

The strip mall stands like a broken promise,
painted stucco, faded western wear,
alongside roadside markets
missing the opening crew.
Still, the hills lean in to listen,
velvet green with memory,
quiet as folded hands.

Even now, under this sun,
the dust knows who knelt here.
Who sang into the rows,
who fled before sundown,
their names erased from the ledger
but carved into the earth.

And in soil’s hush, their names still root and rise.

As a spec of dust
I fell
So slightly
Drifting over
Time and space
Then
Through a ray of light
From the heart
I fell through
Into being

weight.
that’s all I feel now.

the weight of silence.
absence.  
thoughts like boots
stuck in mud up to my knees.

thirteen thousand nights
pounding out of my chest like a riot mob
choking on my life
and staring down twenty thousand more.
****.

the searing void
of an ancient sugared kiss
sends tears down my face
like tiny iron weights—
a silent guillotine.
you’re so far away now.
or maybe I am.

dusting off dreams
like they’re old pictures
and setting them back on the shelf
in this violet desert.
mirage or memory?
who knows.

I’ve become a warm corpse
mumbling “no”
to the tired lives that want to ride me
like an old horse
one limp away from being glue.

who is there to tell?
who the hell would listen?
who’d step foot
onto the interstate of my heart
dodging semis
and roadkill potpourri?

doesn’t matter.
the dreams look clean again.
and that’s enough
to keep the lights on in the cell
for another thousand nights.

so keep that duster handy.
go back to sleep.

these nights are hungry.
and they’re not going to eat themselves.

Why are we drawn
to lust,
to the hunger of flesh,
to devour food
as if the body remembers
a hunger older than time?

Because we are soil!
And we desire
grain,
flesh,
which too rise
from soil.

Like calls to like.
Atoms seek atoms.

The universe obeys
its own silent gravity.

Our lust,
and longings
die
when we return
to the dust
we came from.
But even then,
it’s not over.

Our atoms will scatter
into soil,
into seeds,
into skins.

And somewhere,
in someone,
they will long
again.
Not with our name,
but with our echo.

Maybe, the bodies you see
are echoes,
of echoes,
of echoes...
of echoes…
…
..
.

It's raining outside right now. It's raining.
It's beating down the dust on silent pavements.
I waited you to come the day before.
Today I've realized it was bedevilment.

I've realized it when I saw your smile
In raindrops, flowing down the window,
Your pretty eye wrinkles, so tremulous and soft,
And you in whole, so false and so ridiculous.

Waiting for you, alas, is not my lot.
No yesterday or next day, and no later.
I hate the rain today! I really hate the rain!
There's so much pain in it. I stop to be a waiter.

I walk through shadows, leaving no trace,
like a lost echo in endless space.
The wind keeps calling, whispering my name,
as if the universe longs to take me away.
I’m stardust drifting in a faded sky,
floating weightless, unseen, passing by.
The lights are flickering, trying to guide,
but my soul only yearns to hide.
Let me go, like dust in the air,
dancing with the wind, fading everywhere.
Don’t search for my footprints, they won’t remain,
I’m only a whisper lost in yesterday.
The voices are calling, but I don’t hear,
my reflection dissolves in the water so clear.
I wanted to burn, to shine like the sun,
but I’m only ashes when the fire is gone.
Will you remember when I disappear?
Or will I be dust when the dawn draws near?
The sky holds me close, it sings me to sleep,
and among the stars, my soul will keep.
Let me go, like dust in the air,
dancing with the wind, fading everywhere.
Don’t search for my footprints, they won’t remain,
I’m only a whisper lost in yesterday.
Floating… unraveling…
I’m cosmic dust in eternity.

Saved stuff is a nest,

sticking densely around you --


to a dust depot.