Prose

 In the slow burnin' evenin’,
In the stale-air day of winter,
With the sun a-making her decent,
Due East,
A fury of orange, sunflower seed,
Mendin' softly into purple,
We make our pilgrimage.
 
A product of an industrial-age,
The combustion engine we use,
Coughs and heaves smoke,
As we make the steady climb,
 Sally has her window cracked,
The freezin' temperature quickly,
Outwits the opposing, heaters force,
As she sits in silent,
Indifferent cognations,
T' the moment,
As she takes light puffs from,
American spirits.
 
Beside her was Andrew,
Her boyfriend both,
Unshaven physically and mentally,
Seems like his meditative state of being,
Is consistently interrupted by,
Youthful energies,
For his left leg twitches madly, unconsciously.
 
At the wheel was an ol' friend,
An Irish lad, puffin' mad circles of pipe tobacco,
Navigators blend,
Charlie always wore an ol' newspaper boy hat,
As his dirty brown curly hair danced out,
While driving,
He would mumble inaudible words to himself,
Knowin' the loud music he surrounded himself with,
Would always fill the space.
 
The music in the car,
Loud enough to over power all the senses,
Were grand eastern chants,
Sung like holy prayers,
In sacrifice t' god's long dead,
Though surround by the mint smell,
Of winter in Oregon,
I felt like this pack of un-relatable,
Children of scattered European consciousness,
We’re a-goin'-home t' the Himalayas.
(Through universal cause of humanity)
 
I read the cd case t' take in translation,
Of language that was so completely foreign,
An' familiar,
The dronin' mournful essence of the tune playin',
Was the lament of an orphan.
I felt its message down the fragile spine,
An' caught myself before I lost myself in tears,
Humanity was a reservoir of souls,
Always bein' born again into sufferin',
Only a few knew how t' trick the systematic chaos,
Buddha an' Christ.
"Peace is detachin' from the cause"
Charlie mumbled t' himself,
For no one but him t' listen.
 
"Whoa, what the hell?!",
Andrew cried,
Unpluggin' the Himalayan thoughts,
Supplantin’ us all back into the Northwestern present,
We all readjusted an' saw the subject of his amazement
Snow.
Always thought that was a curious thing,
Snow in the Northwest,
Is as foreign as rain t’ the desert.
Blotched, surrealist white on the muddled pine green,
Held under the pessimistic grey sky,
Like most snow, its angelic grace,
Had been stained easily,
By time (for this was at least a day old),
An’ human interaction,
Makin’ it a sleazy grey, gleamin’ sunflower yellow,
From the dyin’ light of the sun, scalpin’ the horizon.
 
Then we were there,
Crown Point,
The grand ol’ lookout point,
That encompasses the godly scale an’ vision of it all,
 The sun now has melted into the eastern runin’ trail,
 Of the Colombia River,
Whose waves were wild turquoise, dosed in a somber gold,
Lookin’ much like animated oak bark.
Charlie laughed t’ himself,
As he always does when he’s extremely pleased,
An’ the rest of us stood silently,
As the east wind howled deathly calls in our ears.
 
I picked a up a ball of snow,
An’ tried my best t’ form a perfect globe,
“Perfection: pure aesthetic beauty”
I announced t’ everyone,
Before I threw it t’ the ground,
Scatterin’ its essence.
While laughin’, “Why did ya do that for?”
Andrew asked,
“Cause if ya truly love somethin’,
 You gotta be as willin’ t’ destroy it,
As much as you praise”, I answered,
I saw silent agreement an’ disapproval,
“So yer a Buddhist, eh?,
Deconstructin’ your mandala?”
Sally said retorted in monotone,
 Mild-sarcasm.
 Big, laughs all around.
I pondered on the thought more,
Love is infinite,
But form is impermanent,
Like snow,
Always conquered by the fluctuation of decay
An’ change.
 
 I came ill prepared,
Nothin' but a short sleeved dress shirt,
With a navy suit jacket flung over,
Buttoned up, over the skin, its pale bareness,
While blue jeans hung off my waist.
The view was salvation,
But the wind was-a-bitter cough,
One ya hear at the end of a bitin' joke,
Or the bodily upheaval of physical pain.
"Hey Johnny, let's move on",
Charlie said t' me,
"Sure", my lips mouthed,
But no audible sound could find its way out,
Like space's vacuum.
 
We got t’ the car an’ made our way on down into,
The greater body of The Gorge,
Whose foliage, burdened softy with,
Frost,  as I listened t’ an immigrant son,
Whose birth an’ existence occurred,
Here in the greater Portland area,
Endowed his societal title,
Personally shortened,
T’ M. Ward,
His soft, Buddy Holly melodies,
Chained t’ his gravelin’ voice,
And railroad track rhythms,
Were sonic inflections of the world,
I was separated from,
Only by a thin piece of glass,
“So, is this it? Is this the sound ofthe,
Northwest?”, Charlie stated,
T’ me quite rhetorically.
 
Horse tail falls.
We left the steel cage, parked,
On it’s rubber an’ made our way t’ the,
Beatin’ of water, extinguishin’ itself perpetually,
Intothe a natural pool bein’ as ash tray t’ this ambition.
 Oh yes, gravity happened.
 
We stood rather bemused in silence t’ the thunderous,
“Ah Ha!”, the waterfall presented,
Then Andrew rather gracefully pranced,
In a maddenin’ happiness t’ the cove ‘neth the,
English mason’d tourist web,
(oh how fly-like we felt in that fleetin’ moment)
The mossy boulderin’ rock, bathin’ in the,
Harsh cold love of Horsetail,
Held our weight,
As we all put on faces of,
Deep thoughts,
Though the soil of my mind was hard,
For the shovel of my conscience,
Was-a-bouncin’ right off.

On the road again,
East,
Countless waterfalls decendin' cude mystic,
Essence down from death-like coulds,
Whose contents emptied softly in ryhmic taps,
T' the continued utterences of Mr. Ward.
In-comprehensible extenges of love drift ,
From the backseat.

The finale, the great grand-all of Oregonian existence,
It seems lays in shattered ruin at the depths of,
Pooled tears of Multnomah.
Summerized void of universe,
A vast emptiness of form,
Always screamin' life.
On a bridge arched under,
We were baptized of sin.
An' nearby by plantlife,
Buckled into humbled bows,
by furious waves of,
Energy released.