Now, I'm going to take a drink of water
and read a little longer poem if I can find it.
Here it is.
There's a large park in the middle of Vancouver called
Stanley Park, and it's, I don't know, some hundreds
of acres of forest, and ferns, and animals, and bombs,
and all kinds of things.
And it's beautiful.
And before I left Vancouver, I took a nine-hour walk
around this park.
I reach out and nearly touch the fern.
The rest of touching made by my eyes.
Ferns, great ferns flipping my neck on a long ocean side
walk through trails in Stanley Park.
Great ferns made me asthma to my eyes, beautiful miasma.
Nothing ugly in Peyote Park.
Green slugs, beautiful.
Mushrooms, beautiful.
Dead fish, beautiful.
Swamp smell, beautiful.
No death.
All death is life.
All dead things, living.
I can feel the dying cells in my eyes ringing into life,
looking into the sky, seeing gulls and treetops,
clouds above the blue Kaleidoscope Towers in the sun,
great red saw wheels rolling at me across Los Lagoon.
Beautiful.
In my hand, a cigarette, curious,
glows red with webs of gray ash.
Initials on the trees, beautiful.
Eyes on the trees, watching, hundreds of trees, watching.
Letting me know I am there.
Sharing everything.
Water wiggling up.
The sand splashed against my nose.
I reach out, nearly touch it.
Cute little water.
Edge of World holding ocean.
Walk with moccasins over bumpy ground.
Soil on my legs.
Sand in my socks.
No itch on me.
My eyes wide open to sales dipping at the ocean.
Ocean boat skimming top of water.
Men dangling from Lions Gate Bridge,
banging hammers on the sky, climbing towers, waving bridge
into the sky.
Three red berries and palm of hand
rolling nudging together, focusing the park,
burying dust, dying slowly into life, puckered on sides.
Round berries puckered into soil life, falling among ferns,
rolling in the sky, glittering across forehead of my brain.
My brain, a living thing to look into a top Kaleidoscope
Tower and air, comprehending the park umbrella descending
on park.
Striving with branches from the ground.
Dying cell by cell.
Popping into life with peyote explosions of color.
These are veins in my hand.
These are sunshine webs strung face high across shadow path.
Oceanside rump beside handrail turned green by the forest.
This is the forest growing, doing
these things every second of wheel turning time,
stretching seconds to spend hours.
Showering Crimson Waterfalls of seahorses over yellow sand.
Starfish is throbbing purple stars in the glass filled sand.
Old tap water bulging and sprinkling over
very holding hand.
Flower between the teeth, beautiful girl.
Flower between the teeth, beautiful man.
I almost touch you.
My eyes complete the touching.
I gather you in the arms of my eyes.
I see you in sun.
Explosions of brain.
I caress you with tongue of orange petals.
I see you in eyes of the trees.
I hear you in thunder below the wobbling bridge.
I extend my hand to you.
I feel the skin holding my hand.
I feel you warm in the pores of my skin.
Your color is lapping my skin.
Greens of the Forest Park lapping my skin.
I taste your life on the roof of my mouth.
The silver rimmed contours of the day
hold you art parabola of your love tension.
Pin to the edges of the Earth.
Pouring the Earth full of color blasting me with gentle color
burst of soul in body.
With my soul I rub your chest.
With my soul I breathe and the Earth breathes back.