Abandoned
on the road of distant sorrow
mile markers bloody from the vagrants
it has claimed
All names
inscribed with crimson warnings
on devil written
eulogies
Their cries
entombed within an
eastern wind
— that blows away the dawn
(The Devil’s Highway (666): June, 2002)
Mankind
was never meant
to survive the future
Technology
a trap
their greed as bait
Generations
sacrificed
in self destruction
On altars
of indenture
— their natures gone
(Calvary Cemetery: May, 2024)
Wolf’s Tooth Pass
‘For thirty years, she called to me in a voice unclear. Today, a new pass leads me into the true magic of Shiprock.’
Insignificance:
Why was everything so big and I so small? Why, from the very beginning, was the attraction so strong? The closer I rode to what I thought I wanted the more insignificant I felt and the more important everything around me seemed to become.
Was it those things around me, or was it the missing parts from inside my spirit that grew larger in the vast emptiness of space and wonder? Stepping outside of myself in that Navajo Hogan, a vision that Bearheart had foretold years before, allowed me to take that first step back — back inside a self that was prepared to greet me and call me by my real name.
I see my old self in the false images of things that I once thought mattered … things that clouded my sight and kept me from becoming who I was meant to be.
Today, the great Shiprock monument looms ahead and checking the mileage I know I must be getting close. The old cowboy expression of Riding For Days, But The Mountain Gets No Bigger hits home to me now. She sits alone in a sea of desert, and I feel her presence before seeing her image. It’s easy to understand why the Navajo worshipped here, and no life was complete without a pilgrimage to stand inside her great shadow. No matter how much this mountain road twists and climbs, the eyes of Shiprock stay focused on me.
Small in my footprint, but growing larger in my understanding, I feel more important and part of this place. This is new and replaces the empty awestruck detachment I had always felt when passing through here before. There are no small connections when timeless majesty reaches out to you, small is a term that we use to qualify others — and ourselves.
The Navajo Nation, with its flat arid landscape and towering monuments, is a timeless reminder of how low most of us dwell. Until we feel our true connection, we are indeed small and isolated from the Great Mystery — and any chance at rebirth.
Like much of the West, there is a magic here that is felt only in its presence. To become its visitor again honors me if only for the shortest time. I finally realize that by taking nothing, I am given everything, as the ancient spirit of Shiprock embeds itself deeply inside me. Some things only become real in your understanding of them and their acceptance, and before leaving, I stop the bike to look at the ancient Petroglyph wall that faces East.
The Kachina figures come alive and dance for my amusement, and I strain hard to hear the music and what the chanters are trying to say. In silence, I walk closer and hear a voice speaking: “Who Is Really The Ancient One On This Wall Of Renewal?”
As I watch Mudman move across the rock, I feel everything that I knew before change inside me.
In an epiphanic awareness, I point the bike north toward the high country. I’ve been in the desert for four days, and I can hear the mountains of Colorado calling my name. The desert never says goodbye as you wander higher. Time and temperature will bring you back knowing that her light is always on. Like a faithful mistress, she watches you leave knowing that you must. Her trousseau is richer than before you came, and she is content in the knowledge that your betrothal is secure.
Darkness fell, as I pulled the bike into South Fork Colorado. Neither working town nor ski resort, it is the perfect waystop for a traveler like me. I walk my nightly ritual along her one road, my shadow the only connection between tomorrow and yesterday. In the waning light, I see the figure of Mudman again on the east side of the mountain. As he dances, he pulls the last rays of today’s sun onto my pathway ahead.
Walking back to the lodge the temptation to reach up and touch the stars fills me with the wonder of being so high, and the sky becomes a canopy of new light. Alone beneath the Milky Way, and wrapped in the marvelous insignificance that only a day like this day could inspire, my heart is at rest.
In bed that night, I wonder about the contrast between the desert and mountains. Feeling like a piece of thread — I travel through the eye of their needle — looking for that one stitch that will keep me married to them both. I try to keep them connected in the tatters of my conflicted wandering. If forced to choose between the two, I choose not to. One cannot exist without the other — and neither can I.
I am thankful tonight to be a tiny speck of humanity within creations bounty, blessed to have at least one eye open to more than myself. As my one eye gives thanks, my other eye remembers how short my duration is with the moments fleeting to embrace the little time being offered me.
This morning, I left Canyon de Chelly by a route I had never traveled before. The main canyon road was closed because of mud, and my detour took me high over a pass I had never seen or read about. It was newly paved, and the grade was higher than I thought the bike could make. It was called Wolf’s Tooth Pass, and I’ve not found it on any map or atlas. A good friend, who lives nearby, swears it doesn’t exist. All I can say is that from the top, where Arizona and New Mexico meet, Shiprock called out to me in the distance. And in the importance of her calling — I stopped asking why!
Kurt Philip Behm: August, 1999
Knowing I won’t answer
you’re welcome to ask
Questions like a distant
echoing wind
Blown into nothingness
— chasing the past
(Pine Ridge South Dakota: Fall, 2010)
Two contradictions
meet intertwined
Are they or aren’t they
YES, the reply
The black hole of reason
dark matter of mind
Imploding explosions
— together in kind
(Dreamsleep: May, 2024)
When the final chapter on A.I. is written
what will be the epilogue — will that be the end
(Dreamsleep: May, 2024)
How do you start over
consumed by the end
Beginnings aborted
as judgment portends
Desperately hiding
alone and distraught
For all of those presents
time wasted — and lost
(Dreamsleep: May, 2024)
Silence attacking
from deep in the hall
Damage inflicted
the metronome stalled
Blood in the orchestra
harmony thrawn
Melody slaughtered
— rhapsody gone
(The New Room: May, 2024)
Asleep in their nests
birds dreaming out loud
Just outside his window
new questions aroused
The moonlight not finished
what it started before
The church clothes still hanging
on the back of the door
What once he thought ended
returning again
What never befriended
new searching begins
The glass in the parlor’s
long myopic hall
Illuminates squalor
and all he recalls
The ringing alarm
signals all bets are off
As the birds start to sing
of eternity’s cost
The revelers revel
the sanguine proclaim
The church starts to fill
and they’re calling his name
Any proof in the pudding
has curdled and soured
As the chalice gets cleaned
and the vision devours
The mood is enhanced
and wine slowly drips
The light through the stained glass
distorted in bits
The reasons no matter
alone as before
And sanity worships
death closing the door
His dress shirt went on
white starched and unblessed
The sermon made ready
for those at behest
And what might he offer
where prisoners hide
Salvation most proffered
when funded by lies
The eyes looking back
fixed silent and low
The eyes looking back
from pews far below
Surrounded by neighbors
and men who’re once bold
His eyes were then only
but thirteen years old
The distance seemed fatal
the distance seemed slim
But now looking up
it was all about him
To one then so young
and so new and so fresh
Still wanting to believe
in not leaving the nest
Surrounded by elders
deceivers and friends
Dressed in his finest
his hair slicked on end
His eyes remain down
as his thoughts deconstruct
His face never changed
as the sermon ramped up
“And what must the youth
think of me on this day”
The Vicar’s thoughts looming
praying mantis to prey
The height differential
the power sublime
The stairs leading up
for the blind then to climb
And once at the top
all so distant below
And once at the top
nothing new left to know
The birds dare not enter
the sparrow or dove
The belfry stark empty
devoid of all love
The peacock dismembered
in colors of blight
The peacock remembered
in times that were bright
The hand bills are placed
at the end of each pew
A message designed
for only the few
Caught up in the fable
caught up in the lie
To burn down the manger
lambs scream as they fry
The church social breakfast
has started out back
Hoping for: “Great sermon Parson
had to hold my tears back”
But the truth knows no teller
but what’s told in the end
Whose message stays mired
where all messages end
Belonging to no-one
to him least of all
But forever himself
as he must heed the call
The blamer blasphemer
the architect whore
Silent screams from the pews
that they need something more
And in silence he struggles
his collars’ too tight
For clerics who bombast
portend and then fright
The moral unlettered
the reason unschooled
The soul when unfettered
no one left to rule
He knew the time short
few stairs left to climb
That boy once malingered
to always remind
To start at the beginning
to restart at the end
To start where he stopped
as a stranger again
Overpowering reluctance
consumes him today
And with cryptic delusion
he parry’s and feigns
Beget not begotten
claiming unto himself
All virtue forgotten
all feeling unfelt
If it mattered whenever
if it mattered just once
The parson calls out
to approach and exeunt
Reversing his trust
shouting but to himself
“Betray now adroitly”
this ice cube to melt
Benedictions unburning
inside the unhost
All tides are returning
last turkey to roast
The pot is left thickening
ruination sublime
Intention most wicked
coming only from mind
The cowards stay victim
the bravest rejoice
A knave neath the roundtable
never his choice
The bend in the circumstance
the straightening lie
The clue that was missing
the unquestioned reply
Walk up to the pulpit
three steps that don’t end
The pride and the fury
pontificates rend
Looking out at the parishioners
their eyes staring down
He knows without speaking
rivers crossed, bridges down
As he takes his last breath
speaks his last final words
What once was a boy
separates from the herd
He steps down, turns and leaves
without once looking back
The parson stabbed fatally
his parsonage wracked
The breakfast is ransacked
left plundered and frayed
The devout are heard neighing
like a horse without hay
Heading straight down the lane
neither bowed nor erect
No breakfast for him
celebration dissects
Walking in through the back door
his Aunty Ruth smiles
Asking, “Is everything all right”
you’ve been gone quit awhile”
He says: “Everything’s fine
as his father distills
And closing the window
say’s: “I’m feeling a chill”
He walks up 13 stairs
and sits down on the bed
Looking straight up above him
childish images dead
Asleep before dark
in a dream meets his peace
Knowing surrounded by doom
he must tomorrow retreat
He is up before dawn
and back out on the lane
One sack over his shoulder
one orphan to claim
The walk to the harbor
is rocky and steep
His gait ever steadfast
a promise to keep
Signing onto the first ship
that’s ready to sail
Setting a course still uncharted
in a sea of travail
The clouds getting darker
the waves though they fall
His soul is on fire
his spirit on call
With the ship looming outward
beyond sight of land
His future to clear
his mission at hand
That first day on board
and first night below deck
Were the first that had ever
held him safe in their net
With dawn’s light he climbed
to the crow’s nest above
And said ‘Thank You” to providence
vowing his love
And he sat there for hours
his past to enshroud
New horizons were calling
— he never so proud
(Oregon Inlet: June, 2003)
Looking under
the streetlamp
vision departs
While all that we’re
missing
hides in the dark
The familiar
accepted
our nature’s are such
That what’s in
our comfort zone
pleases us much
Distracting
from vistas
that broaden our view
Unknown
and still waiting
— to birth us anew
(Dreamsleep: May, 2024)
An Anthology Of Perception 