comin down the mountain
i’ve got so much rosemary in my boots
i can barely move my hands
and when she bent down to tie the laces of my boots
i started hummin tangled up in blue
i feel like zarathustra comin down the mountain
or like the egyptian dead in a boat
or like i just came home from an epic
on the river styx
and fall into mother earth’s arms
mother earth is no mother at all
but one of those folks who listens
and hears the world in the same key
and wears loose-knit brown cardigans
it’s so comforting after a long journey you
welcome me back to earth n comfort me
with open arms after my trip
to worlds of souls or spirits — i don’t know
and almost crying with my head in your lap
watchin the sunset
hopin that the colors will blossom and warm
me up again
everything is so cold here
and the cold was separate but now
it’s part of me again
and it’s like a dream — comin in and out
of consciousness over and over
to the sound of the music
chimacum rain, blowin in the wind, into the mystic
we’ve got to go down the mountain sometime
i know it’s true and i don’t know what to think
it doesn’t feel like the ‘real’ world
but i kinda wanna go back because it feels so cold
and i know the car will be all toasty
give back some warmth the spirits took
but that’s the thing i don’t feel warm yet
i feel like it’s not real
like breathing wasn’t real
what if i just kept breathing out forever
until i float into the rocks
rocks i’m stumbling over on the way down
so up in the sky i can barely stand and
trip over rainbow rocks, lookin close
and talkin fast — stream of consciousness
kissin the ground with each stumblin step
like my laces always gonna be undone
like this bitter taste will never leave my tongue
and my limbs are so tired and tingly
but not in the this world this plane way
and in my hand i grabbed a sprig of rosemary
from one of the bushes
and at some point i cut my hand on the rocks
so now it’s just bleedin blood n rosemary
smells sweet like iron cities i forgot about
and i’m cold i think but not my hand
like it’s not part of me like it stayed in the spirit space
like i put my hand on the table in the sky
like i’m still holdin hands with orion
that hand still in another world
and i can feel it right now as i’m writing this
part of my hand still gone still orion
and the stars are kind of pulsing like
christmas lights in the yard like
busy planes and smooth plane
we’re following smooth planes, same as the music
same as the music, which goes on smooth planes
same as orion’s hand smooth in the sky
but the car’s pullin up all warm and
i can barely hear you explaining
how the thinker statue sits on the gates of hell
and i feel like the thinker
i feel like an air nomad
i feel like the interpreter but my words
are miles away, third dimension
poetry, music, it’s not in the busy world or the spirit world
and i feel the beat of the music like a ball of string
keepin me grounded not lost in the spirit faces
and the lion gargoyles on that lady’s fence
isn’t alive anymore but he could be
speakin to me, speakin so fast i can’t hear
slow so i can process your words into faces
for the spirits but i can’t tell if they’re listenin
can’t tell if faces keep movin breathin without rest and fall
i’m shakin rosemary out of my boots
untying laces without letting go of the rosemary sprig
still holding cold hands with orion
and every time i smell rosemary
i see his faces
