By Fred Ferraris
Senor Arbusto strolls across the slowly brightening sky. Before a long purple cloud swallows him, which hits him with an unexpected message like a bullet train speeding out of a ropy tunneled dawn��Nothing will come of nothing��certainly not the hexed and perfectly illegible future he can�t begin to imagine. At daybreak, in the Hotel Gryphius courtyard, Jesaru Durango stumbles across the Senor, a disheveled king with one leg cocked toward Mars, lying beneath a tree hung with cue cards. A glassy-eyed cockadoodle sipping blood under a canopy of hemlocks while the ghost trio plays. Outside equals inside whatever is in is out�a monstrous proposition constantly risking absurdity. As Jesaru struggled to catch up cover up close in, as he rode among blighted trees, he came to appreciate time�s illusory slide from future into past, like a river of acid milk eating away at the present�s breast: shuddering bushes, twice-torn veils, bruised caves, tongues that tripped. Later Jesaru stood among the ruins of the evening sky, a limpid space brimming with fire, and planned his escape into rebirth via a one-night stand at the Hotel Gryphius. When night fell, limbed spirits uncorked themselves, their bodies compressed, faces obscured, their schedules cleared, vanished beings with familiar stares, who laughed the bitter laugh of the vanquished.
I was active in the New York and Northern California poetry scenes in the 1970's. Between 1977 and 1996 I devoted myself to family life and dharma practice. I live with my family in Lyons, Colorado.
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