(note: this piece is part of a poetry collection in the works. it's been a while since I've written much poetry, but recently after meeting another climbing-poet I've been inspired.)
You could say
the Joshua Trees
Planted all the
seeds for the dreams
Unwilling to be
the same
Unwilling to
play the game
And isn’t that
the way community should be?
Isn’t this the
place they call the land of the free?
Just fucking
close your eyes
And watch the
sunrise
Just forget
that this
World is full
of shit
If these domes
could speak
We would get a
sneak peak
Of what it
would have been like
To solo the
walls with such balls
That a rope
could be —
A forget me
knot
And not just
high balls
Climbing it all
—
Like Michael
Reardon
A light shining
as bright
As his hair —
Blond and right
on
Like a comet
shooting through space
If these
boulders could whisper
What would they
deliver?
A four page
letter about the better
Things in life:
shared food, drink, and laughter
After all what
the fuck else do you need?
Fucking?
Oh yeah, that
too
But if these
walls could talk
They’d prefer
making love
Because there’s
enough fucking fucking
Going on in
this goddamn world
Yeah the love
that has been made
That’s the shit
That’s the IT
That what make
the J Trees
Get their
swerve on
Leaning towards
the infinite
If the Cyclops
could talk
It might
reminisce over you
And the
thousands of others
That looked
through its eye
And saw the
light, the hope
If Course and
Buggy could speak
It would teach
The way Peter
Croft
Practiced his
craft
And found the
oneness
The Buddha
would have been proud of
If these
boulders could whisper
They would
surely deliver
Stories of
lovers like puzzles
Two pieces
locked together
And rocked the
boat
All night long
And then looked
to the stars
For dessert
If Hidden
Valley could rally
Back twenty
years ago
To a young Dean
Potter
And meet the
necessity of his invention
Of his
perplexing desire to fly
But of course
the first man to fly, had to die
But that can’t
stop the tears from my eye
Just like the
first people to climb
On ropes made
of twine and hemp
Ate up so much
danger they either became
Full of fear or
fearless
But less is
more and its more likely
Their
consciousness carried a touch of grey
So let’s take
it there
While urban contemporaries
Write that the
dirtbag is dead
On their apple
computers
Made of
precious metals
Here in J Tree
there are ten and twenty
Women and men
Living out of
bags
In the dirt
It’s that
simple
The dirtbag is
alive
If these walls
could talk
They would tell
us
No one ever
complained
Back in the day
No one ever had
the luxury
To hate the un-forgiveness
Of slabby
granite mixed with sweat
After all it
was all that existed
Before climbing
went sport
Before climbing
went plastic
J Tree just
brings the truth to life
And some people
don’t like
What they see
when they look into
The reflection
of direction
That a Joshua
Tree points to
Some people
don’t like it
That a Joshua
Tree lives longer
Than they will
So that’s why
we kill
But if we
accept what the trees speak
We can write
poetry til infinity
So who are we?
Are we hippie?
Are we hobo?
Beatnik or
dirtbag?
We are in Cali
So we can be
All these
We can be
Whatever
We want to be
If this is the
land of the free
If these domes
Let their minds
roam
They would tell
us to come home
Come home
Come back to
that place
In your heart
that is
The hardest to
get to
Sometimes
Come back to
the desert
Come back to
the skeleton
Get away from
four walls
And listen to the walls
My books, The Great American Dirtbags and Climbing Out of Bed are both available online, at the Zine site, and on Amazon.
My third book, a memoir, American Climber will be published on April 11th.
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