Sandman Express V

Read more of the Sandman Express poems.

the price, in the beginning, 
was a simple necktie
with a knot like a 
half-eaten moon, a
vase of flowers and
the dust from a magic carpet
that had sailed to all seven
setting suns

or so said that wiry old mystic as 
we shotgunned along on his train 
full of dreams, it was daylight again
and the Sandman Express was
setting its sights on a downward spiral, 
blazing through a field of clouds like a 
	dank blueberry haze 
and off to the east, a neon purple stone 
glowing like a dark star in a 
sleepy mountain breeze

we descended through the eye of a compass,
i was sure of it, The Doobie Brothers blaring 
through the speakers as we sailed over a 
sea of black water, air rising like a
frenzied cyclone that split all the 
	sunflowers in two
and just then, like the fury of a great 
	zodiac sunstorm 
the skies wailed with saucers full of stars 
and that purple stone burst open in a 
shower of ice and lightning like nothing 
i’d ever seen and out of the ash rose 
	woman
	sorceress
some kind of 
	mad earth angel
	voodoo enchantress 
with eyes like two electric swords
slicing through a coat of armor, 
a three-headed dagger that
shot holes in the sun and
glittered the sky with diamonds 

it was a triptych vision of tinfoil and sea salt
as my hippie shaman pal laid his offering 
of a crumpled up necktie and some 
old donut crumbs at her feet

this world, she says from atop a 
throne of glowing sea foam,
is at odds with itself 
and will be forever at odds with you
we’re always seeking shelter 
between thunderstorms
and we’ll always be asking 
somebody to stop the rain
*plucks yellow cloud from a daisy and 
tucks it behind her ear*

you gotta be your own shelter, she says,
and that means taking hold of your 
intellect with both hands, this world
isn’t made of abstractions, it’s 
carved out of flesh and bone
and don’t let those empty-mouthed 
intellectuals tell you any different
like a bunch of starving birds 
	pecking at the sun
it’s your duty to be  a whole person,
to foster the intelligence of your senses
that’s your sanctuary in every storm
*swings on a lightning bolt and 
hitches a ride on a blue elephant*

just then the bearded dude handed 
me a lager and lit us both a stale cigar

beauty, she says, waving one turquoise hand, 
is never background noise
if you’re not training your ears to hear 
and your hands to feel then 
you’re letting the fullness of your life 
pass you by in the flicker of an eye
by setting your sights on a 
	beauty beyond sense
that’s how you romance the sacred

and before my eyes could hook a left
that great goddess of the stone 
had tunneled back into the ground 
like some kind of 
	molten electric seed
and from the pink echoes of an 
	interstellar haze
the Sandman came crashing in on a 
	tilted airwave