Welcome. Here you will find several poems and stories I have written over the last several years, the earliest being The Dirt and the Weeds, and the latest, A Pure Blue Flame Where the Hawks Go. I am currently at work on a longer fictional piece entitled Horse of the Sun, same as the headline for this website.  In addition, I have included a few pencil sketches of various subjects and plan to add several larger, more fully developed pieces when time and circumstance permit.

 

Enjoy,

Keith J. Haines

 

Poetry

Hangover Medicine | In the Avoidance of Women | Fall Valley | The Dirt and the Weeds | On the Forest Floor | Amaranths In Dew | Poet Taking Rest | Second Note to a Past Lover | Under a Feeble Sun | This Desperate Threshhold | Nearing the Base of West Mountain | Spring Hills of Missouri | Penning Delicate Words | Summer River Wildflowers | Parched | Sweating at Meremec | Humming in the Wind | Horse Travel Through the Blues | Nectar | The Long Limbed Day | Jaguar Leaping in the Wind | Outrider

Stories

Pollen Storm Blessing | The Morning World | The Barn Where It Was Dry | A Pure Blue Flame Where the Hawks Go | Dog's Neck | Games of Chance and Get Even | Waterbug | Seven Colors of the Sun

Chap Books

The Barn Where It Was Dry, A Collection of short stories from a contemporary Native American artist
Drinking With the Women, Poems. Love, despair, and the ultimate joy of passionate living

This is my father's room.

He likes to call it his tiny box of bitter contemplation. 
It rests here,
on the five hundredth and third floor 
of a five hundred and three story building. 

This blanket is the place where my father sits. 
All but him are forbidden to rest here. 
This blanket comes from the time when he lived 
on the ground below,
with the dirt and the weeds, 
when he held sway over the broad expanse of this area, 
sitting in comfortable ease 
and directing with subtle gestures of lips and fingers, 
who should pull forth the sun across the sky, 
who should govern the revolution of the seasons, 
who should provide for the rebirth of the harvests, 
and who should lead the flight of the bird across the arc of the sun 
and back.. 

It is from here
that my father once motioned for me to bend nearer his lips, 
and I did so,
and he began to tell me of the time 
when he lived on the ground below, 
with the dirt and the weeds, 
and what happened at dawn one morning 
while he was preparing for the day. 

Long time ago, he told me,
some people who he had never seen came to him
and asked him to leave the spot where he was camped, 
but he said, "No.  I have been here such a long time already."

One of them then replied, "Well, old man, it is no matter. 
We are a gracious people, and we have decided 
that we will allow you to remain in the spot you have chosen. 

But since you refuse to be displaced outward," 
he told my father,
“we shall simply displace you upward.
In addition,
we have decided that we must lay down our cement rug beneath you
and your blanket,
so if you'll step aside, please, thank you."
My father stepped aside, bewildered.
"Larry," said the man,
get your men over here and lay down a cement slab." 
Turning back to my father, he said,
"As well, we have decided that we would like to
build up our walls 
around you, and in so doing, 
we will raise you to a place 
where neither you nor your people have ever been." 

"Where is that?" my father asked.
“Old man," he was told,
“prepare for your ascent into heaven.  Frank? 
Gather your men. 
Four walls and a ceiling, please." 
My father folded his blanket over the wet cement 
and sat down on top of it.
"I am fine here," he said,
and the four walls and the ceiling 
began to close in around him. 

The people who were gathered near, 
becoming more and more by the minute, 
then raised their hands to the sky 
and summoned forth from the ground beneath my
father a powerful movement, 
setting into motion the rise of a massive 
four-cornered structure made of brick and steel. 

The tremendous rumbling caused by such an event
was said to have been felt across the plains,
where a sleeping cloud mistook the rumble for
thunder and began to pour forth its rain, 
over the mountains,
where the Spine of God is said to have trembled, 
through the basins,
where the fruits of the trees 
were moved to fall from their branches, 
and down into the sea
where the dust was shaken from the shoulder of
the land. 

And so began the ascension of my father 
into this place called heaven.

Now,
when I sit with him,
he likes to tell me that he is still able, 
when he closes his eyes, 
to hear the weeds in the wind, 
blowing their music close to the ground.

Copyright © Horse of the Sun and Keith Haines 1999-2002.  All Rights Reserved.

 

---

On the Forest Floor

Now,
even the most gentle of female rains
brings down the early dogwood
blossoms,
once white,
now stained pink and red
as if bruised and wounded,
sent to the forest floor
to bleed quietly in the shade.

The petals are dirty
are cut and bleeding,
and looking closely,
their hurt faces plead into mine.

But what can I do?

I gather a handful,
six or seven,
and begin to shout around about the glory of these
fallen criers of
Spring’s army of joy,
naming the days of their bannered and heralded births,
touting the courage of first blossoms,
and going on about their short lives of timeless purity.

Afterward,
I let the petals drop from my fingers,
watch them come to rest
on last Autumn’s leaves,
now dead one full season
and resting with new stories
of the Winter

for the telling to
the freshly fallen dead
of Spring’s army of joy.

 

---

Amaranths In Dew

I am a whisperer of the moment,
a piner at the edge of gardens,
a drunk gaper of endless petals,

in whose curves
I see the hearts
of potential lovers,

wet amaranths
in dew.

 

---

Poet Taking Rest

My lover,
I admire the length
and grace
of your well-shaped hands,
delicate wings of the butterfly
pressed tightly together
in prayer,
and in between them,
my only thin asylum
of brief repose.

 

---

Second Note to a Past Lover

I do not think of it as folly
to spend all my time dreaming
of your touch,
but I do suffer terrible embarrassment from
those who would say I am
foolishly enamoured with one
whom I am not familiar with
in the least.

Nevertheless,
I will continue
to persist in this behavior,
foolish as it may appear to
those lacking in any sense
of romantic abandon, and
it would be to them that I
would simply say that I take
extreme pleasure in the
weaving of this thought of silk
through the 10,000 crests of
the waters
that separate us.

 

---

This Desperate Threshhold

At this desperate threshold,
look how white my knuckles –

I can’t face wine,
not like I used to.
Not anymore.

Oh,
my most admired romancer
of the most strange and terrible nights,
where will I turn
if not to your sopping invitation?

You have pulled me too far apart,
at my own request –
I could not ask you
to pull me back together.

I have sought out your freeing waters,
often as I could,
for more than a century,
but I have grown weary
of raising your implements to my lips.

Understand,
I have loved you more
than I have loved my women.

At this desperate threshold,
my friend,
look how white my knuckles,
but look how clear my eyes.

 

---

Nearing the Base of West Mountain

In the foothills to the East
there is pollen.

I am coming in the pollen.

The pollen falls upon my hair
and streams across my eyes,

and in my hair
there is a breeze.

 

---

Spring Hills of Missouri

Over endless lakeside hills,
unfolding forests
show spring blossoms,
white lace
airing
among the dogwood
and the plum.

 

---

Penning Delicate Words

What fine silk
moves through these trembling
fingertips
but
what an array of dusty stallions
courses through my wrist.

A timeless dripping sun
labors over me,
yet
I do not sweat as I pen these delicate
words for you.

 

---

Summer River Wildflowers

At riverside,
in the waning days of summer,
I part eight blossoms
from their stems.

Later,
wearing the flowers,
I stand waist-deep
in Summer River,
gathering drifting leaves
from beyond Summer River’s bluffs.

 

---

Fall Valley

Out here,
all my crushes
are on
divine
sugar maple forests.

It’s Fall.

Devastated,
I roam the valley
for a
Summer flower.

 

---

Parched

These three desperate throats,
in the wake of such a malignant sun,
where
in this endless brown valley
can we find wine?

(These horses are but ashy silhouettes).

What a shabby and dissolute arrangement
has been laid out for us!
Is there left a cool breast
to appeal to?

Oh, our dry and tongueless bellow!

 

---

Sweating at Meremec

What is there that can restrain joy?
Not me!
These pores on my back-
with what joy they sweat!

What a time this is
to radiate with expansiveness and light.
These people around me,
these fine days we are spending together,
such laughter!

Under these trees,
in this universe,
we are so small,
yet with joy look how long and wide we reach,
and how deep!

 

---

Humming In the Wind

All day
Beneath the hot sun
I thought of you.

Thought of how
My love for you is like

Ten thousand bright blossoms
Humming in the wind.

 

---

Horse Travel Through the Blues

My blue gaze rides
toward
her breast
like dusk
moves
between mountains:

deeper,
wetter,
greener,
coller,
roaming and
loping
with heavy melancholia.

This
is
the nature
of horse travel through the blues,
stepping through rivers,
noting the shorelines
flowered
and
hung,
bending in the saddle
to part blossom
from stem -

true and desperate acts
performed
at dusk
during a cool and
loveless
summer.

 

---

Nectar

Isn't love, too,
proclaimed to be at it's most
dangerous
when new,
like the poison of a
young snake?

And which is the greater danger?

Love, leaning nearby, musky and aromatic,
or the capable length of a snake?

From either tongue
drips nectar from the body
like dew
from the bud.

 

---

The Long Limbed Day

She is a lean figure
curved against the window,
a limber boiugh
hung heavy with foliage in the sun,
lithe body drawn from
the sinew and supple muscle
of the
slender
forest deer.

In her bare arms
and in her naked shoulders
I witness the
heightened
and tightened
awareness of a doe's limbs, prepared
at any instant
to bound off in a tremendous
single
leap
nine feet long
perhaps,
to go stretching into the
long limbed day,
young
strong
beautiful
forever.

Yes.
Oh,
yes, yes, yes.

 

---

Jaguar Leaping in the Wind

My muse,
you
have liberated me from the rocks!

Long reacher,
high stretcher,
you unfurl your body
a silk ribbon of skin
licking the midday wind,
and I look,

oh how I look!

Woman,
it is a poet's duty,
aye,
a poet's pleasure,
to sing the tips of your fingers as claws,
the breadth of your hands as mitts,
the length of your limbs
outstretched and roaring
from your bosom,
as those of a jaguar in hunger
leaping from the rocks
toward
the hot neck of the sun.

 

---

Outrider

I unsheath
from my boot
3,000 wet tongues,
grim bladed
butterflies
sent out to riot in
the night,

wing tips dark as hot razors
stained with the blood
of
a
long
haired
poet.

I unsheath
these wet things,
hold them level
at sea,
one man standing
against
all comers,

long haired, doublebraided,
point taken,
praying for hope against
the bellowing
sea
of
the
East.

Copyright © Horse of the Sun and Keith Haines 1999-2002. All Rights Reserved.

Hangover Medicine

Coyote had been drinking too much whiskey when he left
the place where the group was camped.
He left because he wanted to go make pee.
He invited those who wished to attend
to come along.
Everybody said, "No!"
So coyote began to wander off
by himself
to go make his pee in private.
Then he turned around and told the others that
when his pee hardened,
it would become a solid lump of pure white gold,
but the others were wise to his tricks,
and so they said, "No! No way! Even we don't believe
you can turn your pee into riches.
Go along in your own peculiar way,
Coyote,
and make your pee without bothering us anymore.”

So Coyote went along the tree line until
he found a nice clearing to put forth his water,
but he decided to rest
for a while before doing this,
and he passed out beneath the tree
he had been leaning on,
forgetting all about the necessity of putting out
the liquor he had poured into his belly.

Next morning,
Coyote awoke with a pain in his innards.
"What is the trouble here?" he said,
"ohhh, why does my body ache so?"
He rubbed his belly all over and made several chants,
but nothing helped the aches go away.
Finally,
he got angry and grabbed hold of his member
and began to swing it around and choke it, saying,
"Look! What is wrong with me?
I feel so awful!
Help make me better!
Send the troublemaker who is giving me hell in my body
out your little hole so I can punish him!
Do it!"
Coyote flung his penis around
and threw it against some trees,

he even caressed it and encouraged it to perform,
but not a thing was forthcoming.
He began to feel even worse,
but he was not worried yet.
He put some lotion on his member to heal the sores
and tucked it away in his pants.

That is when he began talking to his anus.
"See here!" said Coyote to his anus,
"I have maligned and injured my own member
over this pain I feel in my body.
No matter what I do,
my penis,
my favorite,
won't even help rid me of my discomfort.
Help me, anus,
help me to expel the troublemaker at work in my body."
So saying,
Coyote dug a hole,
pulled down his trousers,
and squatted.
He began to strain with all his might.
He grunted. He waited.
He implored his anus to do its best,
and his face grew more red with each try.
Finally,
he grew tired from so much effort and rolled over onto his belly,
cursing his body for the weakness it showed
in expelling this nemesis from within him.

By this time
Coyote could hardly move from the pain,
and his lower lip began to tremble,
and he could do nothing but try to cry.
He stayed that way for a while,
trying to cry,
but no tears came out either,
and he felt worse than ever.
He stayed that way for two whole days.

After that,
he felt better,
and he got up and began moving around again.

Copyright © Horse of the Sun and Keith Haines 1999-2002. All Rights Reserved.

In the Avoidance of Women
I

Sidebelly had become aware of the moss on his belly
ever since the time of an early spring
twenty-six years ago when he was twenty-one years old
with a lean incisive body moving easily
through the pines,
running north,
as he had been doing without pause for water
or love
for six years in avoidance of the assumption of
responsibility
he was to take on as a man,
and what brought him down at the end of his youth
were the frequent and penetrating thrusts
of mental daggers being driven through his ear,
sharply and up to the hilt,
which upon further examination
would have proven only to have been
the thorns of wild roses fashioned into tiny darts
by the thin and nimble fingers of some
woman,
no doubt,
and he did, finally, break down smoothness of motion
of wind in hair
into fractured moments
of settling vertebrae and sharply distilled
moments of anxiety,
for he feared his people were yet on the trail
behind him.

They weren't, of course,
they had failed to pursue five-and-a-half years back
after he had crossed the River of Separation,
the women moaning the loss of yet another
virile partner,
and he had come to rest slowly trembling,
driven down pointedly into supine immobility
by prayers and Wishes designed for his restraint.
By the Almighty Goddamn
they had caught up with him after all!
Hair by hair, finger by finger, toe by toe, cell by cell,
his breathing came deep
and the moss below his back gave way.
He could feel the breath of his bed exhale
near his ear telling him not to be afraid,
to rest,
that he needed rest,
and he closed his eyes and could feel the moss work
beneath his back and move up the sides of his belly,
taking over the responsibility of keeping him alive,
penetrating through his tissues,
extending through his veins, capillaries, arteries,
and enshrouding his heart
in the timeless revelatory muscle of the earth
as he slept.

II

The terrifying complexity
of manufacturing a self contained internal reality
for nine still years spent while saddled motionless
to the back of the earth on a bed of soft spoken moss,
of course,
was not to be undertaken alone.

But goddamn if the young Sidebelly was willing
to give up independence of strong, taut
manhood
without a fight for sole
or even partial possession of his tender mind,
no matter the teachers,
goddamn them all to hell with the
fruits and flowers they bring,
"I have been trying for six years to pound them
into dust,"
he told me, "six years to rid myself of their pursuit,
six years in avoidance of their mouths of
open and inviting tragedy,
six years spent hiding from their invasive minds,
six years working my muscles for prime
defense against their advancements,
I knew they would come too,
starting with Susie, of course,
goddamn her who kissed me first while pinning me
up against the wall
next to the garbage bin in the alley
behind the furniture store.
Six years,
six years,
goddamn them women, them witches,
them who spend the earnest moments before
the rise of the sun caressing,
oiling, and perfuming their legs and breasts
with their own juices,
combing and waiting to plait the magnificent length
of their hair under the beauty of the
polished crystal prism of mother’s making,
designed and crafted for the specific purpose
of dispersing the first rays of the morning throughout
the hair in the belief
that to hold the seven colors of the sun
was to hold the power necessary to enliven
the fibers of the hair which in turn,
when laid upon the pillow at night
and spread in imitation of the sun,
would successfully capture and blind a man
into meek submission of catering days;
days of heat and labor
spent under a malignant and difficult sun,
of strained breath spent through thin and dusty lips,
of brittle and confused moments
at the end of the day when conversation
with the woman
becomes necessary yet unavoidable and what is truly
needed is a cold beer
and an open window to the west –
a breeze would be too much for me to handle;
I would go insane in such pleasure of ease-
and goddamn
if she wouldn't then inhale the sun
into her belly at the close of the day,
swelling deeply
at the rush of performing
her daily admonition,
for she would have been stewing all day in her own
juices,
and speaking with the sun between her lips
of my failure to achieve the potency of manhood
in a dignified and respectful manner..."

And of course,
it was worthless for Sidebelly to struggle,
dangerous even,
for he was being wrapped tighter to the back of
the Mother Earth
at each impulse of protest,
pulled in deeper to the Woman of all our fruits,
and he would eventually learn that to struggle
would be to relenquish an even greater part
of his masculinity,
but he succeeded in the end,

thankfully,
in securing a bit of his manhood
down and away
in a sack between his legs where they could not
get at it,
the witches.

Copyright © Horse of the Sun and Keith Haines 1999-2002. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

 

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