Making Sense Of Madness

Poet and Coyote Converse on Life's Ephemera

Poet, better off you are now 

than in 2016 you were?

If you’re talking about wisdom, morality, and spirituality—

yes, I suppose so. Age and experience and all that.

Why do you ask?

Poet, your first leaving more difficult was for the who 

of you than you thought it would be. You didn’t finish, but you

started from a where you didn’t know. The unfamiliar

and strange in that state of mind you traveled.

Faith and madness…not that far apart.

Uh... Coyote, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.

I’m talking about your voice of the stone age older;

stove up the who you are as secrets have demanded.

Full is the world, not ready for the how of talking.

Interesting. There’s always something to talk about— 

miracles and passion and the cosmos we live in.

Poet, madness today makes sense as much 

as it has before, since eternity, the beginning of...

thinking you’re not following me?

Not at all. 

Okay. Such a distance you know so roundy,

either from and back to madness to wisdom it is.

A trip to the mystical realm has no straight path.

Yeah, I know. So, let me ask you this:

When time is anxious, what memories will it behold?

If I go on sleeping, will I hear the noise of death?

You’re irritating the every bit that I am…

Yikes. Look at the time.

Sorry Poet. Gotta go.

Later, Coyote.

From: The Coyote Writings

p. 48. Book soon to be published

November/December 2025

What Do I Know?

We don’t know.

The world doesn’t know.

The world is needy.

The world is idiotic.

The world is barbaric.

The Universe moves eternally, under our feet,

over our heads, through our hearts and souls,

and I, the stumbling, fallible,

open-hearted poet of lost words

and lost worlds, mending still,

resigned to meandering,

am hoping for that one lightning bolt

that will open new doors;

listening to voices in the wind,

encountering ghosts and spirits,

and knowing stuff of other realities,

of no language, of no visibility,

that are full of colors and gloss and

sacred gatherings that I can’t explain.

At the bar in Pizzeria Mimosa in Hereford, Arizona,

a glass of wine and ordering something Italian,

chatting with the bartender or the person next to me,

penning a line or two, an edit here and there,

pondering the whats and hows of grasslands,

the wheres and whens of the Pacific Ocean,

the ups and downs of the Huachuca Mountain slopes,

the kindnesses of so many people I have met...

The world is beautiful, 

I said to no one in particular.

Just beautiful.

From: Getting There

Unpublished MS p. 39