High Country       In the high yellow woods white trees snake skyward, their golden crowns settle over the mountains like a distant veil that shades to blue and purple. Snows come early and linger long where the land reaches up elbows and knees into the frozen air, tease pregnant clouds to release their crystal children like tiny white spiders that devour the unconscious landscape.   Promise sleeps beneath the bleached folds of winter and waits to infuse color, stroke by stroke, with a child’s reckless intensity all over the ground, the stones, and every part that grows from the bare bones of memory.   Blinded by its brilliant reflections, A star knows nothing of these brief spans.       ©2002 Donald  M. Fox           Armed and Dangerous     Armed and angry men race through the jungle. They run from their mothers and dreams of rest. The cries of their children blacken the night.   Armed and angry men seek shelter in madness. Their hands grasp hard reality from shards of hate. They cannot speak the horror they dream.   Armed and angry men run through the desert. They flee from the fear of freedom and truth. The bare landscape fills the emptiness of their thoughts.   Armed and angry men lope through the city streets. They hide from mirrors and churches and broken hearts. Confused tracks trace the thinned blood of their veins.   Armed and angry men cover their faces in shame. They coil swift ropes around their necks And leap in fury down mountains and rivers.   Armed and angry men soar over trees and valleys. Their talons sharpen in the blistering sun. Their prey huddle among the innocent shadows.   Armed and angry men close their hearts to love. They fill their fists with empty air and hold on tight. Their plodding feet wear away the sorrow and the joy.   Armed and angry men crawl beneath the rocks. The weight of memory binds their wounds. Hidden whispers bear no witness to their passing.   Armed and angry men glide through the waters. They swim with sharks in the deep hollow darkness. Their tears dissolve in the vastness of the sea.     Women weary of dying children who dream of honor and glory And follow the footsteps of armed and angry men in flight.     DMF © 2/02 Rev 6/02     © 2004 Donald Fox         Space Invaders     During the fifties monster films & stories of invaders from other planets commonly portrayed the hysteria provoked by communism.   The monsters were aberrations, miscreant figments of irrational thought like the nightmare visions of Bosch & Breughel.   The invaders were intellectually superior, technologically advanced, sinister & insensitive to the confused but loving humans.   Yet the evil invaders had a simple, fatal flaw, beyond the sight of their intellect, that did them in: a weakness for water, susceptibility to germs, sensitivity to light –   Today, invaders & monsters have merged in conspiratorial splicing, and we still haven’t learned that the images we create are portraits of ourselves.     © 2004 Donald Fox