I wake up in a world I’ve never tread before.
Standing in a forest, before an oaken door.
The door opens with a screeching, shuddering creak.
I walk into a room whose walls begin to leak.
The flood is rising higher in this strange new world,
and then forms a vortex in which I’m cruelly swirled.
As I resolve to drowning, the walls fall open,
and I am washed down a secluded, mountain glen.
I awake mistrustful, and unsure of my state,
but one fact speaks true, that I need to urinate.
Taken on November 2, 2019 at Kolar
This is a 14th century Vijayanagar-era Hindu temple constructed in the Dravidian style that is located in Kolar.
Taken on November 2, 2019 at Antaragange Hill, near Kolar
a moon-made shadow sweeps, wind-borne
tree branch tines race across the courtyard
but trees, moons, and shadows do not race
and, so, my mind & time must have become unhinged —
“unhinged” being the operable word
Taken Laurel Ridge Trail at Lake Lanier in October of 2011
Welcome to the Masquerade!
There’s no reason to be afraid.
Twenty belles, but just one Ball,
but behind ten masks creatures trawl
[a harbor called Bad Judgement.]
Fifty-fifty are the odds,
she’ll not work on the demon’s squad.
Your beast may sport two backs or one,
by the time the night is done.
Choose wisely whom you take back home.
Mask down, you’ll face a wrinkled gnome.
No pressure, but it’s bliss or Hell,
Depends upon the kind of spell
[that you let yourself be put under.]
You wonder how anyone could
believe in Shangri-La,
like it must take damage to one’s
neurons or ganglia.
But if there’s a place I would search
for Yeti high and low —
it would be that Himalayan
land called ‘abode of snows.’
If you can see the vast expanse —
the mountains stretched for miles,
and asked about a lost city,
make your smug denials,
then you haven’t truly seen the Himalaya.
