When setting sunlight warms
silvery tree trunks &
mangrove reeds,
and they alternate with
deep shadows,
I finally understand
the tiger’s camouflage.
Tiger Stripe [Free Verse]
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Category Archives: Free Verse
Grave Reviews [Free Verse]
I click on Google Maps;
a pin highlights for a cemetery,
and, here, I stumble upon
graveyard reviews.
These reviews intrigue me because
it seems to me that if one is capable
of writing a cemetery review,
then one is unqualified.
And, if one is qualified to comment
on the caliber of an eternal resting place,
then one is unlikely to be capable of
posting a review.
I read one of the one-star reviews
and see that the reviewer's principal complaint
is an overabundance of "pocong."
"What is a 'Pocong?'" you may ask.
It is a Javanese ghost that takes up
occupancy in death shrouds.
Why is there a Javanese ghost
infestation in a cemetery 4000 kilometers
from Java, and -- as near as I can tell --
with zero Javanese occupants?
The review does not say,
but I love that someone panned
a cemetery based on the presence
of foreign ghosts
[and not because it is simultaneously
phasmophobic and xenophobic.]
But because it shows an unbridled commitment
to one's imagination that is usually
only seen among children.
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Cemetery Math [Free Verse]
i walk through the graveyard,
subtracting birth from death dates
to determine age at death.
there’s a correlation between
speed of calculation &
the degree of tragedy.
the faster i can determine an age,
the more disconcerting the death:
like the girl — 1990 to 2008.
the 89 year old man who survived WWII
service in the Burmese jungle
doesn’t raise as many questions.
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Sole Connection [Free Verse]
The mountain
was so long ago.
Yet, I feel its pulse
throbbing under foot --
into my ever-loving sole.
[You thought I was going to say:
"everlasting soul," didn't you?
Do you think my soles
inconsequential in comparison
to my soul?]
Nothing is firmer or finer
than the point at which
I touch (& know) the earth,
than the point which
presses the real,
and, thus, by which I have
evidence that I live.
[The ghost feels nothing in its soles --
if such a being exists.]
These lowly old soles connect me
to all that is, was, and ever shall be.
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Bodhi Tree [Free Verse]
How to pick a tree
that one can be resigned
to sit under until
Enlightenment?
If the choice is hard,
you are not ready.
If the choice is easy,
you are not ready.
If there is no choice,
perhaps, you're ready.
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Waiting [Free Verse]
Waiting.
A space between.
Neither doing,
nor resting.
There's something in waiting
that lies beyond being.
An expectation without promise:
As with Vladimir & Estragon,
waiting on Beckett's Godot, or
the Old Man waiting
at Gao's Bus Stop,
There may not be a payoff.
Whatever it is in "waiting" that
distinguishes it from "being"
or "resting,"
it sucks!
All the excitement of expectation,
nullified by the possibility
that nothing will happen --
nothing good, nothing bad...
just a soul-sucking nothing.
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Green Hills [Free Verse]
fingers of forest interspersed with fingers of pasture -- the hidden & the exposed -- two kinds of danger: being seeable & being unable to see. is the mind fearful of being exposed the same as the mind fearful of being confined?
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Silk Road Vagabond [Free Verse]
Dusty trails & caravans.
Traders & spice
slow walking
toward coin.
A thousand merchants,
a thousand tongues,
& lingua franca confusion.
Dazed & dreary
every eve.
Wired each morn.
Sleeping under starry skies
with long silences between
bleating goats or screeching hawks.
Dog, companion & security guard,
barks only when someone approaches,
and there is so much space
to lend wide berth.
Silk Road vagabonds
walk the path alone:
exploiting and dropping
opportunities at will.
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Infinite Regress [Free Verse]
The sweep of trees
forms a mandala.
The eye roams over it,
looking for a center
that doesn't exist.
Those roving eyes
rove & repeat:
caught in an
infinite loop.
And I wonder what hides
in the arc of trees?
What monsters mimic
the sinuous spine
of those pointy trees?
Whose eyes catch
the fine light,
reflecting back a
burning bright-yellow?
What lives unseen?
What flows unbidden?
What empties out,
but returns?
and returns?
and returns...
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Due West, All Day [Free Verse]
driving due west
at day's end,
the sun too low for visors,
an angry sun,
flaring in one's sunglasses.
the interminable tick-tocks
it takes for the sun to drop
down behind the mountains.
oh, how one wishes
the sun would disappear,
even though, having driven all day,
there's something demoralizing
about knowing you require a couple
more hours of dark drive time
before pulling into a motel.
such a big country,
so much West remains.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 