painted skies
make mountains puny
by contrast
in thin air
poor sleep paid in
grand skies
Pangong Tso
seen as by the prisoner
from Plato’s cave
POEM: Pangong Tso Haiku
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Category Archives: poem
POEM: Gravity’s Conspirator
trunk bent at a right angle
and leaning to the south
yet, that tree shows no struggle
every second — day and night
gravity summons it to the ground
it’s survived more than a few monsoons
puddles and soggy soil
have conspired with gravity
the wind has conspired
climbing animals have conspired
alighting hawks and crows have conspired
the boy who crawled out the horizontal limb and swung conspired
for years they have conspired
but the tree rarely so much as trembles
it’s doomed, but that knowledge holds no sway
and when i sit,
centered to thwart gravity,
i still feel the dogged pull
though its only conspirator is
my mind
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POEM: Unfortunate Circumstance
some will speak of loneliness
like a knife tip stuck in bone
some will tell their fever dreams,
that summer they had no home
some have never walked barefoot
through streets strewn with broken glass
but yet they still found themselves
waking, rolled in fresh mown grass
if you gave them each one wish
some would wish it never was
others wish they hadn’t been seen
but see he who saves it “just because”
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5 Mind Haiku
a flower
became the pivot
of my mind
thoughts form,
float ephemerally,
then burst
quiet came
my mind wordless
as pictures gel
feel emotion,
but don’t ever feed
that old goat
perfectionist?
the perfect can’t be loved,
only vied for
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POEM: Budapest
I know you best by the gray of your winters
when road salt coats the sidewalks
and a witch of wind rides down the Danube
whistling around pedestrians on your broad bridges
— except there are no pedestrians
— save for me —
river crossers huddle in yellow trams
or pack into the Metro that rolls under the river
I know your beauty can be unsullied
I’ve seen a Budapest in bloom,
under blue skies and cotton clouds
But your gray days lend a distinguished air
a melancholic miracle is birthed from gloom
a sweep of story,
a piece of poetry,
that would move a stoic to tears
And escape is always close at hand
for Kürtőskalács fires sunshine in my mind
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POEM: Consciousness
it’s a lighthouse in the wilderness
shining a spray of consciousness
over all that is surveyed
experiencing the world through a window
framed by this meat machine,
which is optimized for chasing down prey
over long stretches of African savanna
maybe there is so much more
as so many boldly claim to know
but neither they nor i have the mechanism to know it
— even if we have a masterpiece mechanism for believing it —
so, i’ll not yet extend my footings into the darkness
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POEM: Hanoi
of egg coffee and banh mi
to rocky islands in the sea
tiny, tidy market stalls
to the mammoth shopping malls
once a town in ruin and rubble
I saw not an ounce of past troubles
maybe a bullet-pocked citadel
though it be true that war is hell
it’s also a terrible liar
as if the world could be remade through blood and fire.
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POEM: Dark River
sitting beside the dark river
watching the inky water flow
though balmy, i feel a shiver
abyss, but for a moon lit glow
in the rippling liquid metal
aside blinding light from the moon
i see loping letters settle
in lyrics of an unsung tune
i don’t fear the talking waters
nor the dirge they write for me
for in life we’re all but squatters
i dread the river’s gift lost to a cold sea
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POEM: Rambling on a Koan
“What is your original face?”
Original? Does that mean I have one now?
Perhaps when I mirror gaze.
Otherwise, if I have a face, it resides in the minds of those who look upon it.
He who takes a scaffold built of patches of matter, varying distances from his eye
and reflecting various spectra of light, and fleshes it out in subjectivity owns the face.
That mean thing,
thing of glee,
that by which cantankerousness is displayed
thing of sorrow,
thing of madness,
that ugly-pretty, disheveled topography of flesh
is a faceless face,
or — perhaps — a thoughtless thought.
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POEM: The Endrow, or: How To Survive a Cornfield
I was once a kid in the corn.
News at Eleven ran a story
about a child found dehydrated
and on death’s door — deep in a field.
Any farm-boy will tell you,
you can’t get lost in a cornfield —
not truly lost.
Pick one of the two directions
that your row runs,
and walk.
When the rows re-align at right angles,
that’s the endrow —
you’re almost out.
Sure, it sucks if you hit the river,
because then you’ve got to walk
all the way back past where you started,
moving in the opposite direction.
But a kid has a lot of walk in him.
The only way to get lost in a cornfield
is to panic, and lose all faith
in the logic of a field.
In nature, one may walk oneself in circles
’cause one leg is stronger than the other,
and nature’s chaos is omnisymmetric
to an order-loving human brain.
But, in a field, the rows run true,
and the only way to walk in circles
is to feed your fear
and lose faith in the straightness of rows.
One can’t teleport a harvester into a field,
it needs to be driven there on a road.
Find your endrow, find your road.
