Taken in June of 2015 on the Shimla – Kalka Toy Train
station editorial comments
passing engine
open air
postal elephant
a curious passenger
reminded me of the aqueducts
DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from the Shimla – Kalka Train
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POEM: Foisted, or: Bizarro Liam Neeson
He fancied himself a Bryan Mills
as played by Liam Neeson in “Taken”
…
only the Bizarro World version.
For he had no particular set of skills
[least-wise not as applicable to his situation]
&
instead of having had a child taken
he’d had one foisted upon him.
While this didn’t fill his every waking moment with violence
in a fight to recover the child
it did fill them all with chaos and occasional contusions
in the struggle to flee the bedlam.
And so, in that sense, they were practically twins.
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DAILY PHOTO: Door-to-Door Durian Delivery
Taken in Hanoi in December of 2015
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POEM: The Pleasures of Being Rained In
rainy season spatters onto big leaves —
like banana leaves
playing the jungle like a white noise orchestra
close your eyes and the wall of sound
drags over your senses
smearing tactile and olfactory experience
into the bombardment
yet the sameness of sounds offers no hold
and so that rain-on-leaf spatter dance
lulls one into a ragged, tattered trance
whether it brings euphoria or dark fears
or jagged agony or inexplicable tears
one can’t know without surrender
energy spills down my back
a liquid, electric energy
the subtle tug can be felt against tiny hairs
if your mind can move at the pace of that subtle tug
and not be sprung like a panther’s lunge
you can find your surrender
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DAILY PHOTO: Fisherman on Loktak Lake
Taken in May of 2017 on Loktak Lake in Manipur
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Moon Haiku
day moon
subdued but looming
soon gone
sliver moon
crescent vanishing
hanging lure
mountain moon
lighting valleys
show my trail
shadowless
til milky moonlight
spills the clouds
nitid moon
you must’ve been resplendent
but I slept
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DAILY PHOTO: Rathaus
POEM: Amboseli
belly-deep in glacial runoff
amid an emerald sea
a mud-caked troupe of elephants
the marsh free of acacia trees
Kilimanjaro looms in the distance
the source of all subsistence
if it should go
they’ll never know
it’s a death they can’t outdistance
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DAILY PHOTO: Barachukki Monkey
Taken in July of 2014 at Bharachukki Falls in Karnataka
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POEM: Mynd Aground
Masters of the mind?
what an arrogant crew
thinking they could run a man like a ship
and when the voyage ended on a rocky shoal
surrounded by pirates
pirates too strong to be kept at bay
they abandoned ship
and all he knew was the clock on the desk
ships, shoals, and pirates were beyond his scope
there were only the ticks of the clock
resounding like a hammer raining onto an anvil
the veracity of each tick couldn’t be confirmed
did it truly represent a moment sweeping past?
he couldn’t know
but it felt like the ticks threaded together
maybe just to trick him into thinking that there was something other than a river of nows
