DAILY PHOTO: Around Incheon Chinatown

City Market [Free Verse]

City market sprawls
Under covered roofs --
Blocks and blocks
With no outside, and yet
Not really inside either.
Miles of food:
Raw, cooked, and
-- Sometimes -- living,
Squirming in buckets
Or trying to flip to freedom.

In the witching hour,
With blue tarps up
And food stowed
And only streetlamps lit,
A drunk stumbles through,
Crushing an overripe
Peach underfoot.

DAILY PHOTO: Highrise Hong Kong

DAILY PHOTO: Rainy Day Busan

DAILY PHOTO: International Cinema, Seoul

DAILY PHOTO: Double-Decker Trams of Hong Kong

Long Gone Hong Kong [Free Verse]

In my youth, "Honk Kong"
Came after "Made in __"
As often as did any
Set of letters.

I can't remember the last time
I saw that declaration.
I do hear references to the
Hong Kong Markets opening.

They tore down the
Kowloon Walled City ---
A chock a block, chunky
Architectural cancer growth
Where people lived squeezed
More than a million to the
Square kilometer.

But still there are places where people
Are packed and packed --
While densely stacked --
In high-rise Building-Cities.
(If a City-State is a place in which
City and Nation are identical,
A Building-City is where a
Building contains all the
Functions of a city.)
One could live without leaving
If one didn't love sunshine.

But people do love sunshine.

And mountains and beaches,
Which Hong Kong also --
Against all reason --
Has in abundance.

DAILY PHOTO: Hong Kong Skylines

DAILY PHOTO: Wolmido Cultural Street

Goblin [Free Verse]

After dark —-
A city park —-
There runs the thing
That comes to life
By night.
Caged in stillness
Through sunlit hours.
Its night persona
Is blurred movement
Seen only from the
Corner of an eye.
It stays near deep shadow,
Beyond the lamp lit arcs.

Where is it?
No one knows,
But if one were to
Check the cathedral
Spire, you’d find
Only an impenetrable
Void…
until sunup.