POEM: Monkeys Make Me Smile

Monkeys always make me smile

Some have hair in human styles

Oh the vanity  their locks betray

Can you spot the one with a toupee?

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Faces so reminiscent of our kind

Eyes suggesting intelligent minds

Into their faces they’ll one day grow

but the youngsters all look like H. Ross Perot

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They’ll sit on your car like they just don’t care

And screw the haters who stop and stare

Have you the courage to leave your mark

on the windshield of one who double parks

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It amuses us that they sling their poo

So we banish them to the city zoo

But what of our words so vitriolic

We’re evolved to sling poo symbolic

POEM: Everything & Its Opposite

IMG_0235They say,
“Everything,
&
its Opposite,
is true of India.”

colors so bold
and brash
please the eye
despite the clash
Then there is
that darkest side
slain daughters
burning brides

curry scents
draw the drool
flowery fragrances
from lotus pools
still,
other scents
fill the air
piss,
poverty,
death,
& despair?

honking horns
jar the brain
the piercing blare
of a freight train
then silence
but for the mind
slowing, calming
freed from grind
&
Infinite possibilities.

TANKA: Crows

a murder of crows
call from trees in unison
hidden amid leaves
invisible but noisy
what secret taunts curse us

POEM: Phantom Mind

i washed up on a foreign shore
i saw no house, but just a door
through the door, light was dim
my mind was as phantom limb

 

my thoughts rang false
my mind chugged leaden
white mice danced a waltz
at the edge of Armageddon

 

a piercing tone slapped my mind
my eyes fell out and I was blind
squirming to a surface I couldn’t see
gasping, birthed, and then set free

 

another night in my phantom mind

 

 

 

 

 

Haiku from my daily walk

Hazy hilltop morn,
a resting hiker looks like
a granite Buddha

Chicks chirp noisily
each tremor anticipates
mamma coming home

Early Spring Haiku

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stalwart Beech tree
still gathering sunlight
on last year’s leaf

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dandelion
arrives to party first
eager flower

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a bud breaks open
its tiny leaf waves hello
welcoming the spring

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spring’s urgent leisure
flowers drop a fine pollen
to ride listless winds

POEM: Salkantay: or, Sea-level Gringo

The pass begins

The pass begins

Boulders lay strewn like the dice of God,
moss-covered, on a close-cropped blanket of green.

The Pass educated me,
I’d never known I could see snow and jungle in the same day.
I never knew how thin of air would sustain me.
I still don’t know how a fish out of water
has the death throe energy to spastically flop.

I was a tortoise: plod, stop, resume plodding, repeat.
If I’d been deprived of oxygen to the same degree as that fish,
I’d have just silently fallen off the switchback into the valley below.
Into boulder scree and the carcasses of sea-level dwelling gringos past.

POEM: They Spiked My Punch

IMG_5559They spiked my punch.
I had no lunch.
I got so drunk, so very drunk.
Drunker than I thunk
that a man could ever be,
and I don’t know if I can trust what my eyes did see:

I saw: two elephants riding pogo sticks,
the Taj Mahal made  of Lego bricks,
Ned Flanders as a creepy voyeur,
A lady talking to an honest lawyer,
goats doing kung fu in the park,
a talking dog and a man who barked,
a traffic cop with a great big smile,
the line for kicks formed in single file,
two geese played a wicked ping-pong match,
I got hit by a bus–look not a scratch.

POEM: In an Ancient Village

Seven years down the road
with dirty feet and no abode
I’d wander to and fro
along the narrow streets
of an ancient village



And when the monster came for me
I did not even claim to see
his vile disfigurement
in the dim winter light
in that ancient village



For years I tried to sail away
having failed to keep the beast at bay
but my ship  always
circled back ’round
to that ancient village



Then they’d throw me in some grimy pit
with scarcely room to for me to sit
and I’d whisper curses
under my breath
about that ancient village.



Then the monster would call on me
and all the townspeople would flee
as I wreaked havoc
on the town square
of that ancient village

POEM: Do They Really Sleep?

Are these sleepy  little villages and hamlets really tucked into bed by eleven?

When my train rolls by and there is nothing on display to my bleary eye

except vacant roads, dark shadows, and the dim glow of night-lights.

Cars are still; people are absent; time is frozen but for the wind-blown hedges.

But do these villages go to sleep, or do they just turn off the lights

and do those things which should not be subjected to the light?