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. 

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... 

Willow River [Haiku]

willow leaves,
 slender and sinuous,
  hang to the river.

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.

Sunny Side [Haiku]

the setting sun
 fires the mountain's Yang-side
  to max contrast.

Columbus Limerick

There was an explorer named Christopher Columbus
 who entered the New World to fanfare of trumpets.
   He thought the Bahamans
   were Hindu Brahmins.
 His map wasn't so good as his compass.

Into the Woods [Haiku]

how short a walk,
 back turned to the city,
  to be free.

Rickety Gibberish [Free Verse]

A long time ago,
 I listened to the audiobook of
    Kerouac's "On the Road."

In that format, 
   I became aware of how often
     Kerouac used the word
       "rickety." 

Almost as aware as I became
   of how often Twain uses
      the N-word in Huck Finn
      when I unwisely listened to 
      that audiobook while driving
      through downtown Atlanta
      with my windows rolled down. 

I'm now reading Hunter Thompson's
   "Kingdom of Fear," and I've become
      aware that Thompson had a love
      of the word "gibberish" almost on par
      with Kerouac's love of "rickety."

And I think about how much beautiful
   rickety gibberish I've read from those
      authors, and what a fine 
      thing it is if one can write 
      rickety gibberish that stands up 
      under its own weight. 

Foo Dog [Haiku]

guardian dogs,
sculpted or painted: how do
they fool the spirits?