POEM: Fairy Tale Canyon

Down in the Fairy Tale Canyon
hides a dragonesque companion.

Its spine plates jut from rusty sands
in this ill-known Silk Route badlands.

If you see the ground start to move
you’d better have a countermove.

POEM: A Kim Jong-Un Clerihew

I don’t think much of Kim Jong-Un as a ruler,
but between you, me, and the water-cooler —
there’s something that just must be said:
I’d buy a cookie jar the size of his head.

POEM: Contrarian Bear

There once was a bear named Jerry,
and – like the nursery rhyme Mary –
Jerry Bear was quite contrary.

“Those salmon should not swim upstream.”
“The people I bite should not scream.”
“Why wreck good berries with whip cream?”

There wasn’t a thing anyone said
upon which Jerry would not tread.
Don’t be like Jerry. He’s a d!$%head.

Three Kyōka of Animal Aggression

I
three monkeys
look down from a high branch;
one throws a pit;
a tourist dodges left,
right into the pit’s path

 

II
a goose struts,
then wheels about – wings flaring –
Karate Kid,
but standing on both legs —
feint with foot, jab with beak

 

III
a llama
spits in some poor girl’s face
as if she
were Hitler or Kim Jong-Un
classy, Llama, real classy

POEM: Raging Canyon [Virelai]

The scrub and tumble weed are scant
against colorful sands.
The burning heat will ensure rants
while crossing desert lands.

The heat is felt, and rage supplants
the awe of the badlands.
A broken mind enters a trance
as it dreams choking hands.

The hands enwrap, at just a glance,
the throat of a strange man,
who offended with just a stance,
given the heat’s dead hand.

POEM: Coming Down the Mountain

every heavy step
an act of resistance
against the indefatigable force of gravity

— hell on the knees —

 

why does everyone think coming down the mountain
is better than going up,
as if gravity were doing one a favor

the desire to live high in the mountains
with stunning beauty on view everyday
is one of those romantic notions
that reality pummels
and robs of its lunch money

 

i’d say something about everyone
who goes up a mountain having to come down,
but then I think about the stories
of the frozen corpses on Everest —
instead of coming down the mountain
they became stone-hard monuments to ambition

POEM: The Sprawl

cities grow outward
like angry amoeba —
false-feet stretching down
the motorway corridors,
and developing tumors
that will metastasize
into cities of their own,
sprawling until they span
the global petri dish

Quiet Morning Haiku

I
at the pass,
fog stands guardian,
then moves on

 

II
the chipmunk
freezes at a crack,
sniffing the air

 

III
a burble rolls
off the paddle as
the boat glides

A Limerick of Zambia


There was a young woman from Zambia
who developed an instant phobia.
She’d suffered a trauma,
finding two Black Mamba
curled up in her corner of Zambia.

POEM: Adrenaline Spike

a hot spike of adrenaline
sluices into my blood
not a shot, a squirt, or a drip,
but an adamant flood

if you can find someone who gives
you that kind of feeling
without fearing a certain death
but, still, with mind reeling

Hold on!