I
a gnarled branch
twists its sinewy limb
from a crag;
its grotesque beauty
reminds me of me
II
reflections
on the rice paddies
show the sky
in an angry gray,
but dampen its scowl
III
glacier melt
leaves a great scar
gouged in the earth;
the gray and brown wound
looks like man’s doing
There was an odd boy of Slovakia
who often suffered from hypoxia.
He liked to hold raves,
but lived in the caves,
and so sucked the smokiest air in Slovakia
He sits outside and tells the tale,
but never lets her know
the story features future her,
and hopes for a hero.
She’ll play the lover and the mother
made wise too late to fly —
a mark with many a booster
but not one true ally.
She’s too naïve, too laidback, and
under-classed to wrestle —
a jungle lamb who, thus, becomes
the bled and the vessel.
They’ll quibble over right and wrong
as she lays in the way,
and will conclude evil was done
too late in her last day.
And sitting on an upturned crate
she would never suspect
that a listener would become
this yarn’s shattered object.
hope is a song on the wind
that never makes an echo
it climbs to where the air is thin
that’s where it lets the song go
it rains to earth in tonks and tinks
no melody you’d recognize
no note longer than a blink
a song lost in the skies
the columns stand crooked but strong,
hewn with scenes – right & wrong –
by gods and monsters long forgotten —
some loving & some rotten —
each dancing into its swan song
I
bougainvillea
wall of many colors
flames in sunlight
II
carpenter bee
submerges in a flower,
falling to earth
III
frangipani
blossom sits on sidewalk
courting glances
cool patterns radiate off the back wall
sunshine screams through the transom
i cringe at the taste of red #4,
but don’t know whether it’s red’s stench
or the bitterness of the number four
across Asia, “4” is an unlucky number —
the number of death —
but for some it tastes like citrus peel
A lonely oak sits on a grassy knoll.
I know its shapely nature from my mind.
I’ve seen it when I go to take a stroll,
but could see it even if I were blind.
The doppelganger grows within my brain.
It’s ever ready to join in the refrain.
There was a young man from Singapore
who worked at the docks as a stevedore.
It was a good income,
’til he spit out his gum,
and the cops came knocking at his door.
I
lost in thought —
a bird chitters nearby,
or did it?
II
tripping on a root,
falling awake, landing,
what happened?
III
Kingfisher
sits on a bobbing limb
just watching
