Night [Free Verse]

Relentless [Free Verse]

Winter Poem

Frame of Reference [Free Verse]

Photograph taken at a butterfly sanctuary on Bohol Island, Philippines.
a butterfly hangs
upside down,

but it seems upside down
is as meaningless an
an abstraction for it
as the two million km/h
that a human sweeps,
spins, expands, etc.
through space
is for the person who
feels only the couch
against his backside.

what must it be to not know
upside down -- to feel free
to fall, knowing the air
will catch one?

The Fig Treatment [Free Verse]

Photograph of a Buddha head carving enveloped by Strangler Fig at Wat Mahathat in Ayutthaya, Thailand.
On a scale from
"this is cozy"
to
"my skull is cracking,"
I wonder how the fig tree
at Wat Mahathat treats
the Buddha's head?

Tainted (Free Verse)

Photograph taken at Andersonville National Historic Site in central Georgia.
A gorgeous day:
the sky is blue;
the air is crisp,
and a bird swoops in low
over the field to land
in search of insects.

The sign is kind of a bummer:

It tells me that 13,000
people died here --
most by shitting themselves
into unconsciousness.
(it doesn't use those exact words.)

This is Andersonville --
site of a Civil War prison camp.

Here, I believe in ghosts.
I don't believe in ghosts
when drinking my morning coffee
at my dining room table.
I don't believe in them when I
turn off my bedside lamp.
I don't believe in them anywhere --
anywhere else -- really.

But here they vibrate up
through my boot heals,
and I fear I may
shit myself.

Felonious Fig [Free Verse]

Photograph of a Strangler Fig straddling a stone wall -- taken at Ta Prom, Angkor, Cambodia.
I thought I caught a fig tree,
escaping over a stone wall,
but when I turned my attention
upon it, it stayed so very still.

This Is Not My World [Free Verse]

Photograph taken on Siquijor Island of the Philippines at sunset as low clouds reflected on the Bohol Sea.
Every once in a while,
you see a sight
that makes you say,

"This cannot be
the world I know!"

Monster Toes [Free Verse]

Photograph of a thorny tree taken in the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore.
tree trunk studded by thorns
that look like
mean monster toenails
with gnarly green cuticles,

even tree-huggers stay at
arm’s length.