On The Beach

The car door creaks but only the sun with
its ultraviolet glare responds as she
reaches for wraparound shades that obscure
the howl of the wind and the lure of the
coldest winter yet – a June day in San
Francisco. Ocean Beach is our spot but

the auto is obdurate, refusing
to accelerate as we talk and laugh.
We pass buildings rowed like dominoes
and at stop signs I laugh louder, hoping
the sputtering idle an omen unheard.

Lunch, saran-wrapped (the one that will remain
uneaten while clasps go undone), sits and
waits as she does while my feet walk to the
water barefoot, feeling gravel and grit
burrow into toes, my stomach bottomless.

Now I breathe in the waves and they tease my
eyes, appearing to swallow fishing ships
whole. The horizon extends to the world's
edge and amidst this vastness, nature looms;
Sunlight squeals; wind whips salt tears; the sea and

I are one even as I fear what these
tides can do, even as I map out space
needed for two bodies missionary
on blankets brought under the guise of a
perfect picnic lunch; what I fear most is
what the tides and the ships already know -

that nothing will stop this.

Enough

We are off, driving 395 hard
enough to send the sun screaming toward the
buttes as sagebrush eyes and wicked neon blinds
us to the bones and rest-stop sleepers that
crowd like unburied bones.

None of us knew
we'd been had - not with enough pink above,
enough to see marrow shine through skin gone
translucent, enough left in the pit of
the pipe, and just enough gumption and zest
for the oncoming darkness to be not
like all that came before and all after.

Futureback Rider

Can steel reveal? Go online for real jottings -
musings - information about how to improve your
station, trading learning from face-to-face for
philosophy written by this dead man, at X
place. Why not live in now from your ideas and be clear,
unmuddled by what your mom learned from hers or your dad's
escapism embodied by Bud longnecks, two dreck
ideas dead long ago; go remove the snow and hoe your
own row of muses and abuses and spare me
the accuses - just tell me how your garden grow.
Plow now ex-cow your own relief from past-timed
elves who whisper histories as extensions
of our past selves.

なる

Closing our eyes to

dream diminishes breathing

life into right now.

break - the chair

A bowlegged chair -
all redwood pressboard, green cushions plumped -
rests next to the cling-clang washer,
waiting for its owner to return.

The owner, my grandfather, once needed no chair,
once threw baseballs like the bullets he carried,
sweet shrapneled souvenirs from a Pacific campaign,
mementos for a life passed away,
wiled away on an auto assembly line
eight hours at a time.

The chair was the latest in a long line of evolution
dated from before the war,
before thirty-eight years of Lucky Strikes:
the child of when he met my grandmother
which was birthed as he returned from the war
that gave him, in order:
malaria
shrapnel
and a good left eye exchanged for one of glass,
sealing a childhood shut
the day that Fate
(in the form of a draft number)
tapped him on his shoulder.

November 23, 2006

Meat dark and white, eyes

bright and wise round two tables

on this Turkey Day.



Six years since our last

one has erased stigmas

(natives versus whites)



and left us with true

fellowship, laughter, and

a renewed thanks


for companions, new

and old, amity heating

every corner


as we sipped wine,

reflecting, peering out at

a winter night dusted white.

Malacampa: After the Funeral

Did Spaniards foresee fate when they named this place?
Flat land with heat that hung like death.
Did they know? Could they have known?
Did silver shorn horseman sense that blood would sow the fields?
Could that be why they left?
Did they know that relics from their days - pesos -
could not bring back pride,
and that this bad swirled from nowhere.

My Filipina Grandma had been gone three days,
and the squatters have come forth and feasted
after holding back on their tributes of rice,
and the cousins have gossiped the open casket,
swearing only bad would stem from space
between dead head and wood,
and now no more fires are lit under the morn mango trees -
as the fire ants know enough to flee the scene.

A priestly donation turned into a Range Rover.
Parcels of land re-divided in secret.
Jeepney drivers give no quarter as they sport fresh new tires
leaving an empty house sucked to the marrow.

Now we husband our coins,
give the maid just what she needs and no more,
sit in the house, play cards, and refuse to be bewitched
by five-ace hands,
listening to how a carabao brained Uncle good as we
put out the call to Manila.

Now we hear the baranguay cock its ear,
hear the New People's Army stalk and wait,
even hear the heifers moan at the moon -
knowing that she's gone, and why.

Even the mosquitos cease their buzz -
not wanting to labeled a bloodsucker,
not on this night
- under a bad camp moon,
with a Luzon barrio scarce of breath
under the lunacy of the thick blood moon.

Sinatra and Water

Swooning with Sinatra,
he drives into the sea with windows down and decides
nothing would be finer than to let the car flood.

Done with staring at a square, a seventeen-inch
black and white, powered off,
finished with filing,
wishing all the while he could
fall off the tree like a turned leaf, he sits,
seat-belted; he watches brine cascade
over the door, sees liquid slip between door and
frame, and thinks that anything could be
better than newsmen prying -
even as his hands pry at the doorhandle,
knowing what neck-high water really means.

Hunger: A Prayer

Dengue fever, back from the retinue of memory, strikes
modern innocents: could this be a sign? A critique? Maybe
plagues are not an indictment at all, as much as reminder
of guilt as smallpox blankets or nooses in the wind. Maybe
Cronos did not eat his children out of anything but the most
animallike hunger.

Our obsessions come back to us, a vertiable jack-in-the-box,
and no creamy chocolate or capsule med can save us; their
pleasure sensation moves as swiftly to obsession as a two-toed
thief. And does sensation end? Can memory be forgotten? Once
dengue fever runs it's course, will chocolate fill the vacuum?

Who prays for the ones not hindered by memory, the forward
looking, the bird who learns not from mother but extending
eye to wing, knowing what each is for? May infinite candles
be lit, may syllables soar skyward, may creation/destruction
come with each breath, may the unhip hop and pipe organ
glories praise the rolling of is into be.

(insert prayer ending here)

The Geometry of Loss

He slumped; the gurgling sound Grandma heard from
the kitchen brought the EMTs, there in time to catch
the aftermath, drooling from a mouth frozen square.
It was clear the situation could not be repulsed, and
he was hustled away on a rectangle. With wheels.

That was the day the fuzzy edges hardened. No more
reminiscing about the arcs of sugarcane, no more TV
blaring football. Now, in a home devoid of heavy steps
borne of shrapeneled knees, a home where people
retreat to the kitchen and sip coffee to stave off talk,
my sister and I run circles around these pointed edges.

What was it my mother cooed (to me?) in quiet moments?
"The world is going down, baby. The world is going down."

Beginning

Birds sing. Bamboo sways.
Cows sit in shade. Grass lies down
in an untouched grove.

I sit cross-legged.
Light eases between the leaves.
Harmony is here.

Hobos

Hobos are hep. Not hip, for everyone is well aware that the word hip lost any oomph long ago. It has gone the way of right on and the dreaded neat-o into the cultural vacuum cleaner. Maybe it will be recycled five years from now. Maybe never. But hep is right fucking now.

Even though hobos are hep, I do not know a thing about hobos.

The vacuum, you see, is with me. And Wonder Bread is not the culprit; my mother would not buy me a single square, fearing the chemicalization would push my already pale skin toward, for lack of a better song title, a whiter shade of pale. My friends, I reasoned, could begin to fear their former friend, now florescent, the one with the skin disease that Michael Jackson has. You know: vitiligo.

I have never met a hobo with or without a viscious skin disease but the fact that I was - in part - raised in suburbia makes me believe that if vitiligo is really out there, and not just something my mom made up to scare me into eating whole grain food, then hobos have it. Not whole grain bread mind you but vitiligo. They must. With no family pet save a rusty can of beans, no car waiting on their sixteenth birthday, no remote control set up inside a boxcar, how can a hobo possibly survive?

I say in part above to emphasize that a small portion of me just might be hep. You know how I know this? I have eaten dirt. Hobos no doubt have eaten dirt. Thus, the bond between me and hobos has been cemented by the soil of the earth.

Hobos eat dirt; eating dirt equals street cred; street cred is most definitely hep. By way of soil eating, I, too, have gained hep points. Here is my lament: because I contain both ‘burb knowledge and hep cred in my cranium, I can conceivably get into the hottest clubs and pay five dollars for water bottled in Idaho. Hobos cannot do that – they have the hep but not the knowledge of who to bribe. Neither of us has been on television, and neither of us is likely to, unless a body is found floating in a creek somewhere. The fact remains: hobos have no chance. None at all. This is perhaps the single biggest reason why hobos are hep.

I guess what I am saying is that I want to be a hobo.

The Poet At Dusk

Good words can be seen

in the shade of a blade of

grass, content to rest

Heard at Buena Vista Park, 1996

What's needed is truth,

not deception - it's all a

conspiracy, man!

Convergence

Rostral thoughts reflect

what we aspire to to be

and what we hope for

Must

How do sprouts know when to lift their heads and shout?

Like cool marble on the belly of a bare foot
baring the tenacity of cancer
betraying the lunacy of a blood moon
pulling syllable fossils and making them whole,
this is part the art of writing.

The other part? Reflection:
a reader a writer and the words between
creating a stream of consciousness
or a face peering into clear water only to see itself
for some there is nothing else
for me there is nothing else.

untitled one

she assigns blame and
can not figure out
why she is alone

why no one sews soothing words
into a comfort

why her life spins like
the last revolutions of a top

why stars glint skyward
(because they just be)
unknowing their terresterial names,
assigned by people who
point at the sky

and this she can not get

A Late Grace

Midnight brings a grace that won't sleep,
leaving you pacing,
walking through minefields of hope
with elephant steps
that imprint the ground
while you pace evermore.

It is recursive:
the walking leads
to more walking which leads
to kicking when you sleep,
staring when awake,
connecting with
the yelping of hounds and
the gnawing on bones,
connecting by
choking when you fuck,
feeling the field-dive of hawks
and mourners and
doves in flight
as you walk
and walk
and walk some more

Hold This In Your Mind and Heart

Ripeness of mind has

more value than place or space

or anything else.

Hour of Slack

Myth is alive:
in every cowboy hat
and neck tied,
with every collection plate
and each person not
tied to the dominant paradigm
lie residue of what progress
has passed.

The sky walkers, the boss talkers,
have always trumped the wind walkers
and why not: they deal the cards that
set the rules for the game.
These myths funnel upward . . . or do they?

Not enough people look for the holes
but many find them: turning slack hours into
private paradigm, one that wears a
sideways hat as disguise, one that
wears a Santa suit to dispense condoms,
one that smiles and nods while
understanding that cause and effect has less to
do with bowing to the man and everything to do
with wanting what you get.

Dirty Squirrel

Do what you're not to do and pay
sayeth the hanging judge,
but two squirrels think
nothing of suffering as they
rev like racers at the foot of
the tree, mooning me,
with their bushy tailed ani
twitching at what they see.

My synapses fire at a mere java lick.
To the rodent, heaven is a nut
fallen, and paws don't wait,
grabbing glee with all a small
body can muster.

While I sip at my thick brew
awaiting the grace of a later day,
the squirrel's already got hers . . .

Eve Lonesome

Beautiful was all he said:
the thought wandered as
cicadas chirped and prairie grass rustled,
commenting biddies at dusk.
Legs crying, the rider pushed
on into oxygen-starved darkness as if on rails,
oblivious to where it might go,
unseeing of its end,
thinking yet not getting it,
and cool air turned cold
out where the steam shovels,
knowing this day was done,
unignited their fires and slept.
Can a steam shovel know what
a rider cannot?

Out With The Dead: A Poemoir

Pale blue bleeds the sky,
the eyes that bleed swept away by
a wave of hallucinogens. And it's
on: we send hacky sacks into
sidewalk drum circles and chants into
silence, skipping through tie-dyed
mourning hordes to whom soap and
water were not endemic.
What drugs gave was invincibility,
a orgon pulsing with every step,
an inalienable urge - no, right - to
find objects that had no business
being ours. Capturing the flag
became a glorious symbol of
what we weren't, and so we
set out, trudging up the hill,
tripping over logs (disguised as
bums). We the pulsing claimed
a golf green as if it were our own.
It was our moon landing, and
no country club could stop us.
Pin flags wrapped around
us like war kilts we scurried
down the hills, knowing replacements
would hang limply by the following
dawn; however, our stolen clothing
gave us a sense of hope.
All the moneyed country clubs could
not reverse our ineluctable Shivastic
nature, nor explain why a bottle of
cheap wine stood where a stick should be.
Buoyed by brownies laced with pot and
stem, we pool last dollars to buy roses
from an Iranian and proceed to
parade, to toss them at bongos and
homeless. Dreadlocks, we note,
retain rose petals quite well.
Fueled by Death's release, we
convulse, cradling our selves,
laughing like banshees. This is our
elasticity; this is our way.

Twas the Night Before Payday

Sixty-nine cent bag

of frozen veggies; white rice;

soy sauce for panache.

A Day of Intense Fighting

More headline bullshit.

Can physical combat be

listless . . . or lazy?

White Noise

The kitten, the one plucked
mewling from a box downtown,
the spider fighter, the dark
destroyer, looks at me with
knowing grey eyes as if to say,
"you can't do this. You don't
know shit."

Winds howl outside but inside
silence can not erase the
taunting hum of the computer,
its screen a blank snowy hillside.
Isn't this dramatic, you say.
Well, I'd answer, it depends.
Do you write?

Scouring the floors yields no
answer, lyrics on the radio
laugh at your ego, and
yogastic posing only
twists your body into knots
that approximate your mind.

Fingers tap out the same line
in slightly different ways,
stuck playing endless variations
of an unliked theme. The line
is a kettle whistle, piercing
the blessedness of the page.
Because you love writing, you
erase it

and the sea of white is your
home. Adrift and only
vaguely aware of land, you
strike out for any idea, any
shadow on the horizon.

Darkness descends,
clock ticks are pin pricks,
and time ambles towards
two a.m. as you write the
same sentence, again.

The Unmentionables at the Fish Market

Anger undrenched by an ocean
of distance, you call
to bitch about baranguay
captains and the cousins
who complained, "grandmother's
coffin is the wrong size."
Then in the next breath,
"fire ants will bite your
daughter's feet as she climbs",
and I wonder: just who
allows her to climb the mango
trees?

These are calls that
only my purlieu can soothe,
these tides (and cigs) that
hypnotize a mountain goat
such as I. I drive redlined,
punch a hole in the wind,
reach the shore and stay all day,
buy ice milk from
toothless street vendors, and
wonder how the taste on the
spoon was so pale - how it got
to be this way.

My ribs poke at my tee shirt,
my thoughts jab at my mind
as another call comes from
old Luzon, ire rising from
a far horizon as two people,
wizened raisins, sway on
gravel in a parking lot
to the music of Teresa Teng,
a national idol, dead of
asthma, at 33, far from home.
They move not as lovers but
as one. Cheap netting covers
the man's head, his forehead
and scalp blank with age, a perfect
place for the midnight blue and
white sun of the Kuomintang.

It is a moment, privy to me,
its grace descending like a fog.
The woman in his arms becomes
youthful, small steps go from mincing
to girlish and I wonder if he has
ever had to leave her.

My guidebook does not list the
this fish market; its smells
considered unmentionable,
yet it fascinates to watch
the fishing skiffs bob in the waters,
trying to reach safe
harbor before the sun does.

Folk song notes float through
the air like twilight. The singer
is fourteen, singing "I Am A Rock"
in syllable-timed English.
My pocket yields a coin; coin
clinks in the can; my loneliness
absolved. When my clothes
reek of smoke and gutted
fish, when the early
evening wind
snaps kitestrings,
when the dancers have
shut their stall and
the sky darkens with all
the colors of longing
then I go, leaving the
stench of seafood
behind for the quiet
of empty rooms
and bare feet on
cold hard tiles.

When To Be Quiet

Human beings can

forget solace often comes

from their mere presence.

The Desert is Great for Peyote in April, 1994

Good men are hard to find:

unobtrusive, shadowed by

the hard men who are good,

the ones far easier to spot.

Damming their emotional

spigot, transcending by

societal decree: how can

you get your rocks off anymore?

Living is so rule-governed, so

scripted, so my-guardian-did-this-so-

I-will-too-ed; writing acts as

fire patrol that clears way this dead wood.

In moments of pure folly,

the voice in my head whispers that

"even the burns are controlled, on

the page."

In writing to release,

resolving to relive flesh

wounds (and absolve the makers)

I realize I've cut my own, jived,

and said things about clothing and

owning that were, at best, untruths:

just the kind of things that get men laid.

CarHouseDreamsFears and, for now, Drugs.

Venomous whispers all,

a spider, seeped in societal ill,

sold on TV, I want these things

only as barter -

an evening of words for a night

of hard fucking.

I offer no recompense - for you do it too -

nor is quarter expected from you

and yours. The schism in me is the

schism in you. Let's unite these

divergencies, strap desire to our

hearts and loins, call it Will,

and walk - not as

Saturday night hooligans, not as

renegades (for all is one), not as people

wuthout places,

(for the all the world is a playground of

magic), certainly not as united,

but as visceral incarnations of

our selves.

Cracks spread like pox,

the world undulates,

and Apollo blazes across a

sultry sky, perfect for

tonight my chingadera -

Round Two.

Finally, the Truth is Revealed

Nothing deflates the

ego, nothing harkens truth like

a kick to the groin.

Pondering Being While Sitting in a Bathtub

You do it - again.

You do it - again. Can you

change . . . can anyone change?

Weather Report

Soft snowflakes blanket,

their flutter no less forceful

than hard darts of rain.

An Unexpected Bonus at the Cell Phone Shop

Won't that just tint your

windows? Or pay for a whale

tail? Look out girliez . . .

A Persimmon's Idea of Far

Among persimmons

shining sickly sweet forever,

my father walks, far,



far from seedlings and

Persephone, in autumn,

the underworld so near.



Far from the life he

has grown for himself, far from

being chased by



butcher-knife mother-

drunks, no longer crouched in

closets or Vietnam



fatigues, and now, just

when he can see, glaucomic

fog takes the edges



only midnight white

looms, dead ahead - just when he

shakes long shadows loose.



Orange orbs blaze like hair

but taste fades as light beckons,

orbs swish in the wind,



dangle for Hereafter,

staring hungrily, waiting

for the bitter seeds.



Unfair it is: seeds

have sprouted, grown roots and wings,

transcended time and



camo mail missions,

dropped messages, avoided anti-

aircraft fire, the ground



gunners unaware

his enlisting for this

rescued him from



kitchen pitchers of

vodka lemonade, the ones

Mother drank when his



father drove silver

buses that staggered like

Mother, home alone.



Can a persimmon

know each cackle betrays the

glee of survival?



As sibilant gusts

hush the trees, rock the seeds, cup

them, so matronly,



does my father (orange

to hard-wood, overripened)

know that he can see?



Does fruit know before

the fall that it's wait is short,

that the time is near,



though it's come so far?

Why We Blight

Who's afraid of the

iron lung? ricketts? po-li-o?

spent maladies long



adapted to, outran,

then - mutation! - to bird flu

and masked persons



on city buses,

afraid to cough, forgetting

about polio,




knowing that what took

grandfather, felled dead in

the paddy for want



of medicine, could

only touch them viscerally

via cathode ray tube



yet panic passed

like a baton as people

sniffed the air for



fear that would release

the hollowness embodied

by ricketts, the sight



of people hooked

to breathing machines and, that

devil, polio.

Passed

Can anyone stand

erect and bear the awesome

weight of memory?

Yard Man Blues

I'm in the field, standing between a
post-scripted past and a paralyzed
future. Shucked like corn, tricked,
hoodwinked - brought back to an island,
letter-by-letter, thirty four letters over
fifteen years, to an island that is no
longer mine. Sons cry for me, house-
niggers boss me, but me? I'm
free. Free to watch the show-all American
abortions and race train wrecks. Free to
love my girl, free to drink warm beer, free
to be colonized, free to care for no better.
I have my place - and, within that, within
good graces and valor and obediance, that
place is home. I am native, nipa-hutted,
and no non-native's gonna colonize
this head of mine. When I go, it'll be
in the sun, whiteness thrown off like
a soiled tee, warm beer in my hand, on
my island. I am the horseman in the
swamp and, eventually, the hill people,
the people who gate, will see that I
ain't blind - and sure ain't dumb.

Worldwide Genocide

Gray clots in the sky

watch as disregard / fear pool,

floodwater in wait.

Life Vow

Papyrus of the blood,

a paper encapsulates eight years

of learning limits, body-glitter-

shelved, and tobacco

by the carton. The tax just a

weak deterent; testicles,

sagging evil; every puff,

reflection. Spirit drained by

small moments, road forks,

denials, distractions, disease, and

drive-thru living: in short, America.

Monogamy, the serpent, a territorial

beast, tolled the bell as heaven fell; the

knell a reminder of how you

came in: small, dew-skinned, and

so full of wonder, skin inky in darkness

and whitened in light. At the teat of

life, before paper, the original blood

rivulets through veins, too aware of

life to be captured on a document.

Remember this and have all.

She Who Poured Her Heart Into Mason Jars

She poured her heart into Mason Jars,

old schema in new thick cylinders

presenting apple apricot views into imaginary worlds,

every brew a fossilized life.

Ribbons, moth-like, clung to the fridge

and bruised fruit made useful,

gelatinous, malleable,

willed into existence, spread on toast.

Each prize proclaimed an ache,

every golden font a lie that

stuck to lineoleum like color itself-

her alchemy wore out that floor.

As moonbeams brought demons,

idle hands became confectioners:

snapped heart strings stewed,

sugared, set, then jarred so that only

an autopsy could detect

the root of blackberry bitterness,

knew just what browned those

apple preserves.

Strawberry that moaned of first love

deigned the cupboards, mango

abortions; marmelade hopes,

until the flavors ran together,

indistinguishable now in old age,

as relentless as the slams of cabinet doors

and ushered her spirit into Mason Jars.

Eternal Recurrence

History spun, remixed, a rerun

with the same needs advertised

eight minutes an hour. Can one break free

( . . . over and . . . )

of love, requited and not,

( . . . over and . . . )

or oregano disguised as pot,

(. . . over and . . . )

bitterness that turns heart to rot?

( . . . over and . . . )

Cheaters go free / cheaters get caught,

saliene creeks wet cherried cheeks,

the same leaders, the same freaks:

demongraphics both natured and nurtured

eternal,

while the searchers search

for an abba-ca-end to a mortal curse.

Curse ye gods and Satans but stray clues

remain: an onerous protocol, legendary

recipes of what cooked before -

and will again, recipes worn by

some like a shawl, recipes of

filial forbearance, demented

tenets from beyond the grave,

and broken-stringed puppets,

limp and lank, decorate the now,

venerated like truth. Utopia is

a "going-to", so start your steppin',

sheltered by fronds, sleeping in

nipa huts, leaves turning

fuzzybeautiful, highlighted and bathed

in rhe sweet breath of dusk. From close up,

these leaves are

mosaics that show things as they are:

discrete pixels of nearly nothing,

colors that blend and flash

as life goes by.

Aging

Vinagered pupils,

fluffing the Law of Fives and

a gaze once youthful.

Without the Salve of Water

Your job broke down car
the stars from afar
all dancing and fancing
and laughing at your
life that you're half-
way in way in way in and
so far no sight no sight
no sight of the shore
you reach for the gun to
take down a few more.

Where is family in all this?
What role does the unattainable play?
Who would poke holes in strangers like this?
Will they find peace where they lay?

Opening fire in a place where it never rains
is the cruelest cut
for without the salve of water
nothing ever heals.
Clearly this is a long road -
a life only hinted in my run-on above -
and what can the remaining do?

The mirage of life shimmers,
real and untouchable,
now what can the remaining do?
What can the remaining do?

Yet Graceful Reprise

The light can not hold forever
and a nightwashed blue awaits
the reprise of the void.
In a world gone backwards,
with violets cupping air in their tender petals,
purple passion shrinking,
by remembering that all came from nothing,
there is nothing to be lost.

Gone go the strivings, the voices,
the thunderbolts from high, the
notes that follow our fetal condition
and sound with an ever-mounting urgency:
yet
this trap-door is far from suicidal
if you let your self dissolve into dust.

It's rare to see grace -
a reed that moves with the wind -
yet I've seen it in human form but thrice:
my grandfather, arranging to sit before he
learned how to fall, and, his son,
my uncle, whose laughter makes
the inanimate glint and the animate twinkle.

Bipeds bustle but I see no meaning in the rest
those who insist that (no) they won't make the best
of what coil is left because (yes) their best
years are still ahead of them, as if,
through this invocation, time can and will be stilled.

Kyoto-sensei fills out this sonatic trio:
he once said, upon turning sixty,
he only lived now for soft sips of sake,
warmed, looking out from the farmhouse
whose construction calloused his grandfather's hands,
as snowflakes settled on the ground.

Now, watching through fogging windows,
this thought is a shooting star,
as the night snow crosses the (actual) sky,
fluttering to earth,
glinting and burning on the way down.

May all have the strength to live star-like
and may all find courage
to allow the light to fade
thinks the one who smiles, sits,
and sips in gathering imitation
as a white blanket puts soil to sleep.

Proof

Marijuana tied

to memory problems - what

was I gonna say?

Ballad of the One-Eyed Buddha

First his wife gone, then daughter married
and tarried, then just him,
a one-eyed Buddha watching the shop till,
doing the same things in the same ways
and does not see how
wondering made the growth in his wife grow bigger,
how the off-eye pushed his daughter away,
and a legacy comes from what you give.

With sun skulking skyward
and heat thickening the everyday air,
he possesses himself (under his hat)
and potters down the street,
dropping money in outstretched palms
while on some level knowing
the soul he'd save would be his own.

O education: does any classroom
teach you what hollows the place beneath your eyes?
If it were a class, he would surely take it now.
Beauty exists as an ideal - touching it,
he feels, would disinegrate it to dust -
and his mouth pipe, his mother's teet,
helps puff away anything that
falls short of worldly perfection.

Of shortness, there remains multitudes
but still he prays: for love, for honor,
for richness of mind and pocket,
and nearly forgets that doing so
requires an opening of the heart.

He thinks he is crying without tears;
seeing without engaging.
The heavens open in response,
and the crags and creases on his
doubly-weathered face are awash with raindrops
that mingle with the better part of a lifetime
spent,
and the tears that have become of it.

Act Of Creation

On the ropes
oh-boy-does-life-add-up,
building and
building and
building a
story told orally
or written on tissues
stained by pure red ink and
every past moment walling
you in, closing
closing - can you feel it?
Can you dig? deep,
in the ooze,
the birthplace of you,
spent days and nights
spent battling
the rattling ghosts
in your dreams.
This is not about the moment;
no longer concerns power, nay~
this has everything to
do with peering into mirror
and respecting who looks back,
be able, willing to, and ready to
focus, yes! - only
this will turn swimming-in-blue
to surfacing. And so,
when it is your "time" the
angels shall come sit upon your
chest as you rest, smiling,
stroking your head as a signal.
Never has providence been so divine.
Is it your time?
Is it your "time"?

您要不要演奏 at the Smithsonian

And here, displayed beneath spotlights
are truths with stolen shadows,
the privilege of America:
strong arms and Space Shuttles
flight pods and Wright Brothers
every last one of them pale.

The Machinery of Democracy
touts one new exhibit
as if the chosen were anything new.

Mixed in with moon walking
and founding fathers
are new found pieces:
- shopkeeper internment and cold winter counts
- African Voices under one title harmonious
- determined women in Seneca Falls
- posters from the occupied Orient
and then, with a smile,
a little something about mail service for
a nation's promise left so undelivered.

Though color has snuck into
textbooks like seep, it is small.
Forget the the "Posters American Style" show:
the bullets above are graphic images.
From these cultural sweatshops
sprung award-winners and heroes,
artists with visions,
what will the next fifty bring
when those who've done without
really do with?

Leaders see through filters, self-visions of color,
what's implied is thus:
some must be in
some must be out,
as if binary thinking's a must.

And to those on the out:
don't ire, don't pout because
your history month shall come,
ghettoizing time for some
even as clock bells toll for all.

May distinction without difference
be found on the playground:
may a white child approach
a newcomer with almond eyes
and say, in Chinese,
would you like to play?

May the checker at 7-11
need no adjective to stereotype
his manhood.

May the factory worker
be denoted not by
ethnicity but skill;
may his wife be talked
about for her compassion,
not her religion -
and may it be just when
the company becomes theirs.

The earth is bound,
believe it my friend,
and it will hold firm
as we address one
another, eye-to-eye,
and grant humanity
to all. Only then
can we dismiss,
lay down, or put to
rest the very notion
that the Earth is flat -
an appropriate way
to begin again.

The Anti Cut-Up

This makes me so much more nervous,"
actress Jessica Alba said backstage,
looking every inch the starlet
in a slim black sweater and
pleated white skirt.
"I'm glad I wore the shoes though."

The above was courtesy of Yahoo.
March 5, 2006.

This is the essence of Alba,
the glam slam, the girl
with the talent agency
giving a big big push to
a girl so desparate to appear
serious that she'll sue
Playboy for naming her
the most desirable girl
in Hollywood as the mag
shows her in a
bikini that she seems only
too ready to take off.

Beauty is skin deep;
dumb is forever.
Miss Alba:
have you strapped
your thinking cap on?

乘驾象诞生 (A Ride Like Birth)

Enwombed in fluid,
it is amazing that we
find the light a'tall
and each ray
stands remembered.

Each moment of
ray and revelation
stands for something,
whether it be particles
and luck, the way
the sun silhouetted
a body, or the wind
whipping and untangling
your hair.

Memories are built on
the moments that make
the void a shade brighter.
The whole of it is a ride
like birth
with a thrust you only
think you can control,
the tumult spilling into
the next curve
and the next.

Swimming in amniotica
I can not fail.
A gryffin comes in
dreamscape, grins,
and tells me this as
I scrounge for ground
-bound change, falsely
believing that I can buy
a ticket for the next
ride.

Outside the womb,
leaves plummet,
ever-so-softly, while
wind winds through
branches, ever-so-
randomly. My sighting
this only spawns a
smile; thus, I realize
I am alive.

Sometimes, too much so.
At times I chant for chaos
the way yahoos might chant
"Defense" on a late Sunday
afternoon for many
reasons, if only
because the ataxia
will later give me
something to put on paper.

On The Underside Nothing Grows

The tat
covered his
back in the
same way
six elephants
discussed how
every human
they'd stepped on
seemed flat
for the only
native he'd
known was
his birth dad,
who gave sperm
and alcohol
before walking
back to Tennessee.
His mom traded
for a new model
made of pure anger
whom all made
sure never to
call less than
Mister. That
still just don't
explain the
full spread
eagle stretching
from blade to
blade on his
reddened back
that merged
with a poison
idea of fun
and a pure sense
of rage passed
by blood from
his step-dad.
No one noticed
he was inked
save the ones
he wanted
with gnarled
yellow locks
and without
the years to
tell them
how drink and
rage had given
birth to metallic
clamps digging
in to untouched
nipples and
(gradually)
wondrous ways
to control the
windpape via
digging fingers
and horserope
twisted just so.
A dye job
marked "Daffodil"
only dissonated
the outer from
inner because
the guy we
loved and the
dude we thought
we knew bedded
half the gene pool
and never got
noticed for
doing something
so stupid as
piercing his
scrote after
the only
book he ever
read claimed it
could delay
orgasm while
you still
kept it up
yet it was
the trickster
in him who
firestarted
this little idea
that left another
person-round-the-campfire
with swollen balls
and shriveled pride.
That was influence.
That was him.
There should have
been more.
Since then I have
met many in
his league but
now look back
at his flatness
with the misery
of seeing someone
so unaware that
the shadow above
that cloaked the
tribal tat upon
his back
was the underside
of an elephant's
foot and I wonder
if he ever wondered
how twilight came
so goddamned early.

Feedback

It takes a long time
to bleed your own
and she
made me see red
running down milk
stained skin just
by standing there,
honky-tonk
band polluting the
dance floor with
tourists yet
sounding very
much like
her very own
backup band.
When I congratulated
her, she asked why,
then unbelieved
as I told her what
she had.
Suddenly
the drummer had
a double bass and
the guitar feedback
drowned the rest as
her mouth moved
forcefully enough
to fleck spit,
to hide shame,
to turn and
walk onto a
dancefloor
where tourists
in shiny shitkicker
boots were baffled
by the opening
strains of "Wipeout"
while she strutted
out the door,
adamant that
she did not, could
not, would never
have had an
opportunity to
get vee-dee.

My Inaka

Orientalism is
far from positive,
yet here we are,
police at the door,
dancing to sabotage
in the best way possible.

Lao Tzu said
that in both
ruling a nation and
gutting a fish,
only the small things
are important.

Being on the margin,
we stretched that margin out,
painted over the darkness
in vibrant hues
and called that margin our home.

We were all sempai,
all kohai, all bound
to each other.

We sabotaged,
dressed in black,
the ninjas of inaka,
recycling electronics
and rewiring our heads
as we made the
Gaijin Ghetto ours.

Faces brown, faces black,
faces white, all doves
riffing off a culture like jazz
the way gangiro girls
do at matsuris: all non-straight
hair, non-black hair, non-dark
eyes.

Hands raised, in class and out:
why do you ride a charinko?
and
why did America bomb us?
were the two that resonated
answers
while the same people
who asked the questions
burned bleach into their hair,
quoted American
movies at every turn,
and never once stopped
being Japanese.

The little things
ah!
the little things,
like cheap meat from
nine to ten,
green lights called blue
and blue things called
yellow
and (yellow) dancing girls -
the ones who get paid
to talk to you - falling
like leaves in fall once
they figure out you
live here.

Wait til the skirts see that this
foreigner, this gaijin
rode to the bar on a recycled
bike painted spray-silver
just so another bike wouldn't
get stolen. With a wicker
basket and three angry
padlocks.

You'd never know that,
during a thunderstorm,
wee kleptomaniacs
rampage through the city,
stealing all the umbrellas
marked Y - O - U.

Maybe it was the smile that hid
this; or maybe chewing
intestines that wouldn't be
swallowed simply meant
more beer.

Every Monday made you smile.
Every Monday was a block party;
every Monday natives & foreigners,
young & old, thin and fat and
lovers and cheaters and singers
and jokers and people normally
separated by geography and head-
boundaries clucked til the wee
hours, chickens come home
to roost.

The Headline Sofa/For SuperBen

Headline:
"The stench of martial
law pervades the country"
and, deep
in the countryside and
safe from such
screaming, a farmer rises
with the sun to let his
chickens feed.

By eight sweat rivers down
his head, every last
piece of grain pecked,
and the chickens run
free as troops-in-jeeps
rumble through the
baranguay.

Now the news has reached;
now the farmer herds what
he has, and
now the pen is shut, the
screen door is latched - not
that the outside couldn't
force its way in anyway.

Talking outside is hushed and
text messages cease as the
farmer wonders, wonders,
wonders . . .

as a boy he ran naked through
brush and barbed wire and
never thought to arm himself
with clothes, or shoes - now
he wonders what they may
try to take away.

Two sofas, covered with cloth,
are rice sacks: neighbors
tease, chortle when he sits,
but now they are no sacks left
in the storeroom,
you see?

As a child, he remembered that
things not held to the earth,
not tethered or locked,
not hidden in plain sight or
unspoken,
disappeared by nightfall.
Some blamed vampires but the
boy was realistic: he knew better

As a man, he knows better than
to be conspicuous admist the
rumble of jeeps painted,
flora-like, jeeps armed with
aggression and watching eyes.

Reassurance

"The beauty only comes when they're older",
uncle said, beckoning the trees closer
with a crooked finger and lopsided smile,
and she and I are saplings,
she gone and I fearful,
fearful of being cut down,
fearing of being shaped,
fearful of the man with pruning shears,
just o so fearful.

Lightening's peal,
a sudden reveal,
casts light on the stoic oaks,
silhouetted against a turbulent sky.

"Hope I can stand that tall",
whispered I but my uncle was
off toward the tree's base with
all the grace and tenderness
left after sixty summer suns.

"One of these may split tonight",
his knowing tone turned
might into will.
It seemed beauteous:
tracing the act back to one
hand or another was useless.
It simply was, yes,
it simply was.

My metallic buckle had become
an electric accessory - only
a suit of armor would target better -
but my uncle paid no mind to the lightning,
crept up to the trunk,
stalked it,
sniffed the storm air,
ran hands over the rough hide,
and waited for Nature's attack.

"If I die", he said,
"let it be here,
here with this oak, this field,
and nothing to spare me from
how I was born."

From pink hue to midnight blue,
rough bark to smooth cool stones,
stiff branches went to bend in the
breeze, we stayed and the
whole show felt like home,
looking lazily as Nature
threw thunderbolts,
clapped our ears with ferocity,
and put out the stars
for our wondrous eyes.

Comparison Poem

Salvation comes in the form
of green grass, sea air, a
gull's wing -
certainly not this cubicle -
and freedom.
Do you understand that
there is no safety in a
cube, man-made, obstructing,
eighteenth-floored and
carpeted, that
the earth can't take down?
Understanding that, now,
understand this:
there is no "earth",
there is no "sky",
these are linguistic legacies,
rather, where we belong,
bare-toed and in the mud,
the wind whisking away our
laughter,
is everything,
everything that divines,
word-bound divisions,
aren't. When the inside
is preferred to the out,
and cubes take precedence
over the rough hot good
of sand under your sole,
you will only be confused.
For many, darkness is daytime,
yet the box-world can not
hold a candle to
life unimpeded,
even through a gale
that threatens that sort
of coil.
Not because it is written;
because this is life.
So stand up; stretch;
leave your pneumatic chair
and desk plants in favor of
smooth stones and sunshine.

True Prayer

This is
the last time,
the final time I'll quit,
the time before was
an abomination,
I promise.
I promise.
I promise to
treat life with love
and not wait
for the other shoe
to drop.
There is no way,
no way,
it will ever happen,
not again,
no.
I've made paper fold inside
itself, I've made animals
cower and
angels weep
and only now do I
really
understand. Please . . .
please . . . please . . .

And how

Scream down the sky and
bring it here, right here,
in your living room,
shove the stuff aside,
clean your table,
throw an old rag over the screen,
and settle in for
the divine,
here and now.
Dervishes chant,
seemingly unhinged,
and well-formed sigils
can only hint at
the importance
of such elevation.
Every seagull knows: not
that bald heads make
great targets, but that
perspective, the enhanced
rising above, is how you live,
how you walk as if in a dream,
how you approach any face,
how you see the beyond in a grass-blade,
how you love.

Assing, The Neutral Form

If complaining takes

the female form - bitching - why

don't we say dicking?

Things We Dreamt While Underwater

Welcome to the cool blue hive,
teaming & silent,
finite & blue,
an amniotic, an aphrodisiac,
wishing you were here.

Scales of swords float
by this underwater factory,
the peaceful place borders
on Aimless, and nears
Frivolity,
each one overlapping,
lapping at the shoreline,
looking for you.

Breathing is verboten here;
surfacing incidental.

Now we have to do, to make:
the buzz tinning our ears
as line between sea & sky
brazenly appears,
and loneliness strikes like
midnight, floating alone
on a salted sea.

Rooftop Dancing

The alarm mirrors the dialectic inside -
brrr Brrrr BRRRR BRRRR!!! -
as birds chirp early and often,
this is how most people awaken.

Davey? He was with the birds . . .
. . . on a rooftop, the sun soaking
into him, replacing night toxins
and renewing him for the day.

The fiddle lay at his feet,
strings smoking from a performance
prompted by whiskey, and fine good
times.

Is this living? With cigarette smoke
curling into the air? Dancing? Emoting?
Bitching to the heavens? Shaking your
neighbors out of their slumber?

The rattle of the soul, late,
does not come for all:
but, for those afflicted,
it must be worked out.
For Davey, fags and firewater
were only second fiddle.

Swapping tales like spit,
of Pakistan, of North
Korea, of motorbikes mired
in Thailand mud,
the expats were just wiling
away time, waiting for
double malt to grip Davey,
and he his fiddle.

Creases eased, lines melted,
eyes softened as he played,
the brogue returning to him as
he sang, the brogue that
got into all it touched.
Alley cat wails had n-o-t-h-i-n-g
on us -
and after this we certainly wouldn't
dare call it a
mere violin -
not as it lit up the midnight
sky like comet trails and memories.

What's Left to be Done

High-count sheets can not

conceal the pain of hunger

in a child's belly.

Speaker

I watched a man pound the pulpit,
promote Socratic discourse, and say
nothing at all of the way forward,
so rooted,
so cement-shoed in
the past that
perhaps the very
thought of the future
was too much to bear.

There is a joke here, somewhere,
about a man casting his
shadow on a cave wall, but
I can not find it.

Instead, what strikes me is this:
an extreme eloquence,
a urgent rhythm,
a remaking of the past,
a refusal to move into
an ever-unsure future.

Beach Scene

Untamed skin rises from roiling waves,
bathwater-smooth and kissed with salt,
then spots something below.

Head becomes feet, then nothing,
surfacing only to consider whether
something is hidden in the silt.

Sky turns to blue and dusk
as the boy, now alone,
dives again and again,
not convinced that nothing
is really nothing.

Now the night watches,
twinkling, inky, pondering
how to break him of this quest.

The night stands tall, knowing
nothing can be done to
unconvince someone who swore
that something was there.

Seoul Food

Can we fly?
Do we fly?, the question
begged, as a Korean
winter swirled into our
apartment, baby
swirling within a womb.
We cried, but no matter.
Questions need answers,
questions need answers.

Singers sang in
subterranean suites;
Samoans sold fruit in the
alley and gave us Spock-like
salutes; seranades of
ajima soared upward;
bus stewards stopped for no
one on the third route 'round
Seoul, hat shadowing
steely eyes and a countenance
that only wanted to
go home.

We could go home, all right,
the doc said it would be the
last week to fly,
and the calendar became a
knell that freed. Taxi drivers
driving like salmon upstream
scared us less than the days on
a page.

Would we go?
Would we stay?

Shrimpburgers squealed sounds
of something - we should have
known - and made the
decision easy; food poisoning &
an IV type can persuade even
the heartiest to rest.

Bags lugged emotional and
tangible things that only
weighted the taxi down as it
whisked us to the airport,
through January snow.

Connectedness

Even pebbles that

skim across the top of the

water leave ripples!

Across the Field

The rain, cold and piercing,
does not straighten the shaggy hair,
does not soothe the wounded eyes,
does nothing of the sort.

He is out because the boyfriend is in,
a guest, a VIP,
another Trojan horse of a man,
guaranteed to surprise and
horrify, as his
own father once did,
as many have before.

Sometimes the hurt comes out,
in flashes, in the
form of a tight spiral or a
headslap, the latter a
reminder of what
was done to him.

His mother medicates herself
against him, the walking
talking reminder of a virus
that once got in,
and will again.

Branches snap and puppies
run from nature, out of
balance, hat slammed low,
dripping cold drops,
hair pressed to skin,
slogging across the field.

To A Friend

The air is stiller by
way of graceful vibrations:
we are guests of a man who laughs as
he smiles, talks as he
laughs, and lets the trace of
a smile make his point.

That trace appears as he admits
"I studied Christianity" - the
past tense implying two things:
that he does no longer
and that now he digs a bit deeper.

We talk for six hours,
less an interrogation,
more a meeting of souls,
while our children flit in
from the next room,
radiating the pleasure of
new and gracious friendship.

I feel the same way.
The conversation goes from
his training to my teaching,
from "just sitting" to the
computer he's building from scratch.
"My brother's an engineer",
says he, "so I
wanted to try, too."

He wants to practice his English -
which helps because I have yet to
see a Japanese dictionary explaining
nam-myo-ho-renge-kyo:
the devotion to the teaching of the
law of cause-and-effect, he states,
quite plainly.

Later I notice four computers
in the entryway,
"The one I showed you",
he smiles,
"is number five."

True grace, like stream water
caressing the pebbles at the bottom,
is an elusive quarry,
one arising from rare in-the-moment
moments where it is enough
when
all that you are
is all that you are.

Thank you Gen, for teaching me thus.

Open for Business

It's official -
all over the radio in
squelches and fits -
Nature's open for business.

While humans feel the
need to mount & charge
Nature just produces:
who knows how dragons
summon wind from heaven?
In the interim, watch, awe-
struck as windows buckle,
branches snap,
powerlines zap,
and old ladies nap,
privy to the store,
remembering what they've
seen since time before.

The wind howls admist houses,
the buildings funnel it into
even greater fury while
gravity pulls at sideways rain,
perhaps incredulous,
and the water runs
in torrents to the sea.

Maybe it's a message:
the unrooted are swept away.

The earth remains,
sublime & unsubtle,
wiped-clean and scented,
like an unmarked babe
smiling to the sun shine
that replaces a grey veil.

And grass glows neon,
rising to the sun shine,
knowing why.

Gaikoku Deadbeats

Chris, our Sinatra, moans. Or maybe
his feet make the noise. This is
her entrance cue, her . . .

. . . stockings run like the small children that
we have become, under lamplight.

"Whayoowan?", she says, her hair true brown,
not unnatural, a true gangiro.

We are drunk but not horny;
she is gentle and not whoring,
yet here we stand, bathed in
spotlight, with pained chocolate eyes.

It is Kobe - afterhours -
and our youthful fuel has
closed down the clubs,
wandered into steakhouses,
laughed at $60 filets,
eaten cheap beef bowls,
drank rice wine (for warmth),
scratched at crevasses,
scoured for hostels,
and now this.

It is after the quake,
and the great ferris wheel,
rebuilt, wharfside, casts a
shadow on the bay.

Last night we slept on the train station
floor, the manager poking us with
a metal rod usually reserved for
stabbing garbage.

Rousted, we stagger through seagull
streets, homesick, smelling salt water
while (i am) dreaming of San Francisco.
Our smell repels, gaikoku deadbeats
that we are, receptionists
shutter their doors at the sight of us;
it is in her eyes, and our:
She has been shuttered, too.

A place? To sleep? She smiles.
"Don't need one", she says, "salaryman
pay me well. I am Christina, born
in Brazil."

My adopted town has this too;
refugees from Sao Paulo, Recife, Rio
Branco and the countryside,
living in the foreign block -
my block - smelling
of linguica and techno and wavy hair,
producers of PS and Pajero and
things unaffordable as they wire money
back to their families.

Christina makes more in an hour than
they do in eight.

Maybe, Christina says, I have an idea.

We are deep in the heart of
love hotel country,
where paper thin walls separate sub rosa lives,
where couple copulate, lovers fornicate,
and businessmen just plain fuck.
She guides us by moonlight -
she knows these streets well
enough that if she weren't home here
one couldn't tell.

Alcohol lubricates Chris and he talks-walks-
sings. Only the night is stronger than he.
And Christina? Well, lubrication for
her means other things.

Furious puffs form, adding to
the stench, of our smoke-circle,
cockamanie plotting, naked
without the rain.

The name squints our eyes with
it's garish green glow. Arcadia.

Desparate and stinking,
delirious and smirking,
the biggest body enters the lobby
as five crouch low under the
lip of the counter.

Engaging the desk girl,
she slides me-body the key,
I hand it to Chris,
crouched next to me and
gleeful, delirious,
he stumbles up stairs
running devil-may-care,
low super-stealth style,
Christina last in her silk
stockings, running from
despair.

We chortle cleverness and
deadbolt the door, hide under
bedframes & behind closet doors
but we hear steps rise behind us,
a knock, and
a voice, just as Christina,
kneeling behind the bed,
passes a picture of her
daughter, three, to me,
under it:

"Two - only two!" the voice says.

Hidden in closets, in bed and under,
all sense time is short for our
love hotel plunder.
Giggling and hissing,
uncontrollably missing
one crucial fact -
we've been sighted by
cameras from both front &
back.

The street welcomes us with
a cooling blast of the breeze,
and we follow it,
save Christina,
down to the train station
by the bay where the marble
is soft and strong heads
may lay.

Edward Said Cooks Adobo

I chop up chicken breasts -
boneless, skinless, oozing-through bird -
and saucepan sautee them as I read
about Palestinian elections.

"Hamas will receive no aid", the headline
screams. I eye the words as bell peppers burst,
onions make me weep, and,
the two get chopped up,
as I, teary-eyed, try not to add in
an unlisted ingredient: finger.

The article continues: "Israel will
not recognize the new government",
it says, ignoring the popular vote,
ignoring the cries of the displaced,
ignoring the optimism of the moment
as I ignore the part of the recipe that
says one head of garlic, crushed.

The dull edge of the blade ushers in
most fowl, then the bell pepper mingles
with the onions in a vinegar soup of soy,
boiled until (at least) a dun-brown hue;
soon foods are interchangeable.

It's all going to the same place,
natch, and I have
yet to meet a food more virtuous than
the others. My kitchen witch keeps smiling
as it all goes in the pot,
too amused by food fusion
to say what is and what is not.

Pressure Drop

Cocksure certainty is not him but
silly certitude is;
dots dissolve,
a diaspora lengua,
then nerves nab him,
strap him in,
and take him for a ride.

He is still cocksure,
the bravado of sperm and resiliency of
youth, grinning and growling,
about the social gravy which boiled down and
caused him to drop in the first place.

There he sits, catatonic.
His girlfriend strokes her
long braids with shivering
fingers.

"Fuck - he's out of it", I hear,
but he knows that "in" & "out" is
something you can fake-
a false compassion or the
tension of orgasm -
and mats the grass with his backside
as the world wings by.

With great love we look at his
half-mast eyes and sigh:
who's carrying him?
someone blubbers and,
suddenly,
he's up,
on his feet,
conjuring chaos,
and the world's rhythm is his:
now spitting invective dragon-like,
now claiming spiders have infiltrated
the grass,
leaping,
spinning,
doing kung-fu
as a maniacal mime might,
and our group bonds behind
him, this
watchable winning wind-up
doll . . . just turn the crank and
watch
him
go

August 1993

If all is one,
we are comets,
speeding through sunset and shame,
with a tank of gas / without a penny in our pockets,
hues of pink and blue tickertape clouds
yawn before us like the world beyond and we,
desperately, try to get there:
music pulsing pulsing to the tune
of our quivering quivering hearts.
No one to race but the
coyotes here
and we feel free
to dream under heaven's gaze
and the long-ago light of the stars.

Impetuous

The question ~
where do you come from?
seemed harmless. Mr. Lee, the
questioner, Korean, fifty-two years of age,
the GM of the chaebol baseball team,
was the possessor of
showstopper knowledge
(ancestrily):
he was generation
thirty-four, followed
up with this:
"A salesperson on the staff is thirty-two", he said,
ashing his seven o' clock cig, "technically, I
should bow to him."

We laughed heartily and for reasons each our own.
No way would he, Lee, in
reality, trade this corner palace office for a
cramped amped cube,
give up secretary service and
mohagony for serve
yourself and shoulder-width space -
times two.
(Here credit is due since
Lee took the residency for
each desk from three to two).

Mr. Lee's tea was expertly mixed,
"with the drop of milk - something we
never had as a kid", he
smiled, remarking how
kind GIs gave Cokes or
chocolate bars to a boy
whom I imagined never needed them.
Maybe that's why his breast pocket
read KJL, initials sewn in royal blue.
Maybe that's why he knew thirty-four.

Long slender fingers tapped on
long slender filters as he repeated
a question I had long forgotten,
Where do you come from?,
as my eyes noted the perfect muddy consistency
of my coffee.

Telling him he had me beat
34-3 made him laugh,
but the earlier, got-the-world-beat laugh
had been replaced by something more.

He leaned forward, knived his elbows into
the hardwood, and I
told him him how my maternal
great-grandparents had met
under moonlight,
in an area that was Italy one week,
Czechosolvakia the next,
kissing behind trees
or holding hands with only
the hillsides in cahoots while the
village slept.
They stowed away on a steam
ship just as a baby was stowed away
in Nona's belly.

Another cigarette was lit as
the story reached Los Angeles,
the Depression thrust out its paw and
took, and
the Pullman train company relieved
Great- Grandpa of the need to
paint train cars.

Did you know a nickle got you a
crate of bruised fruit in 1932?

My mom's dad came from Portugal:
came to Hawaii,
hacked sugarcane with scythes and immigrant hands,
made it to Oakland, to Oakland!,
realized the shoulder swinging made for a mean fastball,
and hustled his way up to Triple A.

Smoke could not veil Mr. Lee's smile,
the smile that did not hide
could not hide
would not hide
that the Japanese built their occupatory promontory
where King Sejong had simplified the alphabet
and taught farmers to read.

Words at Grandpa's funeral sounded like this:
" . . . he coulda got called up."
" . . . he woulda played pro."
Then I ran out of words,
realizing all Japan hadn't taken from me.

Grandpa instead tried not to get dead,
staff sargeanted twelve,
spent two weeks with malaria,
spent a lifetime with a bullet in his knee,
a second in his eye.

He was a man -
his generosity only matched by
his patience, unless
his television was wheeled from the
rightside of his recliner to the left.
"How did he die?" asked Mr. Lee, and I give him the
mortal story.
"Cancer. A pack a day for thirty-eight years."

Mr. Lee puts out his cigarette.

My paternal history goes unsaid because it is
eight o' clock and we have spent a whole hour
of history discussing history. His story. My
story. Our story. History.

"Korea is very traditional", he says.

"Korea is very rooted", I say. "Thank you."

"America is very young", he says.

"America is very impetuous", I say.

We walk to the door - the sales staff
still sits in sedans - and he thanks me
with a simultaneous shaking of hands
and a pat on the shoulder
then the bus rumbles up to
take me to my real teaching job -
you know, the one you can prepare for -
and,
later that day,
I receive an e-mail,
from the vice-president of the
Lucky Goldstar corporation,
thanking me for the "lesson" and
for teaching him the definition of
impetuous.

How I goddamn loved radio

The same eight songs play every two hours like chickens

on rotisseries while deejays stumbling over band names

that are misspelled anyway - don't you

realize how I goddamn loved radio?

A larger malaise is at work here, a

pain, an ache that leads to extra honking,

extra honking, extra honking,

nights spend with your favorite shows,

favorite shows, favorite shows,

topped by watercooler daytimes and

milquetoast love songs spending

six weeks at number one -

even burrowing into your head if

you let 'em.

Whomever wants to know the lyrics of

dizzy chicken songs shall be sentenced

to critiquing some celebrity's new 'do

in relation to their own.

(I'm not saying it's okay but I see how)

it could make you murder

just to get some change,

some strange into a life

as far from life as pigs are to

Spam.

Do something with sincerity:

rhyme a word with orange or

write a ode to heartbreak on pots-

-pans-and-a-piece-of-string or find

a random belly to feed, and fill it.

Give someone something that was

theirs but was taken

away away away . . .

but who can advocate humanity at a

time when Caller 9 could be

a winner so you can win tickets

to an event that

you didn't even know was happening?

Jingle Smells

Script your economic demise
and buy half what you see advertised.
Inundated with this crap
the ad execs I'd like slap

or lock them in a darkened room
shout slogans at them 'til they exhume
their souls from under stacks of cash
earned from foisting worthless trash.

Creating need for young and old
not wanted to be left out in the cold.
Don't want to be the only one
relying on yourself for fun

when fun can be bought, useless toys
for idle, cornfed girls and boys
Parents - do you feel maligned?
Buy 'em this so they won't whine!!

Commercials chanting catchwords
which subliminally degrade
while jump cuts make your vision blurred
with funky drumming overlaid.

I know why Dahmer did it,
why Kaczynski went on a spree:
sat at home and went bazerk
from watching too much cable ad TV.

The Thresher.3

One works; the other sweats.

The other comes to Ben,

unraveling shirt and glistening gaze,

and he speaks as the sacks are

shouldered into the hopper.

Each shrug, each nod

comes from hunger.

Each shrug, each nod

dictates dinner come Christmas.

Ben responds,

a Tagalog melody dissolves into diesel and dust,

and both stare at cracks in the earth,

piston-whir and movable metal

playing to a backbeat of moos.

The Thresher.2

Burlap sacks are stacked as countryside currency,

and the thresher roars,

rusting and clackety.

American animals might have taken this

as a cue to scatter, but here

heifers chomp cud, drift toward

shady spots, and eye us glassily.

The operators match in

tattered t-shirts and ballcaps,

and drift as the cows do,

dumping sack after sack into

the hopper, zenlike,

without a care,

without spilling a single grain.

The Thresher.1

Well-bellied, Ben says, "Letsugo,"

and saunters onto the cracked earth,

as hot as Ben's smile swings wide,

the relative nightcool giving way

even now

at eight a.m.

"The thresher is here", he says,

tongue well short of an interdental "th",

and we watch puffs of dust

announce the event as half

the baranguay watches it

squeak to a stop.

Quick Note

Quick Note: These aren't one screen poems,
so this can be presented either as a
scroll-a-thon (the evermore post requiring
a reader to go down, down, down, down,
you get the idea) or like taffy, stretched out
among days.

Taffy tastes good. Especially sea taffy - taffy
produced near or on a boardwalk. Yes,
I know that the taffy machine at the
boardwalk is the same machine as the one
in Chico, California. So explain to me how
waterside taffy tastes so much better.

Taffy's the winner; this next poem will
be stretched
over
a few
days . . .

- E

Seven Unusual Sources of Inspiration

1) My uncle, Thomas Moniz. A true master of comedic timing.

2) The comic book "Transmetropolitan"

3) Mitch Hedberg. R.I.P.

4) The work of Robert Anton Wilson

5) The people who wrote all those books for God. No, not those mooks.
The women and men who wrote the outlaw verses - those are the
ones I'm talking about.

6) Gen Ueda

7) The 1996 Korean Star Search runner-up and his subterranean
apartment in downtown Seoul

Pinion

Before people had wings time crawled on boneless legs,
mere waterdrops on rocks,
and people watched through windows,
mist veiling sight,
and still they looked.

Even full-grown my wings misplace easily,
a birthright o so elusive,
still - such a pellucid stew of feathers,
deigned by Daedalus,
built for breathtaking and blinding velocity.

Opaqueness is true beauty
and today my head's just not in it,
staggering around a fog-shroud of head-ghosts
looking for my winged self
to find my way up.

Ode to Fashion / Down with the Porn Mustache

Fashion rotates on a great karmatic wheel:
yesterday's shorn pate is today's stinger,
hip-huggers superseded by bare midriffs.
From Armani to open-throated collars -
just let backissues of magazines guide you through time
with style.
Now all lost luster returns with time -
the cycle always returns home -
but I hope the current porn mustaches
end up burnt like Rome.

Life Game

Tonight I won the Life Game:
spin,
smile,
and
survive
as hope's
dashed against
the rocks like
a baby's head.

I can
scarcely believe
my fingers
and my thoughts.
We all fall down
in some way,
great or small,
but rising up
afterword
makes a life.

Some Caesaric Jots

Caesar said,
"Et tu?"
knowing that
Brutus turned on him.

The fact that he hung
with the other
mooks who killed
him in the
first place
is what he
should have known.

Can there be
power without
friction? And will it
work?

Operation Follicle

The onset of facial hair
on my formerly fuzzy face
gets play:

metalheads talk to me,
nice girls eye me longer,
and the girls with 'tude
- well,
a bitch is a bitch -
and parents pull their children
closer.

If appearance reflects what's inside
my soul feels well-groomed,
shorn, and a little dark;
that is,
if one can construe
the essence of a human
from a quick
(but not too quick
glance.

Love Haiku #2

A covenant or

contract love isn't; so try

compassion and care.

Love Haiku #1

Venerate love as

true reciprocity, for

nothing higher is.

Nightdancing

Blow out the lamps; night has fallen.
Cast your kings aside
and underlunacized
we will dance the mystic
all rings & things offed like Death itself.
Indeed, Death is the joke eternal:

one who breathes can know it not
one who breathed has known it thus.

So let it ride on that line of Death,
between breath and less,
the howling of wolves covering
the sounds of souls on air.
If we fail . . . there is no fail
as the elseworld falls to dreams.

Line 30: goto 10

. . . feel like life is run-

ning in an endless loop? By

chance, do you ever . . .

The Secret Art of What-You-Do

A leader is nothing but the shadow of your self-
the doubt, the darkness,
those moments when liberation leaves in lieu of law.

Reject this rejection!
Hold your self close as a babe of the world
and - please - spill some red wine on the
ghostly rug.

See the innerness in you always
and smile, mouth agape,
as rain leavens your cracked lips.

Bored?

Paranoia is

a free and easy way to

make life exciting.

BBQ

Saturday. Bar-bec-que.

Weekends exist because of weekdays.
The weekday grind makes
cooking over an open flame becoming a
good idea.

It's an excuse, really,
because the meat is the sideshow.
The time is your own. Really.

It's about time:
time to laugh,
time to drink, to plot, to dream,
to share and empathize . . .

a little too much of everything
on Saturday - all right.

typical jan one poem

Roll your eyes to the milky whites.

Smooth the edges and inhale.

This year will be like the last, and the next.

Eventually everything evolves.

May this be the year.