Atoms

Is matter
What matters?

or

Is what matters
More than matter?

Sentenced

My first thought
When my daughter was born
Was that I just killed someone.

Her gurgling cries of life
Contrasted with the ominous, death tone
Of her mother’s solemn flatline.

And as the doctors hung their heads,
Declaring my lovely wife dead,
I realized I had just killed again.

Tea Leaves

Mangled leaves and withered dreams
Torn from their stable branches
In a final flurry of beauty
As they float down on a cold breeze
To join the Turkish rug of autumn.
There may yet be a child of wonder
Who makes a pile as tall
As their tree once was
And refuses to give up on them
As he leaps into their embrace.
But eventually, the snow will fall
Like a curtain on the stage
As the what-ifs and what-could-bes
Take a long, final bow
And melt away into the dull gray
Of the winter’s cold soil.

Prenuptial

Marriage for the sake of love
Is doubling down
On a sunk-cost investment.

---

Roots

Future dreams are trees
With their roots in the present:
Give them water now.

---

Rafiki’s Nikki

Dogs

The neighborhood is lined with houses
Whose yards are filled with mongrel hordes,
Kept safe behind white picket fences,
Unaware of the world beyond the wooden boards.

Peaceful nights are wrenched away
From hardworking neighbors needing sleep
When the howling hounds come out to play
And bark their prejudice across the street
To other hounds behind picket fences,
Also unable to see beyond their defenses.

Night after night the uncouth mutts stay woke,
Yipping and yapping their ode to democracy.
Until yapping becomes yipping in a cloud of smoke
And they are lost in a haze of their hypocrisy.

All while the suffering, sleepless majority
Are kept awake by the woke minority.
They wonder if the PACs of dogs on either side
Will ever look inward and get wise
To the folly of their two-tone protest
Across the streets of the midwest,
Against enemies decried as ignorant
Who–in fact–are not so different.

 

Like a Mirror

A clear alpine pond
A serene reflected moon
But what lurks beneath?

Stonehouse

Brown is the ground
Blue is the sky
High is the peak
Steeply I rise.

Bedroom Constellations

Loose a bright and strong ray of sunlight,
Wrap it twice, nice and tight around my neck,
And string me up to hang from the plastic stars
That glow in the dark above your bed each night.

I promise not to make a sound as I wiggle around

Curtain Call

Once more, the roar of applause thaws his heart and makes him wish he didn’t have to depart this stage. Where had the years gone? He wonders. How did each day, so long, become faint flashes of memory? An ambling trajectory of wasteful debauchery, his life has passed him by like a distant plane in the sky. And now, as he clocks out of consciousness and stares across an endless necropolis, the clapping masses have gone silent. His heart is no longer raging and defiant. Overhead, the black curtain is falling and the blissful escape of the void is calling.

Reflection Haiku

five long years ahead

vibrant, Doppler-blue future

five red years long gone

---

Highland Hallucinations

Lanky four-legged beasts,
Macabre silhouettes in the morning light,
Cast shadows into the icy valley below,
Prolonging the slumber, if only for a second,
Of the yet-snoozing in their colorful caves.

The creatures slowly creep skyward,
Laboriously climbing to the rocky ridge,
Taking long strides with gaunt forelegs
No thicker than sticks and just as straight.
It seems the giraffe of Broadway gave up the spotlight
To graze the vertical savanna of Japan’s mountains.
Packing our gear, we head out on safari.

Mountain of Apprehension

A somber fear grows deep down
That, ere I near the mountain crown,
Silent tears will slip off eyelash cliffs
And tumble down the deep abyss,
As flames lick and lame my knee
Forcing me to falter and flee
To hours of painful descent in defeat,
Beaten by gravity, compelled to retreat.
Gritting my teeth, head bowed in shame,
Drooped with the burden of bearing the blame.

Shadows

I watch my shadow from noon to dusk,
Ever growing in size and lust,
Making me taller than a redwood tree
And stretching the limit of what I can be.

Until the fading sun falls all the way down
And I am beyond the starry lights of town.
Now lost and one with the black nothingness
I am left to mourn my colossal, black hubris.

I kick a stone as I walk home alone,
Struggling to forget the hope I was shown
And accept that I am an ego confined by flesh:
A spirit trapped, and a man depressed.

Typhoon 7

Why don’t you come back?
The day is not yet dawning,
The sun has yet to start shining,
And as far as I’m concerned,
There’s no evidence it ever will.
So why not come back to bed?

Why don’t you come back?
Dark grey clouds still cover the sky
Which has been sobbing since yesterday,
And shows no sign of stopping soon.
Mother Nature is under the weather,
So why not call in sick today?

Departures

Goodbyes are fickle,
Too long or not long enough,
But this is my stop.

23:32

Fear.

The Oak

In the park there stands an old oak.
I know not how aged it is,
But it was here before I was
And it will remain long after I do not.

Every morning I pass by its thick trunk,
The oak waves its branches, goodbye.
And every night I drunkenly stumble home,
It’s standing still, in silent judgment.

Even when I dash past and miss its farewell
In the rush to catch the last possible train
To $9.50 an hour misery with no future,
I know the stoic oak is standing there,
Gayly laughing at my fleeting and meaningless struggles.

Polar Bears

Can you still remember
That night in early September,
At the “3 cigs” pledge party,
On their decrepit couch?

How I drunkenly stumbled
Across the floor, and mumbled
An inebriated ice-breaker
About a polar bear?

Business Trip

The full moon rises,
Glistening like a fresh silver dollar
As Mother Earth lets off steam
And unbuttons her stifling collar
To feel the breeze of the Sun’s departure.

Eagerly I wait at the window
For my moon to come home,
So I can feel the breeze of his sigh
As he sits on his leathery black throne
And watches me with contentment from on high.

Football Militants

Flags as large as ships’ sails
Waive to and fro in solidarity,
Billowing with pride.

The masses—
Whose fully erect arms
Are only an open palm away
From a formal Nazi salute—
Fill the flowing tapestry of banners
With air warmed by their impassioned voices
As they chant and sing
The acrid cries of war.

Acetaldehyde Dehydrogenase Deficiency

Corralled in the narrow alley
An incalculable mass of humanity
Drunkenly bumbles and stumbles along,
Skipping in hiccuping rhythm,
Belting (and belching) drinking songs,
With the flow of the fleshy river.

Tsuyu: The Rainy Season

As the conductor takes the stage,
The gentle drone of the audience
Turns to apprehensive, expectant silence
Awaiting the impending down stroke.

But before the ictus,
His rushing lift of the baton
Sends forth a gust of wind,
Chilling the air,
While raising the heat of anxiety.

Lost and Found

I am in search of something unknown,
Just beyond my grasp of comprehension.
I stand at the temple doors of Self,
Sealed shut by monks of Sophistry
To conceal their esoteric knowledge and rites,
Of which I desperately long to understand.

Castle by the Sea

The sun was shining on the bay that day,
And in its radiance I thought I saw the way
To my salvation from this, damn lonely, place.
“Liberation” was written on your face.

You left the beach before I learned your name,
And the memory of your face began to fade
Until that day I found you in the Kyoto snow.
When you gave me your hand, I knew I’d never let go.

Break Away

Brown petal falling;
White life now wilted, but free
To Fear and Tremble.

The Sneaker 外岩の詩

Damselflies flutter about
Among the green, broad leafs
Above the mountain stream,
Darting through the river rocks
That make a natural bridge
To the mountain boulder field,
Where stone goliaths lie in wait.

Halfway up The Sneaker,
My love fights to hang on
To nothing more than a pebble:

Ballad of a Stray

“Shoo!” they say to me all day,
As I wander, unwanted and alone,
Down lonely streets, looking for meat,
And a dry place to call my home.

Among the two-legs, I scavenge their dregs
My ribs bruised by their kicks,
While snobby Maltese snub my maladies:
Rabid and half consumed by ticks.