Counter-culture

Hippie wisdom's legacy,

Drop out and vegetate,

Merge with music, in a

Chemically altered state,

Always feed the munchies,

And medicate...

春近よる

Rain and bluster,

South winds bring,

Winter receding,

Arrival of Spring...

Inconsolable

Old mother grieving over

Her son, lately slain,

Refuses to accept it was

Wrong or in vain,

Her son, lost while

Obeying the command,

To baselessly attack

A neighboring land,

She will neither regret

Nor understand...

Bleariness

Sleep, like a finicky ghost,

Sometimes spirits away,

When you need it the most,

And you're left in a

Wrack, insomniac,

Until mysteriously, the

Ghost comes back...

IT's Blessing

No one here, all alone,

But converse with the universe

Through my phone...

Survival

Hardly making a sound,

Solitary starling pecks

At crumbs  on the ground...

Storytelling

Our ongoing, baffling,

Streaming affliction,

Subsumed by, and stressed

Over works of fiction,

Enchanted, engrossed by

The tales they weave,

Forgetting the fact they

Are just make believe...

Checklist

Get ready for a new day,

Check off mental action list,

Wondering which, this

Time, I will have missed,

Different, I suppose, than

The omission before,

As I hurry to prepare

To go out the door...

Invisible Force

Oh, to be free,

Of the pull,

Of gravity,

To which we,

Succumb,

Eventually...

Expulsion

Being one of them,

No longer one of us,

I'm handcuffed and

Riding on a bus,

Being transported,

By executive order,

To another side

Of a border...

Off The Leash?

Dogs, leashed by lonely ones,

Meet others, doing a walk,

The dogs sniff introductions,

While the owners sit and talk,

Dogs, calm, surrender to the

Instinct of the packs,

Only to get excited when

An owner offers snacks…

Ebb Tide

Small waves ripple and whisper,

As they expire on the pier,

A calm ocean, blue turning

Aquamarine, is nothing to fear,

Rather gasp at its beauty,

All calm, now and here…

The Great Plains

Prairie, oceans of grass,

Over which buffalo herds

And prancing antelope pass...

Changed slowly, inexorably,

By the foreigners' arrival,

And the plowing under

To ensure their survival...

Self Destruction

In retrospect,

Internal combustion engines

Produced an effect,

Disastrous, but impossible

To deflect...

Mobility's illusion

Of being happy, free,

Masking a more

Toxic reality...

Nightfall

Cold cleansing rain

In the middle of the night,

Falls unheeded,

Falls out of sight,

Leaves a glistening

For the morning light...

Park Bench

The pigeon jerky-struts

Towards the piece of bread,

But a quick moving sparrow,

Takes it away instead...

To Write A Poem

Inhale, exhale,

Then dig deep,

Down to where

Miracles sleep,

Where burning

Feelings keep, 

Down to the

Mystic fire,

Where words,

Ideas, inspire...

冬の換気

Open window, ventilate the

Room, freshen the air,

February cold invades,

Flows around everywhere...

And me, I jump

Back in bed,

Pull the blanket

Over my head...

Pachinko

Neon like flashing lights,

Excite a game of pinball,

Morphed into a video game,

The silver ball bearings fall,

And when it hits a payoff,

Music triumphs crescendo,

And all would be OK if that

Were the finish, the endo,

But no such luck, because

From the very beginning,

The odds of losing are greater

Than those of winning...

Keikyu Miura Beach Center

Empty tourist beach,

Business plans abandoned,

Profits out of reach...

So different now from

When crowds would throng,

Onto the sand, under the Sun,

Now gone, adieu, so long,

Leisure dreams undone...