Men In Black

The kuro-ko,
Quiet and black,
Stand to the side,
And in back,
From where they guide
The dolls in the night,
The kuro-ko hide
In plain sight.

To Face The Inevitable

Against the onslaught
Of time, and the bruises
And wrinkles it has wrought,
We make our stand,
Together, taking courage
From each other, and,
I always feel stronger
As I hold your hand.

Not What It Appears To Be

I enjoy living in my dimension,
And assume it's the only one,
Not just a mental invention,
That soothes until the day is done...

Until sleep brings a sly suspension,
Of what I assumed to be true,
And the dreams show there's
A side of things, I never knew...

Fashionista

Changes to which clothes to wear,
Are unforgiving, and rapid,
Fashion coloring and conforming,
So urgent, so cool, so vapid...

Scientists Seeking Olympus

Physicists grind their brains relentlessly,
Hoping, groping, for the magical occasion,
When inspiration, or an epiphany,
Reveal the numbers of the God Equation...

Ise Shrine Reborn 伊勢神宮

The faithful followers can not
Ignore what the gods have willed,
That Ise Shrine must be demolished,
And then all the specially skilled
Carpenters must be gathered
To come together and rebuild,
Through patience, sweat, and tears
The holy place they destroy,
Every twenty years.

Carpet Tiger

The house cat, grown fat,
Would rather take a nap
Than chase or catch a mouse,
And sits in your lap,
Or lies in the sunlit-spots
Around the house,

The house cat uses all
The tricks to get its way,
Then curls into a furry ball...

Day Equals Night

The first dead leaf of fall, fell
In front of me, walking,
And it floated pell-mell,
Doing some rolls and yaws,
Before making a soft landing
On the ground, for a pause,
And then cartwheeling away
On a zephyr of change,
This autumnal equinox day...  

Buttocks For Dollars

Rich young spoiled celebrity girl
Makes a fortune by twerking
In public, and she knows no shame,
But I guess it beats working...

Mutton And Me

So, I was trying to get to sleep,
And over the fence
Jumped one hundred sheep,

But then they stopped,
And all turned blue...

Now what was I to do?

The Spirit Of Wall Street

It's some sort of funny,
That we allow others
To gamble with our money,
Calling it high finance,
Brokers and economists
Play a numbers game of chance,
Blurring the fact they are
Flying by the seat of their pants,
Formulas and computers they claim
Can calculate through the chaos
And ultimately tame
Risk, and thereby produce profit,
But it's all a sad expensive game,
Rigged by hustlers with Ivy League degrees,
And the final score tends to be the same:
Small investors losing, flapping in the breeze...

Just Before The Equinox

The tiny spider floats on a thread
Of arachnid silk, gliding on a cool
Breath of autumn, now here instead
Of summer's cloying heat, and all
The feelings, ideas in my head rise
Spider-like, on the first breeze of fall.

Passchendaele, 1917

I try not to remember, and it's hard to describe,
The feeling in the battered trench, as the enemies
Came tumbling in for murder, and if only to survive,
We had to resort to all kinds of fighting, with
Clubs, knives, bullets, teeth, "kill them to stay alive"
Was the only violent instinctive force in the mud,
Where you looked in the eyes of the man you killed,
And after it finally ended, all was shit and blood...

Coal Creek, Colorado, September 2013

I'm hanging onto a beam
In the rafters, literally,
After the quiet nearby stream
Turned into a torrent,
And poured in through
The windows in the living
Room, and all I could do
Was run up the stairs
And away from the water,
Which rips, roars, and tears
A gaping whole in the wall,
And then rises up to the
Second floor, and it's all
I can do to keep from
Being killed by the creek,
Hanging, cold, shocked, numb,
Alone in the dark, feeling,
I just might make it through,
By clinging to the ceiling...

Eric Clapton & BB King & Alvin Lee

What else in the world can transfuse
Hope out of pain and bitterness,
Listening to the Blues.

Near impossible to refrain or refuse,
Nodding head and tapping feet,
Listening to the Blues.

Dissolve into the melody and lose
That stupid everyday stress,
Listening to the Blues.

Deceptively simple chords and notes suffuse
Your dirt-dull life with inspiration,
Listening to the Blues.

In the end, you don't win, don't lose,
You just get through another night,
Listening to the Blues...

Empty Places

Sometimes it is the nothingness of a place,
Free from people, noises, distraction,
Where, for a moment, there is peace...
I suppose that's the visceral attraction
Of forest paths and deserted beaches,
Which still an ancient restlessness
Within our inner reaches...

Listen To The Bird

The sea gull cries "it's coming", but
No one understands, because
We don't speak sea gull, in the hot
Summer lull, which will soon
Be stirred-up into adventure
By the powerful typhoon,
Which, cried the bird's warning,
Will attack us in the morning...

Chores As Meditation

The daily household zen,
Of delving into messes,
And make them neat again.

Cycle of chores as strong
As anything in nature,
And going on for as long.

Life's meaning,
Pondered distractedly,
While cleaning...

Continuity

The priest is the 23rd generation
Of a family who have served
The ancient objects of veneration
Which reside inside the shrine
Silently watching over those who
Come to worship and consign
Those portions of their lives to
Harmonize with the gods' design.

Etymological

Ideals in the ether captured by words,
Which joined in series and strings
Become inspiration, dogma, scripture,
And a million other mental things,
Words which heal, words which hurt,
Words which led our fathers to fight
And be killed, now buried in the dirt...

First Date

Young love
In the gut,
Twisting churning
Urge to rut,

Rushing blood
Lusty and hot,

Unrestrained elation,
Followed by
Emotional evaporation,

The final mating
Chorus sung,
Youth is wasted
On the young.

Monday

The first day of the week
Is really like any other, but
That we've labeled, numbered,
And calendared what
Is just another sunrise,
Which shouldn't be the subject
Of our whens or whats or whys...

Crowd Control

The crowded park clears out quick,
As the rain falls, suddenly, from gray
Sponge clouds, benches wet and slick,
Now unoccupied, except for one old
Man not yet wet enough to move,
And, now gleefully free from obstruction,
I zone into a rain-cooled jogging groove...

Interpreter

I take what you say,
And turn it into different sounds,
In such a way
That your information,
And opinions,
Become communication.

Electromagnetic Organism

The radio towers multiply, unnoticed,
In places all around, and direct
Invisible rays and waves through
Us, and everything, in order to connect
Together human consciousness,
But, I wonder, to what effect?

Where Did They Go?

I go out into the gloaming of an early autumn day,
Walk beneath the trees quenched by a sudden rain,
In whose branches bell crickets ring and trill away,
The last of the cicadas sing a sinking sad refrain,
An insect paean to a summer soon to fade,
Its energy, heat, and humid passion will dissipate
Into a cooler season, where I guess I will wait
For the next exciting thing to come around,
Days pass so covertly, I don't even know the date.

Somewhere Near Damascus

And so it came to pass,
That the people in the
Village were attacked with gas,

Leaving them all sick or dead,
And the rest of the world
Watches sports events instead

Of doing something,
Anything, to intervene
And stop the escalation
Of something so evil, so obscene...

On The Sidewalk

I watch her as she approaches,
And she sees me looking at her,
Which makes me look away
Until she passes in a blur
Of determined perfumed female
Steps, which, in passing, confer
Her smell, in a tenuous vapor trail,
Which I try to ignore, to no avail...

Back At It...

Now's the time to throw the bucket
Down deep into the gloomy well,
Where ideas and images swim in cool
Formation, where the rare words dwell,
And the bucket sinks into the pool...