Tiny Bit Of Living Warmth

A bird's heart beats over 500 times
Each minute, I have been told
By someone who knows, the birds
Now perched out in the cold...

The birds' hearts buzzing,
As the bitter wind recedes,
Into a sprinkling snow, waiting
For the feeder to be filled with seeds.

The Heart Of The Matter

Does love come from the heart,
Or from the loins, or elsewhere
Inside?  Maybe an ethereal part
Of us, where we sense and feel,
Love produced to cancel fear,
To comfort, connect, to heal.

Is love, like water in a well,
Always there?  Can the well go dry?
Perhaps the love from others
Flow and combine to supply
An aquifer of compassion, from
Which we drink, on which we rely...

Love's flow never ending,
And we know neither how nor why.

Hard Landing

Sumo wrestlers, seen from above,
In the outer stands, are almost
Heroic, as they grunt, push, and shove,
Embodying the acceleration of mass
Into a collision, which results in
One of them falling on his ass.

Walking The Dog

Lady, my daughter's Labrador,
Pulls me along in a loop
Around the swamp paths
Stopping to pee and poop,
And also, she likes to sniff
In such an attentive, serious
Manner, it seems as if
She is reading a code
Left in dribbles of intestinal
Waste, along the road
And tree trunks and poles
Telling stories and gossip
Of dogs, squirrels, moles,
All undecipherable to me
And my less capable nose,
As I grimly grasp the leash,
And follow where Lady goes...

Morning After

Frantic early morning scramble,
After a night on the town,
She notices the tear in
Her evening gown,
As she picks up her things,
Hoping he doesn't awake,
That time has quiet wings...

Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

That my verses are "too approachable",
I both acknowledge and accept,
For I'm not from the Ivory Tower
Where the poets' union card is kept,
And issued, incestuously, to
Academics, obtuse and smart,
Who contrive, so cleverly, to
Turn words into abstract art...

Cost Of Contemplation

I wonder if the ascetic,
Who, would quietly sit
And watch the sky, would
Ever get a meditative fit,
From contemplating,
Too hard, the infinite...

御殿 (Goten)

The ancient fortress, safe house
For the travelling shogun, is now
Overgrown with suburban trees
Shading where samurai would allow
Servants, messengers, and petitioners
To enter with a kowtow,
A once fearful place, now softened
By plum blossoms on the bough...

View From The Porch

The realization of
Youth misspent,
Settles in, as one
becomes senescent,
Rocking on the porch,
Shrunken and bent,
Wondering where all
Those long years went...

Classical Inspiration

Good lord, how we get off,
On the 2nd Piano Concerto
Of Rachmaninoff,

Romantic, inspired,
As often as we listen,
We never get tired.

Moon Looking At Me

Stalking through the bamboo grove
On a winter Saturday, a few days
Beyond the full moon, I rove
In the afternoon along a path,
My mind bemused with lunar
Vibes, this day just an aftermath
Of a night full of amazing sights,
An unforgettable stellar display
In the clear heavenly heights
So visceral, yet so far, far, away...

Fate As Trajectory

The universe expands,
And stars explode, unnoticed,
By lifeforms in many lands,
Busy pursuing results based
On biological demands...
Oblivious until the moment
When the deadly comet lands...

Lesson Of The Desert

Lives follow and flow
Along crooked winding lines,
Over before you know.

Lovers' Code

Tentatively, based on her look,
He suggested they fool around,
She didn't say yes, but still took
His hand, without making a sound.

Tick, Tick, Tick...

Time's flow can heal
If we are willing to wait,
Or are able to, depending
On our luck, or fate...
Time's passage can
Soften and deflate,
Hard memories
Of pain or hate...
Like water steadily erodes
A rock, time will soften
Angles, and lighten loads...
If given a chance, my friend,
Or we'll fight and kill
Each other, until no end.

Underside Of Happiness

There sometimes is an odd
Happiness in the process of loss,
Like joy over the departure
Of an overbearing boss,
Or the relief after dumping
The depressing albatross
Of a friendship gone bad,
The breath of new fresh air,
Is the best you've ever had...

地震 Earthquake

Believe it, handle it, if you can,
But we live with the promise of
Tectonic destruction in Japan.

The giant catfish will someday shake,
Simply a matter of when, not if,
All just wait for the chaos it will make.

Unexplainable

Having a cup of English Breakfast tea,
On a cold morning, aft of the solstice,
A revelation of sorts occurs to me,
That could have come earlier, but
Perhaps flew too low and stealthily,
And avoided detection... now revealed,
Like turning on a dim forgotten light
In a dust-dark room, long sealed
In the back of my mind, where lost
Hopes and bad dreams had congealed,
This revelation, wordless and recondite,
May be a step towards wisdom, peace,
A meeting with things beyond my sight.

Sayonara

Watching you walk away,
I die a little, knowing what I
Should, but cannot, say.

A Form Of Reaching Out?

Ping-Pong diplomacy being the alleged precedent,
A quickly-assembled posse of basketball players
Joined-up with Rodman, and off they went
To the lunatic Hermit Kingdom of the Kims,
A Confucian dictatorship, malevolent, bent,
And evil, where the desires and merest whims
Of the pudgy leader, and NBA-fan, Jong-Un,
Control life and death, with nothing to prevent
Personal excesses, deluded desires too soon
Consumed and excreted, remembered no more,
Like Rodman, his pick-up team, and the hoops
Game played, with no regard for the score...

Ride On My Words

Read my words, feel my thoughts,
Swim through the sea of dreams,
And float over the swells of verse,
Ideas flowing in waves and streams,
Drifting with the rhythm and rhyme,
To a someplace special, and sublime.

Follow my lead, take my hand,
I will lead you to a different,
Real, compelling, imaginary land.

The Power Of The Vertical

Across the flat plains we walked and drove
Our herbivore-towed wagons under wide
And imposing open skies, all stretched out
Endlessly under the heavens, no place to hide,
We plodded on horizontally, innocently
Assuming god's grace would eventually provide
A relief from the overbearing emptiness
Left by ancient glaciers, now burnt and dried,
When ... What? ... Ahoy! ... Look at that!
A wondrous huge vertical rock, a granite sign
That there would be an end, eventually,
To our long journey, that all would be fine...

Progeny

Eight pounds, or so, of flesh
Softly squirming in the crook
Of my arm, a portion of my
DNA, I suppose, as I look
Down into his almond eyes,
And I'm stunned by the power
Of this biological surprise,
This miracle of life which
Love found a way to devise...

Customer Service

Entering the Japanese tea-house,
Welcomed by lilting female
Voices, repeating, like birds
Of an exotic species, frail
But insistent, singing words,
Which weave a comfort nest
For the arriving customer --
Tonight's honored guest.

Prophet

I wandered for 40 days in the dunes
And rock-strewn valleys trying to learn
The meaning of things, attempting to
Get closer to the gods, perhaps to earn
A vision, spurred by heat, thirst, emptiness,
To fill the void, the bottomless yearn
Inside my bored, random soul, cursed by
Cosseted comfort ... failure to discern.

And what did I find?
Enough to drive me out
Of my fucking mind.

ご来光 Go-Rai-Ko (Here Comes The Sun)

The earth rotates in such a way
That the sun is seen to rise,
On this, a freezing new year's day,
The sun, blazing, god-like to our eyes,
"Don't diminish or leave us" we pray,
As it brightens the cold winter skies
Brilliantly unaware of us below,
Kneeling, pleading, our whats and whys...