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poet lost among the years
will you remember?
tracing Khmer ruins
crumbling today superimposed
who should be forgotten?
so many questions
from my porch above Monterey Bay
eye raindrops of joy
cheers to friendship again found
in earth's far corners
last night tossing and turning in dream
looked down at a stormy seacoast
then up at a huge orange striped fish
swimming across the waterfilled sky
tangled underbrush
life my feet I find myself
raised up on branches
leaves falling on thorns
between her giggle
and his moodiness
what is investment to he
who lives brightly colored now?
night chill softened by
a couple dancing tango
in rain on the bridge
she smashed everything wooden
to prove the exception is the rule
each went own way and bumped foreheads
their derby loser named "sweet foreplay"
standing on fresh rose petals
we guessed her silk colored thoughts
jelly bean garden
once planted on Snell Street now
melted back to earth
goggles unleashed a mask
returned from alien space
nothing logical
in a box of synapses
just ones and zeros
chewing on the soft cotton
of the bioterrorist's brush
pluto engineered
will you choose your children's eyes
genetic progress
hydrogeologists sit with sand castles
gigantic trees choke terrified ruins
Luna is a tree
held together by giant bolts
waiting for a storm
who only consented off the record
to tell where she hung her hats
coy said he, smiling,
only the haberdasher
knows where I reside
custom outfit on Fleet Street
with scissor-cut ear flaps to boot
clinging desperately
she cries to life's illusion
so seriously
slamming the back porch door she bruised her finger
after sending him back the boxes he'd returned to her
even crickets can't
lighten the weight of her step
walking on your back
born late to write the treatise
we're left with scraps of science
with partner hogging the lines
help pull me out of the abyss
so we're at equilibrium again
pure and fragile beauty found
miles deep beneath the ocean
languid fish without eyes
swaying between the seaweed
ancient mulberry leaves
an empassioned Klimt kiss kept
timeless, tinted into silk
on her scarf pulled tight
in the spring's early mist
fears of those lost years
in the pocket of travels passed
I find bright stones still remind
what Freud would think
in this day and age
with silver spoonlets
twisted into jewelry
sold saturdays in Portland
the contortionist on view
requested a weekend off
to visit distant relatives
long time gone and short time there
travel in your head instead
a flight of geese
in the shape of a key
opens the sky
grey whale breaches the bay while
kin decomposes the beach
shaking the sand out of his hair
the cab driver pulls the seat up
and yawns to signal the nap's end
stealing inadvertently
something deeper than may day
courted by dolphins
learning to ride nature's force:
the sea spits us out
the air also rejects us
and we return home unscathed
only in bold dreams
will the force of our own wings
carry us to sky
swerving lopsided against
the uncanny loops of death
large apple branch mounds
keep trees from reaching skyward
and look like bird nests
with opened palm
she separates eggs
from fluffy dirt
possibilities living
safe inside a hard white shell
rained on traffic cop
stops glitter angels
for bypassing insecurity
to be seventeen years old
is to be invincible
water, bridge, greenery
brown bricked houses
and the endless afternoon
a shop on Newbury street
sells only stone gargoyles
across the street are bibs
for jido-sama and inari foxes
and knit booties for grandma
my cyber-Omi emails
Canada: Great Uncle Karl
Billy down the street
and the rest of the gang
are all on the loose
a horse, a heist, a hideout
high above between redrocks
a bump on the head
family story's lost chapter
slice of pickle pie
underneath the tent
the bear left scraps
high in the sky
Orion shines
without nostalgia
when I saw him the first time
shooting arrows upside down
burning knarled roots
thousands of years old for heat
his children won't know
how to barter beads properly
after he's kicked the bucket
won't matter much
to the moonbeams
frozen out there
once a drunken moonbeam flew
unable to eat petals
Donald and Daisy
padding themselves
on fried leftovers
white marble studded streambed
where anadronous fish live
undercutting waves
with the verticality
of her bobbing yacht
but life is so peaceful here
in the sea of ignorance
until he discovers
her Hungarian blood
flowing furiously
passion in love and anger
baked into Austrian cakes
one Sacher family
three Napoleans
and a pungent rat
Asher morphed into Ashley
Ellis Island self-defense
Henry Ward Beecher
New World bound English sailor
landscape of footprints
not stepping on heads
silver-tongued emancipator
the small-pox blankets
given by "our" namesake and
our national shame
just a smidgen of the evil
generated by the ancestors
for what have we learned
of our roots and histories
if we do not heed
silver ocean's pounding
neon stars' beaming
sixth grade science fair
my pink neon flamingo
blown by hand in flames
his girl friend in tears
with her aunt in handcuffs
outside heads on cement
thanking for the moment
chanting from minarets
behind that grove of yuke trees
green dragon monks live in peace
sitting immobile with
ultimate void superimposed
on apparent reality
a letter gift in a dream
lost when I tried to read it
his words on flowing water
her bubbling mercury pond
their hands loosely entwined
dawn: a deer frozen, listen
to the bobcat's tail twitching
eye of the hurricane
fires on the plain
in her locked scrapbook
she offers up her pages
as testimony of pain
autumn leaves falling
the wind in the pines
and the hissing of lust
fingers walked down guitar strings
in a search for calm again
the grand Mariachi band
courted her passionately
while checking their watches
Louisiana stowaway
crawdads in California
staring at the moon
in a pool of water
train rolling along
machu picchu mystery
roofless for night sky worship
khmer temple reverberates
shadowy secrets of insects
draining memory of mercury
you may eat the rice that fits
in the curve of your small hand
of their first meeting
she remembers mango seed
threads between her teeth
smiles burst into laughs
subtle rainbowed dawn
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