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Entries in mountains (6)

Saturday
Jun102023

Frozen Memory

After Saigon, Leo walked to Sapa in NW mountains.

Talking monkey tourists from Hanoi are here to eat, gamble, sing, dance / screw and buy cheap imported plastic products, said Mo and My, H’mong storyteller sellers.

Day trippers are an army in high heels, floppy hats, sunglasses, shiny belts and lost eyes. They run to stand in front of a Catholic Church to have their photo snapped off. Most ignore us.

A woman tourist slows down in her long march toward consumerism to look at my work: a handmade belt, a colorful wrist wearable, a thin wallet. The wallet is thinner than Mo.

She is surrounded by a chorus. “Buy From Me! Buy From Me!” 

The woman faints. Another buyer takes her place near blue tarp patchwork junk dealers selling fake watches, cheap pants, shirts, hats and knickknacks.

Eyes scan colors, fabrics and faces.

A park has baby red roses. A dusty historical statue stares at brackish fountain water.

Red Dzao women have bags and threaded samples spread on the ground.

“Do you want to buy from me?” said one smiling with gold teeth.

“Yes. I want to buy the mountain.” Leo pointed to the rising green western forest, steel gray granite slabs, deep shaded valleys and gray clouds skimming peaks around high deep edges rolling toward them.

“Ok,” she said. “I will sell you the day mountain for 10,000 and the night mountain for 10,000.”

“Ok. It’s a deal.”

School kids in uniformed mass hysteria and deprived of sleep stagger uphill to a bright yellow building where a young boy pounds out a rhythm on a ceremonial skin drum. Come all yea faithful, joyful and trumpet.

Two big brown dogs fuck on the street in front of the church where tourists gather for a photo shoot.

Local women armed with cameras they rent by the day selling images, reflections, memories and dreams poke and prod women, husbands, boys and girls into groups for the moment. The decisive moment they will remember forever.

Their image will collect dust near a votive candle altar and burning innocent incense feeding, appeasing dead hungry ancestral ghosts. Caught in time. Frozen alive.

 

Thursday
Apr062017

Butterfly Nose

Stone path
White yellow butterfly
Hello
Flutter wings
Dancing air
Touches nose
Ah ha

Language river
Brown life highway
Mountain silent
Clouds fly around
Here we go

Brown orange
Butterfly
Escapes rain
Resting
On Kroma rainbow
Cloth



Orange brown
Butterfly lands on forehead
Feelers probe eyebrow, scalp, ear
Skin
Massage
Sit still as a mountain

Still mountain
Flowing river
Sky dancer
Sitting still
Breath rain

She sent a bamboo forest
Poem heart
From Australia (summer)
To Laos (rainy season)

 Clouds dance mountainsButterfly rainbows
Avoid spider webs
 
Under rafters
Parents teach spinning art
Wait until you feel the vibration
Rush down
Grab your struggling meal
Haul it into darkness
 
Upstream brown
Nam Ou sings
Row row row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a
Dream 

A French tourist takes a GPS
Reading
We are lost he tells his wife
Crying in the rain
You will never see
Your precious cat
Again
 
Butterfly swoops
Eardrum brush
Sky mind nature
Original
 
It's not a gamble
It's an investment
Upriver
Weaving village Supjam
Cotton, silk

Dressed in cloud
Mountain celebrates
Luminous forests
Blossoming

The Temple of the Divine Madman

Bhutan
Druk Yul - Land of the Thunder Dragon
Keep it raw
Human flourishing
Eudaimonia

Under this mask, another mask.
I will never be finished removing all these faces.

Wandering river mystic wind
Rhythm of world
Dances
No fear
Expanding joy
Contentment
Laughter therapy

Jump out of your skin
Backwards
Dream

Mind-stream transmission
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form
 
Cloud carries
East weight
Wind
Around green granite
Mountains
Singing
Here we come

 Brown Nam Ou river

Developing strength

Flowing south from China

Phongsali, Muang Kieu
Karst
Sang
Bring it on
I am thirsty
 
Cloud
Dumped wet cold slashing
H2O
Wait
Stay longer said Nam Ou
I need you
Yes said Cloud
I pass through
Dressing mountains
I dance with Wind-spirits
 
Tiger butterfly
Guards stone entrance
Kisses wing sky
 
The map is not the
Territory
Linguistic syntax interpretation
Cloud dresses mountain

past nine mountains
river brown paints
 
Yellow butterfly waves
hello farewell
Return soon breath wing
Blues harp C key
Luminous magic

Long mud road south
River, villages, mountains
Green all green
Rice paddies luminous

 

A farmer walks
through strong luminous
green
rice paddies
his life
 
See with soft eyes
Five weeks on river
Ling's passion
Caress reunion
Ease down slow
 
Sweet smiling sorrow
Laughter's delight
Gentle calm way

 

 
Mountains clouds river
Butterflies
Wave farewell
Thank you for visiting
Good luck to you and your family
Passing through

Tuesday
Sep232014

clouds

morning
east clouds
sing with pines
evergreens
afternoon
clouds dance west
through forests
granite 
old mountain
new clouds
river flows

Tuesday
May312011

Fishtail 

Namaste,

Fishtail swims in blue
Alone
Cold steep snow regions
Dances along Annapurna spine
Laughing at human's meager
Attempts to summit

Metta.

Saturday
Apr232011

scroll

blue lake soars white mountains 
range of annapurna
touch blue sky
majestic sense
foreigners trek, camp, parasail, river raft nature
they pass like seasons 
 
new Tibetan friends 
escaped in 1959
live in refugee camps 
work hard raise families weave futures
lhasa return only a dream
a famous haiku 
on a scroll
in mountain museum
is longer than climbing a peak