Laos

Thin vociferous tongues

Wag sound letters

Calligraphy senses voice

Sniffing garbage

Swirling smoke dances from grilled meat

H'mong man eats sticky rice with startled fish eyes

Net man deftly braids threads

White filament

Words melt into excellent soft smooth paper

Laughter sings a long song

Wearing a crash helmet

In the event of a volcanic eruption

Pen fountain

Tyranny of whining children

Angry mothers without love die of neglect

How did I get here?

Blind eyes see blind lies

Real eyes realize real lies

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king

We’ve been killing each other for 4,000 years and still no one knows who the king is

Grow Your Soul

Loom

A character said with a secret JOY you have returned.

Yes, she says, my dream of you is unfolding. She caresses silk threads on her loom of time. Your sensitivity and serenity calms me, he says.

Before dawn. The Mekong river is water. Fog obscures distance. She stands at a window looking for him. He is on the river. His net flies over still deep water. Threads and knots of jungle vine land on the surface. They sink into silence.

She hears the Mekong sing. She returns to the source. Sleep. She dares dreams, aware of voiced whispers in silence. Silence becomes her sense of desire. She follows desire. Gratitude, her awareness, calms her tortured heart. A leaf leaves the tree of life.

Transparent water bowls sing. A purple lotus grows from mud.

She is at her loom. Her pattern begins with purple silk. This is her base. She runs threads through thin lines of balance. Twin bobbins spin out golden threads for new diamonds. Weaving is her meditation. Her voice. It is her heart-mind, hands, fingers and feet.

Poem

kick boxers attack mangoes

chop ice while shifting gears in the wind after school

six month infants wail at the hospital for a blue placebo pill

charcoal fires waffles

a boy pedals his bike

seeking recycled trash before wicker baskets say hello

spare change searches for user value collecting cardboard images in a squall

red ink meets onion paper at an intersection

whisper secrets with speaking sparrows

inside thematic variations Echo recalls speaking memory

hastening a chill dance with Cinematic expressionism

write in exile

write naked

write in blood

ink is too expensive

write like you will never see

your friends and family again

gestures of silence washes clothes by hand

family loss

personal joy

simple pleasures

mirrors

weight scale

mad blind whore in love jumps over the abyss

smell rain

hear leaves dance

Whisper

Laos

It's a walking meditation.

How do you spell loss?

What I called "memory" contained an entire world.

Imagination is memory.

A blind painter paints from memory. A blind writer. A blind poet. A blind musician.

Painted words of yellow laughter.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

The old monk in the shade reads to his 95 year-old blind friend resting/dreaming in a hammock.

The wailing infant gets a job as a siren on an emergency vehicle.

Once upon a rainy day Whisper paid attention to sensations.

Whisper paid Now.

Whisper is Now. Not Later.

A heavy deluge increased the density of murmurs and ideal idea voices sat quiet.

Voices heard rain bouncing off recycled Asian war PSP sheets in sheets. Steady yellow Agent Orange rain hijacked a life jacket.

He shuddered with the sensation that an entire life had ended that day.

Another unpredictable life was beginning.

Designing the charcoal elements of crisp fire as infants scream at talking heads women drive young ones crazy in out in out their tongues banging like pistons on a desultory 125cc engine propelled by virgins returning home with their unblemished shy dignity intact.

One woman fans skewered buffalo meat to a crisp.

A grandmother cradles an infant. She suffers from diabetes Type II.

Shuddering wedding photos are frozen on a wall. It never turns out like people imagine.

They breed, work and get slaughtered. They trade hands and hearts.

She skewers another hypnotic form of laughter to preserve her conversation.

Fat lost European tourists waddle past.

With an accusatory tone men get smashed on beer Lao.

A mechanic hammers one sharp line of description vs. mundane observation.

Fire

Traveling isn't supposed to be fun, said an American father to his whining son sitting on a cafe balcony in Istanbul overlooking the Bosporus. It's an adventure.

I used to be someone else but I traded him in.

Begin this day at dawn.

Pashupatinath Hindu cremation ceremony along Bagmati River.

Shiva is the destroyer and creator.

Wood pyres. A woman kisses her shrouded husband goodbye.

Light his fire.

Fire is the beginning and end.

Fire is your rosé flame.

Stir his bones.

His ashes flutter with death and mortality.

Silence. Solemnity. Serenity. Grounded and transient. Flowers. Offerings.

Glorious color dancing fire.

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