river

River said please don't push me.
You can't push me. You can try. Everyone fails.

You can't step in the same River twice.

I am from the source.
Consider my source.
High above you in the white clouds obscuring granite peaks. Climb high. Birds sing.
Humans carry their short life on their back.
Women wear love's labor, feeling a child's warmth behind them.
Heartbeats mingle.
Dreaming on their long walk, through jungles, forests, along a river. On River.
Below the surface of appearances.
Crescent yellow moon
Reflects hello dream.
Dance on my surface.
I am a mirror.
Beauty is my mother. 
I am wide deep. I flow forever.
No beginning, no end.
Are your needs being met Mountain asked River.

22 flowers

Crow music
Dim sum next to glorious flowers talking
Who will buy me?

My bouquet rainbows
Red orange white purple green stem
Life carries me home
Climbing 114 steps

Arrange me like so many
Perfect Yangon worlds
Create a dream
Yes

Put me in water

On a soft day
Invisible crows in thick branches
Write laughter's dialogue
Bleed letters, ideograms

Chant sutras ring bells

 

Nothing but the blues in Malamyine, Myanmar

real eyes realize real lies

i am a fake person
selling a fake reality
to fake people
where the sound of speech
has no alphabet

creativity has no rules
said a Yangon crow
the end of the world
is down a long labyrinth

without a center 
filled with staring voices
a blind man on a train
clicking clacking to Pan Yar Lan

uses a bamboo staff
carries a cup
staff signals pressure
walk slow
trembling through life
blind

Yangon primary students.

don't repress anything

engage senses
a foreign man in myanmar
makes his living by reading
in a coffee shop
on a train

singing words flying free from a little story
crows release wing words gliding over a forest
above falling yellow leaves
a canopy of green shelters
debris decay leaf blankets soft shaded
meditating monks in burgundy
touching whorls
gentle way
soft eyes

sunlight saturday shatters shadows
as invisible traveler scribbles women
rearranging small orange carrots
wilting leaves

incense smoke curls into chinese temple
light as women wash flowers framing
red yellow orange
flickering buddha lights
enticing past present future potentials

in the long now

fools dance

flocks of floating balloons 

in a floating world

fly up the yangon street 

pasta Buddhist monk 

chanting into a microphone

calm meditation

accompanied by a child's xylophone

high heeled working girls

gyrate in pulsating strobes 

flickering red, yellow, green, blue

singing loss, loneliness, alienation, poverty

deep shadows

languish melancholia

embrace boredom