Deeper

‘Quick! Into the tunnels!’

They sat sweltering, crying, still. Hearing the dull roaring threaded whoosh as steel and iron napalm canisters thudded, this tremor, shredding forests, fields, homes danced into flames. Heat soared over tunnels bathing them in sweat. They went deeper. Deeper, following hollow carved earth trails. The earth swallowed their breath, their bones fertilized soil. Ancestor bones cried in their sleep.

The sweet silence, save all the crying and wounded after all the foreign devils packed and left, fleeing in terror as peasants streamed down from the mountains, out of caves and tunnels, poling rivers, attempting to escape, walking on water, drinking all the oceans in their creation myth, draining lands of blood, driving them into the sea. A blue green sea danced red.

This easing down of their voice flowing between crumbling sand, crushed red bricks laid haphazard. Cement walls blocked everything but the sound of their anger, frustration and repressed bitterness in life’s twisted fateful reality.

Their memory was a fiction and this fiction created their memory.  

Checkmate

Fingering her Tibetan ivory prayer beads, death heads shook, rattled, and rolled.

The mother’s fingers caressed life’s thorns. Nothing happened completely by random chance, by accidental predetermined random fate in her life. Life for her in America or Amnesia if you will was free will versus determination confronting ambition, privacy, isolation, and community in a corrupt, violent cynical society.

People wanted to control their Fear. They believed in fear.

They worshiped fear and consumption.

They were afraid of being poor and lonely. They were willing victims of their fear, uncertainty and doubt. They switched on their amygdala — a small almond shaped brain structure — validated to be involved in fear and emotional response.

Manipulated by the insatiable invisible insolvent propaganda system, by socialization control mechanisms and the subtle power of right wing conservative propaganda persuasion, they either wanted control or approval facing daily choices.

They struggled, suffered, dancing discovering gratitude and forgiveness in their heart-mind. Living and dying. Dying once while you’re alive is necessary. Get’s it out of the way early.

You die twice. When you are born and when you face death. Inscribed on a Zippo lighter in a dusty Saigon museum case.

Were you born laughing or crying?

“Checkmate,” said Death.

Animist cemetary, Ratanakiri, Cambodia

Skylight

Sky darkened. 
Ceremonial drum thunder sang vocal intensity.
Lonely lost suffering foreign tourists in Cambodia shuddered with fear.
What if I die here? 
How will my family and friends begin to realize my intention witnessing 1200 years of dancing Angkor laterite stoned history gnarling jungles revealed by natural strobes? 

Lightning flashed skies. Giant flashbulbs illuminated petrified children 
Buried inside cement cavern eyes eating cartoon images on a plasma scream.
Skies opened. 
Rain lashed humans. Some laughed, others cried. Tears dissolved fear.
Sweet dreams, baby.

Dawn. 
Two arrived. The boy is cutter. He carried rope, ladder, small axe and machete. 
Helper friend is coconut palm tree scout. 
Here and there, he said, pointing.

Go up.
The boy shinnied up a narrow palm.
Transferring to the towering 2’ diameter palm he climbed higher.
Roping his tools. 
How’s the view, asked helper.

Sublime. A wide brown river lined by cauliflower oaks reaches bamboo huts.
Orange sunrise severs cumulus wisps.
A market woman has her nails done in blue glitter.
A boy saws crystalized ice on a red dirt road.
Girls in white cotton pedal to school.
A woman grilling waffles along a road buys bundled forest kindling.
Saffron orange robed monks sit in meditation at naga wat.
One plays a drum.

Go up.

He climbed higher.

He chopped. Long thin heavy branches weighted by freedom danced free.
Helper dragged branches past advertisements for temples, orphanages, river trips.
He chopped. 
He dragged.
He chopped.
He dragged.
He secured rope to the top. Blossoming.
He chopped.
Coconuts, leaves, bark danced down.
White interior life dust snowed.
Tree crashed.
Light escaped. 
3 hours. $20.

exposure

after a lost time

in Tibet

animate and inanimate objects

focused their attention on a voice whispering

mindfulness

in the moment

because

living safely is dangerous

film grain

what did an exhausted lovergirl
on the back of a scooter
strapped, trapped cashed out
say after a night with a stranger 
to her memory of loss

what did laughter say
to silence

what did a blank page 
say to ink

what did fantasy
say to anger
near resilent bamboo

what did clouds
say to soil
during the dry season

what did shadows 
of feelings say
to dark and simple

what did bayon faces
say to 1,200 years
of reflected light
sawing ice 
as sleeping roots
gathered strength
below the surface