To Chiba

Namaste noble warrior of the Zen path,

Your haiku writing is inspirational. 
Farewell little French traveller someone whispered.
The father asks me if I have a (wi-fi) signal. You have three signal children and a beautiful signal wife. 
You don't need an electronic signal. He laughed with this small realization.
 
The crazy anxious German man insists on knowing the cremation cost.
I don't want to die, he said, The water is too dirty.
He needs medicine. He needs to slow down. His energy is a violent fireball. 
It consumes his desire. 
He creates his personal cremation ceremony in public places.
 
In dawn light women inspect orange and yellow flowers.
Men haggle over chickens for the new year sacrifice.
The chariot collided with a wall. Wooden wheels are pinned to stone. Towers shift toward gravity.
Boys play with tower brass bells, women offer fire flowers.
Men discuss future engineering projects.
 
Your Sakura cherry blossom are sublime. 
Seasons bloom with love, beauty.

Metta.

Die of Shame

Namaste,

In a Bhaktapur, Nepal guesthouse it’s dinner time. Five Chinese aliens appear. Two males and three women. They are in their 20’s. They are armed with laptops, cell phones, and loud discursive language. This is normal.

Noise and confusion and interruptions and arrogant attitudes fit their life style. One girl is dressed like a flapper dancer from the roaring 20’s. Daisy Bell talks with her mouth full of rice. Her red diamond tiara squeezes her frontal lobe into a shucked pea. 

They are lucky to have a passport. Their parents are important Red Party Officials. It’s all about connections. They whined their way out of manners and intelligence in public places. They are the new breed of The Ugly Chinese, the lost, terribly frustrated never satisfied in their exported coddled spoiled youth.

They are the new emperors and empresses of a prosperous, for a minority, rising dynasty. They act like they own the restaurant. They complain about the price of a meal. One girl said in a shrill voice, “Oh, it’s too expensive. I am a poor student.” She is majoring in Stupidity and Callousness at Beijing Normal University. She failed Basic Courtesy 101.

A brat boy chastises the Nepalese waiter about his pronunciation of Menu. The crew cut Mandarin idiot commands the boy to say it again, Menu.

They are living, breathing examples of the spoiled one child political and cultural genocide legacy. It will come back to haunt China. They have the emotional maturity of a 15-year old. They are so busy stuffing their faces and talking over each other all the European guests stare at them. They don’t care.

They act and talk like this at home. A new strain of vociferous Chinese virus has been unleashed on Earth.

Suddenly Flapper Dolly jumped up on the table yelling, Kill the Running Capitalist Dogs! Making Money in China is Glorious!

Everyone threw their steel toed reinforced Everest hiking boots at her. She died of Shame. Her friends dragged her body out, selling the boots to pay for her cremation.

Metta.

a German woman

Namaste,

Yes, said the eighty-two year old woman in impeccable hard, stone cold German to her Nepalese guide across the dinner table after she sent the green glassed bottle of beer back because it wasn't cold enough for her aristocratic standards as her arthritic silver haired myopic husband stared vacant with his docile gleaming owl ears hearing her reminiscent warble, Our Further had it right. We missed our golden opportunity to achieve greatness.

She sighed and stabbed her salad.

She ran a death camp. She signed documents in blood. She was cold, efficient and pure ideology. She escaped to hide in Argentina from Nazi hunters. She changed her name, her hair style, her accent. She prospered. She returned to Vienna and opened a bakery selling stale crumbs.

Fake pearls glistening in the glow of a candle strangled her. Wax dripped into her melancholic debris. She adjusted her mask and stabilized her husband out into the long dark cold night.

Local dogs howled at her smell.

Metta.

Kid Fools

Namaste,

Said the young Nepalese girl carrying the world on her back.

Her world is a large plastic sack for collecting valuable garbage. She uses a piece of thin hooked metal to probe piles of refuse. She has children scavenger friends in Vietnam (bundled logs and firewood), Laos (twigs and firewood), Cambodia (trash, charcoal, plastic bottles) all singing and dancing under the weight. Down all the days of their youth.

The weight of childhood is heavy. Children are not fooled. No joke. 

The girl led a traveler to the national zoo. A huge magnificent orange and white striped Bengal tiger roared near the bars. Feed Me! He dragged raw red buffalo meat into the shade expanding canines, grinding flesh.

Two sad brown eyed crying Black Himalayan bears in a cramped cold cement cage with scraggly tree trunks pressed their noses through rusty bars whispering, Please open the cage and take us back to the mountains.

A Griffon's brown elegant wing span blocked the sun flying beneath wire limitations. Oh, it said, If only I could soar again on thermals. If only I could regain my dignity and freedom. 

I have seen many people in cages, said the girl.

Metta.

Draw water. Draw your dream.

Mandala

Namaste,

An old caretaker man lies on his back inside an erotic temple with 24 carved images of playful sexual pleasure. He welcomes devotees covered in their piety, devotion, shadows, offering flowers, oil flame light, petals, incense, foot worn stone paths. Interiors.

Ring a bell, many bells, fingerprints wear down stone. Human gestures vibrating bells across a valley.

Endless brick factories fill the Sudal valley. Humans living in brick shacks, using water, clay, wooden forms, creating gray bricks. Sand, dust, hand labor, coal fired smokestacks, piles of coal being crushed, hauled on backs to fire. Fire gray red. The scope and density of men, women and children pouring their lives into their daily effort.

This massive element of people surviving. You walk on streets made of bricks, seeing brick homes rising to blue sky. Brick by brick. 

A mandala. Centering the universe with non-attachment.

The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind. I have no reason to despair because I am already there, sings a Nepalese child.

Gallery.

Metta.