like a
prisoner, my thoughts,
swept away
by children in a
hurry to grow up
a full
moon . . .
father's shadow peeing
into the new year
an old
poet carries dawn
into the
forest with a
rucksack of words
oh my,
tree,
your shadow stretches
across the street!
staring
as i
do every morning at
the bay, the
fish my mother in-law
is cutting, gasps
washing
rice
at dawn when stuffed
animals sleep
and dreams are blackbirds
perched in trees
the
drunken
laughter of mah jong
players below
my window, save me
from the gecko's smile
reading
haiku
under a bent shadow . . .
winter wind
come
back, egret,
shadow dance with
reeds in a
lake breathing
clumps of cloud
in
darkness,
a sea anenome
grasping stars
like
carabou
swatting stars with
not enough moon,
i unbuttoned my
girlfriend's blouse
palm
trees plodding
through autumn . . .
the monsoon
a
tailor,
memory, patching
together
the quilt my grandmother
gave me at birth
if i was
a stone,
would you skip me
across the pond?
digest
me,
darkness, into a
thousand paper
moons, spiraling through
my urethral canal
a
withered plant
lectures me on my
way to nowhere
i remain
in this world waiting
for you to
step out of the shadow
i wear into winter
lost
souls
paint graffiti
on clouds
coughed up while
the earth stutters
your
temper,
wind, reminds me
of my wife!
deep
into
winter, this dream plucked
from a dream . . .
and you, sitting
placidly with buddha
a home
boy
the moon, spray
painting snow
here in
my
office, perched like a
crow, i slip
into a forest
sprouting words
the cry
of slugs
beneath my house,
panning winter
i
watched ducks
from my car, this
afternoon,
float across the lake
into my daughter's mind
the
mango
from my neighbor's
tree, blushes
your
lips play
possum in a desert
that will eat
you, pasting stars
on saltine crackers
picking
rice
into the new year . . .
brown water
an old
salt
on the wharf spewing
dreams
with gray whales
in mother's womb
driftwood . . .
not knowing
it would speak
this
flower,
unafraid to open up
at dawn . . .
breathing the
remnants of stars
darkness,
and no moon to dip
my brush into
