Recitations

I’m a one-cent worker—

Who the fuck are you?

Driving surreptitiously

up unpainted streets

dressed in crumbled brick

and shaded asphalt.

A candle,

a wisp of incense,

the still as ocean sucking into itself.

Gwan Shr Yin, with eyes

on each hand.

Mundane recitations:

Computer,

One who communicates indirectly through colon closed parenthesis click send,

Figs accosted by ants,

IM, cell phone, finches chirping, high-speed pic upload,

Feline in afternoon August light,

Starting fresh after flooding,

scrubbing silted corners,

laying carpet,

preparing dinner,

listening to fig leaves rustle evening breezes,

the telegraph tapping of ceiling fans:

“Sea of Suffering. Stop. Observer of the sounds of the world. Stop. The sounds of the world.

Joie de Vivre

There were three of you

Wooded and ensconced

Sharp and wary

And no way

To capture you

Disappointed

You sang high

And briefly

Breaking into chorus

In the midst of flights

For territory

Wooded and encroached

Obscured and aware

Of the order of things

Mine to see

Your browns and yellows

Foliaged and dulled

Are only mine

To see when you show

In quick movements

But when I looked

You were gone

And cold winds wintered in

Splintering habitats

So fastidiously keystoned

I rebuilt a rectangular fortress with

Westward windows arching

Saw diminished eleventh-month light

Illuminate inward ecologies

Collapsed under disunity

Then detritus covered the ground

Trophic levels disappeared

I had only myself to eat

I shrilled a self-elegy

Accompanied by birdsong

Lay under wind-blown leaves

Soothed by death scents

Reordered according to

Outward ecologies

Old niches filled with new species

New niches created

Your chorus reached me

I looked toward

But you were gone.

Kitchen Conversation

He commanded me

As a dog,

And I was a dog.

He barked orders

And I stared, wide-eyed,

Stunned.

He moved

As to move through me,

And I leaped aside.

"You are a dog,"

He assured.

And I was a dog.

Juneau, AK

Living an Alaskan wilderness

dream, a glacier easing into

a new niche. Whatever was

gnawing and restrained

has been pacified in an opium-

like tranquility untroubled

by dreams.

Are there Northern Lights

reverberating like silent echoes,

casting forth undulating specters?

You'll never come back,

why should you?

California dreams are supposed to be

warmer. But 100 miles from the Pacific

nells "stasis" like a bell

rung in mourning for adventures

pretended and tides recoil

from miles of flat land dotted

by apartments and cracked

sidewalks. But not you. You

walked right into a Northern Light

and found what you weren't

looking for.