No. 1
2023-2025 Collection of Poems
Vegas
Sitting on a bench in Vegas
Clothes drying on a sidewalk plant
Air dry against the skin
Bare mountains chuckle in the distance
Lingering, the afternoon sun drips down
Shifting under the shadow of a palm
Slipping into memories behind the heatwave
Maybe the clothes are dry
The world rolls on, bare uncaring rock
Scuttling along, wow we die alone…
Old enough to have regrets
Young enough that the elusive winds of hope sting
Cold and biting into exposed cheeks
Stumbling into a storm
Not naive anymore
Not sad, exactly, not happy
Just tumbling along
Like dust freewheeling across these desert plains
Tired, so tired…
My kingdom for a place to rest my feet
A lap for my head
To doze in the shade
Joliet
Gray skies and dead corn
Warm old house
Bustling with the weight of family footsteps
Cider, food, snow
Walks on sidewalks, smiling neighbors
Christmas carols on the radio
Now I play the same songs
To the blank wall next to me
It sighs back
Birdcall
Green blue melding in the dawn
Finger ridges dipping into the ocean
Calm day, only four foot swell
Inkspills of clouds on the horizon
Gazing south towards endless mountains
I forget maps exist
The grassy ridge tops backlit by morning sun
Cut a line through the shimmering blue sea
Sitting in the morning sun, peeling off the slope
Hummingbird in the manzanita flowers
Chipmunk and swallow in the bare buckeye
California bluejay in the enormous madrone
Other birds I wish I could identify: one with a yellow chest, black crest, and white and black spotted feathers.
The quail scream.
I see a western meadowlark, I think
Old trees, older stone
Yellow grass carpets under oak
Wild wind and wild birdsong
The soul drops out of the human
And dances free on the land
Walking barefoot, the forest becomes louder
Trickle of the spring stream
Deafens my ears
Wings rustling of a fowl, I’ve never heard before
And the great horned owls hoot is a trumpet to my ears
So nice to wander in the hills
And think what I want
No billboard urging me
No shop sign beckoning
The steep hills and bird calls are devoid of human meaning
And yet not empty at all
Ashes
Lying on the ground, watching the sky fade from dusty blue
A single star breaks out, meager, lonely
I’m waiting, praying
For the sound of familiar footsteps
The sun sets
Somehow stronger in its last moments
Sifting in the ashes, I find no phoenix
Small embers, waiting, hoping for a last gasp of wind
To nurture them back to life
Or snuff them out
Haikus, ish
Today I have learned
To hear a deer sneeze
One must listen to crickets chirp
For a long time
~
To climb a tree
And not be observed
I walk for miles on dusty road
~
I don’t want to remove myself from humanity
Just sit far enough
Across the lake
That the sounds of construction
Can be mistaken for
Falling
Water
~
Wet leaves dry branches
Moonlight shines on white deer tail
Few tracks in fresh snow
~
Waking up from my flute
I conduct my koan
Under rushing stream
Unzip
Pee into sunny moss
Bar Rains
See the rain but can’t feel it
Swirling fog under streetlight
Yellow ochre color
Snuck into a fancy bar
Wrap breaded Japanese shrimp in a napkin and slip it into my denim jacket inner pocket
People, everywhere. Little lightbulbs of potential
One slips up and grabs my pinky in hers
Whispering lips brush my ear
I drift away, chasing that unknown
Three drinks, comped by the company running this rooftop show
One is passed to me. I say I work in operations
Lots of smiles, and eye bags
Folks my age, but they seem so far away
Living on a gilded surface, up here 12 stories above the streets
Work hard play hard, I guess
I go to the bathroom, adjust my baseball cap in the fluorescent mirror.
I got it from a startup event, more free food more free drinks. VCs in leather jackets and slicked hair talking about 10x-ers.
Floor and walls are black white tiled. Abstract art on the wall over the toilet, it looks like a sneeze.
Chatting in the elevator. She leans in, whispers “I was thinking of fucking you a little bit.” I laugh, whisper back, say I have to go feed my cat. Her friend waits outside the door.
I sneak out, mix amidst the giants fans streaming out of the stadium.
Cigarettes, fades, sports jerseys.
I stumble into an alley, gaze through the peeling paint brick buildings out at the water.
Half moon is barely visible behind the clouds.
Am I doing it right? Am I living up to the heroes in the books? It all feels like an elaborate cosplay. I find my way to the train. It’s only me and a white one eyed cat that is prowling the benches. Strange that there are no giants fans here. I look up and the night sky swallows the city whole.
Breaks
Change the world
It’s an addicting aspiration
And also a doomed commandment
Little demons and self loathing
Angel voices make my skin crawl
Weave this life into a brick
Rigid, conformed
For the reading room of another
Psychotic break
Shopping aisles
Quality control
Waiting rooms
Break free
Break free break free
Living on a wooden pallet
Bleary eyes open to a patch of blue
Field mustard flowers tall in the dirt
A baby rabbit stops by to say hello
Warm dry air, faint scent of pine
And wafting from the house
Through the wooden veranda, over the grass
Under the slack line
Through the trees
Pancakes sizzling on the stove
Clouds
Rain clouds resting like tattered silk
Untroubled in the crooks of mountains
Long, wispy fingers creep between the treetops
Puzzle pieces, that don’t quite fit
Lone branch reaches tall
Shuddering, it silently screams “more”
Secretive blue lines retreating into the ocean fog
Drifting
In my fever dream I’m an old man
Sitting on a decrepit wood porch in a rainstorm
All my fights and battles, loves and losses
Are a distant afterthought.
A worn stain on washed wood.
I just sit, a vague sense that something is missing
That something has ended
That there are no more chances.
On Moving
Movement is a conversation
The way no conversation is perfect
But can still be good.
The way it starts and stops
The way the same motions are never the same
After training, light, loose, in sync with the sinew and bone
The inner glow that comes from catching up with an old friend,
For we are social animals, and our flesh is our oldest companion.
Property Signs
Walk down the street
Flanked on both sides
By private property signs
I walk among dusty hills
Tired feet
Above me, I hear the hawk screech
It’s been following me, you see
Along this narrow ridge
Between forbidden seas
How I longe to stumble and fall
Call of the void
Find my freedom among grasses and trees
But for now I walk
In a line straight and dull
Gazing out at land once free
Five Lakes Basin
Granite and water so pristine
Closing my eyes is less restful
Dusting of snow on the bowl of mountains
Ancient wrinkled juniper twist out of rocks bathed in shimmering sunlight
Silence
The type made more pure by the wind blowing through the trees
And the lakewater lapping on the shore
Five lakes basin
Oak
Wood house full of books
Still hires gas leaf blower
To interrupt the quiet slumber of
The oak tree’s morning.
Rockaway
Sliding down mountains of steely gray water
Accelerating down a metal surface
Biggest wave I’ve ever ridden, by far
I mean, I’m getting a view!
Half my brain registers the hills and the sky
Froth tumbles over my fins, carve hard
Two dolphins breach to my left
“Oh shit!”
Bodyboarding mountains at Rockaway
Slow Moments
In retrospect, life is mostly the slow moments.
It’s a hazy August afternoon, post-thunderstorm, post sex, sweaty, silent. Even the crickets too swamped out to make a noise.
It’s an evening at a white sand beach where the only tasks of note are to smoke a joint and watch the moon reflect off the peaks of the incoming swell.
It’s sunny afternoons under a live oak tree, remembering childhood and listening to the fog roll in over the hills.
It’s that lull in a party when you step away from the dancing to go sit by the outdoor bonfire at the fringes and burn California bay incense.
It’s running away from Christmas carols to tramp through the woods in the moonlight and do the duty of disrupting fresh snow.
It’s the infinite minute after complete and total exertion in the training room with your body baked inside a gi and there literally being not enough energy in your body to fuel a thought and you just broil in your own heat and awareness of every vein that has opened up under your skin.
It’s the quiet familiarity of the living room at night, surrounded by family. The lifetime of history settling in, comfortably, silently, between the couches.
Ocean Beach
The world revealed to those who travel by foot?
Daunting first steps into black starry night
The journey begins, rather than ends, along the ocean
That everplunging energy of dark rumbling Poseidon crashing onto the shore
The world may be revealed to me
Someday
But for the moment all I see are muddy feet
And cold, smothered sky
Kiso Valley
Evening and morning onsen
Miso soup, rice, pickles, daikon, deviled egg
Kabocha squash, orange slice, Japanese hamburger
Which is quite strange
Tea
Wood structures, garden plots, colorful flowering misty mountains
I sit in an old wooden house
Woodsmoke in the air, a dark central room
The courtyard light spills in, but diminishes quickly
Like it’s afraid of the age of this place
Weeping cherry petals scatter on the ground
I’m Enraptured. I want it all.
It is all the things woven together.
I am hungry but I have no hands.
Twin
I lie on the tatami, tell my body to relax. Move through each muscle one by one until my whole body is as heavy as lead. 12:00pm alarm blares through the window. WWII leaves its trace even here, on the edge of the country.
I stretch, blow some notes. The texture of the woven grass is pleasant, says hi to the skin. I drift off again, lolling in the afternoon sun. Clothes are drying upstairs, maybe I’ll make some miso soup…
I’m awake again. My training partner is here, he looks at me. One of those piercing stares. I can tell he’s going to drop something.
He says, maybe if we could riff on the guitar we wouldn’t have to do this. Cuz sometimes it’s just too much, all this. Cycling between hostel beds, park benches, the woods. Meeting people, nice people, bad people, making love, training, wandering new grounds, but always onto the next place, always drifting lightly… there’s just too much and it tears me apart.
Sometimes it feels like we’re part of the universal rhythm, ya know? Other times I’m just so tired… it rolls onto me like a beachbreak. I’m lying down in the sand watching this huge wave rolls in. I know it’s going to pull me in, but I can’t move a finger. And I get washed away with the sand.
I look at this travel companion. Dusty, torn shirt from our hike, beat up backpack, messy hair drawn back with a piece of cloth, eyes hunting for something.
You and I - we’re two dumbasses too slow to express how we feel with words, much less fucking jazz. So these things build up and we let it out the only way we know. If we weren’t the same person, I’d pity you.
Wild Springs in Taiwan
I met a hunter at the hot springs
He appeared in the river, white vest with red and blue edges, spear
In the jungle valley, amidst the roaring river
I speak broken Chinese
Alone in this valley
An amphitheater for our two souls
I met a hunter at the hot springs
On a hot summer day in Taipei
I thought I was so far away
A one hour bus ride took me back
Plus a fifteen minute walk into the gorge
And I feel like an old human again
I met a hunter at the hot springs
The butterflies swarm the hot springs
Land, alight, back again
Five hours here, I’m not tired of them yet
I bet he never is either
Unleash me in this garden and I will stay forever
Dissolving into this landscape like a sugar cube
Miasma
Japantown
Waves of color roll over the peace plaza.
Old ghosts come out to say hi.
Jazz from a street performer wafts on the late summer breeze
The sound washes over, a rushing tide of ocean foam
Each tiny bubble forms a clear image of the self, millions of eyes looking back at me.
It’s a beautiful agony, really
A string under far more tension than it can handle
Holding on with baited breath, waiting