Category: Book 1

it has rained for days
relentless mini monsoon
memories flood in

Flash
lightning
crystalized
atmospheric
clouds and rain and air
sown by the sun's brooding
and harvested by the wind
to make bold lines in the gray sky
and illuminate my aging bones.

I waste so much food.
When I cook, I forget the change
that cancer gave me.

dreams
suspend
waking life's
uncertainties
replacing those with
a different set of doubts
which well up like floodwaters
murky, dark and full of bodies
to inundate the mind's furniture

[daily log: walking, 2km]

My thoughts just hang like wounded beasts that yield
to nothing, struggling on instead to death.

ㅁ
There is nothing here but silence.
Trees just stand, awaiting nighttime.
Dust and bones discarded lie here.
Look around, the soul is listless.
There is nothing here but silence.

– a pentastich of indeterminate tetrameter.

In a box in South Korea
lives a man quite eremetic.
Yet each day he goes to work and
herds the children to and fro.

My houseplants are mute.
The sky gazes upon them
through a square window.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Clouds can be perfect
brooding gradations of gray
with contours like maps.

A pile of bones there;
Stark mountains without feature;
The wind claws at me.

I don't quite know what's been the problem.
A kind of struggle, doubting purpose.
In fact that's not uncommon for me.
But still it's bothersome to deal with.

So… morning again
the sky bemused by dull rain
my window spits wind

I own just four spoons.
Well, it's odd, in fact it's five.
But one I don't like.

The sky is darker than blue – more like black.
The moment lacks depth, though, true.
Think it through.

Hypnagogic… becoming animal:
an eerie, fallen feeling…
just running.

[daily log: walking, 7.5]

The Lego monkey
fell off the desk. He shattered.
So the students mourned.

In the cooker I put rice, with water
Adding some curry'd be nice
or beans, well, it would suffice.

some weekends feel grim
a kind of slog through failure
and a gray rain falls.

Profligate blooms are beholden to nature's control
Substance, divinity interconnect and unroll.

[daily log: walking, 7.5km]

The monkey met the crocodiles.
"We want to eat you," so they said.
"I prefer playing, all the while,"
He told them. Now poor monkey's dead.

the sky is just gray
the air is thick with blossoms
the sidewalk is rough

the light comes earlier, dawn grasps at clouds
who yield their shrouds and pass on
the night: gone

My houseplants grimly
await my failure to give
the water they need.

Some streams flow mindward
waters gather at edges
where thoughts touch atoms

ㅁ
Almost a ghost, and just drifting through time,
Face made of bones and untouched by the grime,
Nevertheless, like a fighter he came,
Stories and prophecies spilled out like flame.

– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter, about a fictional character.