Attention! (to Details)

After forty years
of service
to the country

my father was cremated
and in the urn
overheard the ceremony

in the year 2001
just three months
before the nation

which until then
was concerned only
with itself

investing, consuming
under purple mountains
travesty

unaware of a growing
threat less deadly
than cigarettes

unaware of a growing
tumor more deadly
than terrorists

for such pageantry there is no apology --
the chaplain forgot to read the eulogy.

Adrift in an urban sea

A plastic bag
an unfurled sail
large enough for

2 cartons of milk
a can of yams
floats in the

wind & tumbles
end over end
in the gusts

close to the ground
& around cars
buses and businessmen

then up and over
signs & signals
alone singley

soars into the waiting
arms of the branches
of a wilting tree.

The Mind Telescopic

There is this time
in the late night
or in the early morning
beyond distant early warning

when the human mind
becomes as narrowly focused
as lenses on a parabolic reflector
gazing in harmony at a star.

In these expectant hours
when the night is darkest
and the stars shine brightest
when we see right through to Heaven,

when men and women
cast off verbal complexities,
agendas and antennae,
and slip into a mindset

a little more comfortable,
in native, indigenous tongues,
sit in dishabille and converse
telegraphing galaxies in verse.

When our eyes see two

Your age is
about half of
what you think,
a pack of coyotes
set out across
barren desert
beyond the lavender haze
of distant mountains,
howling from failing
on their hunt,
led off course
by a mid-winter storm.
Harsh elements
conflate Nature,
complicate our snowy
relationship,
tempered by anger,
by the shrill wind
of our raised voices.
If only we'd see
the impressions we leave
behind, backtrack,
and compromise.

Service in Silence

Tuned in to the mission,
he filters out the falling rain
pooling in the paddies, with
cupped phones over his head,
cigarette in hand
the notes already scribbled.
Interference distorts the signal
oscillating in the atmosphere.
All around, the enemy
creeps ever near over
soggy ground soaked
by September showers
drowning out the sound so that
he could not hear the shots
down in the village.
Crounched under
the canvas awning
listens the anonymous,
silent analyst.

This

is the screaming loneliness
when old home is deathly silent
in the overcast afternoon.

As the setting year is blown forth
with a chill that even the sun
cannot bear for more than a few hours

family's ever distant, the moments scant,
and friends can't reconnect, recant
the dots and lines in our faces.

The dials on clocks spinning
wheel within wheel in seeming perpetual
motion while the quiet commotion

in the room removes our awareness
of each other's place, each other's pace
of love, life, and fateful loneliness.

I forgot my phone

I forgot my phone
yet again

having plugged it in
in order to charge

it's in the back room
behind a door

beyond the cortex
of my brain

and that's why I
haven't called.

Stalling in the public restroom

Stalling in the public restroom
where I take my morning poo,
reflect upon the upcoming day
forecast, schedule, review,

then emerge, renewed,
the warmth of water extrudes,
then brush off the coffee'd patina
and return to the machine.

Between these moments, between
these serene moments to piddle,
like a poem that peters out midstream
in the middle

Departure

And in sorrow's hazy morning,
I found solace in the wrinkles in
his skin
in a dim hospital room
helping him over to his water,
because taking it to him would deny
him the accomplishment.
The drained vessel as in his arms,
drawn in to his bones
like the bag of saline
hanging over his head.

Some Other Day

I have walked
by you
a thousand times
in our house

and though
you were probably
awaiting
a sweet kiss

Forgive me
I was delirious
so young
and so old.

The Ghost

The ghost glides
spiritually,
split off from
her human form

she has arms
that flail
about as she wails,
assailed

from the back
of her spectral
eminence,
resistant to earthly

desire and will.
in some future
tense, exists
perpetually

chapter nine,
everafter
a vision in
someone's mind.

Family Reunion

smokestacks
arranged as an
upturned chair
four storeys

a leg for each
working shift
the tales to tell
the working stiffs

of labor unions
tough as steel
men standing
heel-to-heel

though smoke blew
in their crippled faces
from suits crouched
behind smokestacks

now dormant.

This gift i give

This gift I give was once a thought,
Birthed from another mum
Frozen last winter;
Rain by day and ice by night
Bent the trees into arbors, laid tropicals down.

Then in spring's slumber the sun's lungs
Rescuscitated one evening ths seedling,
And then in summer's spring
Sun stopped the rain of seasonal will,
Another mother nursed the bud with chlorophyll.

This kiss you give, this love you let
Take root in your garden,
Raised in another country
Under a foreign philosophy
With no vase, no base, no bed to call home.