There is love,
Then there is Tanizaki love
As can only be told by sake-ghosts
Lying back watching the velvet swath
Island bound midstream among the reeds
Full moon-gazing Yodo River enraptured
Soul captured by this reed-net vision;
Only here, wind whispered memories
Stirring ancient songs from water's lips,
Do I find that most devoted love:
Oshizu living her sister's life
Becoming her husband's dream,
An unquiet silent soul
Submerged beneath the river's flow
Melting under the flood of Oyu's sweet tortures;
For who suckled milk from her breast
While mischieviously she enslaved
Her family the way she was raised
High upon the pedestal the husband's infatuation
So that, even with her blessing, before her he knelt
Breathing, desiring: pinch me please
While I hold my breath
And try not to laugh, laughing
Sitting, holding myself, hands folded
In my perfect lap, silk
Eyes downcast to formality
Everything is appearance
O, my lady,
I give thee up willingly
In order to possess you eternally.
Come, ye ghosts of sake,
Play in the blue moonlight
Oshizu's song, immortal,
Gurgling my soul
In perfect harmony!

So eager we dance a jig
Bored of yellow birds big
Singalong puppets, purple dinosnores,
We read aloud board books
Taste their thick pages, our looks
Locked and loaded on all fours.

Walk, son. Walk.

Eat a remote and change
The images in your life
Channel your energy well, surfing
The Third Wave of the future--
Or is it already crashing to foam
The carpet at your feet, tiptoed?

Talk, son. Talk.

You've done the impossible,
Taoistic Pooh meandering the hardwoods,
Time travelled, revealed myself to me
Shown me my own origin--
Life revealed through the panda bears
Peering from the bottom of your sippy cup. 

The Mother of Silence
Gave birth
To me, her humble slave

Betwixt night and day
Twilight ecstasies
Captured, fallen star

Singing naught its song
Tongue-tied soul-bound fusion
Earthen voice cracks

Like falling rock
My heart, penetrates
Aquamarine realms of time

In search of what, lost
Brethren, diving siblings
Devoured in the beginning

My very own
Pain owns me
Speaks to me

Child of silence
Cry not, tremble not
Breath wasted by the lungful

Is never recovered
Fragrant stellar sighs
Embrace humble thoughts

Listen well, O Child,
Mother speaks, teaches
Revelations of silence

Hyperchild

for Sarah 

She is a Titan
Hyperion rising
Peerless radiant being alive
With thought, bursting with juices
Creative, succulent as a Garden-ripe apple
Humid skinned, red-cheeked, ready
For the plucking if any be braver
Than Odysseus with his bow drawn;

Mayhaps the younger Child
On the Eve of maturity
Poking the other half in the rib
Eating what she chooses, when,
And unafraid of any snake
Whispering in her fields;
Or is she the older Lilith
Frolicking through the deeper trees
Shadowed beneath the canopy green
Vibrant and alive like none before
And, unfortunately, none ever after,
Teaching Man the silent, hidden arts
Written with dew on the leaves
Of Vatsyayana's ancient text?

Or perhaps a darker Isis seigning the Nile
Searching for every last piece
Of her consort lost to the desert dog
Moon brighter than sun at night
Catwalking the pathless desert sands--
A muse caught in the locked jaws
Of foam-flecked Anubis' lips
Pryed open with her soft-gold ankh
Jackal tongue licking the source
Of all our woes, our sighs,
Knowing the end result, feeling it
Approach in a climax of Resurrection;

Hyperchild she is
A modern-day Americana,
The mirror-image flame of Byronic love,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage resumed
A lesson to learn, a book of life
Guiding her to and fro, though never lost
This wandering soul seeks the center:
A central meditative park inside her
City, universally amorphous, crowded, overflowing
With streets, buildings, people, tales,
Cafe-filled to the brim, slanted
At odd Italo Calvino angles,
Some bizarre Marco Polo geometry
Explained only in Kubilai's royal court
Backhanded among her courtesans.

Scurry, scurry, my worries
Flee from my approach
A brown squirrel bouncing away
Fluffy tail flickering goodbye
Dashes up the tree of doubt
Hide and seek in the foilage above
Green leaves, brown limbs,
Flashing eyes hoarding
The fruits of winter. 

Chinchorro Mummies Rising From the Sands 

Blue faced masks wrapped in reeds
Stare silently from the mountain caves
Watching Pacific waves lap the feet of Andean heights
The same salt lick tasting gently the soil
They've seen it repeated for seven thousand years
While their Incan descendants scurried about the hills
Empire building the foundations of their destruction
Beneath the airports of modern conquistadors
The winds kicked up and drowned out by take-offs
And landings still carrying the sonorous chants
That teach us all to walk up the mountains
And look inside the deeper caves of our Titan past
To find ourselves sitting there quietly preserved
Skins ash-pasted and bellies stuffed with earth
Familiar faces cracking a crooked toothy grin
Quietly meditating on infinity.

Some Aggravated Thoughts About the Nuke 

Suddenly,

            Out of nowhere

                                Rides Death,

Nuclear death,

                                                                                 her name is

Chernobyl:

                         Our Lady of Death

(What else is there now, simply:
A town of destruction          a zone of death
A district of death                   a region of death
Drifting over us all                   a cloud of death
Raining death upon us          a storm of death
Soaking our fields, our soil  a land of death
Killing the animals                        the nature of death
Killing our children                   the price of death
Killing our children                   the future of death
Death and disease                   death death death
Bringing more, multiplying          death procreating itself.)

Glen Keith

Corner of wind
blown dreams street
cleaner of winter debris

Golden red fall of man
(w)hole clogged city
scapegoat of garbage dump

Mr. Ed, of course the horse
play never ends, begins again
-st the wall, out back, midnight whistle

Fight from the inside out
sidestep shuffle of work
load,(k)need in the groin

Moving at the speed of thought
-less behemoth, the noble playing
doc savage our only hope in hell

upon reading the journal of the greatest writer of our time
for Jim Valvis 

I wanted to see aliens
So I cracked

Open my head emptier than sky
Stuffed full of cosmic dust I found

Beneath the skull dome no lights
Merely some dark bronze stains

Which proved to be Coke
Etched into the bone, phosphoric acid

Memories fizzing caffeine-jacked neurons
Feasting on happy meals, salted

Cry fried in the corner, the best
Product I had ever lost

In America's consumer
Wasteland of opportunity

I came, I saw, was conquered
By she, turning the trick

Back on itself, a favor
I forgot to thank her for, vanished

In the night, red dawn
Bursting with air, inertial

Pain pulling me back, my back
Broken beneath the cross

Winds of patriotism, my pride
Flagging in the desert storm

Front, display window soul
Less 5th Ave broker on the 50" wall

Monitor where, rolling horizontally
In the cathedral Cypher offers Angel

Much needed boiled eggs
To my lesser, ghost like image

Swirling in Ziggy Stardust mind
Motes, I turn down the offering

Up of my past, frightened
Of the exhumation, corpses

Better left unsaid,
Slammed shut my scalp wrinkled

Eyes just before impact, airbag
Bastards helium speak verses

I never wanted to hear
My self moan, my fall

Satanic to Dantean depths, like Milton
Berle tipping his hat to God

Played by some smoking cigar
Kidder named George, burns

My soul anyway I turn it, too hot
To handle, too alone to potato

It into the next innocence
Lost, no victims, no vacancies

Found, Mrs. Bates, yes mother
The pain is too much, I let go