She keeps asking what he does,
though his answers are recycled:
half-finished carpentry jobs,
French bulldogs, paintball,
a seventh-grade broken nose.

The basket of fries between them
feels like an interview.
She teases about sweat-stuck bangs,
neon-laced Docs,
his faux leather squeaking when he moves.

Her smile forgives empty stories,
softens each silence.

Condensation slips down her glass,
her knee brushes his-
a spark he does not catch,
his throat working like a valve.
The door opens, closes,
a draft follows smoke and cedar,
distant wildfires.

Outside, a truck unloads shrimp.
A box bursts on the pavement-
pink shells and thawing ice
sliding into gutter water.

Curses flare into the alley.
Engines idle.
Hydraulics hiss.
The stoplight clicks red to green,
green to red,
its metronome louder than either of them.

the moon lights a bed of frost.
the wind a storyteller.

are the stars and the sea
still there
when the sky weeps white?

the moon lights a bed of frost.
the wind is a storyteller

and the griffons know the failure
of flesh, flesh and bones

and feeling the bones
in my crooked nose,
I understand sunrise
is not a guarantee.

the sky weeps white.

but the nightingale sometimes
sings to me of you in my dreams.


...(if the nightingale sings of me
then know I hear her too.)

I care not
for the age I am

Too much sand has past through the hourglass
gram after gram

. . . . . . .

Wishing that I could
turn it around
But time has the chapters of the book
locked-strapped down

. . . . . .

Then after I fell
from the tree and
hard-thumped the ground

I stood up and I looked sheeplessly around

"Egad" ! I said with a reluctant scowl
I care not
for this moment wiping the pain off my brow

. . . . . . . .


Now that the salt has
turned blue steel to rust

It leaves me with thoughts that I find just disgust

. . . . . . .

The temple crowns . . .
snow white in disguise

The truth is affirmed
inside reside all of the lies

. . . . . . .

So many things
I care not for . . .

Seems like the list aquires
daily
more after more

. . . . . . . . .

The burden's great that holds me down

The elementals of time
have shackled me to the roots in the ground

. . . . . . .

Yet I set sail to sea
with one set of sure-sails

knowing there's hurricane force winds
and tempestuous gales

. . . . . . .

Just one more thing I care not for  👇

"I'm just another mouse that wants to hear itself roar"

If you want to find God, you can go by rail
or catch a jeepney, repaired a thousand times
and driven by a madman with a rosary on the mirror.
Tell him you seek the Divine and be certain

that he does not misconstrue your meaning.
You go down General Luna street to the place
where the Moon and Mars both must bow
to the great glittering of the Creator's face.

When you arrive, look for the Indian Laurel tree
where a crow has come down the backbone
of the Sierra Madre to wait here for you.
He knows you have lost much, your child, your home.

The Sierra Madre crow can offer only baubles,
still-warm bits of pan desal bread, and his wise mein.
He is here, like the church of San Agustin,
as mournful as the Christ, as wounded, as kind.

Go inside, where adobe bricks contain time itself,
and the Spanish artifacts reconcile gold with rust.
There you will find Dibella, Alberoni, majesty and peace.
Outside, the kind crow, the Philippine sky, the laurel trees.

In Đà Nẵng my friends cradled me like a child.
We screamed Taylor bridges,
tequila-toasted in bars until the lights blurred.
A single candle in the bathroom
danced warm sighs through open windows,
and all felt calm.

I grew new muscles balancing on a motorcycle,
sometimes gripping Harry’s jacket,
sometimes throwing my weight into the wind.
The city flared neon and gasoline in stuttered traffic,
but along the coast
he drove so fast the vibrations in my chest harmonized.
I pictured my bones becoming butterflies if I let go.

Last year I entered the year of the dragon on a futon,
swayed to sleep by a hundred chanting voices from the temple next door
while Bailey burned incense for her ancestors below.
I did not dream of dragons.
I only learned to breathe fire.

The year of the snake slid in with new bones and old habits.
It hissed that suffering could be scripture
until letters slithered free from the page
and coiled like cold jewelry around my wrist.

That was the shedding.
Salt water peeling old skin away,
songs shouted so loud they drowned the ache,
poems that did not start tragic,
nights when my body finally kept time with the moon.

Then at home the dog’s teeth found my hope.
A terrified mouth rerouted rivers
through my soft parts.
A jewel carved from my nose.
Six punctures blooming across my arms like altars.

In Vietnamese stories the snake waits beneath the water
to claim whoever dares the bank.
I wonder if I was chosen the moment
I opened my mouth in those bars,
when I leaned into the bike’s curve
as if danger could be a love song.

Now I lie awake at hours unnamed,
tracing scars that hiss answers back.
Vietnam hums inside me still,
the candle, the coast, the chorus of friends,
but I cannot tell if they are memories
or if the snake is still awake inside me.

They say snakes shed to grow,
but no one warns you how thin the new skin feels,
how everything burns against it,
how you mistake survival for prophecy.

I touch the scar and wonder
if I am still that girl clinging to the bike,
or if the snake has already swallowed me,
patient, sleepless,
feeding on my own venom.

Kościuszko was never loud, never gilded.
An engineer, he built freedom stone by stone, trench by trench,
more mason than general, more architect than conqueror.
He fought for America, then bled for Poland,
but never belonged fully to either.
He carried liberty in his pocket like a compass,
offering it to all who hungered,
even those enslaved, even those history ignored.

Poland remembers him as a failed uprising,
America as a foreign helper.
But the truth is larger —
he was a bridge,
a man between worlds,
a man who knew that margins are where the real battles live.

I grew up in Florida,
the peninsula that America laughs at,
a child ostracized but indispensable.
Now I walk toward Poland,
the Slavic child the EU scolds,
but cannot do without.

In both places,
I feel the echo of Kościuszko:
understated, underestimated,
and yet unyielding.

He is not my idol —
idols are for worship.
He is my companion,
a reminder that freedom is rarely polished,
never granted from the center,
always carved from the edges,
by those who refuse to be dismissed.

it is the inky, only one, you will ever be gifted,
the others, you will need create from scratch...

In these days where
solving for Self, "Selving," dominates,
a long time,
now-all-the-time work,
this selling
of the cells of sel~awakening.

though, duty insists,
                                    I insert the Psalmist's wise words,

"There is nothing new under the sun'

a cautionary comma to reckless abandonment of senses,
instincts, passed down wisdom.

a hardy learned lesson that's
not needy
for forgetting,
advice offered up with a
compote of temerity, tenderness, timidity.
'tis:
    
                                  far, far better to fail well than not at all!