I'm still stuck in day-drunk unemployment.
A millennial with eyes to a screen,
adopting a science
in a bedroom whisper for Gaza.

Now a writer of pretty words and clumsy verse,
there's no place for happiness
in forcing poetry. There are ribbons and bows
around the fenced-off trees,

there are notebooks of unfinished thought.
I'm searching the skies for a scrap of movement,
for some coded message
to **** the engine of war.

There's a wedding in the morning,
and there is somebody who still believes in love.
Rainbow confetti will kick in the sky,
a dandelion is born in the skull of old Palestine.

I'm still stuck in this new-age desperation,
a constant plea for peaceful completion.
I'm changing address
for a clean way of living,

in your sweet floral dress,
let this be the beginning.

I have searched for your face tirelessly everywhere.
Though I've failed in my quest, I know you're there...
I have seen your beauty in the full-moon's glow.
I have seen your immensity in the celestial flow.
I have seen your precision in an atoms procession.
I have seen your passion in a poets obsession.
I have seen your bounty when a rain rejuvenates.
I have seen your mercy when a seedling germinates.
I have seen your restrain when injustice prevailed.
I have seen your wrath on great cities razed.
Though I've seen you not, I've seen your essence,
I have felt your love and your nurturing presence.

I am lost.
Yet,
Something is telling me you are just like me.
Maybe
We were put in the darkness
To find each other.

Hiro was such a clever guy.
he always said the funniest little jokes, even when he was Hiro-chan, to me.
he used to act like a cat when he was frustrated and, and-
remember what he said to the mailman that day, in like june?
about how he looked like an angry Hotei-osho?
we all laughed and that mailman, that man’s face went radish red.

he was such a good lawyer, Hiro.
i mean, he wasn’t rich and powerful, no
but he did good things, though.
like Sayotoma’s lease –
without Hiro, he would’ve lost the store!
and then where would we get our tempura? huh?


oh, Hiro, you are so much fun to talk about.
and i hate that all i have of you now is smoldering incense and an expired passport.
i poured a cup of water on your grave today, you know.
it was a hurting kind of hot under summer’s sun – it’s august, after all.
some steam came off, and it sounded like you sighing
and i said more loudly than i cared no problem, Hiro
and my wife looked at me, with a misting eye,
while my son kept flicking matches
from that cheap matchbook we got at Sayotama’s place.

all the failed matches collected between his sneakers
and i thought that i wish Sayotama didn’t make all his matches
so **** fragile.
they burst and blacken in a second,
and you don’t have the chance to really light something,
and they just end up falling between the sneakers
of some kid who can’t even remember you, Hiro.