farewell, father; goodbye, school
    demagogues divide to rule
          words my weapons
              to try my tool
        
   Francis of Assisi is a holy Fool.

genocides and near genocide
against indigenous First Nations
(the rest hard pressed to reservations)

centuries of race-based chattel slavery
against African populations
(then Jim Crow and segregation)

triumphalist imperialist expansion
justified as Manifest Destination
(the Empire of Liberty as obligation)

Unjust expansionist wars
against Mexico, Vietnam, Iraqification
(the injustice given theologization)

Some call this USA! USA! USA!
I call it abomination
(and now Trumpism is its culmination)

meaningless yes, but still quite precious
    twilight best, deep blues refresh us        running on empty, no one to catch us ...

                      year by year
                       disappear

Climb Mt. Rainier, O male.
       But lonely! lonely!

Adonis in Atlanta
Soul to soul I bleed

Adonis in Atlanta
I too need a creed

Adonis in Atlanta
Endurance like a seed

Adonis in Atlanta
Father’s foes indeed

I fear annihilation
yet still I travel on

yearning and time turning
the goal perhaps anon.

beware, they say, the quiet man
who watches at dusk and dawn

words that strike like lightning
karma chameleon

So I read the mystics
Learned a thing or two
Transmigration
Kabbalistic Jews

I miss my mom
Live mostly alone
No computer
Little black cell phone

Tired. Tired.
Endless Night.
Exoplanets
Two green lights.

  Mr. Spock kite

Please for dailiness
Help me take it slow.

Courage, calm, and caring
The anxiety will ebb and flow.

            Seeking. On we go.

genocide against the indigenous nations
     race- based chattel slavery
                      against African populations
  Imperial expansion, cruel wars
                                                of decimation
Mexico, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc... -
                                         lies and violation

and now the culmination in
                         Presidential gangsterization

some call this U.S.A.  I call it abomination.

it's not great timeless art
but, Susan, I tried my best

now I write at night
before I take my rest

I seem to need the poetry bleed
my mind finds rhyme expressed

I loved you for a long time
yes, Quixotic my crazy quest

now just a little couplet
may you and your family be blessed

above all, she was fun
more fun than philosophy

i was naive and young
the end I couldn't see

i like traveling trains
and slow go ferry boats

i remember her in dresses
i remember winter coats

even memories fade
silences beyond blue notes

Cordelia - integrity everywhere
Portia - nobility and care
Juliet - beyond compare
Ophelia - alas, suicidal despair

Anne Hathaway - what did she share?

The Statue of Liberty in New York
                counterbalanced by
The Statue of Responsibility in California

Thich Nhat Hanh is right to thus employ
                      O wise Buddha!
      We are indeed not free to destroy.

When I traveled in Taiwan
I often took the train
I remember the typhoons
Relentless was the rain

Passed and prayed a Dragon temple
Daily on my way to school
The students most respectful
My sons a-swimming in the pool

Taiwan an island in the ocean
Some say the South China Sea
Buddha and Confucius protect the people
Asian islands inside me.

Eliot, Wittgenstein, Melville
J.K. Rowling, James Joyce, Confucius
Possibly even Shakespeare (a good guess)

Teachers teach.
Professors profess.

Statue of Responsibility
So says Thich Nhat Hanh

Planting a Buddha seed
Water works at dawn

Time’s terrible illusion
Flux flummoxes on

West coast water wonder
Rise now Rising One!

She's a really bad person
Selfish, mean, hateful
My green couch is quiet
I read alone

America began in genocide
Slave labor all around
La Florida has thunderstorms
Zero at the Bone

Evolution is random mutations
Am I changing too?
Pondicherry Zone
Emptiness Unknown

Tired, restless, uneasy
Life does not make sense
No real deliverance
Into this world we're thrown

      City at Night! City at Night!

At times I’m superstitious
coincidence and names

But mystery’s delicious
More delectable than fame

Yes, I’d like to live
In a fantasy story

Like Karen Eifel gives
Or Gandalf in his glory

Analogical is my mind
I search for secret connections

The rhyme is what I find
Similarity reflections

Ordinary daily life
I admit is often prosaic

Yet amidst the struggling strife
I fly Eliadean archaic

My spirit in the sky
My body walks the beach

To philosophize is to die
As both shamans and Plato teach.

I have been a fool
But I love Sophia
O my secret love
I would love to be ya!

Dear Soren Kierkegaard
Your writings pierce my soul

Hereditary sin
And I love rock n' roll

Went to Copenhagen once
Asked them about you

They gave me a tourist map
Graveyards for to view

I hope you and Regine Olsen
Are together in eternity

I keep reading you
Say a prayer for me

              Thanks.

...a few small gifts for my children..   
         blasting Bon Jovi in route
conversation with the man from Morocco
      a poem or two, sky grey not blue
                        wifestrife
                        d­aily life

from the bookstore to basketball
in this southern state

Johnny Cash in my car
Good God is he great!

mindful the Nashville museum
and the bar where we ate

Travelin’ Soldier too played
true love, tragic fate

now quiet, quite unknown
in patience I wait

The bipolar is my burden
Sick and suffering
Lay in bed and lonely
Always ill at ease

Grateful for my father
Help in my sickness
Mr. Harry Chapin
Good things come in 3s

I like French cathedrals
European licorice
Midnight basketball
Please, baby, please

The world is a madhouse
I'm intrigued by mathematics
The cruelty of women
But the wind is in the trees

such cruelty, but also kindness
    startling beauty, baffling blindness
              faithful in my fashion.

      No to fatalism, no to indifference
Yes to vegetarianism, Silence, non-dualism
                    Great Compassion

crossing the Baltic
young sons sung
    exoplanets!

the endless battle of the sexes
           the haunting memories of exes
                  unknown if there a life next is

still we carry on - time destroys
                                what resurrect is?

Ordinary sadness today
But I did talk to my Q

Snows of Kilimanjaro
Carolina blue

Father Greeley at my side
Postcards. Just a few.

For her. And them. And us.
Silence seeping through.

         Do wah diddy do

Starbucks barista
Beautiful brown *******
3.70?

                  Yes.

the radical ambiguity
of the Roman Catholic Church

the horror and the holy
both hidden in the Search

better protect your chidren
read, resist, research

seek salmon, shamans, sushi
poets, painters, basketballers, birch

suspicion sits with trust
may the best battle back their worst.

A Spirit of Terror stalks the land
Ruination now is near at hand
All eyes fix upon the man
Whose face doth sneer with cold command
Like unto Ozymandias of old
His claim to greatness takes no hold
The people cower, make no stand
The Empire itself reduced to sand
Surely Shelley would understand.

desafortunadamente
       I wake this morning, think Vicente
              he paints the stars, I am presente ...

             tired, lonely, yearning - parente.

Nietzsche the suffering Solitary
    late night lonely, daylight library
          fascination with the Irish fairies...

                     
         reading, pleading, still needing.

quiet little library
memories in my mind
Coastal California
San Francisco signs

i like misty mountains
oceans gone bluegreen
David Markson books
she and i between

i might sleep till 2
don't know what I'll find
for my future friends
water worlds unwind

       Johnny 99!

tomorrow I drive to Denver
but today near Santa Fe

just to tell her truly
though I don’t know what to say

stop into the Cathedral
quietly I pray

the movie and the letters - Yes
then alone and on my Way

Too much yearning
I can't control it
Help me take it slow

Walk to the grocery store
Nowhere grand to go

Stockholm was so pretty
She's in Ohio

I like seaside cities
I'll never really know

Eliade endures
Better look out, Saul Bellow.

Maria! Maria!
I’m drawn to great art

Maria! Maria!
Theotokos my heart

Maria! Maria!
Please help with my vices

Maria! Maria!
In silence like spices

Maria! Maria!
Por favor me amor

Maria! Maria!
I need courage galore

Maria! Maria!
True like Jesu

Maria! Maria!
Steadfast for you

Because there is so much crazy religion
In the United States
You have to make scientific claims
For people to take you seriously

So, if I tell you
I went to Gethsemane Trappist Abbey
When I was a college student
** hum. Who cares?

But if I tell you I wrote a poem like this

               Crossing the Baltic
                young sons sung
                     exoplanets!

And mailed it to Our Lady of Guadalupe
Trappist Abbey in Oregon

And then a couple months later
A telescope called Trappist 1
Discovered 7 new exoplanets
That could possibly harbor alien life:

See, you're interested.

it’s migrate, mutate, or perish, he said
   I plan to proceed before I’m dead
      traveling on wherever I’m led
      opposites often weirdly wed
        starry wonders up above
      Exoplanets Appear Ahead!!!

it’s true i’m drawn to mystical madness
because I feel the terminal sadness

my mind a jailbreak plan
when man is wolf to man

and omens regarding women
haunt me, keep me swimmin’

Neils Bohr and quantum theory
when I’m down and wonder weary

opposites together
like me and joyful weather

reality beyond appearance
craziness adherence

if Emily’s species stands beyond
where to share their coming dawn?

Uriel and I play basketball
    Si, hablo un pequito Espanol
          Maybe one day you too to Tokyo ...

                       gracias, mi amigo

5:07 a.m.
Birds singing

Long ago
Basketball

5:08 a.m.
Cease clinging

Shunyata
Wetheral

    Call.

sound and fury
signifying nothing

yet here we are
kicking and cussing

to what end
the fighting and fussing?

to be determined
by unknown othering.

inside again today
avoid the summer heat

nothing much to do
no one to defeat

if she called me I would run
to wherever we could meet

but I am not the one
so I walk the solo twilight street

                              whistling

so much exclusion, hate, fear
  though often excluded, I still hold dear
       weak, weary, quite unclear

  nevertheless, nevertheless -  I silently steer.

hot ***, not Pol ***
    tonight’s wondrous starry sky
             beautiful, she’s from Taiwan
                
               eat, drink, and be merry
                    for tomorrow we die.

American society loves celebrity
But I am quiet and shy
Don't like public speaking
Do like Life of Pi

All the news is bad again
Kiss your dreams goodbye
In my solitude
Exoplanet Sky

Yo soy un isolato
Why Judi Why?
Silently Shinkansen
Ay! Ay! Ay!

Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
Both atheists
Both French (sort of - Camus from Algeria)
Both live through the horror of World War 2
Both believe life is meaningless.
Absurd.
Both have lots of affairs
(But Camus is handsome
And Sartre is, um, not)

Both resist the Nazis
But Camus says Sartre
Was a writer who resisted
Not a resister who wrote.

Sartre's titles: Nausea, No Exit, Being and Nothingness. And he believes that
Hell is other people.

Camus: I rebel; therefore, we exist.

Tokyo to Kyoto
Upon the Shinkansen
Not really a question of if
More a question of when
I think about this often
Nearly every now and then
Will I too disappear
Like I’ve never ever been?

the future is female, it read
a sign in my hometown

the races mixing and mingling
so the future also is brown

exoplanets above
stars keep swirling around

if aliens also inhabit
future fantastic renown

solo in the Irish bar
   the 80s band rockin’
        I sing every word
                of every song
                      
                   the joy of music
                            and yet ... loneliness