Basketball is my therapy
Shooting, rhythmic shooting

Played since I was 7 years old
Happiness undiluting

Philosophy is like basketball
Like a game, I see the court

Offense and defense, I play both ways
It is my favorite sport

Now I'm older, not on a team
Just shooting on my own

But I guard the point, see the passing lanes
Here's a pass to you on my cell phone:

                   Homecoming Dance!

a little sunlight
Carolina blue
          U

Nobody knows the trouble I seen
Nobody knows the trouble I seen
Nobody knows the trouble I seen

Glory! Hallelujah!

Sings Mahalia Jackson

Where does that last line come from
Because it certainly does not logically follow?

Asks Cornel West

Jerusalem to Tel Aviv
Dancing with Lee Tal's cousins
                 Mazel Tov!

Journalist: You must be a very spiritual person to spend months here. No ***. No drugs. No meat. No alcohol. Hours and hours alone in silent meditation.

Leonard Cohen: The only reason any of us are here is because we are badly ****** up. Normal people have jobs and families and careers and responsibilities. They do not spend 12 hours in silent meditation seeking satori for months. If you ask around here, you will discover that there are many former addicts and people with much trauma in their past. We are broken. That's why we are here.

mortality on my mind
I seek but seldom find

the country grown unkind
is American Cosmic a sign?

                is life benign?

Bipolar does bring psychosis at times
Frightening, off the chain

I love Motherless Child
I sang Purple Rain

The sadness is a burden
The songs of southern Spain

Stephen King likes Springsteen
Lives up there in Maine

                   O Donna!
            Never been the same.

The comfort of solitude
freedom in loneliness
         more or less

A sense of myself as extraordinary at times
Ambiguous. Hard to perceive.
Mr. Charles Darwin, yes
(but I still believe)

Angkor Wat was fascinating
And scary, very scary
The Buddha in my house
I take refuge in Mother Mary

The Irish are superstitious
Kinda like the Chinese
Tried to show her, Tried to show her
What it is I sees

Prayers for the animals
And to banish the pedophiles
The Buddha sits in silence
Olive Green he gently smiles

                       revolution ...

At times I have no faith
I just drift toward death
This world seems to be chaos
I don't do crystal ****

Jesuit Universities
But me I'm public school
Satellite High
King Lear is a Fool

Satellite High
1987
Lightning over the Atlantic
Seltzer at 7 11

                 Go Scorps!

John Updike was *** obsessed
So, at times, am I
***, art, and religion
The three great secret things

Karl Barth lectures in the South
Purple goes the sky
Like a homing pigeon
Gollum destroys the Ring

            ch ching ching

At times intense alienation
From these United States
But let me not abandon my nation

Basketball at midnight
I search for elevation

UNC, GMU
The hope of education

Libraries all alone
Silent meditation.

At times I'm superstitious
Coincidences seem

But mostly I am quiet
The nightmare and the dream

I love being a father
I have just one good friend

Timor mortis conturbat me
Please courage at the end.

G.K. Chesterton at times aggressive
I got some of that too
An Irish need to fight
And Carolina blue

Fire today at Q
Smoke
Flame
True

I pass the ball to you
What then must we do?
Horton Hears A Who
Reno Rendezvous

Not 1776
Summer 2022
3773
Ever ancient, Ever new

              Seattle U.

At times I try to provoke it
We need a conversation
I fear publicity
I went a bit too far

3037
Quiet library
My words in her mind
Mr. Markson: right you are!

We visit New York City
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Time avails not
Volkswagen bug my car

Viva Oscar Romero!
Viva Raul Julia!
Viva Tel Aviv!
The sky. The sun. El mar.

               Santiago!

Mine has been the madness way
But I didn't truly choose it

On the contrary, it chose me
And I can't quite ever lose it

The bipolar came at 24
At a Trappist monastery

Since then silence at my door
And some moments strange and scary

A gift they say, and it is true
A gift that's near the wound

My mind is hurt and so it sings
Quixotic quest keeps me attuned

so long, Karl Marx
still the future's collective

we just do not need
relentless invective

Russia has fallen
China will too

The Dao is eternal
though often hidden from view

the Catholics continue
to plead for the poor

Brother Bernie, Sister Elizabeth
but who's keeping score?

e pluribus Unum
revelations galore!

So I'm hangin' out at Urban Air
My son is playing dodge ball
Jumping on the trampolines
Saturday. Place is packed.

Lots of birthday parties:
Gwen. Aiden. Sophia.
Frederick, Maryland
Quite far from Iraq.

Or maybe not
I like falafel
Hummus and pita
Kobe and Shaq

Cambrian Cai is climbing
I rewatch the Batman
The rain keeps falling
Got my eye on CPAC

      The Empire? I strike back.

The old man who will not laugh is a fool.

Said Santayana

Which I heard at a lecture in Seattle in the 90s.

Never right without the girl
Therefore, never right
Empty cemetery
Two green lights

Melville's birthday today
Better watch that Moby ****
Some say sacred artist
Some say bipolar sick

I say slow and steady
Gotta fix my car
Icy exomoons
Exoplanet star

                      El mar

...........Thinking of Alex............
empty baseball diamond
             three dear deer

All the religious obsessions
My boring daily living
U.F.O.s again
J.J. Abrams too

I miss Stockholm, Sweden
Uppsala was so quaint
Paris rendezvous
What would aliens do?

ordinary. nonheroic. troubled.
confused
to do the best I can
frightened and abused

Life is Suffering
I like bullet trains
Lost in Translation
Runnin' round my brain

so sad, so sad
but the nurse was smiling kind
for a different body
and a different mind

                 no sign

she wished me hope and peace
for that I am most grateful
but I have the Pope and Greece

how will I avoid the Fateful?

can’t see it but perhaps can hear it
      hope and pray we need not fear it
              though far away, we are near it...



                                 the sacred!

Aurelio on Franklin Street
Lord of the Rings liminality

George Will in the Washington Post
Obsessed with poor criminality

George Will is a racist
And he doesn't believe in God

I'm becoming an outer spacist
And my momma called me Todd

The infinite power of belief
Heather Ledger quite right
Giannis, Sidney Moncrief
Last lone American Night

I'm not afraid of irrational
I climbed Yangmingshan
Hospitals are boring
Shamans travel on

Hotel rooms are quiet
No celebrities
With her I cannot deny it
Please, baby, please

A little salmon yesterday
Smoky Mountain Rain!
I ride the DC Metro
She rides the Tucson Train

              Avila, Spain

Private eyes
Private wise

Knockin' me out
With those American thighs

Bruce in Perth
My brother Scott

What it's worth
Until I'm not

    Australia!

****** are more perfect than we are
Said Heath Ledger
Because they are actually *******

Roll on 18 wheeler
Roll on highway. Roll on through.
Alabama trucking

I have to be honest, intimate reader
Memorable, Lifelong memorable indeed
Is her first **** *******

Irish rebel songs
Irish stallions
Running freely. Bucking.

                 Australia!

very well academically
not very well socially

           hospitals

I tried but failed.

fireflies and water fountains
     Sherwood Forest, misty mountains
                             quietly I keep recountin’...

                    fantasy stories

The privacy of poetry
But I am reaching out

I have intuitions
Don't always know what they're about

Fall is getting closer
Autumn chill to be in air

Leaves and orange October
Leaves and yellow prayer

                 She is fair.

Probably no more to come in dreams
So I sit by Mother Mary
Guadalupe green
Candles in the night

Poem to Taipei
Tomorrow Toyota Camry
Yesterday slips
Basketball tonight

Quiet doctor's office
Refill my medicine
No Dread Pirate Westley
The name is worth the fight

Yangmingshan, Taiwan
Ravenstory stamps
Maggie's Farm in Charlotte
Cranberry juice with Sprite

                Avatar alight.

The Latin teacher dies
But stories still persist

I studied for two years
Never really got the gist

But I like the sound
And I like ancient things

Rome on my honeymoon
Didn't kiss the old Pope's ring.

At times, I admit, oracular
But oracles can be wrong
Poetry is different
The drum. The pipe. The gong.

At times a bit obscure
But I leave my privacy
Listen please, dear reader
Listen as you see

Loneliness this life
I break my isolation
Poetry is different
Mental condensation

I hope to be remembered
I hope my family calm
In Seattle cedarsnow
In Gilead the balm

             know thyself

The psychofears scare me
Pin me to the bed
Holiness is frightening
That's what Otto said

I do love Marvin Gaye
I wanna be just Todd
Don't wanna get even
Taipei 101 is odd

Set aside my lillies
Do good for my people
I hear the monastery
Hidden from the steeple

I'm afraid, Mother Mary
Please see me through
Now and at the hour of my death
Help me to be true

                     Amen.

Old Mr. Satan
He got mad
Missed that soul
That he thought he had

I pray that Bruce
Will understand
Maybe bring Taiwan
A rockin' band

Help them all
To make their stand
Democracy
In a Chinese land!

desperate desperate yearning
I just cannot find her
No where to run, no 101
Nowhere to behind her

Tired, lay in bed
Chicago Cicero
Politics ridiculous
Stupidity for to show

Unhappy, unsatisfied
Drawn to beauty blue
Points all her own
High hushed world. The few.


                   4772 Lou

Father Greeley was right
The drama of history
A great and mysterious story

But Eliade and Joyce
Are also right
The terror of history
The chaos, the terrible death pile

And Robin Williams
As Mr. Keating
In Dead Poets Society

The powerful play goes on
Life exists and identity:

You can contribute a verse
What will your verse be?