Sweet Oriental Angels

with your cloth-thread harps

play your song on dizi flute and

mandolin echo soft

in the foreground

to the cruel industrial drum

of a new world.

This palace orchestra scrawled on scriptures

now a specter of labors

and dawns coated in smog.

Veasna Ta Kvak recording
playback
over Chinatown cafe again
while recounting recent events
to journal pages
muddled from frequent
exchanges bag to bag
(Been to Taipei airport, Bali, Vancouver, most
recently)
blind fate
blind fate
shower me with Indian daisies
and photographs of Railway
New Delhi!
Hanoi Old Quarter/
Vietnam monsoon/
evening on balcony/
Darjeeling water boiled
and filtered anti-malaria
golden drink for honeylungs and
spring-soul morningtide
under moonlight canopy
of Avalokiteśvara
the fruitful
Bodhisattva!
English lessons
and future
hourless
comely chimera
in sleep phenomenon
Benares phantasmagoria YELLOW
(near Mata Anandamai Ghat)
speaking to Aghori
prophecy
Kala Bhairava
FIERCE ILLUSORY APOCALYPSE FAMILIAR
WHERE IS YOUR NOOSE?
the Ganges is full of lice and flowers
candlewax melted into holy water
sickness
equal to
harmony & jubilant
eyeclose and mouthcurl.

The future mysteries in
Mexico City poorboy
$2 mystic orb jade green
reflective underneath
dirt now in North American
bottom white four floor house
basement suite coffee table.
Visions indivisible
from the Viridian roundly haze
but surefire in their accuracy
I'm absolute
and universally formed
for the next few cacophonous
decades!

If I was a king of Asia I would give you all the gold there is
But I'm not even prince of Persia, all I have is love and dreams
Let me show you land of legends, land of honeymoon and rising sun
I am not as rich as Ali Baba, but I promise we'll be having fun

I'll take you to Bali the gem of Java Sea
Then we'll go on to safari a little south of Abu Dhabi
I'll take you to Maldives to swim in coral reefs
We'll enjoy the sweet papaya on the islands of Pattaya

I'll show you lake Baikal, Tibet and Taj Mahal
We'll see Macao, Yokohama, Hanoi, Jeddah, Jaipur, Jakarta
I'll take you to Dubai, Dushanbe and Mumbai
We'll spend some starry nights in yurts near the city of Yakutsk

I’ll take you to Tashkent where melons got their scent
We will taste all sorts of apples in the city of Almaty
I’ll take you to Beirut we'll go nuts on dried fruits
And the coffee with vanilla we can try it in Manilla

I'll take you to Kashgar to shop at old bazaar
Then we'll fly a magic carpet to the markets of Qatar
We'll see ruins of Karakorum the old capital of Moguls
Then we'll go to Kathmandu and then Karachi and Kabul

We'll discover caves with treasures, make three wishes all at once
All at once will turn to a fairy tale, like in one and thousand nights
Let me show you feast of colors, take you cross the dunes in caravans
Even if I don't look like Alladin, I sure know a thing about romance

I'll take you to Taipei to see its lovely bay
We will sip on Coca Cola on the silky sands of Goa
I'll take you to Shanghai where towers touch the sky
And the best of architecture we will see in precious Petra

We'll go to Ashgabat, Bishkek, Busan, Baghdad
We will see Great Wall of China and Cambodian Angkor Wat
We'll see the Everest, mount Fuji, Gobi Desert
And it's certainly my pleasure to take you all around Asia!

It's 7AM in Taipei, I haven't slept yet.
Jetlagged and jaded.
I travelled a long way to see her
strung up on a blood transfusion.
Whimpering like a poor rabbit,
the nurse reminding her
that fresh blood curdles in four hours.

I was motivated a few days ago,
but those feelings come and go.
She'll drain her osteomy bag,
I'll hold the jar but
I'm not really worth anything,
I'm not strong or smart, and look
at her wasting away to nothing.
I should be doing something.

I'm distracting myself by smoking,
dipping in and out through the hazy rings
drifting lazily above my head.
Dreaming of *****. I've never tried it,
but I bet that poppies smell sweeter
in January when it's grey.
I'm thinking of a blue eyed boy.

Maybe he thinks of me, here in Taipei,
where it's ten degrees warmer
and 7AM. It's midnight to him.
There's so much in the world to see
maybe he'd hold the insides in me.
And maybe pain cuts through my discipline,
but I do have plans, honestly.

In China, 666
Means things go smoothly

My time in Taipei
Did behoove me

To learn from others
Love foreign movies

Yangmingshan
(feeling groovy)

1 tonight for my boys
1 at Taipei 101
Un pequito Espanyol
Un pequito Midnight Sun

Time tick tocks
La Florida for fun
My Mr. Spock socks
See how they run

      Only just begun ...

Taipei taxi twilight
      young sons sung
                 101

The poems like a diary
This is how I am
Except that I reach out
Me, dad of Cam Cam

I read David Markson
Several thousand times
Quotes and aphorisms
Zapping my May mind

7:25
Postal work today
Longshan temple
Tenderly Taipei

i have trouble accepting the ends of things
relationships, each day, my life

i miss my Beloved Dead
i sing Cuts Like a Knife

the Buddha saw the transience
Nothing Gold Can Stay

2:22 all alone
Bangkok to Taipei

Krop Kun Kop
Xie Xie