Willets cull the seawall
snapper on the grill
rock ***** swoon
in shallow lagoons
long boats pass
under quiet
palm shade

Plovers dance and flutter
handrails frayed and torn
graffiti spots
at lovers rock
frigate-birds fall
from a high
noon sun

Thatched roof on a mud wall
fish flags settle score
anchors arch
in front line march
pillar cracks form
under rust brown scars

Elegant tern and grebe
watchmen fall in cue
children play
on crested waves
whimbrels and notchers
perch above Tentaciones

Striped pelícanos
the bandits of the sea!
merchants grow
in steady flow
siblings jostle
in a tide cooled sand

Heerman gull and boobie
durango smoke in yurt
boiler shrimp
and puffer blimp
castle buckets and scrapers
under a dusk light cheroot

Six pulls on a lead line
painted toes in sand
shearwater run
in a rainbow sun
the portly mexicano
flaunts his tacos
and wares

Rooster house for swordfish
bamboo shoots and sails
broken shells
and ocean swells
rise
on the
perfect
La Ropa bay

If I had a dollar for every poem I ever wrote,
I wouldn’t even have a grand.
How on Earth would I pay the monthly rent,
buy our food,
survive
darling?

I guess a goat & a yurt
doesn’t sound so bad after all.
We could start a garden,
grow some tomatoes & drink
fresh unpasteurized raw milk,
We could even make soap.
Fixin’ a hole in the ceiling would
just take a needle and thread.
What a simple life we’d lead,
we could actually talk to each other.

And in the winter,
we could spoon,
snuggle underneath
a real buffalo rug.
It would be groovy.
You could tug on my ear lobe
with your pretty teeth
& whisper how much
you loved me.

I want to run away from it all
to escape the rat race's incessant call
to be left to be myself
alone but happy on the shelf
I want to run away from it all

I want to start again somewhere new
Doing only all the things I want to do
No more obligated chores
Washing windows, scrubbing floors
I want to start again somewhere new

I want to buy some land and build a yurt
Live off grid so Mother Earth I don't hurt
Water heated by the sun
Organic gardening for fun
I want to buy some land and build a yurt

I want to sit a write by candlelight
Not a CF bulb or fluorescent tube in sight
No noise or light pollution
would be my perfect solution
I want to sit and write by candle light

I want to be awoken by the sun
not just on special days but every one
readjust my body clock
to natures silent tick and tock
I want to be awoken by the sun

I want to run away, you wanna come?
One is great but really two is twice the fun.
Loving life the way it's meant
Two poets in a tent
I want to run away you wanna come?

Cursed by technology
Born to be a prodigy
Roamed the earth to become well versed in ecology.
Broke the dirt with the farm hand’s anthology

Made a stony hearth from the girth of this broken land’s economy.
Pitched my yurt where the man can’t bother me.

On top of luscious greens,
In the field of dreams,
No more do I pull the weeds of society.

All my proceeds grow seeds
I don’t need deeds just look at these feats
Grab an ear of corn if you haven’t heard of me.

Burn what you don’t need,
An idea of greed, the illusion of necessity.

Brought to you by bold thieves
Who trade lives but don’t sleep
Hold banquets but don’t eat
Grow food but don’t feed.

Ripped from your roots.

Dropped on the streets
in the sweltering heat.
Drying like souls of the ******,
every last one of us lost lambs.

What they want for me, it’s not a part of me

I won’t take place in the injustice that’s been bought for me.
But what I brought for me is a hypothesis,
Tranquility so deep a Buddhist monk couldn’t offer me
More than what my coffers could proffer me.

I’m not crazy but I have started the uncoupling

That’s got me to this mental brink,
Out of this poisonous sink,
No longer do I drink- from this sea of doubt
Where the irradiated mind has its teeth pulled out.

I put my knowledge of “earthology” into this horse and plow
I raise sow in the north for truffles of course
Sell them for hundreds of dollars an ounce to chefs in New York

I make herbal oils richer than kings from thorny things and rosy beings
Contemplating the meaning of life while looking at my fig-leaves

And I will pick the fruit and share it with you
Confuse me not with a more treacherous youth
Whom only seeks to toxify you with some new indoctrinated truth
Give you some of their lead paint proof, glyphosate too.

Their cell phone hooks filling your time with
Facebook looks,
And a MySpace laze
With honeycomb glaze
There in your man-made maze
Where you don’t speak for days.

I have seen the ways good people choose bad things to happen due the deceit
Of the industry they’re tapping’
Where is the Chaplain?
He’s got this book , and his grubby hands are in the pocket of the fat man
Who takes the holy waters and turns them to black sand.

Tossing grains in the air it’s unclear “whether” we can breathe it in
With no name and no face one rigged rat race,

We look for those Rebels M.I.A.

My fingertips will never let me forget the scent of stale cigarettes.

I was a fool in London. All the friends I made had better accents than me.
I dreamed of Bulgaria and Brazil.

I walked through mud. I waited for French tides.
I trudged in heavy water waders.

My hands built a house with stones older than the country on my passport.
The etching of cement on my boots still reminds me what we carried there.

We drove along tired volcanoes and craggy cliffs in the dark.
I never learned how to drive manual.

We flew further south. I dried out in the sun.

The glands of Spanish streets pulsated
citrus mist into the air, my lungs.
I never did remember the difference between limon and lime.

We stayed in a haunted castel but missed Halloween.
The upper peninsula, where Napoleon dreamed of a better dinner.
We moved to Shangri-La. Even in Eden, people still snore.
But there were cakes laced with flowers. And I was over the moon.

Then, a dreamscape. The closest to the Arctic I’ve ever been.

We ate deer for dinner. I baked Danish pies. I slept supine in a smoke-filled yurt. It was all peace. It was all over.

Dear middle class friend
You have to know that I love you and know we come from difference
I am thank full for your existence and teaching me how to blend in
Find myself inside the lines of a different class
you take the time to teach me how I should act
You come from power I come from poverty
But I can mask, just change my cloths and vocabulary
Im educated and observant
Subservient to what you say
Speaking of your problems
How you hate the rain
How you over booked yourself
Should you go to the yurt or to the football game?
Not trying to undermine
To lessen your distress
Or infer you have a mistress
That money isn’t happiness
Just remember when you talk to me
You are forgetting who I am
Because of how I dress
Disguise myself to well I guess
Remember
I just found a place to live
Food is hard to find
My parents split
My siblings flail
Cancers killing someone else…
And you forget
That money isn’t mine
And I am short on time
My problems are different
I just can’t relate
I have never seen a yurt
Or seen a football game
Or been on stage
I don’t know what to say
Dear middle class companion
Thanks for offering to stand in
When I want to complain
But don’t feel bad
And take my hand
I try to feed me again.
I don’t need fixing, or sad eyes
Just try to sympathize
I know you don’t understand
We come from difference
I hope for acceptance
Maybe understaning
But I don’t know how to say
Ill never care as much as you
About such silly things.

“Jurt,” she
curtly spurts out
and stops
not knowing if
she’s going to
continue to
speak unknown tongues
or if
this emanation, this
interjection,
spoken on strange
impulse,
is Icelandic
or Bosnian
or Serbian,
and if
the middle one
how not the last,
when they both mean
the same thing, yurt.

The play is written to be staged in a pub or a large cave like yurt in Cardiff.  Its action and dialogue provides characterisation, with sound and lighting being used to establish context.  The setting a darkened pub corner that is  modelled on The Bunch of Grapes in Pontypridd.   There are only 6 characters, five speak in haiku-ed verse with the exception of the Drunk who acts as my 'Greek Chorus'.

- Hand-in-hand she enters to **** her thumb in a corner

- Chocolate ice cream soda demanded from Daddy

- Joking banter ceased slowly as the regulars all begin to quaff their brown pints

“Balll uut eass swept -
Chimrrrrr, Chiirriica,
war is never won”

- Church quiet, the village pub listened lips clamped tears swelling

“ ***** cut swapped with eyes -
Chimerica, Chimerica,
war is never won”

- The cornered hero of two Afghanistan tours is seen regressing into childhood*

The set darkens slowly then after 30 seconds a spotlit conversation in lines and stanzas begins.

Haiku and tanka that inspired the coming play include:

******* -
thoughts sought, taught and wrought,
testosterones
Fighting aggressive games,
Afghanistan camouflage


Globalism and War -
cloned greedy conspiracy,
that third tower
Titled selfish-self-grandiose,
deliver warring terror


Springs cut Irises -
dripping vital red not purple,
far from my window*

.

when we met, it was tipsy tuesday and donnie had swollen fingers
and nate sank into his plaid frock and dropped his shadow
on the patio like a heavy slug, and the flies
cavorted in the vortex of our subtext
as the night skies spat stars
at our foreheads.

you were beautiful;  too beautiful then.

i was smitten, i was tossed on stormy seas, unsick.
i was healed. the world spun filth and dull glamour
but your face hurled fireworks
and my mind leaned into my heart
and i knew i loved you.
whoever you turned out
to be.

i babbled and groped, as the inertia
of falling, filled my sails
and I was purposefully adrift -
in your brown-black eyes;
as a dog fetched a frisbee
for an illiterate.

and i think i bit my lip a bit.

I saw you for the first time.
for the last time
in my life
and was never
the same.

my heart, now more precise.

you had fierce speech
underneath your sweet speak
and long hair.
i had you in my soul's yurt
on a plain of windswept pavilions
with free horses and costly
remoteness.
i was ' there ' less
and more somewhere else
alone with the perfect you
reading my lips
as they tremored
delight of it.

i babbled speechless.

i remember you tossing your locks
at my cage. and i was set free.

please add me to your wishlist
and complete me.

Go a whole day talking in a western accent

2. write a 5 hour song

3. learn the rapping in "Empire State of Mind" and "Run this Town"

4. Go on a 3 month road trip on a Harley Davidson with only me, my guitar, what I'm wearing, the Harley, and the road

5. learn how to speak Hungarian, Greek, Latin, Hawaiian, Italian, Finnish, and Spanish, maybe some others

6. write a book

7. learn about Native American mythology and rituals

8. Learn how to survive on my own by making my clothing, food, supplies, tools, fire, and shelter

9. Build a yurt up in the mountains to live with wolves

10. Do a hang 10 on a surf board

11. ride a horse with wild horses

12. Paint a scenic picture

13. Protest for anything the government is against

14. Go to Europe and study art

15. Go on a train trip in Europe

16. Go to the Middle East and talk to woman about their rights

17. Go to Israel and West Bank and spray paint on both sides of the wall

18. go paragliding

19. Get or get close to winning a Nobel Peace prize

20. Help out at an orphanage

21. Learn sign language

22. go to help kids with cancer

23. Learn to play roque

24. live one year outside without spending 1 night inside

25. make a cook book

26. teach a African kid to read in English

27. Become a better poet

28. grant 28 people's biggest dreams

(This will be ongoing)

In my head,
For a year,
I dreamt your name
Would flash on my phone.
A token of remembrance
And familiar resemblance.
But never did I know

That at a festival,
This year,
I'd get that token
That broke the silence.
Through deafening bass
And a crowded place,
Our conversation felt timeless.

Gold dust,
And rainbow stripes
Were what you wore,
Still how I remember.
Whole bodies moving,
My eyes approving
Like that first night in November.

Over the noise,
We had to shout
And get up so close
I could smell your cheek.
Half-heard sentences,
Apologetic messages,
We'd been too weak

To say before,
That night,
In Spring,
Where we cut off abruptly.
But all the pain went,
Along with those countless nights spent
Trying to pick up the debris.

My friend,
Your partner,
He'd gone
A day early.
So we spent the night together,
Ignoring the cold weather
Till tiredness made eyes blurry.

My friends
And I
Walked you back
To your yurt.
Made new favourite memories,
And an excess of remedy
To stay the hurt.

I thought a year was too late.
But instead a half blank slate
Is all I ever wanted. Now I can give

My gratitude,
And thankfulness.
That I always had,
Deep inside.
To bridges rebuilt,
And no more guilt.
I no longer need to hide

From you,
From me,
From the scars.