Soft thudding
bare feet leading astray.
“Nǐ hǎo” wave children, continue to play.
Alive! Life! Pulse of the night –
The Heart of Asia, a magnificent sight!

Engulfed by mountains
surrounding seas.
Tantalising fragrances
dance with a breeze.

This foreign land
surreal in a way
an expression of beauty!
A longing to stay.

I see you.
I wonder if you know how beautiful you are.
With the way you smile, the way you laugh.
I like seeing you having fun with your friends.
And I love that you are happy.
It makes me happy, too.
Exploring and discovering places with you.
Profound feeling, knowing that you're only inches away.
I laugh at myself sometimes, for always being nervous and awkward around you.
Because I know I'm not always like this at all.
Only when I'm with you.
The stairs were a pain in the *** but you made it bearable.
See, I don't really care if there's anything to be seen up there.
All I know is, the view ain't worth seeing without you.
And you're just too **** cute when you're ******!
But I do hope that you won't be ****** at me.
There's just so much to see in this beautiful country.
But what I realized was,
I did not come with you to see Taiwan,
I came to Taiwan to see you.

THE cypress trees there translate
season into color.

A line of boulevards for guests like
me: a hungry one.

I may know what it is
they plan.

Splash and swish. Sweet. Ripples and
breezy. Lyrical.

After the song I used to remembered
and always wanted to hear.

I may know what it is
whispered the water to the wind.

It's like a diamond stake pushed through the silence of my brain
It's like a thunder of voices coming down like a hurricane
It's like a forest of gunfire blowing past my bedroom door
It's like the force of a god pushing down on my floor

Whip smart, by all accounts, but lost beneath the sheets
Forced out of a comfort zone and pushed out to the streets
Spastic changing voices like a record out of line
Just speak like you always do and don't **** with my mind

I'm like a tidal wave that only gets halfway there
No shore to erode with no Taiwan to even care
I'm like a promise left on the kitchen table after dawn
Someone will find it but it will be thrown out on the lawn

Born without a spoon but there is silver in my teeth
I'm made out of as much spirit as a plastic, clearance wreath
Dust beneath the stars cancels out the dawning sun
Shine on the bums, the prophets, everyone

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!

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.