Hypocracy Mandatory.
Gullibility Mandatory.
Insensitivity Mandatory.
Obesity Mandatory.
Immaturity Mandatory.
Childishness Mandatory.
Monarchy Mandatory.
Capitalism Mandatory.
Conservatism Mandatory.
Terrorism Mandatory.
Corruption Mandatory.
Incompetence Mandatory.
Socialism Mandatory.
Dictatorship Mandatory.
Militarism Mandatory.
Liberalism Mandatory.
Bhuddism Mandatory.
Islam Mandatory.
Christianity Mandatory.
Judaism Mandatory.
Hinduism Mandatory.
Vedism Mandatory.
Hatred Mandatory.
Anarchy Mandatory.
Jealousy Mandatory.
Nationalism Mandatory.
Fascism Mandatory.
Racism Mandatory.
Lies Mandatory.
Hypocracy Mandatory.
Obesity Mandatory.
Heart Disease Mandatory.
Cancer Mandatory.
Idiocy Mandatory.
Eco-****** Mandatory.
All of us Humans.
Of all Five Colours.
Wherever we be.
Whatever we do.
However we "see" ourselves.
What do we call ourselves now?.
How about shallow nitpickers?.
Or celebrity obsessed morons?.
Or religious hypocrits?.
Or Democrats?.
Or Socialists?.
Or Revolutionaries.
Or just plain "nice folks"?.
Or supporters of oligarchy  policies?.
Or immature backpackers?.
Or government assassins of integrity?.
Or juicy *******?.
Or swift tongued ******* ticklers?.
no matter how many lie dead or injured as a result
of our obfuscation and avoidance.
As if poets have the explanation to life
except in strings of meaningless associated
but fine sounding words.
When "poets" are the voluntary slaves of Mind
and Conditioned Identity..
As if poets had the ***** to go beyond all these things.
As if .
Scrape the Moons suface and you will find a delicate Castello Blue Cream Cheese.

Seeing Ghosts

I walk around the streets
Of old Saigon
Seeing sensing the undead

The ghosts of the war
That haunted life
So many years ago

So many people died
For a war
That never should have been fought
For reasons that are still not clear

A great tragedy unfolded
In a land half away
Around the world

The ghosts smile at me
And then they disappear

Leaving me in the present
Life goes on
 
Old Ghosts  

Old ghosts wandering the streets of old Saigon
Lost spirits of the dead
Died during the endless wars  
Ghostly apparitions around every corner

Here was Kilroy
and his gang of soldiers
Over there were the Viet Cong
Waiting to **** them

Saigon is filled with memories like that
Terrible times were had here in Old Saigon
Silently the ghosts parade the city streets
As the tourists drink in the bars

 

Mastering the Saigon Shuffle

When I first visited Saigon
Learning the Saigon Shuffle
Was difficult

And now 24 years later
It all seems to be coming back

There is an art to crossing the street
Dodging the motor cyclists, the taxis, the private cars
The bikes and other pedestrians and the buses

The art consists of letting the big guys go first
Then walk between the motorcycles and cyclists
Trusting that they will get out of your way

And they being masters of the Saigon shuffle
Always find a way

In my two visits I was struck
By how it all flows together

Without a central authority
And with almost no planning
Lights or cops

Somehow it just is
And somehow it works

And it is still a mystery to me
24 years after first
Encountering the Saigon shuffle
 
Coffee Lady
Every morning
I have gone out for Vietnamese coffee
At a sidewalk café
Down the ally from our AIRBNB

The owner is a pleasant middle age woman
Who for some reason likes us
She smiles at us
Greets us in Vietnamese
She does  not understand English
Or Korean

And I wonder why
Why was there this connection
Between us

It dawned on me
Perhaps in a prior life
She knew an American or two
And I remind her of someone

Or perhaps she is found
Of Korean K drama
And Angela reminds her
Of her favorite K Drama star

Or perhaps it is both
Or another reason entirely

But I moved today
And will miss her

Might go back for a final cup
Of coffee

To say good bye
To my Vietnamese coffee lady
 
Mostly Harmless Old Lady in the Alley
There is an old Vietnamese lady
In the neighborhood
Obviously senile

But everyone knows her
And watches over her

To make sure
She stays out of traffic
And out of trouble

She talks to everyone
But no one seems to understand
What she is babbling on about
They smile at her
And she smiles back

Reminds me of the phrase
From the hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy
Mostly harmless

And she for some reason
She likes us
And like my Vietnamese Coffee lady

I wonder why
Why was there this connection
Between us

It dawned on me
Perhaps in a prior life
She knew an American or two
And I remind her of someone

Or perhaps she is found
Of Korean K drama
And Angela reminds her
Of her favorite K Drama star

Or perhaps it is both
Or another reason entirely

But in any event
I look forward
To seeing her smiling face
Every time I walk
Down my ally way

Avoiding the War Due to Two Birthdays

I avoided being drafted
Due to a fluke in my birth certificate
In 1974 the last draft was held
And some people were drafted

But no one went to Vietnam
The war was ending by then
I avoided the draft though
To no effort on my own

My number came up on the draft list
My real birthday was in the zone
But then my mother pointed out
That my legal birthday was different

When I was born at 4 am
The night clerk typed up
My birth certificate
With the wrong date

My father pointed that out
She said
Once I typed it
That is it

His birthday will be
What I typed
Get use to it
My father gave up

And so, 18 years later
That saved me
From the last draft
Never made it to Vietnam

Many years latter
I visited Vietnam
Right after we opened relations

Glad I finally got to see
The country
That so many Americans visited
so many decades ago

Buddha In Vietnam

In Saigon I saw the buddha
Buddha images are everywhere
Temples are scattered about
Here and there and everywhere

Buddha lives on
In the hearts and minds
Of the Vietnamese soul

The communists tried
To get rid of Buddhism
And other religious traditions

But they failed
And Buddhism has come back
Still speaks to the Vietnamese people

A different style
A different vibe
Than Korean Buddhism

But still Buddhist thought
Prevails in the tropical lands
Of the South
 

Mekong Dreams

Traveling along the Mekong
Back in time

Seeing the river
The people
Imagining life on the river
Imagining the war
The past in the Mekong delta

And the present tourist boom
Yet life goes on
With its own laid back rhythm

As we traversed the river
We were transported back
To an earlier time

Following the ancient rhythms
Of the Mekong Delta

 
Down and Out in Saigon

Southeast Asia, and Mexico
has always attracted
A certain type of westerner
The down and out
On a down word spiral

Why?
Relatively cheap to live
Lots of part time gigs
Teaching English
Or other things

*****, drugs, ***
Readily available
And cheap

Places to stay
Dirt cheap
And no one needs
To sleep out doors

Easy to disappear
Into the foreigners backpackers ghettos
And escape
From whatever you are running from

The locals are somewhat tolerant
The police usually look the other way
And there are lots of people
In your shoes

I was surprised to find
That Saigon has become
The latest place
For the down and outer crowd
To gather together

In Bangkok one sees them a lot
In Cambodia as well
In the Philippines
In Nepal

And south of the border
In Mexico as well

In India not so much
In Japan and Korea
Just too **** expensive
And too cold to be outdoors

Back in the day
I used to work
The citizen services gig
And saw lots of the down and outer set

The old song comes to mind
No one remembers you
When you are down and out

And in the States
Being down and out
Means living on the mean streets

As it is very difficult
To live with almost no money

And the various side hustles
Don’t give you much money
Unless you are dealing drugs

And teaching ESL
Is not an option

Food is expensive
Transportation is expensive
***** and drugs expensive
Rent is prohibitive
Commercial *** is expensive

And no one loves you
If you are down and out
No one knows your name
You are just another homeless ***

Invisible to all
As you try to make do

Much better to be down and out
In Southeast Asia
Than on the mean streets
Of the USA
 

Ghosts of Chu Chi

Crawling down the tunnels
Of Chu Chi
I could almost imagine
The Viet Kong guerillas

Hiding deep under the tunnels
As the land above is turned
Into a temporary dessert

With the vegetation burned off
By ****** and agent orange

The Viet Kong creep out at night
Stealing onto the bases
Stealing weapons, food, supplies
And occasionally killing soldiers

In their sleep
The US soldiers
Stay on base at night

Terrified of the mosquitos
And of the Viet Kong

the ghosts
Surround me
Telling me their stories
And at last I fled

Through the emergency escape tunnel
Declaring victory
Profoundly shaken up
By the ghosts of the Chu Chi tunnels

 
Saigon 2019

Saigon 2019

Vibrant, vivid, exciting
A city on the move
Becoming a world class city
Yet still with a Saigon swagger

Wandering the streets
Dodging the traffic
Admiring the women
Enjoying the food

Saigon enters my heart
And I know that I will be back
This city is growing on me
Reminds me of Korea back in the 1990’s

One hopes that as it develops
It will not become a carbon copy
Of other big Asian cities
Obliterating its past

In search of a false modern image
I hope it can retain
What makes Saigon Saigon
And not become another Gangnam

Hope it does it with Saigon style
And the people will evolve
The country will emerge
And become what it should be

The Paris of the East
This is my vision
Saigon 2019


 
Saigon 1995

Saigon 1995

In 1995
I was one of the first tourists
Allowed in to Vietnam
To freely wander about

Tourism was at its infancy
And Saigon was chaotic
Wild and crazy
Traffic was insane

There were few tourism sites
Few hotels
Few guest houses
And not too many restaurants

The food was good
We saw the war memorial
The re-unification palace
And the big market

But we felt we were being monitored
Beggars were everywhere
There were scams everywhere
And it was not that pleasant an experience

But Saigon grew up
Became a much more tourist-friendly place
And these problems we encountered
A thing of the place

Saigon is so much better
So much more developed
That it has captured our soul
And we will be back

No, no, I haven’t been doing this myself,
but I live in Cambodia,
and 2 guys and a girl were deported recently
for riding around on a motorbike in the ****
in broad daylight. Actually, you see,
naively or deliberately,
they rode right past a police station.
Now that must have been a sight for sore eyes.
So the police set out in hot pursuit,
rubbing their sore eyes, or whatever they rub,
maybe their truncheons, eh?
And when the perps were pulled over,
the cops didn’t fall about with hilarity
when these riders said quite calmly
that they were going to pick up their laundry.
Truly! They were backpackers! As if that explained it.
But publicly, the cops said nope,
these perps are obscene to be seen like this
and they violate Khmer customs and culture.
The cops even took pictures of this outrageous obscenity.
Indeed. The riders' rapture of being bare assed
and naked and **** free is not for Cambodia.
Certainly not at this juncture.
So their capture resulted in them being deported,
never to show hide nor hair in the country again.
Just goes to show...
But you can get away with ****** here,
particularly shooting union leaders or critics or protestors,
or you can throw a grenade into the opposition,
and **** a few right there. Those killers go free.
It's probably dangerous to speak openly,
but I don't think these guys read poetry.
They're probably busy oiling their artillery,
and even rocket launchers, as the PM
threatened to use against the opposition recently.
Seriously.
They're on the lookout for dissenters here.
Oh yes. And bare *****. Obviously.
So watch you **** in Cambodia,
especially if it's bare on a bike.
And ssshhh! Watch out for your mouth.
You need to cover your mouth up properly, too.

Mike T Minehan

Entry 1# I'm not suicidal am I?

This city reeks. I love it and I hate it.

Sat by the window. Light fazing out like a lonesome child defeating homeward in twilight walks after a long winded winter day of school. Hard breath, red cheeks, cold icy hands. Yes.. it's like that scene, the cloudy glow of a hidden sun is sinking over the edge and I sit in this partial darkness, able to see but losing visibilty as day turns to night.

Drizzling rain.
I watch the orange alleyway flicker, from my ghetto townhouse window I can hear an ambulence wailing in the distance, can hear cars, and can even hear and taste the wet, cement grit.

I can feel the old spirits, the dusted away spirits settling back in.
I miss that laughter. Remember when we played hide n go seek while adults sipped wine on hardwood floors and ate expensive cheeses. We, like circus performers waving to the adoring public with a seal balancing a ball upon his nose as we showed off your golden retreiver spiffed up in the outfit we had picked for him.

Remember how we danced in play, imagination and all, until the last possible moments. Until it was time to go home again, my parents at the door and you and I hiding under your bed.

Its one of those nights again, the long rainy screechy kind,only your dead and the garbage pile outside my house stinks extra hard.

Cozying up to the window, I am a cat, a fat grey house cat who spends the hours water eyed listening to specks of gods droplets tinkling upon leaves. Its good to be home, to be blanketed in a cuccoon of comfort. Of familiarity.

Scraggly memories crawling from behind my ear I hear the rangly cuckas of the jungle and its ancient misty spirit. I miss its danger and exotic excitement. I miss my smile, the genuine one.

I put my things away so I could sit and write in peace, placed my guitar in the corner where it belongs, and hid my now empty backpackers backpack under the bed. I don't want to see it, my spirits greater than my mentality.
Like air, like wind, I'll sweep away, I'll run for hours just so I can feel that high. I'm not grounded, maybe I have issues.

So then I sat in frustration listening to the rain, its like an annoying tap. Creativity gone.

Pulled my mess back out of the box and scattered it everywhere. You know when your young, when your a child and you just kind of do things?

I thought back to when I was little, to the moments of my greatest joys.
It was always when I was at the top of a tree, at the peaks of death, or when I was running, running away from the world my conciousness was born into,
  it was when I jumped out the window and got the ministry phoned on us. Although the latter one wasn't a joy, more so an annoyance on my freedom and a burden to my family.

I could spend hours staring out this window at night, I did it once too. My first all nighter at the age of 5, when I simply had to see each snowflake fall. And then it was sunrise and the neighborhood was pure white.

I miss my mom, shes still here but not as young. I miss spirit, I miss soul, I'm getting older but am I wiser? I think I was smarter when I was little. When I would run for freedom, when I would pit up a fight. Not submissevly recline to my other side as to ward off any inner resistance.

Now that my ***** scattered all over the room I find it easier to write. At least thats something I've always known, everything has a home. My guitar is happy on my bed and I've always been happier on the edge of a cliff, flying high with my heart in the heavens and my head in a cloud. Just waiting to jump.

..
..........jump.

Oh the misery of an air spirit.

yep, and the Welsh and the Chinese were intuitively drawing dragons before dinosaur bones were dug up.

i'm poor, in tatters, worn-out rags,
i slashed my cowboy denims
to show a plagiarism of the gaping holes
in my encoding -
listen... the Chinese were working
on the serpent long before you came along,
it's can be more abstract as that,
cold gaze venomous rattler, or sidewinder,
a spine of what was once a tyrannosaurus rex,
fair enough, arms too short to make a bed
but you wonder where the Koranic
reference about Iblis and pride came from,
if not that, meaning the prior to
mammal was somehow superior,
the lizard coliseum - looks like i'm
the Gremlin that drank all the brain juice
and became a talk-show host for the night -
and become famous for simply interviews interviews,
interviews? crackpot nostalgia,
bull ******* nostalgia swinging my way?
oh, i think i hear the church bells ding-****
the uvula of the anthem: mm mm Albert Hall,
hmm hmm, one ball... Colonel Bogey
boogied in the Elizabethan **** with a
Kit Kat... maybe two chunkies, depends on
the lung capacity of thrills too ooze up
that soaked sponge... granny gotta take,
she's up to her pleas for a deathbed seance;
was it me or was grass' *the tin drum a bit ****?
i mean, i loved the Bolshevik granny stuffing
potatoes into her skirt at the beginning,
but then the scenery changed into undecipherable,
images coming thick and fast like a tube
journey from Liverpool St. to Bank - the roller coaster
part of the Central line, ride it someday,
then you'll know what i'm dabbling about -
a real Karma Sutra geometric twist and turn
etching out what pop lit. would testify as a real
page turner, a thriller, a Tom Clancy -
here me with the Parisian boys, upturned nose
and a stiff-upper lip;
but like i said, i'm poor, look at my phonetic encoding,
**** just pours right through me,
thanks to the added space i get Voltaire Newton
Mary Sinclair... it just rapes the **** out of me,
if i were Chinese i'd be taking fancy to the words:
**** building a wall to keep the Mongol out,
let's just write ~ (tai) ~ (ji - chee, chi or źee),
that'll keep the ******* out.
i mean, look at it, it's so ******* complex compared
to the arrogant simplicity of the Latin text that
it's no wonder the Chinese were well grounded people,
necessarily staying gravity prone in one region
and no other, lucky them... i've got a lot of backpackers
to mind, ants in their pants crew, brothel safe-haven
in Spain or Corfu for the summer, and then
top-hat christian goody-two-shoes back home.

Active motion
act in motion
spark the plug
and speak with love                  smalltown rain
occasional clouds                       bus stop lights out
hazy thoughts                             sway your imagination back and forth with
                                                      violin­ and incessant heartbeats

I adore you saxophone
and appreciate the pattern of your voice
there's a little something for everybody here.

(at least for those that act on their own
volition!!)

existential essays among
the Spanish backpackers belongings (Camus' Myth of Sisyphus)
the sound is dazzled with itself/
my attention wanders to the distant mountains
where snow still sits meditating on
my dreams and your dreams.

(The more we get together the happier we'll be!)

In a flash the coffee shops close and large homes from decades ago
are physically moved to other lots
and cranes observe the night
a little ways down my street
across from the Apartment I lived in around 2002
(My cousin Rachel came over while I was sick with summer fever)

EVERY STRANGER SLEEPS
I WONDER WHAT THEY DREAM
I WONDER IF THEY ARE DREAMING RIGHT NOW

painted animals wait idly in the fields of parched grass
for another bomb to go off
and I've forgotten the static of the TV
I once saw them in

May day May
day
I can't believe how hot it's been outside!
I'm forcing myself to be confident enough to wear a T shirt
(ah) at the line in the grocery store the woman ringing thru my
soon-to-be plastic bags
she's a child of her cigarettes and a mother
of her ashes. Her hair salted and her face like tired glass
I'm so sorry
I'm so sorry that love is hard sometimes
(and o so soft)

I was at the sleepy supermarket once
(in an imaginary place)
and a child was with her parents and noticed the expiry on a 2% milk
she asked
"What does this mean?"
her mom looked down at her to what she was pointing to and replied
"That's when the milk goes bad. When you can't use it anymore"

They continued down the aisles and she asked
"Do people go bad too?"
I don't know what caused her to think this so early
it's such a shame dear,
her mom frowns in that way when you're trying to hide it.

"Yes, you gotta drink the milk fast, but some people drink up life too slow and it leaves them sour"

and upon leaving back to my mattress
I never saw which direction they went or where I wound up
after accepting that my heroes would never appear.

PASSING the elementary school I once attended
during a windstorm
throwing tantrums during assemblies and making
friends with car accidents.
I try to remember names and only Sean, Alexis, Daniel and Dean
come to mind...

..So long to childhood vagueness in
days deceased to
trashcan calendars
it was nice to see you
but I really must be going now.

                   (TODAY IS A UNIQUE SHADE OF YELLOW)

If I were a bee what a good bee I would be
From apple blossom to honeysuckle
From petunia to plum tree

If I were a bee what a good bee I would be
From peanut butter sandwich to sweet iced tea
Enjoying the company of the trippers , backpackers and -
picnickers
The honey , the syrup and the *** liquor

If I were a bee what a curious bee I would be
Flying high above a green mountain scene
I see bears , a buck and a sleepy red fox
A maple , an elm and loblolly tree tops .....

so that men at work song
land down under
is about a bunch of australian
backpackers
looking for jean-claud van damme?
i thought so!