junebugs flit
against skeletal cracked windows
desperate for
the promise of light

One of my favorite
pastimes back when
Spring was Spring,
and not a death sentence
of epic proportions,
was tying a piece of string
to a Junebug's leg.
The hardest part was getting
the restless creature to lie on
its back long enough to
slide the miniature noose
around him in such a way
that when you let go
he would fly around
like Bonnie Blue Butler's
show pony as far as you
allowed his string to take him.

I feel like a Junebug lately.
The process of looping that noose
around my leg has left me
weary and ready for a rest.
My ankle has third degree rope burns
and my wings are getting tired
of flying in exhausting circles.
The child at the end of my rope
is ignorantly unaware of her
imprisonment of my principles.
Or perhaps she knows what she's
been doing all along
and just doesn't have
the heart, guts or brains
to cut the string and let me fly
like the shiny little
Junebug I was born to be.

My sisters thought
we were cruel, us boys,
tying a length of thread
around a Junebug's leg
and having it fly 'round
and 'round and 'round
and 'round above our heads
until Junebug broke free.

Junebugs knew how to
have fun back in the day.
So did lightning bugs. They
made the coolest necklaces.
My sisters didn't like them.
Girls don't know fun from
Junebugs on a summer day.

r ~ 5/29/14

A quiet life
A country life
Where the grass sways in the breeze
And the hues of green signify the beginning of balmy nights
A far cry from the city
Gone are the endless vibrant lights
Gone are the 2 a.m. trips across town just because they make the best doughnuts
In this place of air almost too clean to breathe
They stroll
A traffic jam is four cars at a stop sign
Battling rules of the road with polite hat tips of "you go first"
Fast feet and hot dog carts
Italian ices on every corner
Fifty-six blocks to a destination
A world of choices
A billion footprints at a time
Stoplight crowds of sneakers and pantyhose
Everyone is invisible and naked at once
The green haired freak and the business man
The limos and the gypsy cabs
The excitement only felt in a world of possibilities
The difference between pick up trucks and bike messengers
A hundred miles for supplies
Or fifty-six blocks of everything under the sun
Soot filled pores and too much traffic
Street sounds to sleep by and a world of opportunities
Crickets and junebugs
The world closes at eight
Nightlife turns into Wal-Mart and Taco Bell
The slow pace of growing grass
The warmth of a winterless Summer
Wishing for a trip across town at 2 a.m. just because they make the best doughnuts

The slam poet in cords, in denim,
rambles from neon beer haven
to flybuzz brothel, cracking quiet
jokes about soup to shiny junebugs
in the relentless moonlight.
One hundred dollars in thirty-five bills
slowly retreat from wallet
toward water-cut whiskey.
He’s got a chapbook widely
available at frozen yogurt shops
across the metro; he’s got a
tour in the works, tri-county,
every middle school from
Shawnee to Seminole; he’s
got a collection of ex-girlfriends,
made up almost entirely of wizened lesbians;
he’s got an MFA from UNC Wilmington,
and he shouts this more than speaks this
from his treacherous barstool to the sleepy bartender.
One of the girls, she takes him upstairs,
and to her he says, Your freckles—islands
in the sea of your milk-white skin.

The night passes, warehouses are razed,
and he watches the loft apartments emerge.
The food trucks come. He parks beside them,
typing poems made to order out of his trunk. The
money flows in, crumpled and sweaty and
in one-dollar denominations. The Old Fashions
transfigure into Old English. And in his pocket
thesaurus he looks for a word. It’s not vagrant,
nor vagabond. It’s not homeless, nor wayward.
He lies in the long shadow of a Midwestern sunset,
starved and shaking. Up from the blackened
city shrubs comes an indifferent breeze and
just as he thinks the word Pauper, he dies one
on the corner of 23rd and Western.

He would ride up to the field
God had lain so purposefully for him
Along the final bight of an earthen track.
Narrow, which climbed, as with him
It swerved. He believed in God then.

Fenced off, blades became thick as
A dare, a moment—before confession
Or asking out his girl, the one whose
Crescent eyes in smile moonlit clefts
In his time. He would see her moving

Her body like His girl, exhaling His
Name, as if He was her only breath.
Through oceanic grasses she would
Flow in his ear, all the warm hadal
Mist of her. Aging wood throbbing

From gusts of wind on the fence. Deep
Enclosure of slender stalks and stems
Swaying by the rhythm of an ancient
Reverie. Crickets and junebugs, early
Fireflies lilting, sung to him tunes of

Indecipherable freedom. But not once
Did he cross, not once did he ever
Disturb a nature obeying the music.
Only the torrid yearning he allowed
To slip through the separation, knowing

There it was reunited, home among
The barely heard hum of the grasses
Oneiric and bare. Years later, when
The fence had disappeared, he once
Walked through and was overcome

By an emptiness thrashing against
Emptiness. In a single gust, scented of
His desinence, those years passed again
And he thought. Even if I’d crossed,
Had joined—not disturbed. Even if.

Jailed with all the other squawking birds
confined, it never flew and barely grew
& never knew the mimicry of words

sanguine, foul molting cockatoo in the corner
lowered, bloodied, the lowliest in a pecking order
his owner's a loner, a collector of tinged newsprint
entombed in brick & mortar - nomad minus footprint

and his birds, perched across wooden dowels
proceeded to empty their millet'd bowels
onto sheets of unfinished poetry
correctivewhiteoutmisery

so, he, being miserly, wouldn't shell out the reader's fee
to the greedy posthumous publishing company, yet
another relic in a mortuary of literacy

he was just another faceless, bearded bard
and with the old coffee grounds
he would discard
piling mounds of compost, broken bound
his compositions decomposing in the attic
warbling hiss, winding tape spool. ghosts
searching for signals amongst the static

he awaited revision of his works
ill, amidst the scattered ruins
red ink, gold leaf & carets^


he, impetuous, slumped further into his doldrums
though, all public grievances were withdrawn
crass, he prattled on to his dolorous birds
still oblivious to his defunct words

He lied dormant, comatose
in the 3rd degree infirmary

there was once a pretty lass
who could exhume the pristine
glass contents of his tinsel'd tomb
His malady, he once named Gamine
lived in a stretched-white canvas room
she eyed his burnt pile of vile-dirge verse
as mayflys & junebugs, & smoggy dirigibles
fluttered gently out of her empty purse

she grew on him like a cancer
for she was God's embellishment
pallid and perfect, and he cursed
her love as it ebbed and flowed
her aureole glowed, safely stowed
in an airship's overhead compartment

she was flying home for
there was no other answer

And I stood there,
with the Junebugs at my feet.
Squashed, smashed, and stepped on.
Broken with defeat.
It looks like a battle scene,
with no one slowly picking them up to bury the dead
and care,
for the wounded.

Not a memorial will be placed

Just run over them.
Their bodies being decimated.

WE are as insignificant
as these creatures seem to us
we are to the UNIVERSE

velvet stains, sawgrass breath of junebugs over again

I am from incense
From water and candles
I am from the three prostrations
needed to enter the baai san (prayer room).
(cold, smooth, watchful tapestries)
I am from the pecan shells, the tree whose nuts
and leaves left small hills of muddy layers

I'm from ginger to contacts
From Ly to Tran
I'm from the headstrong
and the never-wrong
From mou jung! (useless)
and hou gaawi! (how obedient)
I'm from Nama Amituofo with Cha Lua
and Taking Refuge in the Gurus,
Buddha,
Dharma,
and Sangha

I’m from Sugar Land and Bellaire,
2% milk and Pork Sung sandwiches.
From Dad forcing my brother to stare at green
to fight our genetic astigmatism
to Mom making us chant mantras
with rosary beads on the way to school

In the neighborhood pool,
I pushed away floating junebugs
I am those moments—
Chalk on the cul-de-sac

Jailed with all the other squawking birds
confined, it never flew and barely grew
& never knew the mimicry of words

sanguine, foul molting cockatoo in the corner
lowered, bloodied, the lowliest in a pecking order
his owner's a loner, a collector of tinged newsprint
entombed in brick & mortar - nomad minus footprint

and his birds, perched across wooden dowels
proceeded to empty their millet'd bowels
onto sheets of unfinished poetry
correctivewhiteoutmisery

so, he, being miserly, wouldn't shell out the reader's fee
to the greedy posthumous publishing company, yet
another relic in a mortuary of literacy

he was just another faceless, bearded bard
and with the old coffee grounds
he would discard
piling mounds of compost, broken bound
his compositions decomposing in the attic
warbling hiss, winding tape spool. ghosts
searching for signals amongst the static

he awaited revision of his works
ill, amidst the scattered ruins
red ink, gold leaf & carets^


he, impetuous, slumped further into his doldrums
though, all public grievances were withdrawn
crass, he prattled on to his dolorous birds
still oblivious to his defunct words

He lied dormant, comatose
in the 3rd degree infirmary

there was once a pretty lass
who could exhume the pristine
glass contents of his tinsel'd tomb
His malady, he once named Gamine
lived in a stretched-white canvas room
she eyed his burnt pile of vile-dirge verse
as mayflys & junebugs, & smoggy dirigibles
fluttered gently out of her empty purse

she grew on him like a cancer
for she was God's embellishment
pallid and perfect, and he cursed
her love as it ebbed and flowed
her aureole glowed, safely stowed
in an airship's overhead compartment

she was flying home for
there was no other answer

spoiled milk and wilted flowers dried up like tobacco
and all the air musty the litter and entropy of it pulls at your
attention. roaches and moths and junebugs tapping against
the glass or skittering
across your floor, climbing up the walls and into a corner
eyeing me probing the air with its antennae.
oil caked on the glass thoughts in my head
spurting red broken bones and shredded muscle
deliciously sinewy.

flush it down. inhale and head rush legs weak smile written across my face as my mind
recoils in terror and confusion
the world waves and warms. it shines.

nag champa blackwood currents and shisha
oily anticipation. just a few hours now and there will be reprieve
i can go back and heal from this confusing binge.

skies are blue. helicopters hover their way over the city and suburbs.
the tower spins its light. floating and warmed I wander back home.

the dreams might be hellish
sleep might not come at all
the time it takes to readjust is staggering.
yellows shades and water and lots of **.

now to disappear completely. leave the damage.
not a trace of yourself though.
run a massive burn
and then escape unnoticed.
sayonara.

Determine within yourself, to smile more, worry less
Let love and peace guide you away from the path of bigotry
That will slay the soul and mind, look to the lush green cornfields
Standing as silent guards in America, the blooming summer apples
The the rapid streams, with minnows swimming in clear creeks
Junebugs buzzing in sundown , butterflies floating in soft winds
Fireflies glowing as tiny  neon signs, outliving, outdoing, stonings
Beatings to the body , spirit, of being called "shine'' , '' ******'' , '' darky''
Which of themselves, are never unforgettable, ever hoping that a stain
will be left on white souls, so that one might be able to smile in autumn

For some, letting go is as easy as untying a bow on the back of a summer dress
Letting the strings softly slip through their fingers
Feeling the cotton threads and whispering goodbye

The field is filled with hazy summer light and nostalgic perfumes
She licks the wine off her fingertips
And smiles at him with a grin that hints of cinnamon

They lay among the fireflies and junebugs
Minds in faraway places
Hearts anywhere but here

She can hold the sadness that fills his eyes
In the palms of her hands
But she cannot keep it

He tells her that she reminds him of gossamer
She twirls her hair in knots
He touches the strap of her dress

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet
and so were you.

Junebugs are creepy,
Mosquitos bite.
You're nice during the day,
but not so much at night.

Arachnids are vicious,
insects can fly.
Your voice is so soothing,
even when you lie.

Crickets sing,
Lightening bugs dance.
I should've known when I met you,
I never stood a chance.