A young Vietnamese girl
just new to hamburgers
hard core and hand me downs
cannot
no matter her discipline
pronounce the hard “t”
at the end of words.

Still,
she is saying something,
isn she?

Who are we to pass judgement?
Why can’t we go pas(t) judgement?

Toronto, Bay/Bloor, 5th floor, Language Connections Int., 1996

“Send me your book
when it’s published.”, she said.
just before walking away.

Just like a woman
to always think

there

about the new sofa
or tomorrow’s weather
or the child to be.

What fun we could have had
here and now
all allowed!

God! She’s like the guy who eats
only to get a good bowel movement.
Life is lost unlived.
He stares at the shit
that doesn’t give a shit.

How might I
bear the cold desert nights
of my bed
now L is gone?

Not that I held
her close for warmth
but I do now
that she is gone.

This night
I love you
that’s all I know
between the death throws
the laughter how it shows.
I love you
and on life goes.

This night blue
with our own incompleteness
nowhere no neatness
a sea of fabled wreaths
desire dying beneath.
I love you
that’s all I know
hear the hunger of that below.

This night
I love you
that’s all I know
dumb by life’s drumming
I am no longer coming
going, the piano keys clatter.
I love you
that’s all I know
each second without
I’m about to shatter.

She asks so openly
as only a woman would;
why
my penis, broken out
like a flower
hard with sunshine,
has a head, unhid
in its bold stance?

So openly she as asked
so I told her
“circumstance”.

So much is done to us
before we have a say.
Lost here in bed we can only
wait for the wind to make another day.

Freedom is the failure
to see the right cause
to obey the one and only law
in blindness we’ve stumbled upon;

we don’t know
we’re a flea in the lion’s paw.

I have drawn from
the well
a thousand buckets –
now finally, finally
saying,
“Fuck it. I’m still thirsty.”
walking away
to another world
where desire may not be,
to live unmovingly
an old oak tree
letting the world walk
around me.

I have asked
so many questions
they are now
beginning to answer themselves
with a question,
the way a chain
gets its way
around
link by link
until your
chained up, tongue tied
and you have to hide
cuz u can no longer
spell
it out
and begin
to believe your chains
are wings
and fly away in
thoughts
up high to a nest
where they’ve never come
to question the tree
that which always was
will and always be.

You can walk far

and go nowhere.

You can stop

and still be moving.

You can find happiness

and destroy that of others.

You can build a house

and have no home.

You can love

and swim in sorrow.

You can die

and never really finish.

I came to Kyoto

the quick way –

splitting rice fields

in a flash,

arriving under the mountain

in an instant,

only to sit around

walk around

think,

do nothing.

What good is speed when time stretches out forever?

I returned from Kyoto

the quick way –

splicing villages

in a blink,

arriving by the ocean

so fast,

only to lie around

read

write this poem

and wait on death.

What good is speed when the marker moves with us?

Better to listen for

the cuckoo’s cry

and drink warm tea.

The bamboo in the garden

I’ve never known

to rush –

but how we prune it

with such vigor!