Laos

Thin vociferous tongues

Wag sound letters

Calligraphy senses voice

Sniffing garbage

Swirling smoke dances from grilled meat

H'mong man eats sticky rice with startled fish eyes

Net man deftly braids threads

White filament

Words melt into excellent soft smooth paper

Laughter sings a long song

Wearing a crash helmet

In the event of a volcanic eruption

Pen fountain

Tyranny of whining children

Angry mothers without love die of neglect

How did I get here?

Blind eyes see blind lies

Real eyes realize real lies

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king

We’ve been killing each other for 4,000 years and still no one knows who the king is

Grow Your Soul

Poem

kick boxers attack mangoes

chop ice while shifting gears in the wind after school

six month infants wail at the hospital for a blue placebo pill

charcoal fires waffles

a boy pedals his bike

seeking recycled trash before wicker baskets say hello

spare change searches for user value collecting cardboard images in a squall

red ink meets onion paper at an intersection

whisper secrets with speaking sparrows

inside thematic variations Echo recalls speaking memory

hastening a chill dance with Cinematic expressionism

write in exile

write naked

write in blood

ink is too expensive

write like you will never see

your friends and family again

gestures of silence washes clothes by hand

family loss

personal joy

simple pleasures

mirrors

weight scale

mad blind whore in love jumps over the abyss

smell rain

hear leaves dance

Whisper

Laos

It's a walking meditation.

How do you spell loss?

What I called "memory" contained an entire world.

Imagination is memory.

A blind painter paints from memory. A blind writer. A blind poet. A blind musician.

Painted words of yellow laughter.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

The old monk in the shade reads to his 95 year-old blind friend resting/dreaming in a hammock.

The wailing infant gets a job as a siren on an emergency vehicle.

Once upon a rainy day Whisper paid attention to sensations.

Whisper paid Now.

Whisper is Now. Not Later.

A heavy deluge increased the density of murmurs and ideal idea voices sat quiet.

Voices heard rain bouncing off recycled Asian war PSP sheets in sheets. Steady yellow Agent Orange rain hijacked a life jacket.

He shuddered with the sensation that an entire life had ended that day.

Another unpredictable life was beginning.

Designing the charcoal elements of crisp fire as infants scream at talking heads women drive young ones crazy in out in out their tongues banging like pistons on a desultory 125cc engine propelled by virgins returning home with their unblemished shy dignity intact.

One woman fans skewered buffalo meat to a crisp.

A grandmother cradles an infant. She suffers from diabetes Type II.

Shuddering wedding photos are frozen on a wall. It never turns out like people imagine.

They breed, work and get slaughtered. They trade hands and hearts.

She skewers another hypnotic form of laughter to preserve her conversation.

Fat lost European tourists waddle past.

With an accusatory tone men get smashed on beer Lao.

A mechanic hammers one sharp line of description vs. mundane observation.

Tribal Narrator

After they cut out my tongue I started writing script.

I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire. I added a little water to a gray stone surface and placed the ink in the center.

Using my right hand as Master Liu in Chengdu taught me I turned the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid. A drop of water rippled a pond.

I picked up my bamboo brush with pure white wolf hair. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin delicate paper.

I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, my left palm flat on the table with fingers spread.

I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink then slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess.

I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality character. There are at least 5,000 characters in my written language.

I have much to learn and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.

I stood up straight, took three deep breaths and exhaled into emptiness.

I centered my unconscious on the paper filled with nothing. My wisdom mind of intent became water. It was quiet, calm and still with concentration and focus.

I listened to brush, ink and paper. I am a conduit.

Be the brush, be the ink, be the water, be the paper.

Each essence is pure, free, clear and luminous.

My useless tongue flapped in the cold December Himalayan wind. Stories and songs were birds. I heard children laughing and singing. Playing with strings of word pearls they greeted each other in the babble of nothing,

They dreamed with eyes open.

When we are asleep we are awake.

I memorize ancient chants with black ink soaking through parchment skin.

I am not of this world.

I sit with a diamond in my mind. It reflects 10,000 things.

It is free of the three dusts: desire, anger and ignorance.

I sing my tongue-less body electric.

Where do I park this empty vehicle?

I have paintings, poems, stories, translations of oral traditions to finish that I haven’t even started yet.

If I had more time I’d make them shorter.

Easily amused

Children of all ages are easily amused

by repetition and task-based activities

like sweeping, fucking, eating, sleeping,

milling around and staring at phones with vacant eyes

happy sheep slaves addicted to phones

surrender their consciousness.

Cheap thrills. So it goes.

*

Tribal survivors ate roots and plants garnished with entropy.

Survivors passed through civilizations seeking antiquities. They reported back with evidence sewn into their clothing to avoid detection at porous India-Tibetan borders. They severed small threads along hemlines, Chinese silk gowns and Japanese cotton kimonos. Their discoveries poured light rays into waterfalls rushing over Anasazi cliff dwellings into sage and pinion forests.

Survivors arrived at a mythopoetic part of their journey.

I reflected on the unconscious residue of social, cultural, ethical and spiritual values.

I needed masks. I needed to understand the underlying mysteries inside death masks. I confronted the realm of spirit. I created masks on my pilgrimage. My journey is the destination. Masks signifying the dignity of my intention thwarted demons and ghosts. I became spirits dancing in light.

Everything is light in my shamanistic interior landscape. I released the ego - Ease-God-Out - detached from outcomes, eliminated the need for control or approval, trusted spirit energies and remained light about it.

Inside light with slow fingers and long thin ivory nails I turned clay into pots. Spinning spirals danced on the wheel of time.

I finished throwing them used them for tribal ceremonies and smashed delicate clay pots to earth.

They exploded into the air creating volcanic ash coating everything in a fine dust.

I dug into the soil of my soul.

I scattered raw turquoise stones along a trail of sacrificial tears on a long walk through geography.