Life is a test. Lessons later.

Discover a pinecone near The Tax Department in Trabzon. It escaped The Department of the Forest.

Make copies of your life. Duplicates accepted. Mirrors reflecting mud and meadows of reality need cleaning.

Visit the Tax office. Get a tax number.

Go to bank. You are #199. Sit on sidewalk. Wait for a teller to tell.

Sullen and impatient she’s late for 12:30 lunch. Sit Down deposits $12,000 for four native barbarians.

Withdraw tomorrow, said Teller’s Overture.

Go to the police residency office across from the cemetery where a wailing mother drumming soil waters roses. Hired guns sing gravestone’s chiseled destiny with a sledgehammer. A gravedigger turns soil in his absolute phenomena of totality.

Grill your usual suspects while eating chicken with shredded lettuce not have this conversation in the abstract.

Giresun loudspeakers imported from Lenin Park in Hanoi engaged, studied and activated speech-enabled synapse software. Attention Comrades.

A woman teacher directed behavior control classes with sparkling syllables. Children memorized grammar rules. Pass the examination. 60 is heaven. 59 is hell. Pass me through.

Life is the test. Lessons later. It is multiple-choice.

Silver man polishes a serving set. Flour hands of a laughing baker removing loaves from ovens whisper secrets near fish hawkers washing ice streams. Bread aromas float past women selling cabbages bigger than lost children.

Walking through sad Giresun rain Lucky remembered his Khmer lover.

The Language Company

Lashio Burma poem

old woman

deep lined face

gray hair pulled back

meditates on emptiness

begging bowl

woman without arms

sits under umbrella

empty begging bowl

loving their phones

market people laugh

selfies - easily amused

wicker basket on her back

silver coins jingle jangle

light passage humor

red thread solid black background

how’s it feel this magic show

meditation, caught in the quiet

absorbing diversity wandering,

sitting in visual symphonies

cement shell zones

steel shutters, mercantile 

set it up…sell…tear it down…go home.

invent a history

Inside laughter she cleaned his ears.

She's young, thin in a crisp white blouse with lipstick and recently married.

Men sweat. Women glow.

Her clean stainless steel tools removed babble, bike horns, whispers, ghost stories, lies, truth, encouraging symbolic metaphors, musical saws describing ice, a little hammer breaking ice.

INVENT A HISTORY

What's your greatest sorrow?

What's your greatest joy?

(Memory)

10 things you love.

10 things you dislike.

Confront your deepest shadow.

Tolerant and open minded. The greatest happiness = acceptance and gratitude.

You are a ghost here.

This is why people stare.

Everyone your age is dead.

everyday is a celebration

A man, wise or a fool must prepare for their end.

Cemetery space, chop wood for a cremation ceremony, white linen cloth, final letters, fixtures and fittings, a guest list. Every day is a celebration .

River. Bell. Bow. Mirror.

Laughter in the tea house. Survivors are happy. One has a secret.

Weaving women.

Everything I do is an experiment.

I am an iceberg.

Want you don't see is fascinating, below the surface.

Composite characters.

People talk about people talking about people.

It's fucking hysterical.

Dr. Death - TLC 81

After eating Turkey with trimmings, Simon Says, a fat jovial American educator with an M.A. in Obscurity collecting centuries on his resume escaped Indonesian archipelagoes on short notice.  

He accepted a new job in the Middle Eats to pay for his emergency life support expenses while employed at a private Jakarta school.

Lucky returned home from his fare-thee-well dinner of grilled-fired fish, rice, veggies and giant prawns swimming in garlic to discover a medium size cock-a-roach scurrying toward dark safety.

One room smelled of Turkish delight, a sweet gooey mixture of nuts, berries and flakey pastry. Another room was resplendent with tropical bird songs and silk warbling blues riffs, improvisational cool cello bass lines and the sweet taste of a flute.

Behind locked doors sad, lonely, angry, and neglected spoiled crying Asian and Turkish humans rehearsed songs of alienation, loneliness and boredom.

Amnesic rooms dancing with autocratic sensations remembered how Simon perceived his decision to decline a doctor’s advice and proceeded with a dangerous medical exploratory option to check out the source of his internal distress.

“No anesthetic,” Simon told Doctor Death. This decision almost killed him in a microscopic moment inside Time, a valiant teacher, an educator, facilitator and an arrow of non-renewable resource. His decision cost him vast quantities of blood. He needed many transfusions from barbarians and strangers.

During exploratory surgery Simon felt a warm light bathing his skeleton. Understanding by Design.

Simon saw God. God said, “Later Simon. I will wait for you.”

 Simon was frayed fabric. A needle dripped volunteered slavery. Lying in his hospital bed Simon contemplated what is life.

Mental gymnastics: Why do simple medical challenges escalate into a life-threatening crisis? Rash misunderstanding of how and why my body said, give me pain killers and my monkey mind ego extinguished flashing rational emergency lights ignoring warning signals common sense and professional medical advice. 

Being a Super Hero had its risks and rewards.

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