Bell

Iceman rings a bell pushing orange wheel cart down Dream Street in Kampot.

He survived The Dark Years ('75-79)

No one ate ice cream then

They ate death, fear, suspicion, doubt, uncertainty

Rice and fish paste if they were lucky
He is lucky to have survived

Now he wanders the river town

Ringing a bell

Enlightenment echoes through hearts minds souls
Survivors cherish bell’s memory music

Flowers at pagoda whisper laughter
Respect love courage dignity compassion

Meditation
Poem nature symbolic butterflies

Silence

Void wheelchair fate
Wheel of Life eats anger greed ignorance

One Hundred Aspects of the Moon - Yoshitoshi

Clowns live on the moon
Flaneur - the sacred prostitution of the soul

Projections of shadow self
Time
Space
Matter
Energy

Being

You are an experiment of the universe with a free will.

Grow Your Soul - Author page

Dance Wing

Butterfly shadows dance in your face
Street theater drama

Feed Me
said the capable girl of 7 in her blue skirt school uniform

to a parent or teacher telling her what to think

sitting on a cement Vietnamese bench
surrounded by green plants and yellow flowers swirling

bakery aromas of baguettes

French dialect dependency waited for her dwindling courage
Draw the future
Poetry sits with sea sky blue
Black swift lets
Dance wing
Saliva
Bird’s nest soup
Delicacy
Negotiate clouds

Calligraphy
Cut up
Less is more
Old man’s face carries future of child innocence
beauty
clean pure radiant

luminous
Dream Sweeper
Kep ocean songbird waves islands
sky rain sings green blue purple
white yellow gray sheets
clouds dance

Space is geography
Time is history
Bird song sings wings

A dying caged bird sings Goodbye Blue Sky - I never knew you ...

Grow Your Soul

Author Page

Spring

One Kampot morning  
Dawn struggles to create music hearing
 Brooms dance with dust as Khmer and Vietnamese women
Bent like branches in strong wind

Hover over leaves, discarded fruit skins
Memories
Bird songs
Night dreams
Sweeping swish a wish
Rain glorious soft smooth clear rain

Cloud tears echo silence
Calm way
Spring speaks laughter
Cool sky jazz

Water imagination seeds with bliss & gratitude

Diamonds reflect a universe on bamboo leaf

In a Brave New World you shift from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness.
I ate civilization.

Breath brain 157 neurons
Attention arousal
Mortar pestle music
Rhythm kids
Chatter with mom on crutches

Reality is a crutch
Steaming gleaming aluminum containers
Meat, eggs, vegetables, soups, rows of BBQ fish, sausage

Smoke curls from charcoal flames
Backpack tourists avoid motorcycle mama mayhem

Little boys with little toys all 125cc
At the speed of light

Be light about it
Blind female masseuse meditates in a green room
A slow steady rain falls
Clean air smells good

A single star,

flickering out in the universe,

is enough to fill the mind, but it is nothing in the night sky.

Grow Your Soul

Author Page

Basho

“Great writers invent their own world, a totality of the experience…literature does not tell the truth but makes it up.” - Nabokov

Morning peace overcast wild waves
Healing process slow and gentle

Healing ointment waves language wind
Nature

Your skin is my skin, said Meow
Zen of Needle

Being present

Awareness

Be a work of art or wear a work of art

Nature...

European man
Next to wife
Tamed by retirement inspects Espresso
Spoons top layer
Savors 1/2
Eats cookie
Swirls 1/2
Swallows
Facial satisfaction
Replaces white cup
Yes speaks to sun baked wife good
Offshore a white sailboat catches a steady wind as she goes eye captain

Tacking for a green island
Two obese Russian women with breasts like unexplored planets
Slather on sunblock

As a Khmer woman selling orange lobsters
From a balanced head pan
Spills small words
Competing for voice articulation

With a Khmer nanny dressing white children
Before they constructed sand castles

Talk Story
Discuss common sense
Not very common
The world of forms/ideas

Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form
Forms in natural world

Basho said, if you want to know a tree go to a tree.

World of ideas

*

  Grow Your Soul - Prose and Poems from Laos & Cambodia

Casablanca

Tattoo

Ink Me
Married to a needle
Zen of needle

Tattoo customers wander into studio:
Russian mafia, Indonesian businessmen,
two female Chinese students
Khmer boy has “Lin Forever” tattooed on his forearm
English man has a cover up job done on a red risqué dancing woman replaced by Dali's “Melting Time.”

Mont Blanc ink me
Penetrate my skin using coil and rotary machines...

Feel the pressure

Surgical precision
Process: set up worktable, cover table, pillows and bed with cling wrap,
arrange needle machines and ink. New needles from sealed packages.

Put on black surgical gloves, attach plug into amp meter for needle machine,
tape stencil on client for tracing. Client lies on back with cling wrapped pillow under head.

Artist places arm on pillow and long wrapped table for support. Small talk.

Artist consults sketch, applies pressure to arm with left hand,
puts needle machine on skin, client inhales,
artist turns machine on, zzzzz cutting skin.
Client exhales. Process continues 2 hours.

Focus of tattoo artist
Calm waves early light

Be the ink
Be the needle
Be the skin

Clear heart-mind healing skin
Ibuprofen 800 reduces wrist/hand swelling. Rest. Water.

Deserted beach, wave laughter, dawn light
Floating world islands remember current
Yoga posture
Healing energies

Orange sunset dives into blue green waves
Swim with
Courage laughter joy bliss and gratitude

Grow Your Soul - Prose and Poems from Laos & Cambodia

Luang Prabang, Laos