A Long Walk Home through Downtown Vancouver

downtown here
is just like my city

in this city
poems are written on parchment

everything important
is said in silence

around each sharp corner
soft green edges

am I walking too quickly
or running too slowly

to English Bay
where low tide strands deadfall

this city
is nothing like downtown home

in my city
poems are written on pavement

everything silent
is said to be important

around each sharp corner
soft rivers’ edge

am I running away from
or walking right into

downtown Brisbane
where king tide swallows mangroves whole

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

#gibberese

#gibberese  #gibberese

‘#gibberese’ is a dialogue across oceans. It’s a dialogue of land, fauna (especially birds), and writers who have mostly never met one another. As a component of a rawlings’ 2012 Arts Queensland Poetry Residency and subsequent legacy item Gibber, over twenty writers from Australia, Canada and the USA utilised Twitter to live-generate an exquisite corpse over the span of one hour. This was simultaneously projected during a performance at the Queensland Poetry Festival in August 2012. Post-performance, Twitter’s robots (curiously all assigned young female personas) extended ‘#gibberese’ by recycling the tweets written by the poets. The exquisite corpse itself was accessible via Twitter for a few days after the event occurred. For those readers familiar with Twitter, you’ll understand the enthusiasm that this project brought as the hashtag #gibberese trended (meaning it was promoted to front-page popularity given the frequency of its usage on the social media site) for a period of time during and after the event.

This manifestation finds hundreds of ‘#gibberese’ tweets cycling randomly; any entry into the world of ‘#gibberese’ will be unique given the random occurrence of the texts.

‘#gibberese’ was co-created by a rawlings, Ray Hsu (Canada), david stavanger (Australia), Emily XYZ (USA), Kent MacCarter (Australia), Katie Fedosenko (Australia), Julie Beveridge (Australia), Craig Dodman (Canada), Carmel Purkis (Canada), Christine Leclerc (Canada), Angela Szczepaniak (Canada), Angela Hibbs (Canada), Elee Kraljii Gardiner (Canada), Lainna Lane (Canada), Sarah Gory (Australia), Michael Christopher Holmes (Canada), Sonnet L’Abbe (Canada), Jamie Popowich (Canada), John Back (Australia), Tim Sinclair (Australia), Norma Lundberg (Canada), and Nikki Reimer (Canada).

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A’ao

Right index finger
caught in the ringer.

Clenched fists
await a granddaughter.
Holding hands
in the dark toilet.

Patched hole
in the homestead
1899 reminder.

Shape shifter matai
Sina feeding gogo
her hand sweet.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Pomegranates, Early November

I want to be a cat. I want to be
the snowfall in Jersey after
a hurricane’s ruined feat. Know

this poem follows a template: where
I take your words and stuff them
in my mouth. Here I grow hungry

and walk short distances
in the San Francisco rain, cupping my hands
telling the world that this is the only way

to hold rain. To view the poem through City Lights,
wondering why I’m never used to reading
at daylight. I think about the future,

no deja voodoo that no one can
out do. I am at the store now buying
live fruit: opening it with a dull knife, watching

its seeds spill. Here: take your words,
take the seeds I spat –
make a tree the cat can sleep on.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Reluminations II

The streets have felt much of the century

arch of sky all art & activity

There are bread lines in the streets

Quotations like robbers sink

who leap out armed

who aim to not only have the most

who encased in the core of a shell

who loved their metonymic body-parts (teeth, signatures)

who help me understand all those love songs and how the artists
must have felt when writing them


*


I feel I say a drink might help

For sale unheard of animals their cries

towers fired upon simultaneously

Future prospects smaller than today

after the feast of flying bricks

We recommend a midnight train

a Garry Oak on southern Vancouver Island.


*


the beginning of the impossible is here

its phantom limbs and silver flanges

the goods the mob captures

A collection of obsessions, oblique references and footnotes

Keep munching until all the animal is gone


*


It will be the same

They will be unfit for further service

Rabble

Thus did it happen

I saw it

Cruel tale of woe

Unhappy mother

They do not arrive on time

What is all this noise?

The great he-goat and the drowning dog


*


I am Part Neanderthal, genetics confirms

the difference is when someone runs out of money

cuts descend on deserted streets

brokers reacting in a trading room

burning car after burning car

become a regular form of expression for the disenfranchised

occupied or picketed or just appalled


*


The storm of the future grows skyward

inanimate but reaching down into the orchestra pit

hedgies with a philanthropic bent, aight!

the politicians were for sale this whole time?

randomly rising inside the auditorium

get ready to jump into the Abyss

that consumer society attaches so much value to


*


walk away from the medium vs message conundrum

somehow expected radicals and activists to be falling out of
every doorway

Do they not know the flood has come and gone?

burp once for yes, twice for no

nooks of the ruined bank (formerly a Starbucks)

Keep munching until all the animal is gone


*


on the chaotic untitled works of cities

Avant-garde Memories of the Good Old Days

tour through those countries

the economy will have to muddle

into a police state youth have rejected

as we swing back and forth between moments of clarity
and densities we cannot explain


*


If time flew then there isn’t much fun

This was a bank now it’s a Starbucks

to deal with the crushing debt

A forest full of beautiful trees

I must confess to a little pessimism about the future

give me on-line shelter

gather round an overturned bus
real crowd pleaser

then grant some of them a rage effect / some of them agency


*


Prospero’s phonebooks

in spite of refusing to tour this album

bad faith seizures by police

designed for generations at the end of the alphabet, aight?

Disruptively Better Business

Now Blizzard decides to screw us here in cataclysm

Cue voiceover of slow-drawling veteran talking about

heiress / media whore he very soul of this establishment


*


What a week it has been in climate change!

There’s not much meat on these bones—a stew?

They didn’t really need the police after all, huh.

Gilded wooden animals, tiny fish, seraphic centauresses

It’s not as much like “Withnail and I” as I’d expected

You can’t eat money or poems


*


We come back to sadness

That gum you like is going to come back in style

Maybe I’ll sleep inside my coat

unable to keep the present in its place

death is a dramatic escalation of their rage and frustration

Philip Morris Tobacco Corp. Inc. appealed yesterday to the government


*


Narrative, I lay you across my knees and spank your reddening bottom

Merchant of blemish

It was a landslide—except that, you know, not that many people voted

that sheep probably resent the word “sheeple”

You know that thing we keep doing to the Middle East we keep calling
“liberation”?

I have a hazmat suit and a rag soaked in vinegar


*


These are instances of the poet in shock

artist that blankness cannot actually mirror

find a lyric hole to curl up in

Today, it does not matter

What is it like to have albinism?

I feel I say a drink might help

back to mermaids back to dredging

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Japan Series

Wheat gluten sticks with red miso and Fox tail millet
Fox tail millet, one sees the tiny
teeth of the vixen, biting
tiny bones of wheat,
her tail upright in the autumn morning.

Sakomoto Noodle Shop
We stop for a bowl
of noodles, the broth arrives,
slightly peppery, after
talking in circles
tangled like ramen.

Little Murmurry Bakery
The buns hiss slightly in their pans,
loaves mumble in the oven.
Out springs an outspoken Danish;
Oh, sighs the pie, I’m made to be broken.


Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

National Anthems

They are the skull and crossbones of tunes
designed for winning championships
or cheering troops.

Never rock ’n roll
they’re in the classical vein
with trombones, cymbals and flutes.

All written by the same person
or so it sounds,
whether Australia or Congo,
the bony drum-rumble
and trumpets yelling.
A poet probably added the lyrics—
those high-tone phrases for camp reverence.

However unruly a place
there is a ruly brass band on parade
presidents and footballers mouthing the worditure.
They’ll manage the first verse okay—
the one about mountains and forefathers.
After that they mumble air in forgetfulness,
pipe up again for bits of the chorus,
lay a palm or fist to their hearts.
A few slouch ‘Whatever’ like we did at school.

La Marseillaise is the best of them:
It roars barricades and slums,
a get-even swagger and violent grace,
justice’s perfect noise.
You can’t imagine Jesus whistling it,
but that’s a recommendation—
he made himself his own blood sacrifice
which was a bad sign.

The marcher’s art
is in clicked heels and buffed toes,
stiff pleats and arms swung in unison,
a vicarious war of good manners and style.
An anthem’s art is the equivalent sung:
two strangers side by side can do it
and imagine common ancestors watching over them
like parents inspecting their young,
making everyone else a foreigner
not quite good enough to belong.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Near the Tree with Caretaker Roots

27th Century BCE, China

Firmly bound

Swathed
In marmot skin

My winter daughter
Stiff as a branch

Arranged upright
In a vessel.

Petals, scattered,
Praiseworthy companions

Thrown to brighten
Her starless brow.

Yet colourless, my emotion.
A coursing grief

Falls on sharp blades.

What we know of emptiness
Is nothing.

Tomorrow
Over the burial ditch

Between two dwellings

The sun will continue
To release its arrows.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

nagasaki

a white collapse
as if kiosk of
an uncertain sky

one moment

the paper fold of each

A=0

flat.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Topside, Nauru

like one-armed
drownings
these
marked escutcheons
crash

through the quaky crust,
in no clear pattern

some
stalk
others

a few
adrift,

even more
abandoned;

all eyeless.
doomed.

there is nothing else here
frigate birds stay away,
and even the leaves have left

just jagged monoliths:
dead men.

expedition over –
stone surrender
to the indefectible
sun

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Totality Canto 25

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    Referred limited democratic vocabulary cell affects
          System being
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    Get conventional right wave skepticism
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      Robot choices scene orderings
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              Cocaine pastor revolutionaries make dual induction heart
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                  Conflict dutch time ruins fact modifications
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                Appears populational and/or playful utility
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          More acted assured savage orthodox administration cultures agreed
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      Absolute finitude essence histogram imposes recommended ill minimal existence constitution
    Within one-sided tractatus newt
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          Mental unanimity algorithm passion answer disablingly often
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            Summarized reliable vector defiance instantaneously
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              Civil grand oriental
                Vast early unusual found service married sophisticated planet recruitment conviction
    Debasing modern fellow chaotic oathbound regular analysis countenance rumor
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              Nice holy knockdown years absorb sketched voice intuition cover
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              Directed discriminating calibrated flack chuck dimension surfaced
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        Manage misleading sir still when factories too affair introduces
Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Touching Earth

To leave your homeland is to achieve half of the dharma – Milarepa

Leaving all places like walking out of an empty house.
Long years of the dark-eyed lens
obscuring sight losing focus on what’s been lost
inland seas of tears
opened unburdened
a humming jet-plane moving empty-faced
across Antipodes desert and drift
sheer Himalaya ridge of mind’s eye
breaking through
unknown space.

Is that what all exiles are:
every morning meeting
‘the air of another planet’
knowing that freedom comes out
of a cupful of silent water
where bodies everywhere seek their own weight
in another wait in abeyance
to inner-city street-grit worlds
stories dried-up books forgotten
love sex dissolved in
film-frame all 24 maps of ecstasy
gone in a second
of wheels lifting from earth
the end-click of a long-distance line.

In buses trains planes
rickshaw oxcart cargo-ship
moving through still earth
without the Original Ticket
the next stop-point only
half a destination
to take flight flutter
unfurl get cast down -out
from nectar places unravel in fever-beds of
hunger or
the deafening suburbs –

where does everything go?

*

In India passing alone by Ganges steps
the ghats frantic with Shivaratri
mania of bells didgeridoo
among the flames Brahmin dead
satellite-enshrouded beamed-out from Krishna’s vast maw
kaleidoscope of all the worlds turning there:
Wall Street pretas Fairfax demi-gods
belly-dancing brokermen flab-fool’d
grasping at hours champagne flute
sewer-music efflux of the spheres
before the rage of yuga’s turning
CNN oraculars World Cup finals
bedtime benedictions of the BBC
updates on the bombing raids
‘keep the homefires burning’
terrorist cells inciting
domestic fissures new cracks in the wall –

stop in at Shiva’s druggy shrine
make offerings to all the ghosts
spirits yakshas
crowded inside the Shadow of untold lives
10,000 years gathered in this town
someone wants to sell you opium someone else enlightenment
drumbeats bloodletting Varanasi arteries
bhanged-out in the night
time-blown in the year 2012
on Dasaswamedh Ghat the aarti
hums an open-tuning on the air
all beings with the dead turning Shiva blue
by dawn chillum-smokers rouse
Ganges lapping bank
pale blue boat
drifting loose vulture hovering above
smoke-stained roof…

Syndicated News in Economy can’t show the burning
of Rohingya Muslim Syrian inferno
Abraham’s brothers-in-blood
Kurdish no-man’s land
Tibetan genocide unsung
Hutu plains of bone-bleached soil
lost peoples every one where do they all go
silent as old Buddhas of Afghanistan
blown up into ten-thousand pieces
each pregnant with Kasyapa’s smile
lying in dust to ask of silence
if the great matter of life and death
sphinx-riddle that refuses answer
world’s perpetual will to suffer is the only will to tame her
the hungers the horror of self-willed hells
the only proof to convince us
of death’s provisional night
the steady grace of pain
evaded misread unheeded
under stratosphere sonorities rustled newspapers
static over the intercom all the dappled Way
from some God to here…

*

Dawn come
birthing inbetween the blinds
someone else’s motherland yielding beneath the wheels
breasts of coastal hills
nervous system of Los Angeles grid
vast serpentine.

Milarepa was wrong
there is no homeland other than this mind
though its relinquishing give us dreams
no choice
though filmic narrations
demand heroes and ill-histories
succour of war
refugee-plagues
knocking at democracy’s
Janus-faced door
another crusade against
apostate the meek
Earth’s poor.

Coming to every unknown shore
an innocent and a fool
stepping-down touching earth
history’s weight uncaught
flies breathless
away from you
unyoked it seems always
unsought –

this life the only life to bring breath to.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

The Pacific Ocean

is of Scandinavian
origin, & is about
to undertake a
tour of several cities south
of the Mason-Dixon line
with a show in
which it enfolds
local polypeptides &
assigns musical notes
to mathematical
algorithms. Tickets
go on sale at the
beginning of March.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

The Reprisals after the Great Earthquake of Tokyo

The reprisals come as intent to smother the volunteer
communitarians and orators in the interim, when all smoulders and aches and begins
to regenerate. Effigies of dogs around necks, unsigned summons sported at the hip
a heraldry of pamphlets. In flak and light shoes
they bust the paper doors of old Asakusa and its secret slots
the self-governed Fuchū
the small-time smugglers of Azabu
suspend the summoned by the ankles, poison and drown them in the wells 
from which they’re purported to have come, until hair stops.
Crimes in the interim between presentations, between the film about the Bibliotheque 
Nationale and the film about the lynched union official drawn out of the factory 
and into the field.				   The claypits had him
                                                                like a club 
                                                                      to the head.
Summoned by hand in lieu of affidavit,
frontispiece of the library hoists the child
to the front balustrade of the rostrum and harries
till the mouth clams shut, meaning closes 
into absence ipso facto.

The smugglers of Ikebukuro drowned in shreds of cycle race bets,
foil to the smartly dressed bookshelves of the modern history of village Hokkaido. 
Once again, until hair smells of nothing, hangs like a willow 
in the dead of night. Tossed from the factory
					                  into the field.
In the interim they swan through the cracks and sluices and quiet places of the noisome
town, friends fettered to their throats,
friends at hips and friends at knees, encircled by hordes of man’s
best friend in attack formation – no place to them without stink –
formed until all progeny of the well are thrown out by hand and shibboleth 
along with their languages and periodicals, 
tossed back to the field
                   and the claypits, no word of the purge there
                                                       but a gargle 
                                                          of the autolytic slough.
Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Waiting for the Big One, West LA, 1982

We never did understand how that old pair of shoes
ended up in the bathroom; neither could we fathom
how our bed dropped like a rock, moments before
sunrise; and, although we knew perfectly well why
the moon turned red around midnight, we never really
explained our rattlesnake fear that the Pacific Ocean
would reclaim all points west of National Boulevard.

Our last source of air leaked out through bullet holes
in the plate glass windows; Gray Whales breached just
beyond the sandbars; Brown Pelicans squabbled over
anchovies; wildfires blackened the Chaparral, set seeds
for next spring’s Californian Poppies. Would we reach
Santa Catalina Island? We checked our supplies (beans,
water, rice), held our breath, our hands, fitfully slept.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Mother’s Line as Logarithmic Spiral

This place where wily warehousemen and clerks
traded pots and pans for ermine and marten
This place—Voilà un diamant du Canada
quartz crystals exhibited back home
This place—the land God gave Cain—
rocky shores now slowly sinking into the sea
This invented America, this illusory kingdom
This place took her.

Her bones lie in hard ground in Vancouver
with kababayan whose markers define her boundaries.
She bought this piece of property.
Truly Canadian now: Daughter of the Soil.

Something made more out of mere discovery.
Something made attractive so as to justify
that transpacific adventure to conquer new territory
where she danced, loved, founded a community.
Life continuum. No ubi sunt, no exiled lament, no loss, no ruin
but siþ

transforming that displaced Visayan girl who said—

I’m ninety.
They’re all dead there now.
I have nothing to return to. —-

as we sat over tea and muffins at her kitchen table.

……….

Despite purple skies and golden sand, mother,
you’re not here in Onay Beach in your natal Samar.
The water gasps in and out like the heartbroken woman
whose hanged body gave this name—diin ba ang may nag-onay
is this where she destroyed herself?
You rejected her.
Empty seashells prick my feet.
At the edge, in the open ending, a mollusk had built
an equiangular spiral, gnomonic, marvellous,
growth curves elegantly expanded shaped by its lifespan,
not a circular spiral for that would have suffocated it
like rope around one’s neck.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

ginen tidelands

~

“The fallen Latte is the sign. It is from within the row of Latte that we feel our strength. It is the
severred capstone that gives us Their message, ‘Ti monhayon I che’cho.’ We will not rest until the
Latte is whole.”

                              —Cecilia C. T. Perez
                              from Signs of Being—A Chamoru Spiritual Journey



~

“these latde stones
were moved from
the village of mepo
behind the military fence
to a museum—
but then they were moved
again to this park
for tourists

              [early prelatte period : prior to 1485 bc—500 bc]

“to build i guma’latte’
a traditional house
start with the foundation
the latde—

“find a stone that resembles
the haligi, the pillar
then find a coral head from the reef
for the tasa, the capstone

“to build larger latde
you have to go to the quarry

“first outline the shape of
the haligi and the tasa
in the stone like writing
the bones of a house

“then dig

              “an act

              relative to
              changing

              the official name
              of guam

              to its name in
              Chamorro

              Guåhan

“to move the tasa and haligi
[we] need rope

“peel the bark from
the hibiscus
cut into strips
dry and weave with
your hands
like this

              [intermediate prelatte period : 500 bc—1 ad]

or get coconut husk
soak and dry
and braid the strands
like this

                             “from
                            guaha :
                             there is
                             have
                            exist

                            the final ‘n’
                             denotes
                             possession of

                             Guåhan : a place that has
                            a place of resources
                             all-encompassing

“then [we] pull
the stones from the quarry
pull with your legs pull with
your arms your back pull with
your shoulders pull
from your bones and
breath and
blood

              [transitional prelatte period : 1 ad—1000 ad]

“pull the stones
to the land
that will hold the house

                                                                                    here?

“dig
to root
the haligi
fill the space
with rocks

              [larger latte period : 1000 ad—1521 ad]

“build a ramp of dirt to
the top of the haligi pull
the tasa and place it
on top

              “unlike Guåhan
              it is difficult to decipher
              the base word guam
                                          or its etymology

              guam
                            was predominately referred to as Guåhan
              from 1521 until 1898
                            in 1898 the treaty of paris signed by spain and us
              referred to the island as

              guam

              words instill ownership

“when all the latde stones
are placed in parallel rows then
[we] can build the house above

“the spanish called them casa
de los antigos
house
of the ancients
before they destroyed them
but many latde stones survived
just like us

              “the legislature finds that guam
                            shall herein after be
              Guåhan

              all references to guam shall be renamed
              or understood to refer to Guåhan

              And shall be
              the official designation

              of the island

“in the space beneath the house
within the latde stones
you can work
cook
build and shelter canoes
learn to navigate

              [early historic period : 1521 ad—1700 ad]

“the dead were buried
beneath the dirt beneath the house
woven into the roots of the latde
close enough to protect [us]

                                                                                    even if [we] were moved?

“even here
yan pago
hasso
i patgon-hu
hasso

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

What What

Three Artist’s Notes for ‘What What Nigger’

“The verbal image which most fully realizes its verbal capacities is that which is not merely a bright picture (in the ususual modern meaning of the term image) but also an interpretation of reality in its metaphoric and symbolic dimensions. Thus: The Verbal Icon.” W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry

“If you determine the process starting from its structure, you obtain at least the structural materialism. You avoid the constitution of the real by the subject; you short-circuit the phenomenology of the data of consciousness.” Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject

“Matter was that which both threatened and offered salvation. It threatened salvation because it was that which changed. But it was also the place of salvation, and it manifested this exactly through the capacity for change implanted in it.” Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe


What’s happened to me? Look at me?
What, what nigger.

She did not say anything derogatory to him at any point:
she did not say “fucking niggers,” he did not say
“fuck you, bitch.”
Under her breath, she muttered,
“fucking niggers.”
He said, “bitch, I know you didn’t call me no fucking nigger.”
She lunged at him with the knife; he backpedaled
and swung back. He hit her three times.

She remembered being in first grade with him,
walking hand in hand, and being called gay, wetbacks, and niggers.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

No Movies

Mobile web motherfucking street party
another attack today

fight like an Egyptian

in Chicano cinema
mouth taped shut
gun taped to your hand

“The Border Patrol swallows
as many shadows as it can.”

She had twenty children, Iztapalapa,
hijos de la chingada

it is accomplished
these streets are full

ghosts hella lay book on fools
who come hang out

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A Minuscule Map of the Country

(discounting the Coriolis effect)

The antipodean plug lies in a pool, like any other
plug, any other pool, where breasts dunk and voices
drown with the universal two-bob watch.

Nonetheless, a garden gnome or a kangaroo shadow
is plastered into a corner. A painted ear
sprouts a mullet, an AFL flag and a 60s song.

Space is taken by exclamation marks instead of
words or “ah!?”, with pawpaw vaudeville spilling
its guts alongside the oil monster’s teeth.

And landscape looking like toast is topped
by blue wren with worm, on a coast lined
with lashes and strokes, the Australian Crawl.

It is tidal rather than epiphanic, full of blurts
and gurgles, a frenzy of gold drapes discloses
dynamite, a dash of IT, a shout of the white stuff.

The immunity of litter is where the ends
have bled into space, time and a chlorine pool
in transmutation of the surface, blue existence.

Tough your way out of the map via a house of
ain’ts, of club riddles and perks, a terroir of tears
on the coast, and naked lights on whirling hills.

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Greater Kaohsiung Jaywalking Poem

Everyone’s pinking about us–
Les Enfants, military-joke movies, New Taiwan Flavors become a must

Blue Way jeans, yellow movies, savoring water trades of summer
Fahrenheit Boy Band, blue jokes, the promenading dharma-bummer

I am speeding truck drivers gone manic by the Donggong River
You will become Red, oh Angry Buddha, another new highway deliver!

Sign-glutted, I world past the Nail Queen Boutiques
stroll primordial pasta alleys, laughing Tooth Fairy Dental Cliniques

Me. Love. Love. Me. Café I just may
Pure Tea, Just Drink It, Wufu Third Way arcades say

I take in World Games closing ceremony giving off oceanic savors
containerized shipping-port cast in multiethnic global flavors

Circle Lotus pond, “Taiwan number one” says ex-soldier guiding us around
Chad compares our walk to a forced march round a military-compound

How do I turn left, sir?— “You just take five rights past the Bagel Bagel 5”
But how do I say ‘no’ to this soldier guy?

Foreign Land Ingredients Snack Shop by the subway-entrance clock
3 cops, 2 cyclists, 3 pedestrians give us wrong directions round a block

Formosa Beauty, Formosa Plastic, Birds of Formosa flying free
Asia-Pacific Machine Group becoming Hegelian global-ocean destiny

so many spreading Beetle Nut trees
cover this homeland of shrinking coconut trees

Golden Oldies echo around the world on ICRT
Just Smile Gas Station for the grimacing drivers by the MRT

“Please forgive me, I am nonsense, maybe!”
said a high school student laughing, negating English-as-destiny

if the God-who-will-give-us-money
flips over into the computer screen, worshipping ginseng honey

then “the god who’s a drifting bum” still follows me
Black Pig north, White Pig south, by the Catholic headdress of a Paiwan Mary

bursting yams mangos karaoke food, dreamy semiotics, our summer-fare:
yes it’s the Xtra Rally Gift Shop, you must take the Totoro Bus (but to where?)

Posted in 54: TRANSPACIFIC | Tagged

Day of a Seal, 1820

A tall ship patrols the coast,
pelagic fish are vanishing.
I sniff the kelp and bloodworms,
mould into an eroded kerb
with an akward wriggle of neck, whisking
as if hiding my fur was natural
as instinct for milk, or man.

Tuesday afternoon, Bass Strait’s shadows
ring the slaughter sands.
A man in sandals reeks as he wheels his rage
with a pivot, swings his heft.
A half-caste. I watch him clench the haft,
before the first blow shocks.
He braces and repeats.

Black women from the camps pile our skins
on spits for tobacco, for oil.
Some snatch at birds with their gloves— now
I am weightless as feathers
my arteries shut tight, as if underwater,
the acidosis bearable though
I cannot strike back.

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On Not Having Encountered Snow, Aged 43

The Siberian whimbrel, all the weight of a human hand
Gestures to the artic wind as it rises, never looking back,
As if the greater insult is to survive winter’s chokehold.
The fingers of its wing feathers adjust reflexively to tiny
Snowflake fluxes like a glove scraping ice off a windshield,
As it leaves behind its dog-bowl shaped nest & two million
Other frozen craters on the tundra. It flees before the cold’s
Pack-ice strength crushes the life out of it; before its food
Reduces like a supply of cut firewood in a Russian folktale.
From this curlew’s eye view; Asian shore habitats chopped
Up by reclamation butchers, their fatty coastlines trimmed
Of their energy. Here, its oil-gauge bill fits the fiddler crab’s
Hole neatly, when it tests the marine engine of our estuaries.
On Nudgee beach, waders muscle up for their flight home.

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Postcards from ‘The Neon Cactus’

I


‘Mother me, sunlight’. Fashionable mantras
pass the time from one damp hand to the other,
anesthetizing the old embarrassments I am
writing you in order to water down.

The hotelier has me make up the rooms,
tart up the palms with tinsel, insert bin liners
in the hollowed tree trunks, sift shells
and rake sand. The service is bare bones.

The guests are festive, not bothering to save
the paper for next year. To flatten and fold it
is too hard a job, post hubbub. It’s over
pretty quick. Each retreats to fiddle with gifts,

leaving on the pretext of a minor lie,
a counterfeit coin come to bear.
Some come
to prefer the company of statues.


II


Hairy stretches of Highway 1 ooze
through me at inopportune junctures —
the way, after driving all day, one drives
in dreams. Your mind drops you off

and drives on. You hold it against me,
but I can hold it, this wheel-like flotation
device, ring of fear. This is the third beard.
Clearly, I lack the moustache.


III


Becalmed by cutlery snug in their serviettes,
I rise before the guests to swim laps of the legume-
shaped pool. I make up the rooms, fold the edges
of towels to resemble flowers, and garnish with actual petals.

As I write, scaly patterns ripple the pool, filling me
with a pride that is undermined by an image
of your ankle pivoting to reach a kick serve,
effort and innocence visible in a ligament.

The scales turn and you are frozen there
forever. Vulnerable, the word is a mouthful.
The surprise sound of ball against fence.
A winner, down break point, I put down

the pen to pour tiny piles of sugar crystals on
diminutive saucers, anointing each one,
Mt Sweet, High Peak, and see the ladder-rail
from the pool is a pair of italicized R’s,

stars of light knifing their spines. And the past,
we must let it run around exhausting itself.
It’ll sleep better tonight, and fall from us
like pool.

The future is mute,
a belligerent ventriloquist’s doll.
Its lips begin to move,
quite dryly, struggling to part.

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