On the Other Hand, You Could Have Been Run over by a Truck a Couple years Ago

The tool best fitted to your hand lies centuries deep in an undiscovered midden.
Your onetruelove's parents will be born this year.
That man in the rumpled gray suit you passed in the Taipei airport, speaking what language you      
     couldn't even guess--he would have been your best friend.
The animal that would come to you most readily to have you stroke its soft hard flank was the
     assemblage of bones you shuffled past with your third grade class.
The medicine that would still your fine tremors is locked in the bark of the big tree in your yard.
The recipe for the malted milk cake your grandmother always made you is on a page stuck to another
     with a dab of frosting in a cookbook your mother just sold in a yard sale.
Your favorite and most secret perversion is advertised every day in the Battambang Herald.
The language in which you would write your best poems is spoken by three old women in a high
     valley of Irian Jaya.
The only surprise party of your life dispersed without a trace that night you worked late last week.
The knowledge that will change everything, on its journey of millennia, riding on the light from a
     distant star, is now only a hundred years away.
And yet I, now with memory failing,
in this house built the year I was born,
I am here for you.



That woman in the Taipei airport wearing outrageously clashing colors, she would have been your
     best friend.


And yet here,
with memory failing,
sitting in this house
built the year I was born,
I am for you.
      

Dry and Brittle in the Spring

A leaf from last fall
spitted on a new green spike.
Emerging tulip.

The Maumee in Flood, from the Veterans' Bridge

Sunlight ripples
over shadowed water;
hope, across the heart.

Ever-Gloomy Heian Buddhism

Imagining My Death and Cremation

Sad to end as just
a green haze drifting pale
over distant fields.
--Ono no Komachi

My Two GED Students, 1970

My Two GED Students, 1970


Cherie’s not home
when I get to her place
in the projects across from Gunckel School.
So I bullshit with George awhile
and he gets five dollars
from me for wine--
Pear Ripple, the new flavor.
And when she comes through the door—
twenty-three, tiny,
with her three kids
and her hysterectomy scar
showing above her lowriders—
we hide our orange plastic cups
and I have her read Langston Hughes:
A poem?
It ain't no poem here.

David sits in his wheelchair
at his mom’s dining room table.
We work on the beginning algebra
I taught myself the night before.
He drinks a mug of beer
for his kidneys
and laughs, choking,
about some asshole buddy of his
who made it out of Nam OK,
But signed on to some secret
mission to Cuba
and got his balls blown off,
and now he can walk,
but there’s nothing between his legs.

I Don't Fully Understand This One

In the Hills, a Plum Tree Flowers in a Small Garden


Blossoms all have shaken down, and alone
it casts a warm beauty over the garden,
whose slender shadows lie on shallow ponds.
A faint fragrance drifts under a dun moon.
Snowbirds, landing, look again, to see
what dusty butterflies would faint to know.
Lucky me, making friends with whispered verse—
who needs golden goblets or rhythm sticks?
--Liu Bu

Tanka with the Theme of Misperception

Almost showed you plum blossoms
that were a light fall of snow.
--Akahito



The sea slips from the shore.
One white wave again stands fast.
A crane in the surf.
--The Emperor Uda

To the Dogs

The ravenous god who devours our flesh,
she always throws a bone to the dogs.

The Tenderloin, the Yoshiwara,
Sharon Terkel’s trailer, all gone to the dogs.

Feeling distant from him who lay close,
she crept downstairs alone to the dogs.

A misanthrope she now knew him to be,
for he’d never taken that tone with the dogs.

The parents, but not the sons,
feel most at home with the dogs.

Most say Ron, some Ronald, some Ronnie.
By scent I’m truly known to the dogs.

Two by Li Bai

Seeing Meng Haoran Off From Yellow Crane Tower


As flowers bloom and leaves unfold,
my friend sets out, west for Guanling.
His solitary sail recedes,
vanishing where river meets sky.
--Li Bai






To the Festival Plateau


Feeling oppressed toward evening,
I drive up to this ancient place.
The sun blazes a moment more
before the yellow dusk follows.
--Li Bai

A Whole Lot of Asylum

Whatever your view about whether we should have gotten into Afghanistan or whether we should get out now, most of us should be able to agree that if we leave and the Taliban takes over again, we'll be obliged to offer political asylum to the entire female half of the population. There could be a whole bunch of women trying to grab onto that last helicopter taking off from the roof of our embassy.

More Hoboes

Dead-These-Ten-Years Mitchell
Chester "Polka Down the Tracks" Trazewski
Mustard Sucking Rudy
The Beloved Word-Salad Sarah
Liver Lips Lenny, the Dollar-a-Kiss Man
Gimpy Jim with Kids in Columbus
Trilling Willy, the Mole Whisperer
Merkin-Lint Mavis Stumpel
Trevor from Guelph
Beardless Jane
Imelda, the Former Mrs. Burro
Defrocked Sandor

A Possible Answer

Meme theory is the notion that cognitive items--ideas, phrases,etc.--can be subject to evolutionary pressures. So let's say we have some dubious religious idea. What happens if we add to it provisos that it is absolute truth, that you are deep trouble if you don't truly believe it, and that it is known to be true by faith and is thus impervious to logical disproof? A dubious idea with these provisos would be more likely to be reproduced--maintained in your own mind and passed on to others--than a dubious idea without them. And then what would be the effect of making the idea not only dubious, but to a degree nonsensical or unintelligible? An idea you want to reproduce, remember, pass on to others, that is also not really intelligible, is more likely to be passed on verbatim. More likely to be passed on without mutation because paraphrasing something you don't really understand is difficult. Thus we stand up together reciting creeds.

A Renga Written by My Lonesome

32 COUNT NATURAL CASING LINKS


Waiting in twilight
for darkness deep enough
to light the yellow lamp.

When I was young, I didn’t
dance, and now I dance like this.

The catechism girls
wobble to first communion
on their new high heels.

Oldest memories are of
earlier recollections.

Dream or misty night.
Can you make out the song heard
only from the bridge?

Faintly violet in flight,
the blue and white butterfly.

One purple flower
betrays the bindweed, curled tight
around scrubby trees.

In its arms, the old maple
holds its leafless, broken limb.

I wake up thinking
Christ, my index finger’s numb:
Still holding your hand.

If it’s her perfume I smell
on you, whose scent is that?

As it propagates
throughout, can you say here
voice ends, record begins?

Choose: forgotten happiness
or false memory of joy.

Only now hearing
of a friend’s old hurt—what use
untimely comfort?

So, how much grief and longing
will this little art assuage?

All the workday long,
dogwood blossoms fall on cars
in the shaded lot.

Among all my employments,
please find some trace of my work.

The unheated house.
Back to back with my black dog,
lying in sunlight.

Boats drift apart, together
tug the stake on the night shore.

Recalls his words of
farewell more clearly than her
to whom they were said.

Now long past, the nights
that were to justify our whole lives.

Out front, my car parked
crooked on moonlit ice. Here
we are, warm and naked.

The trees crackle in the wind,
after hours of freezing rain.

Cold rain becomes snow.
We remember summer, though
it not come again.

Walk again in the same woods,
where we’ve always seen new birds.

Long unvisited,
this narrow space, here
between garages.

Note from an inside pocket.
Forgot what it said again.

Of the old photos,
the one remembered doesn’t
match its memory.

Neither so old and sick, dear,
yet, to have to lie alone.

Silver note. Our son
tings the ancient copper bell.
We age gracefully.

At my most garrulous, still
I am thought strangely silent.

The perfect poet,
for greatest effect, just once
in his life writes "fuck."

Shee-it—winter, spring, summer, fall—
beer stanza time, raht chere y’all.

Two by Ono no Komachi

Should the stream whisper "come,"
like a severed reed,
I would float away,
adrift as my heart.



Falling, the long rain,
the color from the flower,
the eye through the world.

A Couple

A COUPLE


For years now I’ve known,
with the first intake of breath,
it’s you on the phone.

How much more gentle
than your words are your fingers
on my sleeping back.

A Few Hoboes Overlooked by John Hodgman

Eat-Me Ed, the Eunuch
John "Forgets His Name" Doe
Ham on Rye, Dijon or Die Harnish
Potato Face Lily
Strapon Esther Manbottom
Hamish the Kiltless Hungarian
Got-a-Letter-Once Grunwald
Kippered Arnie
Fatter-than-Maxie Marvin
Lucky Leo, the Gristlefinder
Japanese Randy
Fish Strangler Betty Scales
Plaid Face Jimmy Drozik
Double Underwear Arnold
Steam Iron Mary Graham
Strain-It-First Cappie Jack

Aren't you?

YOU ARE ALREADY A BUDDHA


I.
May impossible
lovers conspire
to idle over coffee
as if
each other’s
kisses were barely dry
on lips and thighs.


II.
How shall I see
the sun on my hand
as I reach from the shade
for my tea on the table,
not knowing
that just now
your captors have released you
at the muddy end of the logging road
and you are walking down
to the highway?


III.
When will the cartoon coyote,
chasing the bird
out over a cliff
look down and realize
he can walk on air,
at last
allowing the animator
to draw in the blood
dripping from his teeth?
.

A Tanka as a Tanka

Should we never meet,
and entwine, like threads making cord,
now this way, now that,

upon what line shall I string
the jewels of my life?
--Sakanoe Korenori


The rare tanka I've managed to render as a tanka.

Spring Prospect

The nation in ruins,
mountains and rivers remain.

The city in spring's
deep in grass and trees.

My tears at the passing days
fall as dew from the flowers.

Embittered by separation,
I startle at birdsong.

Beacon fires have blazed
for all these three months.

For a letter from home
I'd give ten thousand in gold.

I've pulled so at my white hair
my hatpin hardly holds.
--Du Fu


Thanks to Joel Lipman, the poet laureate of Lucas County, for the suggestion to separate the couplets. Helps to break up the clunkiness, in English, of always-endstopped lines.



Another Version:


The nation in ruin,
mountains and rivers remain.
The city in spring,
deep in grass and trees.

Lost in wretched times,
weeping over flowers.
Sunk in loneliness,
startling at birdsong.

Beacon fires,
burning for three months.
Family letters,
worth thousands in gold.

I've pulled so at my white hair
that my hatpin barely holds.

My One Poem in Bahasa Indonesia

SORE DI MALIOBORO

Orang-orang, banyak warna.
Abu-abu, kehujanan.
Mantel-mantel, kecil di bawa.


Thanks to Yulianti for correcting the syntax of the title

Two by Du Fu

Slender grass in the shore breeze.
Tall mast on a lonely boat.
Stars sink over spreading fields.
The moon rides on the river.
Too old and sick for office--
and will scribblings make my name?
Drifting,drifting, what am I?
One gull between earth and sky.




MOONLIT NIGHT


Just now, alone in our room,
you gaze at the Fuzhou moon.
Our children--I ache for them
from far away--they don't see
why you brood upon Changon.
Fragrant fog scents your gathered hair.
Lustrous moon chills your slender arms.
When, among the gauzy curtains,
will we lean together again,
these tears dried on our faces,
their traces limned in moonlight?

Immoral Structure

On the putative moral structure of the world and/or the character of God:

Are we horrified by the expendability of the lives of unbelievers? Or, say, by the killing of babies to save them from condemnation to eternal torment by their birth into unbelief? Then the horror is not in the logic--often flawless--by which we argue ourselves into these atrocities, but in the premises from which we begin.

Perfect Nonsense

I wrote this
while eating cherries
and it lacks something
I think
for not having
the cherry juice
on the handwritten original.
But it makes so much
more sense
as an imperfect
copy.

Un-American

College football and basketball: an extraordinarily successful scheme for making the minor leagues in these two sports popular and lucrative.

A Million Monkeys Typing for Millions of Years

This sentence is written in a language every sentence
of which perfectly mimics a sentence in English,
but in which language the meaning of any sentence
bears no relation to its apparent meaning in English.

Hey, a self-referential sentence can be a poem too.

Damn, there went another few million years.

So, what language do monkeys type in?

Doh!

A Bloated Basho

My version of a haiku by Basho, repacked in a larger, tanka-shaped box:



Double Vista Bay.
Farewells at the end of fall.
We part as these shells

open upon tender flesh,
as eyelids upon the eye.

A Thought About Big-Box Retailers

To the extent that discounters make themselves able to discount by paying lower wages rather than by real efficiencies, they hire your neighbors to to do jobs for less than the going rate, then offer to split the saving with you. You take yours in in lower prices. They take theirs in greater profit. Or they hire you for less and offer to split the saving with your neighbors. So for you and your neighbors it evens out--minus the greater profit taken in each case.

Two Versions of a Broken Verse by Li Bai

Resentment on the Jade Stairs

Midnight on the stairs of jade,
white dew soaks her silken hose.
Draw down then the crystal shade:
fall's moon glitters in its gems.




Stood Up on the Jade Stairs

Midnight on the stairs of jade,
white dew soaked your silken hem.
Draw down then the crystal shade:
moonlight glitters in its gems.

Some Spare Parts for a Renga

Boats drift apart, together
tug the stake on the night shore.



Moaning, moving together,
old couple turns in their sleep.



She's sitting on this,
the cat who lies on my book
when I read in bed.



Even my foolishness
has its place in the world.

TWO BY SAIGYO HOSHI

Destinations unknown,
two ships that left harbor
side by side, now diverge.



Before the dubious shrine
I stand dumbstruck and crying.

HITOMARU: My Versions in English

Not combing my morning hair,
so lately pillowed in his hand.



Dim in the mist of morning
off the shore of Akashi:
the island hiding the boat
upon which sail all my thoughts.



Walking past my door
unglancing: how she tells me
"so then, die of love."