My so called life does not make sense
So watcha gonna do?
Take the Downbound Train
To the Pondicherry Zoo

City at Night. City at Night!
Try to break on through
Carolina Inn
With her and me and you

      Rothko green and blue

                 Seattle U.

Against the threat of etoliation
I play basketball - my staycation

Moon aglow, crisp chill night
As when young and all was right

Starshine yellow, Mr. Van Gogh
Bipolar misery I too know

But not tonight, children here
Keep me sane, hold them dear

Years roll by, games do too
Sophia! Sophia! I love you.

My intensity also frightens me
See how they run
A little peace comes dropping slow
And then there then were nun

Movie theaters
Video Games
Breakfast on the road

Sleepless nights
Hydroxyzine
Brain on overload

Endless search
Solitude
Longfellow's Day is Done

Mysticism
Hospitals
But did I have a little fun?

     un pequito, my darling one

So afraid of being forgotten
Please help me not to fear
Snow Falling on Cedars
I too disappear

Grateful for the travel
Grateful for the song
Long live David Markson!
Am I late along?

Tired. Lonely. Tired.
Pain on rain on train
Exoplanets spin
Stars shine in your brain

                Discoveries!

Tokyo to Kyoto
Upon the Shinkansen
Not really a question of if
More like a question of when
Will I too disappear
Like I’ve never, ever been?

Often unwell, she wrote
Often unwell is true
Endurance please and movies
Rest my point of view

Wait for it to come to me
Help my second son
Libraries in the New Year
Little way French nun

Q can cook creme brulee
Now almost as tall as me
Get Cam into sports
Watch him run break free

Plato wrote in dialogue
I can write it too
Shema Israel
Marc Cohn taxi Lu

    The best for last for you

Emily leaves her fascicles
David Markson leaves his books

Lao tzu leaves the DaoDeJing
I am one who looks

Solitude is openings
Taco trucks have cooks

Listening to Ludwig
I now my move my rooks.

Kamakura snow
        silencio
             yo

Don't wanna be a party of one
But I do need solitude
Rainy Night in Georgia
I wait. Do not intrude.

One Dark Knight
The Windy City is Wendy
She is on my mind
I plant and place and plenty

We are short stories
Dragons at my Gate
Spirited Away
Touch a Tiger plate

      Mother Asia

The Notecard Quartet
The postcard poet
God creates flies
Spider-Man does know it

Into the Spiderverse
Yo, what's up, Danger?
Near the London train
Shared my dream with a stranger

Her name was Samantha James
She ran to the bus
In the wind is London Calling
Silently I trust

     Love is an Angel disguised as lust

                 Desperate ******

                             Us

lamplight rain
        night
          yo

Si Deus, Unde Malum
Does indeed destroy
Every human lie
But not every human joy

All attempts to think
Through theodicy
End in total failure
The silence of eternity

But in our dream drive to make art
Music and poetry
I sense a hopeful hint
A possibility

That a creative cosmic Artist
Touches our human brains
Leads us from within
Amidst our persistent pain

Toward music-making beauty
A transcendence we can’t quite see
A yearning, an acceptance
Mystical unity

I think I'm a geek
My son says I'm a nerd

Do we find what we seek
In this universe Absurd?

Prayers for Susan Meek
Men on first and third

Desafortunadamente
My favorite Spanish word

                   Ole!

The morning of my birthday
Hello, 52
Never been back to Knoxville
No Porsche in my front yard

Life is suffering
This the Buddha knew
I rode the downbound train
Times indeed got hard

Gonna write today
Postcards in the mail
Find my superpower
Truly, no canard

2037
Then grey and misty nights
Time is like an ocean
Long live the Bard!

Miles and Mr. Morales
    Farrington Road, texmex tomales
             San Antonio much more than Dallas...

                                             great responsibility.

Said Emerson.

is this a crazy coincidence?
     he smiled and strangely said

or do you perhaps know Todd
     to Aiden's pizza lately led

no, I do not know him
     the tattooed Meghan soon furtively fled

but first she mentioned Stranger Things
    Quinlin, kindness, cred

Wolfgang Pauli to Niels Bohr:
You probably think these ideas are crazy.

To which Niels Bohr: Unfortunately,
They are not crazy enough.

pace Sartre, God is an Artist
          like a painter, not a Bonapartist
                    where it's light, and where it's darkest …

                                       Creativity!

She said I was polite
But freaked out by my ?
In favor of tyrannicide
Shiva the Destroyer

Sic Semper Tyrannis
George Mason in Virginia
Jimmy Reed Indeed
And everything within ya

Silent Thomas Aquinas
All is straw at the end
The hardest thing to do
Find a true blue friend

La Florida the Land of Flowers
SauRon Desantis
I watch the waking hours
My hands in prayer like a mantis

                Yo estudio

struggles again, criticism, screaming
   fight and flight, torment teeming
                but natural birth
              our joyjump beeming ...


So in the far off snow, California dreaming

Costa Rica this morning
Costa Rica and St. John
Coincidence and mystery
The Road goes ever on

Slowly guacamole
Let the music play
Jo Jo's Arizona
My callooh! callay!

Step by step by flight
Early Saturday
Jodi Picoult alights
Life of Pi to pray

Still got a few ideas
I plot and plant to place
Quiet conversations
The charm, the change, the chase

                  Hearts: Ace.

maybe it's a diary
my life as little poems
my life as long disease
exoplanet Sky

photos of Chinese trains
not really Dr. Strange
mouse in my house
Larry Bird, not Danny Ainge

ugly American churches
all my fruitless searches
Denver, Colorado
slowly guacamole

Shakespeare in Staunton
drive by JMU
Susan Meek, not Sue
Joshua Wilton view

                    Camus!

In Thailand I touched a Tyger
In London William Blake
Denver, Colorado
Lady of the Lake

I am puzzled by predation
Doesn't God ******' care?
Titanaboa
Highwater Everywhere

The prey runs to the predator
At the end of American Cosmic
I am you and you are me
Thich Nhat Hanh's Buddhist logic

I read of Korean shamans
Women in the mountains
I listen to Bob Dylan
Yon cool and crystal fountain

I'm quite good at waiting
Not as good at action
Come the kairotic moment
To give me godly traction

Trappist 1 in Baltimore
In Toledo my Uncle Jack
Viva Tel Aviv!
Please help para Iraq

             A Comeback!

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South
      she reads, we talk, word of mouth
        industrial England, Unitarian spouse

                     my friend as well
                      curiosity house

City of Ember
     Embers
         Fire.

I was given madness
So I'm gonna see it through
At the ledge of my Linsanity
Doo wah Diddy do

Not an Academic
Now not even a job
Ja Morant on the break
Jokic on the lob

Glorious sunny day
Curious Robert Graves
Jesuit volunteer
Sunlight on the waves

Sadness and compulsions
Blue Flame in the fire
The Silence is Eternal
Lotus in the Mire

         Please patience

My 7th grade English teacher
Coach Brian Katz
Billionaire Bruce Wayne
He's the man who learns from Bats

I got banned from Duke
For posting in the Chapel against Trump
I am UNC
Bernie on the stump

Maybe Unus Mundus
Invisible threads connect
Maybe baby coincidence
In order to protect

I wanna be a point man
Aware of looming threats
Pass and play good D
Run the break at the Lake

                 Outlet!

Swedenborgian vastation
       devastation within the nation
                resist with respiration ...

                           mystic madness!

Psychosis is periodically required
For the integrity of shamanism
So the bizarro thoughts and fears
They fit, they fit right in

Lovely brown chapel at UNC
Newman Center
Yes, John Henry
We have to lose to win

Legends live on Franklin Street
The bus is free and easy
Coach Brian Katz is America Respect
The Trumpfucks are America ******

Alex and I played a lot of ping pong
He is better than me
Wonder and Exile, mystical-prophetic
A New World for to see

                     Let it be.

                    Eventually

Christobal Colonizer
1492

Slaver
Master of Genocide

Jamestown colony
1619

Slaves

And so it goes
And so it goes ...

wondering with the water
      Galway girl, Denver daughter
               Destiny - a puzzling plotter..


         She’s like the wind
                    The students like Harry Potter.

I didn’t think it would be so hard
She honestly to me said

I understand, I understand
I’ve sometimes wished I’m dead

The happy times so fleeting
The agonies not fled

Rejections have left me reeling
Soul to soul I’ve bled

Still we soldier on
Blue against the Red

Roll, Jordan, Roll!
Wayfaring Strangers in my head!

I have my contradictions
Gifts and demons too

Better Angels fight
Like Rilke's angels who

Join beauty with true terror
But those, at least a few

Speak of other worlds
And discoveries imbue

                  Revolutions!

I sleep with the lights on now
I sense the endless dark
Please protect my oldest friend
Sacramento Mark

Venice and Istanbul
Will I ever go?
Portland's Japanese garden
Kyoto aglow in snow

Beauty is a blessing
Science marches dawn
Snow falling on cedars
Scifi Gamla Stan

Beauty doesn't last
Young women become old
Sent my letter to you
Truth had to be told

           Origami
        Florida Fold

Monuments in DC, Dali along the Way
       Not far from the mystic Mall
            Music still holds sway ...


                  say hey, say hey
                    Marvin Gaye.

I keep writing because I ...
Rainy grey today
More family feuds
More hate than love

America began in genocide
Slave labor all around
For basketball gratitude
Thank you, Andy Dove

Might rewatch The Batman
Blade Runner 2049
First saw it in Bangkok
Renu Rodthongkam

Silent old monk
Women in Tai Chi
Motorcycle taxis
Nitnoy som tam

            Chan Um

No need to fear the intellectuals
It's such an ugly word

Ichiro Suzuki
On second stealing third

Harvard and Chicago
I don't think they heard

Socrates doesn't know
Knowledge is Absurd

       I'm a theonerd.

It's in me and has to come out
         Decades of reading
                   Spillover

David Markson
The Notecard Quartet

So I am chaperoning the winter dance
At little Sage Ridge School in Reno, Nevada.
Speaking with a dad who is a veteran
of America's misadventures in the Middle East.

He tells me a story of a recently arrived soldier
Who awakens one morning and begins to dress
But forgets to shake his boots out first
And inserts his foot directly into a desert scorpion.

He lets out a blood curdling scream
That awakens the entire base
People come running
His agony lasts a long while.

The veteran dad also tells me
Explosive devices sometimes land near the base
Emergency procedures kick in
People are protected.

What can you do if one actually lands
Inside the base, near where you are living and sleeping?
I ask somewhat naively.
Bend over and kiss it, he says.

Badly deceived
By the imperialist and kooky
D.T. Suzuki

Not fully aware
Of the ambition and drama
Surrounding the Dalai Lama

But right spot on!
Regarding his brother
Thich Nhat Hanh

.......Death just takes us.....
Our virtues and our vices
                So long!

Life of Pi
     Stormy sky
         Tzimtzum why?


                       Imagine I

Life is tough, very tough,
But so, darling, are you

Richard Rodriguez Escritor
Brown to see me through

Waitin' on the Ghost of Tom Joad
Bobby Ramirez too

Down and Delirious in the Aztec capital
Quetzalcoatl y tu?

Cortez Cortez - What a Killer
Dave Matthews flips ships Montezu!

I did karaoke once
Wasn't very good
Sweden, Finland, Denmark
In my neighborhood

Rabbits in my yard
People on TV
Play a little cards
Jesus: Come and See

Mr. Josiah Royce
Beloved Community
Bold Jimmy Joyce
Hong Kong: xie xie ni

Politics portends
Thailand, Land of the Free
Childhood pretends
Buddha blessing be

              Willow Tree