Watching I do notice
Stamp my envelopes

Chicago for my teacher
Rome this Francis Pope

Thailand for the sangha
Delicious Thai iced tea

Dublin for the pubs
Where for you and me?

       Have to see

I'd like to go down grateful
I'm gonna go down pain
Help me, Jack, relax
Help me, Diane Lane

Drive into DC tonight
embassies, black people, churches
Wizards with my son
Silences my searches

Women are more interesting
Exoplanet water
My sons on a Thai beach
2 oceans for 2 daughters

              Astrobiology!

Chartres Cathedral - Vive la France!
           Trappist-1 coincidence
       another world is an instance ...

                       the Rising.

i've known the mystic terror
my fears form full of mind

love is waitingly
listening and kind

tragic from the music
trapped tiptop by the past

silently eternal
Hey Now! everlast.

I sing the Songs of Experience
Like William Blake
I have no apologies to make

I'm with you, Bob
But I also have old fashioned Catholic guilt
And embarrassing sins
So I remember Chicago soul
And I pray to the Lady of the Lake

Marguerite Porete
Surely no fake

Standin' by God's river
My soul begins to shake

Not Sir Walter Raleigh
Not Francis Drake

          Tupac Amaru!

America is Ignorance
Bad schools, Broken homes
Imperial Decay
All roads lead to Rome

Sacramento as a child
Coach Brian Katz
Dee Ann Reeder
Now she studies bats

Vancouver, Canada
Tea in Stanley Park
Tea in San Francisco
Sacramento Mark

Hope amidst despair
Little lotus flower
The Daughter indeed will come
But no man knows the hour

                  Rosalita!

we drive at night, shooting star
Harry Chapin, how right you are!
     Beauty borne Pat Benatar

               though growing old
       I long, we long, all along -
                              to break the mold.

posting prose poems, my teacher of Zen
    linking and thinking, now and again
                countering Wall Street
                    anxious and then
comes to our house my oldest son’s friend
       his t-shirt the mask of dark Kylo Ren

                      (I’m not fakening)
            There has been an awakening

I love the sound of words
Music even more

The pleasure in the poem
Like a woman yelling More

Life indeed is pain
Hath the rain a father?

I’ve been quite close to insane
The beauty is why I bother

To soldier on and write
On my sturdy new cell phone

With these words I now reach out
From my small apartment all alone.

                      Pensees.

I often read theology
Even when I can't believe in God
Yo soy un isolato
Yo soy solo Todd

I like religious architecture
Scifi movies
Vegetarian tacos
Young adult books

My son says
His English teacher
Has got no idea
Just how mean she looks

Hopkins in Ireland
Emily in Amherst alone
Me in tears in Berkeley
Zero at the Bone

           Unknown!

Crossing the Baltic
     young sons sung
            exoplanets!


Heading for Helsinki
      young sons sung
             Trappist-1!

Meaning and signifigance
I know not know not know

Almost like a rap
A Raven told me so

I live dailiness
Do my postcards grow?

One man come he to justify
One man to overthrow

One Man of La Mancha
          Ay yay yo!

I admit fascination with coincidence
And I do not understand
The psychiatrist says it's nothing
I'm just a one man band

I like Richard Rodriguez
Brown discovery in this land
If I traveled to Korea
I would try to lend a hand

No money now
Hard to sleep at night
Gatsby never got the girl
But he did see that green light

Life is rain on pain
Fatherhood is joy
Tomorrow double Batman
My darling darling boy

         Espero? Nitnoy.

I read a lot of books
And I still like to read

A wrote a few loveletters
In which my soul did bleed

I am so afraid of death
And I have a need

To communicate my heart
And plant a mustard seed

                Indeed.

I just sit and watch the rain
Green and blue and brown
My family is in Mayland
Not a man of much renown

Young women, very beautiful
Old men, not so much
Plato spoke of gaze
He did not speak of touch

Little money, little hope
I often ride the bus
Lots of time in solitude
Solitude for us

I think of Gary Pettigrew
Students in Taiwan
I sensed the fight was coming
Now the fight is on

                 Yangmingshan!

Trump draws big crowds
The Abyss calls his name
Legolas the Elf
Gandalf's Secret Flame

O Canada!
We could use your help
Vegetarian burritos
Miso soup with kelp

I have an Olive Buddha
Silently sits and knows
Compassion in our suffering
Kamakura snows

I like yellow curry
Vegetarian Thai fried rice
South Side of Chicago
Oooo dat girl looked nice!

                   Prince4ever

Religion is a form of mental illness
Truly, this I know
Jesus was also mentally ill
The Bible tells me so

Almost ran out of gas tonight
Had to call my dad
California Coast
Sweet Sir Galahad

Almost ran out of gas
But made it to 7 11
To be remembered with love
The one and only heaven

Death is annihilation
But we'll never know it
Edgar Allen Poe
Inner Harbor poe-t

            Ravens!

I'm ambivalent about universities
But I now live near Hood College
Stopped by to see their library
I kinda like it

Reading is essentially mystical
Thinking with another person's brain
Maybe thinking Spain
It's true, Highness. Life is pain.

But also joy
Also the comfort of her voice
How curious. In the Wild West
Philosopher Josiah Royce

Not many American philosophers
Most of them hopeless shallow
Gerard Manley Hopkins at Oxford
Christ, His Mother, and all His Hallows.

81 South in snow
       Lights on
         Romeo!

Poetry, it had to be
Life is pain on blue
When I disappear
I'll reappear in you

In Japan
I was a samurai
Arigato
Mu

San Francisco
Reno snow
La Florida
Y tu

Seattle U.

Plurality and Ambiguity
Gonna be some shadow falls
Tryin' to get to Florida
Dodgin' them Georgia laws

Plurality and Darkness
Followed by a truck
I loved living in Dublin
A little Irish luck

Plurality and mystery
In ways I can't control
Country, pop, the Blues
80s rock n' roll

Plurality within me
Ambiguity too
Gamla Stan, Thich Nhat Hanh
Dear dear Tienmu

                 Oui. Parlez Vous?

Punisher or Guardian?
Guardian I hope
Buddhamind in Bangkok
In Rome this Francis Pope

In America the postcards
Chimes of Freedom ring
Responsibility
Teenage girls do sing

Takin' people down
Buildin' people up
I do now love Zephyr
Still miss that Quayzar pup

I am a taxi service
That's alright by me
Fly from Baltimore
To Thailand, Land of the Free

                  Sanuk Di!

The vomiting and the vertigo and the dream
Probably won't happen again

Now the poems like play
In basketball I wore ten

I wrote a poem about Rey
Did not write of Kylo Ren

She's the One!  hey hey
The Skywalkers fight like Zen.

remembering Rieko
on Valentine's Day

Staunton to Baltimore
Tokyo to Taipei

you held our newborn son
we took Shinkansen all the way

all these decades later
arigato and xie xie!

It's hard to say
Precisely where the Terror comes from
The logical answer
Is also the most frightening:
God.

But let's just speak of the Universe
A gazillion exoplanets
UFOs, what are those?
Extrasolar water

Sexuality
No we don't
Don't die
Yes, we mult
Iply

What might have been is painful
Fantasies don't come true
But they persist

Father Greeley said
The Crucifixion does not mean
Jesus died for your sins

Rather - no one dies alone.

                 Annihilation.

feeling the futility, nevertheless I write
unsure of my utility, we regress and fight
aware of an ability, I shine a little light
             inscape, intense, insight

He asked me if I understand
I said sometimes, but sometimes not

Not knowing is ok
We walk the parking lot

I'm now 50 years old
My children all I've got

No to Richard Nixon
No to shadowman Pol ***

Yes to that first night moonlight kiss -
She may not believe me or remember

                      But trust me:

                       She was hot!

If only If only, Hector Zeroni
The wolf, the lion, the lamb
Seattle ferry boats
Santa Rosa, Cam I am

My father in California
Tonight I'm on my own
Sympathy for the Devil
Rio, Rolling Stones

Basketball once more
Walk the Empty Diamond
Ry and Jenn and Rowan
Elvis at the Ryman

2025
Politics portends
The Cost of Discipleship
Germany, my friends

             Tres bien

Nothing is going to happen
I wait, but it doesn't come

Solitary walking
Dum do do dum dum

I like the little poems
My lonely little bio

My sons in Maryland
Mom buried in Ohio

          me o my o!

summer in the Seattle shelter
        Taipei, Taiwan’s typhoon swelter
               I try, I try to somehow melt her ...

                                mother nature

somewhere in the skies
    UFOs as windows, not lies
           myths too of various size


                            emerging whys

He thinks religious people
Have no return address
But he doesn't understand
Finding them gone
Pascal in my band

The saints have their own country
Maybe they do math
Silence of the Lambs tonight
Maybe another bath

                 Mahdi Body

softer than the rain
hidden as in Spain
Upon the Tucson Train

        riding, riding

Taos, New Mexico
Alex - souls we grow
2 men to Overthrow

      confiding, confiding

basketball to play
Hidey Hidey Hidey Hey
gracias xie xie

         igniting, igniting


             Blue Flame!

Star Wars theories, Star Wars shirt
two male deer in the grass and dirt
I walk the grove, sit quiet - alert ...

                       waiting

I taught Stanley Yelnats
I listen to Bob
Workin' in the Spirit now
No more paying job

Madam I'm Adam
?Was it a car or a cat I saw?
Un pequito Espanol
Only the honest outside the law

To hot to hoot
Do geese see God?
Geeky still at 52
My parents called me Todd

Ah! Satan sees Natasha
A Toyato's a Toyota
I might buy a Camry
To Seattle past North Dakota

                 !Dad!Mom!

Ruth B. and Lost Boy
   Beauty indeed, quiet joy
       Play on, Play on - Neverland employ.

The vegetarianism mostly Quixotic
The animals get slaughtered and slaughtered
Predatory terror
Life as horror story

Buddhist monks in forest
And temple
And palace
And hut

A poet of place
Her face!
Her name
O glory!

The imaginary becomes real
She dances
She sings
She teaches

                      What?

Wandering around Wal Mart
Fondly for the faces
Livin' in the love of the common people
Serious doubts that we are beings
               who survive death

Livin' in the love of the common people
But suspicious of demagogues
And race haters
And American Imperialists

The historical Jesus
Was not born on December 25th
It's a myth
And a winter wish

Jerusalem was brown
Tel Aviv was blue
He says the Irish are silver tongued
Says Thank you kindly, too

                  Seattle U.

if you give part of your love
only a part still remains

but if you give all your love
it returns in sweet refrains

you can love more than one person
in each way she gives and gains

dancing in the darkness
singing in the rain

in love we disappear
Montreal's Leonard Cohen

late along in London
singin', ringin', knowin'

I've seen London too
stayed the Stansted Inn

Medieval women Muslim mystics
I discuss with my new friend

                   Nadia
Mohammed, Khadija and the poets
         Peace be unto them.

Sometimes I write from terror
Sometimes gentle peace
Istanbul, Heidelberg
More than Ancient Greece

Still love Heraclitus
Sting and the Police
Will they come to fight us?
God protect my niece

                   Increase.

a hundred billion planets in the Milky Way
           dust to dust, what to say?
                    the saga begins
                      dawn to day

I've had a wish to be famous or known at times
And a fear of it as well

But what I most want is dearness.
To know I am loved and cared for.
And to love and care in return.

I have it at times, in places
But I also have chaos spaces

                 persistence!

Maggie’s Farm in Charlotte
  requests at Granny Brown’s
       insults to the sangha
         therefore, time now
            to throw down.

                Heed it well
                  Rebel Yell!