The Catholic Church near complete collapse
But still I love Pope Francis

Priest abusers again relapse
Shiva does his dances

Bridges to build over walls
No need to fear the Other

Encounters with strangers mysterious
Ourselves we too discover

I go to Mass infrequently
Sit in sacred silence

The bread and wine I wish to be
Strength against Time’s violence

Solitude I often know
I sleep, I read, I write

What will remain in 10,000 years
When comes my cosmic Night?

Probably no more to come in dreams
So I sit by Mother Mary
Guadalupe green
Candles in the night

Poem to Taipei
Tomorrow Toyota Camry
Yesterday slips
Basketball tonight

Quiet doctor's office
Refill my medicine
No Dread Pirate Westley
The name is worth the fight

Yangmingshan, Taiwan
Ravenstory stamps
Maggie's Farm in Charlotte
Cranberry juice with Sprite

                Avatar alight.

Last one before I wait:

I was in Providence once
Took a gondola ride
Bread and cheese
Man sang in Italian

Lovecraft died in 1937
I have not read him
But my son has
Positive reviews

Lovecraft *** store
Maybe 20 minutes from my house
In Frederick
Drive by, haven't gone in

Racist but supported Roosevelt
Wrote of the supernatural horror
But an atheist
Believed none of it

I am Providence on his grave
The Hobbit
Guernica
Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship

                         1937

                  I am Providence

Just live your life, the psychiatrist said
Don't go to extremes

But I love Don Quixote
And I have Impossible Dreams!

Joseph Goebbels, pH.D.

Basketball courts are full
So I walk around the campus

Solitude at the church
Silent where the lamp is

Stars shine up above
Black the endless sky

No answer, still no answer
To the Cosmic Why

I'm very very very tired
But stillness I still try

Said Stanislaw Lem

Platonic contemplation
        e.e. elevation
         instantiation

Most people do not have my anxiety level
And that's a good thing too
Mohandas K. Gandhi
Muslim Christian Jew

Harper's Ferry today
Fall 2022
Halloween. Things Not Seen.
Reno Rendezvous

            Sage Ridge, John, y tu

we three free in the Reno snow
   one more soon - Californio
              (valley below)

David Markson
The Notecard Quartet

A lot of Spanish in the USA
Colorado, Florida, burritos
Tecumseh in Detroit
My parents in Toledo

Detroit, of course, is French
As is New Orleans
Chicago in the winter
And I read Things Not Seen

John Brown raided Harper's Ferry
Nat Turner led a slave revolt
I spend some time in Baltimore
Saw the Ravens not the Colts

Trappist 1 discovered
Water? Alien life?
Silver Spring, Maryland
Thai wedding, my half Thai wife

The fight is on for dear Taiwan
Please wisdom in the strife
I taught the students about Islam
Taipei 101 at night

                  Be alright!

paranoiac-critical method
     nuclear mysticism
   que bueno, Salvador!

Fr. Greeley, stranger than fiction
passionate priest, for me a benediction
Irish brawler, story predilections

               Chicago and Tucson
           May your stories live on!

Gerard Manley Hopkins
I was in Oxford twice
South Side of Chicago
Oooo dat girl looked nice!

Dead Poets Society
Kennedys and Kings
Lonely little walks
Lost wedding rings

London. Dublin. Stockholm.
Back to the USA
Vegetarian tacos
For her daughters I do pray

There is no God
And Mary is his mother
Sacramento, California
Me, my mom, my brothers

               Summer
           Before the Fall

I read Flush aloud to students
Noah and his dad
Grandpa Bobby
The Green Flash

Nashville
Reno
Texarkana
Johnny Cash

Delia, O Delia!
Delia all my life
Better to live in libraries
Than marry a wicked wife

Gonna break my
Break my rusty cage
San Francisco Zen
Detroit Turn the Page

    the gifts of age

Said Dave Chappelle.
😄

marriage of despair
       contempt without care
                 Highwater Everywhere

Paul Wolfowitz, war criminal
Donald Rumsfeld the same
University of Chicago
Up in Smoke, Up in Flames

Can't quite forget those tide pools
Empty beach in Monterrey
Lebanese bread in Jerusalem
San Francisco Bay

America the Land of Genocide
In DC Marvin Gaye
Won ton soup
Gunmetal gray

      Endless Night Ending Day.

In America, gay people can marry
But not in the Catholic church

Ah! But mysteries hide in Jesus' story
You have to deeply search

I like Things Not Seen
And birds upon a perch

Fly away, flap your wings
Your mate is not your merch

In my solitude
Memories still arise
Ghostly demarcations
Perpetual surprise

That those no longer present
Visible no more
Return anew within
My spirit’s open door

And every separation
According to Ms. Weil
Yet still a true connection
Though how we cannot say

Living intuition
Those we cannot see
Hidden in the Zero
Of immortality!

Life of Pi
Markson in the mail

Me?
On the trail.

Joan of Arc
Condemned by the Catholic Church
Burned alive as a witch
May 30, 1431

Joan of Arc
Honored by the Catholic Church
Canonized as a holy saint
May 16, 1920

Malahide was so curious quaint
Am I in a painting?

Patrick is the patron saint
Washed on an empty beach

A southerner I ain't
But I drank tea in charming Savannah

San Francisco y Chicago
Turn the river green

               Things Not Seen

12:37 and I’m still in bed
      drifting, drifting
           exoplanets!

Life along the Liffey
Riverruns and keeps on running

In this mystical, musical city
I keep playing, praying, punning

Postmodernity arrives
I reJoyce and am not shunning

Though much is taken
                               much abides
Including silence, exile, and

                                       cunning

Aurelio and bball into the night
Tolkien. Dragons. Buddhism. Rome.
Fare thee well! I walk home alone.

I've written an awful lot of poems
But I do not reach
Do not breach
It's the silence that surrounds me

I'm probably Buddhist
No religion
No hope
No life after death

Silence
Loss
Snow
Breath

Shinkansen
Fo Guang Shan
Shabu Shabu
Arthur Edens reversaleth

                  Lincoln
                  Lear
   ­               Caesar
                  Macbeth


               ­         0

Our world of wonderment and terror
Who can understand?

Frodo’s the Ring-bearer
And I too a fantasy man

I mean I need to enter Mordor
I’d be both Gollum and sometimes Sam

The Cracks of Doom, they call to me
Vertiginous I often am

In real life evil can’t be defeated
But still we plead and plan

I’d gratefully go with Gandalf
Misty Mountain or Shire sand

My imagination runneth over
But my wife says I’m boring bland

Pizzeria Uno
Chicago in my style
My Mr. Spock kite
Let's get high awhile

Goin' postal today
Walkin' to the market
Chick fil a for dinner
Right after Target

Not many beautiful buildings
Not many beautiful people
A little beautiful music
Not many beautiful steeples

Christmas not too far
Maryland ordinary
Green clothes, Asian eyes
Diminutive Mother Mary

         3377 Irish fairies

Away from the Universities
But I write some of the professors
He says literature is what gets taught
Yes, I'd like to undress her

Coached basketball in Tahoe
Drove the mountain bus
Lights go out. Someone shouts.
Just the 3 of us

James Tiberius Kirk
A man of intuition
A man who boldly goes
Father Greeley had ambition

I am mostly shy
The limelight I find scary
This little town and I
Asian eyes Mother Mary

         37 Irish Fairies

Socrates and Hamlet’s ghost
      those we need and love the most
                Jesus and the holy host
                              atopos

Bill Moyers: So which is it, Mr. Rodriguez:
More American or more Mexican?

Richard Rodriguez: Actually, I'm Chinese.

When the poets turn against the Empire
It's all over but the screaming
Shamanistic mystics
In the Fire is the Dreaming

Antelope Canyon
A family from Japan
Seattle totem poles
Solitary Man

Deer on my drive home
I listen to the Eagle
Zephyr is a hound
Snoopy is a beagle

We at Angkor Wat
Tokyo train for two
Tecumseh in Ohio
Crazy Horse in view

             Mu

perplexing perceptivity
      baffling brevity
              yet still...

           connectivity.

I hope and pray to find good work
     thank you to that Irish clerk
         Time becomes berserk ...


               why wordsmith?

The British Empire did Expire
Hey nonny nonny

The American will too, how do you do?
I miss my aunt Bonnie

My love is prehistoric
Happened before the Fall

Alas, alas poor Yorick
Mortal after all

        Love live Wetheral!

At times I do risk madness
My blessing and my curse

The terror and the twilight
The drive in that black hearse

Keep calm and play basketball
The fear may well reverse

She may not like your letter
She may see you as a nurse

She may also know the way
To heal the haunting verse

History more concrete than philosophy
And far less romantic
War after meaningless war
Terror in the Night

I mention Millard Fillmore
He tells me of Japan
I'm gonna go down, go down
But not without a fight

Not a fan of Thomas Jefferson
The Uber American Hypocrite
Graduate of George Mason
Still see 2 green lights

The Zealot and the Emancipator
Gonna have lunch in Harper's Ferry
I John Brown
Still the puzzling plight

             Brown not White

Leonard Cohen saw the Future
Maybe I did too
Little prayer for Taipei
Carolina blue

Vegetarian tacos tonight
Edamame for my son
Rieko held him newborn
At Taipei 101

Sometimes profane the sacred
Sometimes revere and cherish
I do pray to the statues
But do not attend the parish

My ordinary life
Boring, but gratitude
My joy in my three sons
In my solitude

                     3!

Speaking with the social worker
Dread Annihilation
Help me, Dr. Thomas!
Terror in the Night

My mom died at Georgetown
Metastatic breast cancer
Young sons sung
2 green lights

The forest burns along the Road
Exoplanets spin
Drums beatin' cold
Sor Juana's mystic flight

I too get the loftiness
Lithium y Lonely
I write telephonely
Puck the mischief Sprite

          DeSea DeSight

Individual consciousness - adios
Death takes all away
Heaven for me:
Basketball to play

             my my xie xie

Perfect Love casts out fear
But you have to battle through it
Marc Cohn in my ear
29 ways to renew it

Today I watch the Incredibles
Tonight I rest and sleep
One Dark Knight
Vigilance to keep

Protect her from herself
Break her heart of stone
English country dancing
Magic Flute in Rome

Just to do my best
Persistence. Self doubt blues.
Persistence.
Rothko hues.

          Reno rendezvous

God is not real
But She is the Better Story
Stephen King in Maine
Me in Baltimore

Grey day blues
Hard to concentrate
Star Trek tonight
Enterprise does soar

My son makes creme brulee
I like French cathedrals
No parlez vous Francaise
2024

          Ocean's pounding roar

                         Nice!

I too know the futile
in vain I often write

today the true blue sky
but soon negation’s Night

from women more rejection
from men a distant light

solitude’s soul sorrows
companions on my flight

my children and the music
relieve, revive, delight

name and word obsessions
      candid confessions ...
               learning