I took an art history class at JMU
Don't remember it well
Mark Rothko blue
Picasso, Ishmael

Also took Calculus
Geology, Racquetball
The Once and Future King
River Eden, Wetheral

All the King's Men
Jack Burden. Jackie Bird.
Hits me, hits me hard
Albert Camus and the Absurd

Dr. Thomas and Pascal
I still place my bet
Little Sage Ridge School
Reno spins Roulette

                   37

10:37
Temperature 72
Pythagoras, pray for us
Reno rendezvous

Tomorrow I'm back at it
In la oficina
Loneliness I guess
Can you see what I meana?

Siena, Italy
Beautiful cathedral
Seattle twilight sky
All lit up Space Needle

My life does not matter
But it matters to live to me
Keep her from the Abyss
Protection for my 3

                    Merci

I hope I can smile at it when it comes.

The psychoanalysts and the intellectuals
Will have a field day with me

All my sickness visible
Conflicts they can see

I don't deny this mental try
But I write for free

I do my best, if I pass the test
To others I will be

Wounded inspiration
Enduring vulnerability

French sounds beautiful
German sounds intelligent
I told her her Irish accent sounds musical
She said only when we're drunk

I wanna go to Heidelberg
I read Jens Muhling
The man in 119
Takes his tea all alone

I'm mostly rock and the Blues
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
Achtung, baby
Is Billy Idol punk?

1985
When Doves Cry
Prince 4ever
They notice him in Rome

            little Red Corvette
          little black cell phone

it's 2 o'clock in the morning
but i had no idea

out shootin' hoops
can't see far from heah

Celtic Cross at midnight
one dear deah

in 5th grade lovely Laura
sat next to lovely Leah

           See ya!

I am not primarily a political person
Once I was a teacher
Little Sage Ridge School
Big blue Reno sky

The American Right is Ignorance
Fascism
Repression
Time for me to fly

I like quiet conversations
The Carolina Inn
Cranberry juice
Everything has to die

My bookshelf is full
Road to Heaven
The Notecard Quartet
Life of Pi

             Ay! Ay! Ay!

My Indian neighbors
         Bharata
         Sunyata

deer sprints across road
car stops and waits: and waits

into the forest she goes
car now accelerates

I walk on home
to see my two roommates

I once was at the deer park in Nara
the deer commemorates:

                 Shakyamuni's traits

Truly, Truly - I don't know what to do
Life is goalless. It goes on 2 by 2.
I live solo, but O how I miss you!
I am Catholic, but Jesus was a Jew.

                       Rendezvous...

So if you are with me this far
You see my thing with 37
Here it comes again
Diet Coke at 7 11

Probably apophenia
And my desperation
Did Shakespeare write 37 plays?
Is poetry bipolar elevation?

37 doctors in the Catholic Church
But I ain't gonna be one
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When the Day is Done

I asked the Canadians and Americanos too
Which European country as you travel through?
They all said Italy
Sunlight just might do

Why, I asked?
The people was their reply
Warm, friendly, generous
Mama Mia - What a sky!

I met a French waitress
So what do you think of France?
Se magnifique, I said
If you see her, ask her to dance

        In this Universe of Chance

so I wake up from this dream in the summer of 2015 with a poem/song in my mind or at least the first stanza and I go down into the lobby of the hotel where we are staying my family and I in Charlotte and I write the rest of the poem all day I try to remember where the tune comes from and then at night I walk out of the elevator and it hits me - Ms. Suzy Had a Steamboat - so I hesitate but eventually I send it to Wendy Doniger at the divinity school and she likes it but she doesn’t know that I’ve been listening to Lost Boy by Ruth B. (Wendy Darling) or that my high school girlfriend who broke up with me yes there was another guy at the end and I’ve been thinking about her every day for literally 30 years and then because Wendy likes the poem she calls it fine and thoughtful it gives me confidence and I keep writing and posting and sending for example I put poems on the altar at Georgetown and near a Madonna and Child statue and then the Secret Service visited me and asked me if I had a gun which I am not legally allowed to have because of the bipolar but if they gave me one and the monster of the American Unconscious with the orange hair was across the table from me would I shoot him and I said yes because he is evil and embodies all of our country’s worst qualities and they were honestly intrigued by my ideas and my reminder of Virginia’s motto from George Mason - sic semper tyrannis! - which usually translates as thus be it ever to tyrants but they didn’t know this so they took my picture in my Moby **** House of Kebab T-shirt and the picture of the depakote and risperdol I take for the anxiety and psychosis and mania and now I’ve written 4000 poems approximately in 4 years and can’t stop and keep attacking the white racist trumpfucks that have brought fascism ******* you ignorant nazis to our country and I told both Wendy and Susan that I love them both and i cant stop writing but I better now because it might be rhyme time ...

Early morning sirens
Daybreak emergency
I lay awake awake
Grey to blue the light

Carolina Inn
Postcards if I can
I hope I get the car
Batman's human flight

Jeremy in Hong Kong
My eye still on Taiwan
Ah! those Asian rains
Vegetarian delight

Emptiness compassion
Respect. Intelligence.
Courage to Taipei
Interior insight

Cattleya
When she was good
She was **** good!
And she got her revenge.

I've made some big mistakes
I know nothing of Stonehenge.

My words were poorly chosen
But I did not know

Was raised to trust authority
Ay yay yay yay yo!

The serpent is suspicion
The serpent works for God

Women's intuition
Please make me just Todd

I'm gonna take him down
Wheel now is in spin

Please for wisdom words
Please forgive my sins

Please for Warrior Poet
Please to begin again

            Virginian.

Today I'm to the bank
To see a notary

The man near the Book of Kells
Told me: meant to be

My family in sun in Stockholm
Cycling by the Baltic Sea

Only in dreams and screams
Can humanity be free

                     In God's time.
                       Event-ually

Only one life
Mostly disappointment and pain
Amos 3:6
Mexico y Spain

America the Shallow
Cathars once in France
Simone Weil in Spain
Arthur. Guinevere. Lance.

Tidal pools in Monterrey
My children still so young!
Thank you, Dr. Thomas
Delicious Din Tai Fung

My son with me tonight
Let him sleep in peace
Sybil in Toledo
Sybils in Ancient Greece

             Synchronicity:
         Sting and the Police.

tidal pools in monterrey my boys so young grey cloudy day california california steinbeck monument not far away monterrey bay aquarium we play in the sand and water my two oldest so young

                                                 so young

Drinkin' turpentine
And breathin' Fire.

Sometimes I have a sense of myself
As extraordinary
But I'm actually boring like everyone else
They might say a fine madness
They might wanna know my meds

I cannot express exactly what Markson did to me
Read his books thousands of time
Obsession!
Access to Roof for Emergencies only. Alarm!

I have had some unusual experiences
Mysticism or mental illness?
Yes.
Please protect her from harm.

At Granny Murray's pub in Dublin
In Charlotte on St. Patrick's Day
Reading Chronicles about New York rebels
I said I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm

                        No More!

Vulnerable, she called me
           I fade away
               xie xie

I was in Japan
For 10 or 11 days
Tokyo to Kyoto
Dressed up like a Samurai

Lost in Translation
Snow Falling on Cedars
Rieko and Takahiro
Shiva's third eye

I like miso soup
Snowfall shunyata
Edamame for my sons
Salmon teriyaki for I

Tokyo to Bangkok
Motorcycle taxis
Som tam. Panang curry.
I Thai Wai

                 Ry.

Pretty desperate desire for influence at times
Reality is very little
In my solitude
Si Samut Prakan

Science fiction bookstore
Cycling by the Baltic
Tak tak tak
Tak Gamla Stan

Rainy Night in Georgia
In Savannah we drank tea
Adonis in Atlanta
Yea verily

                  3773

Dogen in silent meditation all through the night
Shabu Shabu in Boston we ate

I from hospitalizations return to fight
Fall 7 times; Rise up 8!

She bid goodbye to Alan Rickman
So I just had to say it

I can't usually believe in heaven
But for her I had to pray it

I love that Galaxy Quest
By Grabthar's Hammer I'm a believer

Artists lie to serve the truth
So I lied, but I did not deceive her

Compassion and lovingkindness
Chesed in Hamlet? No.

Mist in Wetheral
Seattle cedarsnow

Immortality for others
The gift we cannot know

Life comes from death
As above so below.

She's sort of a wish or a Wonder
Of what might have been
She reminds me of my mother
Caring. Feminine.

America is quite far gone.
The precipice in sight
Strife through the days
Qanon Trumpfuck Nights

Millard Fillmore
The 13th president
Can't help us now
Alien residence?

My high school had a race riot
Maybe yours did too
First they come for the terrorists
Then they come for you

            Whatcha gonna do?

at the stars in silent wonder
        Uncle Walt, no going under
           on the mountain comes the thunder


                Contemplation itself Salvation.

can’t see it but perhaps can hear it
      hope and pray we need not fear it
              though far away, we are near it...



                                 the sacred!

On shinkansen
    quietness
        Kyoto!

Mabel Loomis Todd
Mary Todd Lincoln

Names are mysteries
And names keep me thinkin'

Apophenia
Is what the doctors say

Maybe baby so
But maybe baby may

       Callooh. Callay.

the little way
then disappear
disappear forever

O the time
O the time!
The time we were together

3 days in Vienna
Freshly fallen snow
Honeymoon in Siena
I guess I'll never know

                     Yo Calyx.
                           Yo!

no intentional drama
     ordinary boring
              steps

I think the Propher Mohammed was bipolar.

The suras of the Koran are like poems, he experienced terror when the Koranic voice first came to him and believed he was being spoken to by the angel Gabriel.  He also tried to resist it but could not (his wife Khadija was of great comfort to him).  He was also tempted to commit suicide because of the anguish and terror of the experience.
As a Turkish psychiatrist once told me:  bipolar disorder is good for society but bad for the person who has it.

The Prophet Mohammed:  Peace be Upon him.

dailiness: my response to depression
                 slow going
               one at a time

I like the little poems
Patiently I wait
Despite, despite everything
Peace at last for Cate

Tidal pools in Monterrey
My sons still so young
Trepidation
Pero young sons sung

                 Among ...

need for elevation
   silent meditation
        dearness, deerness ...

                 desperation

Didn't read much Auden
Though I know the boy fell from the sky
The ocean is in motion
Catastrophe for Piscine Pi

Jesus was a sailor
I cycled the Baltic Sea
Lightning over the Atlantic
3033

Hope is the thing with feathers
Eternal like despair
When she was 17
You shoulda seen her hair

I can't write a novel
Can't do calligraphy
Can't fix your broke computer
Can't save democracy

Just a few little poems
Taxi for my sons
Try to speak with strangers
Prayers for Taipei 101

         Until my Day is Done.

time as such decay
       lost along the way
                truly unruly stray

                             where is home?
                                               I cannot say.

We cannot easily forget
It is possible
To be a teetotaler
A nonsmoker
A vegetarian

And still be called Adolf ******.

The genuinely new is rare
The Confederacy of Dunces
Conspire against it

Not really Walker Percy
Or Flannery O'Connor
More Robert Penn Warren
All the King's Men

         JMU 1987 - 1991

                     You

                    3710

A small child in Taiwan
Only 2 years old
I still have the photo
She stands in black and white

35 years later
I'm teaching in Taipei
Tienmu, Motherly Heaven
My boys in the red double stroller

I like Eckhart
Wrestled with Nietzsche
Would like to read Novalis
No need for Sein und Zeit

Yo soy un Theonerd
Too shy for the stage
Can't give a lecture
Bipolar rock n' roller

           Hendrix!

book look, tuk tuk
      bustling Bangkok traffic
                Buddha mind -
                          but who can find?

People throw shade, she said
Which is certainly, curtainly true
Write your masterpiece
But don't read the book reviews

The professors and the intellectuals
Often attack out of spite
They go after famous writers
Because they themselves cannot write

Trust the art, not the artist
The artist, of course, has sins
Her best self is in her work
She loses, but her work wind wins

I do like Universities
But just to walk around
Everybody knows
I am the newsboy of this town

My father's house is quiet
My brother soon will come
Here said I , with a sudden cry
Is my crematorium!

A little Germany this Christmas
A book about Berlin
John Scotus Eriugena
Scott y Ireland

             Yin Yang
             Yang Yin

Try to understand
But the world breaks your mind
Living more than knowing
Wanna travel blind

Her hair, her curves, her smile
World of strange design
Extrasolar water
Johnny 99

She dances in my memory
She also doesn't understand
She and I in Istanbul
Shazam and Alakazam

She and I in Istanbul
Hagia Sophia
Meet me near the minarets
Aslan comes to free ya

          Turkish delight