Words.

And morning broke behind me,
without my knowledge.

Stained coffee cup stands
by my side.

Jacques, Jean-Paul, Walter and Maurice
stand on my left.

Marcel and William
stand on my right.

I look ahead of me and see
Monaco in the evening time.

And morning continues to break
in all my consciousness.

For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible except to God alone
By His permissive will through Heav’n and Earth.

-John Milton, Paradise Lost.

Miso Soup Afternoons
The simple recipie of miso paste,
chopped spring onions,
the cubes of soft tofu
nearly expired. Yet we
lacked one simple ingredient:
the vegetable.
But we found our subsitute:
Chye sim.
That made all the difference,
that made the exclusivity.
The light meal cooked in less
than fifteen minutes,
repetitively, like an addiction
over the portable electric stove.
Punctuating those afternoons was
a whole lot of Sex in the City
and Whose Line, propped up legs
and dishes in the sink.

… the fact that man is a morally responsible being who, voluntarily or involuntarily, submits to the morality that he himself has created.

-Carl Gustav Jung, Dreams.

I am, and will always be
an Other.

Standing apart.

Sometimes I wonder
why
I stay on, why I
hang around.
Perhaps I am only

waiting,

waiting for my stage
exit,

to walk off,
tumble, and fall,
into blood,
into semen,
into spit.

Grandfather, grandson
The younger of the two, barely
wasit high, clad in his PJs,
trotting along.
In one hand a stuffed toy, comfort
for sleep.
In the other his grandfather’s hand,
comfort of a more sublime
type.

The older of the two, two times
taller, in grandfather garb,
ambling along slowly, steadily.
He says nothing for the time being,
merely trying to keep up
with the young one.

They come to a halt, waiting
for an elevator to bring them up home,
standing side-by-side.
Grandfather says something in a
mandarin dialect, fluent, soft.
Grandson replies in a mix of languages,
stuttering, childish.
They did understand each other.
Not just through the words,
but also though their joined hands.

Imaginative Space
Nothing dared move in that room.
The white-washed furniture
leaving barely any space for seperate movement,
or distance apart.
The drawn flower-print curtains
threw a shroud of Eden over.
The orange vest hung on the
cupboard door headless to watch,
but the dolls were able to,
and did, through the clear glass
from within their cabinet,
only peering over the foot
of the bed.
Mr and Miss Teddy were flung together
onto that chair in the corner,
and then a white towel flung over
them, hiding them away.
There in that imaginative space,
nothing else moved,
nothing else happened.

Excavation Work
Early in the morning, the engines roar
to life, the excavation machine ready,
poised, the worker at the controls
manipulating its tracked feet and
single, lone arm.
The irregular hits into the ground,
sometimes digging,
sometimes drilling,
pounding,
or even barely scratching at the surface.
The engine still keeps rumbling on alive,
conjoining with the abrasive sounds of
the excavation work.
The worker brings the machine through
hard and soft rock,
mounds of earth,
wet and dry, these conditions all
affecting the process of the work.
Finally the hole will be complete,
six-feet deep,
the excavation machine standing at the
edge of the grave,
its engine switched off,
the excavation work over.