Taiwan Providence

  Freedom Trail, oh Freedom Trail Here’s where the road starts homeward  To be near the family close to heart With unconditional love and empathy I can hear them welcoming me  But before I leave Taiwan this time I need a reminder of why I came To override the bitterness and blame Here, in Chiayi between Taichung and Tainan Straddling the Tropic of Cancer Is the Taiwan time forgot A small city, quiet and unobtrusive Framed by waving lawns of green rice Slow with an easy simplicity of farmers Tufts of grass growing wild near a gully Banana trees spreading wide leaves unattended Happy dogs unleashed barking outside free In a space of fresh air in fragrant breeze This is the Taiwan I will remember On Freedom Trail a forgotten dream recalled To the countryside common i sing in harmony with the birds Ah-ma from a dirt path here with greens to sell Off a bench near the route of sugarcane trains The whistle of the local at a distant...

  In an empty museum of precious treasures Of award winning architecture Filled with mythic revelation What good is it to me? It’s a place to refill water bottles, Cool off in dim light, See ten thousand Buddhas and tea Surround sound videos and demos And a destination for a long bike ride While the morning is still cool And the end of a hot afternoon. Empty grounds with an emptied lake In world-renowned landscape What good is it to me? There’s one little tree big enough for shade For Chinese folk tales about a conch shell woman And cry lonesome self-pity Like a fleck of dust feels  From an untied knot unraveling Writing a useless poem, self-absorbed Outside a grand museum, With less sparkle in the light Than a man emptying trash cans Sifting sludge from the lake shore; I’m going inside for more.   April 21, 2021

  Moving day was a moving day She was sitting in the living room As they carry what I packed away She didn’t pretend to be happy But I have reasons not to live there permanently   Before when I was sad with problems She lent an ear, we talked it over Now she is the source of that problem. And something interesting I would share The things I’ve done I wouldn’t dare   The limiting void of intimate love Made ways hopelessly closing in But I do miss her hunting mosquitoes She would have caught a few by now. And doctors’ appointments without end   the transition will soon be complete When she got what she wanted and I must leave The day before moving day my last chance,   I asked myself the final question: Should I go back in the darkening light?   Her position of authority would bring me harm So not to get swept along by unfavorable circumstances, Nor permit my steadfastness to be shaken. Perseverance furthe...

See live first rendition here After each chapter I look to see; Has she read the update about me? The Instant Messenger doesn't show And Melville has more to say  About schools and schoolmasters  how a cavalier bull fights for his harem  And different sex characteristics; How a struck forty-barrel bull’s gang quits him But a stricken harem’s member swim around her With every token of concern. So who is this woman I seek between chapters Compared with Moby Dick? Like the difference between fast and loose fish; That whalers capture and inadvertently lose Ha! A fast fish belongs to the party originally fastened  While a loose fish is fair game for the soonest to capture Because possession is half the law  Or the whole of the law depending  Like a rapacious landlord to the widow’s last mite His ruinous discount  had he but not Mordecai, Who lent to keep,  from starvation, a family  Fast fish they'd be. ...

  Love is like being on an express train With a local ticket and no reservation. One stop you sit chillin’ as soon as it starts; It takes you for a little while and a little while more. Next stop? Get up to find another seat at the door; Maybe the next stop will be the end of the line, So rock her down till the rollin’ stops,   When you seem too familiar and kind. Too hungry to sit and hard-pressed to move on, It is done before you reach your destination. Perhaps you sit on the floor transfixed Or stand in the vestibule near the toilets. When you’ve opened your eyes to the world you created, It is half past late for the ride to go that way. Without faith and vision no place goes well. From car two, aisle-seat nineteen you move, To car two, seat twenty-six window move, Third stop, to car four, no seat at all; Two-thirds of your life down the line. Red signal reflection on how your trip’s been going. The train may reach your station too so...

  Should I be a married man in a bachelor pad? or be with grandchildren playing nice old granddad?   Should I be someone's estranged husband living like a single man Or a Grandpa where the children sleep and go off to school? Work on writing stories, poems and books to publish Teaching what's cool and keeps me ruled  Loved with a woman's youthful fountain   Or a man kept alive like a mothered orphan Or cashed out in his clinging wife's coffin    Am I sick yet of living in the replica of China The make believe republic of independent living With a native spouse calling the convenient shots? When will I get sick of this lonely expat life? Uninterested in other expats appropriated lives To live my life like passing clouds that never threatened rain But filter sunlight through the smog of an unpredictable brain Should I sit on airs that slowly float away? And not stare back at natives that don't care what I say?   ...

  I'm on a slow train heading home with a bag full of useless currency and coins from a mix of countries and places I've been some with stories yet unseen hits me like an icy blast of Irish spring Going home in my own time  where hearts are beating rhythm a rhythm I've got with music and my gal to the place where walls are pulsing when I start dancing, we start waltzing down a river Southerly that follows my mouth till Westerly south to be home everything's butter and honey milk and wine where I can spend my final time on a can't-miss train unscheduled nothing brewing, rearranged I'm going where spirit soars higher where fire burns brighter and nights have desire Not growing old but growing older making the road where keys fit doors that makes the Lord’s laughter float like the Lord has made me before ridding myself of scornful desires to a place where autumn leaves fall in springtime and waters run inland throu...

February '21 was a turning point in my life. See how I grew in February

  How did she tame you, Bobbie bobtail? you are the emblem of my disgust as she failed to cure your bald-spotted belly that you licked raw with your shark-tooth tongue and would have healed the same over time time not fast enough for a clinging medic that bound you in body armor but forgot the meds made you walk funny, handicapped kitty unable to groom your nerves keep ticking Thinking an improvement but it's her sickening She forgot the calming mist of letting it be airborne relaxation for a sun-bathed morning believe me, I know about her not letting go but if you escaped, unlike me you'd be hit by a car or dogged up a tree Instead you remain her nervous manifestation trapped in her routine of warped perfection of doing what she says to be carefree unable to live and be the cat's meow unlike me, you will get along with her somehow Bobbie Bobtail, at least you're not alone Your problem child companion on the same ward His wheezing and daily thyroid medication Must miss ...

See live rendition here Watch a ride across the wood bridge here Two bike bridges across shallow estuary water the sea salt flows into the steppe of Alishan From Fengqihu where eight fingers stream into one To funky flatlands meandering down through Chiayi In wild weeds overgrown from the last rainy date a bird flies shyly with no more than a song from a dried tree with nothing much to fawn an egret stands in muck wondering where to look but the smell of an ah-ma's fragrant garden invites him to drink nectar from her spine and I too feel refreshed on this bike path bench on the brink of fording muddy waters thirsting for a drench of plum rain showers when the deluge swallowd all in a cinch and typhoon rains will pound it like a fist Whipping winds across the bridges' suspensions their anchorages in danger of being dislodged again or moving not an inch of span reconnected as I am starting to make ends meet till the time when it is no longer hers or mine but weighed discreetly o...

The woman I'm thinking of  wakes me to make love while I'm still asleep. At any age  there is nothing better to do. from the end of the line to looking forward  everything once I'd made the decision,  done nothing wrong doing good for myself.    It's too nice a morning for anything else. but a bird singing her song, loud and strong no sound of vehicles or air compressor, no droning fork-lifts or marble ladies,  the news of the world so far away the repetitive syndrome or talking heads how America's being inoculated  or a deadly derailment near Hualien A bird is singing; the same song as yesterday's on the last cool week of Taiwan winter.    It's starting with her dawn surprise  then a bike ride up Freedom Trail  as neighborhood discoveries keep being discovered;  like a bowling alley hidden on Shanghai Street  Indonesian teak furniture up a back road On our ride back to ho...

Like an arrow flying upwards before the inevitable I know I'm getting old,  but why wait around to tell? with ten more years of tequila on a red horse  set the tone, be my own boss.  Moving to the melody of Mambo and Calypso of two longing people who've met their match a couple that didn't know how long  they'd be surviving progress.  Through the lateral move of reincarnation  The duty of our last lives done it brought us to the next plateau. where our minds are upbraided after contemplated not waiting to restart but follow the path to the heart is  a part of what life is coming to the many I will set free doing what I do so long as one of is me to my heart be true   of the many in this lifetime Staying fresh  not ending up in a dumpster    April 3, 2021