Night Crossing

Waiting at the red light
You stand on the city street
In the warm spring night
While the young around you laugh, whispering
A joke, and touch,
Affectionately tussling.
When the light turns green
They move across the street
And you hasten behind to listen sight unseen.
When they are gone, you start toward home but stall--
Looking up you see in a lighted window
A painted dragon on the wall.

This is the dark place--
Now you’ve found it
The hole from which you
Look out, look up
To the passing clouds
To a dog, a fly
Unable to cry out
Your voice clinging to you
There, down in the hole,
In the dark place

Announcement

I have published a long poem, "Tel," as an e-book chapbook on Lulu.com.

While you uttered prayers
Something entered from the other side
Into a dark place
Within you
A serpent lodged in the bowels
Burning you with fever
Or chilling you
Till you shook

While you intoned softly
A spear from the other side
Opened a space
Within you
That filled with pain
And made you bleed
Rivers of blood

While you clutched at Heaven
You were raped from the other side
You did not yet know
Within you
The strange marriage
Of psalms and thorns
Thorns and psalms.

Hikikomori

The body is a house--
So hard through the windows of the eyes
The wall of the skin
To meet, connect
One hand touching another’s
Betrays the separateness of flesh, of bone
The spirit recoils
Into its shaded rooms
Drawing a curtain on the sunlight
And the other houses on the street.

Night Shining White

Dawn of night
Dawn of the moon
Hanging silver
In the dark
Night Shining White
Zhao ye bai
A horse is fire
Eyes wide and
Nostrils flaring