Passing

The stairwell a place
To greet a neighbor and smile
Sad to see bent heads

Passing One

You are the first nations, the first people.
As I was coming in you were going out
you held the door for me and said, ‘good timing.’
I asserted, ‘Yes, indeed, good timing thank you.’
Ascending the stair, I felt my settler state.
My emphases extending everywhere
your body, your speech, your land.

 

Passing two

I have shared bread and wine with you.
Now you walk up the stairs and I walk down,
our eyes do not meet; we do not speak a pleasantry.
I draw blanks in the spaces of my mind,
I let you and your kind into my home,
your child playing with mine, sharing, caring,
the only thing left between us is that
we share the same selfish white sin.

 

Accident

The car this morning
Pink blossom petals stuck on
the dark black bonnet

Accident 1

I drove that day, it was spring,
pink petals stuck on my black car.
My attention flickered to my mother,
our relationship grates, grinds,
like metal on metal.
Moments clashed, the car sidelight,
knocked the parked van.
The crash, the rasp of touching,
a metallic clack, a clang,
There were no pink petals, only
the pretend fur of my panda,
soothing the sizzling sparks, of
my metal against mother’s metal.

Accident 2

Crashing into a stationary car.
Is it you or me at fault, it is after all
unnecessarily careless to hit,
an object that is not moving.
Except when the car
moves into your path,
leaving no reaction time, but still
you should be able to stop.
If only I could have swerved ...
we could say this went down 50/50
but the van was not moving
so, I assume the position of blame.

 

The car just sits there
in the middle of the lane.

Like a reoccurring dream, we back track,
and assume our positions once again.'

 

Momentum

Senso-ji temple
Green tea, fortunes good and bad
Pray for peace

 

Momentum 1

Macbeth

The warrior world got worse,
on return from war.
Did you go fighting?
Or did you fight to go?
Did you draw blood?
Or did you bleed deep?

That torrent of dank dark red,
you must have seen the loss.
Seen black veins burst into scarlet,
you just must have seen it all.

You must have fought,
yet you came home and stuck a dagger,
in a sleeping man.
Blood flowed in a flood,
a torrent of red everywhere.
On walls, on carpet, thick, sticky,
dogs crazily licking red blood.
You had to be stopped,

your kin cut off your head.

There you are dead.

Momentum 2

​

The Whale

 

This morning walking,

the whale slipped into my head.

A great lozenge moving the wrong way,

up the rivers open mouth,

hitting the rivers narrow throat.

We watched from the dark grey bridge,

the man-made, palatopharyngeal arch.

The great capsule going in instead of out,

​

the rivers mouth, Like nature, stuck in nature’s flow,

unyielding movement. The mighty mammal pushes forward,

not knowing to turn it swims in nature’s line. Momentous movement against perpetual flow.

We walk off the bridge,

choking back our desires,

to have the beast flushed out to freedom,

a reflux, of natural distress,

silently shared.