“At the twisted junction of civilizations,
up from the dark to this darker time,
the engines of dialogue churn new converts
climbing up the folded bridges past our
moments of estrangement.
My neighbor has no appeal except for
techniques of his washing machine.
The heart dictates an urgent visit
leaving the spirit safe and sound
from the freighted haul of
broken bridges.
I am no foreign correspondent.
Faced with redefining me role in the
world, dealing with implications, globalization,
proliferation, cultural relativization, trans-border variations,
not to mention carnal multiplication, only content
to keep my shelfish dimension.
I read and lecture about coexistence
and shut my window to the other, thinking
vertical consolidation.”

”

What must I do?
I circle my sphere and
cause the loud speaker:
love, hate, heal, sever, perish, peace.

Desires of the mind for
right and wrong over
the speed of light there quiver
like oracles that instruct us
as worm waywards for
cold and hot words apart.
Harmony is always someone else.
Clouded judgments, whatever their source.”

“Ravaged by a nightmare
I engage the morning gear, dressed in hope.
Hope in what, where, whom?
For my car’s inveterate start,
fuel lines clear, ignition smart,
distributing hope and fire together,
and hope no treachery in morning traffic,
trusted only in perfect still.”

”

I need someone to tell me
what shapes my mind.
The light grows less, the more
I self-reflect, and currents within the laps of
my cave fall.

Does brutal air weigh down with a frost?
Does Autumn speak fewest lines?
What makes being grafted to our essence?
Not sure of roots but leaf and branch alone.

Life comes over us by foil and force
and thickening first then flays us to the
bone,
for death is its course, and our illusions
our own.”

“A life time lost in search of a
concrete center – visiting sadness
wrapped in grey and brown, this
slowest detriment to love I desire.
Is there still, I wonder, as the hum of
years fizzle before my eyes, anything
but nothing?”

”

For Antje

As night comes
the sweet spring night torments my loneliness.
I wait among her countless forest reeds
listening to the spirits admonishing me,
say, friend, if all is well still with love?

Whom can I seek for refuge there?
They laugh bashfully when I peek at her window,
the taste of passion echoes from their murmuring.
Why do I blankly endure love’s desolating fire?

Tangles of yellow flowers lie wilted below her window’s hair.
Downcast and tongue-tied, an owl’s suspicions raise a vision: He
cannot belong to this thicket of faces.
The owl’s advice decieves me, life is better
in this barren habitat.

Oh, to spread the bliss of love,
Sooth me! End the paradox!

Trees with night-lily eyes feel me,
I am forced to stare back.
curling, sandal forest winds,
cool winds like fire, a paradox of
passion-bound infinity, command
my torment, lifting my lifebreath
with arrows, Love!

Gracious love, tears fall even as I wipe them
away, with the leaves that cover some tree’s loins.
“Leave us alone,” I utter in a
faltering voice chocked by tears
like a humming bird wailing relentlessly.

Fragrant breath of wind shakes the demon away,
and my fear of darkness fades
my soul prospering from their
calm, seasoned looks,
rich with mood, under moon’s
touching footprints, their
proud chest bristling
like cloud-forms thickening the sky, examining
every fiber of my soul.

Joyful of their clan, I only lament
her absence of presence, not witnessing
this symphony of sounds reverberating through the forest,
divine subtle flowing sounds
like poems of erotic of mood.

If loneliness enriches my heart
the forest’s seduction arouses me into
the sweet pool of remembrance,
in her thin incarnate form,
soft belly, tender kisses, and
charming smiles.

Triumph! I am now drunk from dancing
in the rite of love, in the hot bellies of trees
circling wildly, reveling in the festival of love.

After weeks of waiting, frozen in time, triumph, on
tips of smooth oak branches,
melodicious voice of cukoos, raising
their joyful sound, mimicking willful girls,
delighting in their seductive game.
Are they mocking me?
What can I do, except stare
at her cat’s vacant stare out the window,
basking in morning’s glow, curiously
at a crowd of roving bumblebees.
“Comfort in love now, friend.”

Our stare click for a moment,
vaporized jealousy, entangled with mutual sympathy,
co-miserating her absence of presence.
Are we not allowed a moment’s peaceful coexistence?!

With Sun’s rays in her eyes, she wears
a garment of different colors.

Beneath their shady roofs, I stand, laden with memory,
tuned into their fresh pipe, their bright pavillion, issuing forth
a sporty climate. The oaks had slept, while
I beheld their maiden fairer in the sprightly dance,
dancing my solitude away, in the company of their
magnanimous mansion, bereft of hatred, revenge, cruelty,
terror, and exploitation, only
law of nature, peace, love, and unity,
complete as a human illusion. “

“No, I was not pulled from underneath the rubbles.
I was never even in danger’s vicinity.
Nor have I been cross the Potomac to Pentagon.
And yet, I carry all the symptoms:
My hands shiver as I write these lines,
feel structurally broken inside
fear resides in me permanently,
and I relive the horror by the minute, 24 hours a day
I feel trapped on the 94th floor
with the firewalls closing in on me.
I feel hopeless in the back of American flight 11 calling
my loved ones goodbye.
I feel reading a fireman’s last rite before
getting struck in the head by falling debris.
I feel numb, nothing, nothing at all.
You see, we’re now a nation of survivors
grappling to set things straight again,
to live a normal life
by internalizing fear and vigilance in daily life!
We survive only in unity and compassion
and by the wrath of our oceanic anger
& resolve — to make this a better world:
our new manifest destiny.”

“In their bags, a reminder
to stay steadfast, and look to God for strength.
They shared a will you see, and
and by their ATM photographs,
embraced death with smiles, traveling
the whole length of
crusade mentality.”

“This terminology does not really belong to any dictionary.
I keep looking around for the right words,
and get lost in my wandering.
Today driving in the highway I look over the sign
that instills the right element of fear: Speed limit 55.
And then think of the size of ticket for
ramming a plane into a tower.
There are times I wish to be a traffic cop
on the ground and even in the air.
I want to be the merciless teeth of justice
teaching Zen of Counter-terrorism:
know thy enemy, the looming
price of their mind.
A loud break in my rear
pushes me back to my element.”

“Remember Pearl Harbor?
And which aspect of it?
Can we ever disentangle Hiroshima from Pearl Harbor?!
History’s hideous jar, we saw it for magic
that will never be maddened on us again.
Per thought it grew more powerful,
carrying up our level of historic contrasts.
And bang, the doomed grasp of analogy.
Cowardly acts proclaim our sentiments.
Time is working to their benefits.
If no one moved on analogies,
Would they kill still?”

“The blows dug in memories,
deaf to times’ bell, blinding.
That is the language of horror,
giving sustenance to our
cluelessness, baffling.
Living the ancient psalms speaking
pain, death and disease.
My mind has tipped over to their
parched lips, onto the felled body
of faith, past the open gate
of understanding.
Only the nightly report of
troop buildup soothes the pain.”

“Shall we kill terrorists together
you and I?
Murder to save the world
and keep the good times?
Shall we organize vigilante,
as part of our overtime, or
fellow commuters?
Shall we?
Hope and confusion mix into acids
making every day a commitment
to kill together without any
timetables, or remorse.
We’ll have the time of our lives.”

“Walls have fallen before.
Berlin wall was so easy.
We clapped, and cried happily,
yearning for a souvenir piece.
But, when the thunder shook the world
and the graceful towers turned to
monuments of barbarism,
walls that came down, down
joining ceilings, vaporizing bodies
and souls, the tragedy hit home like a
pain of my own.
And each day I look back
in the dark alleys of my mind
at walls that captured a
corner of our existence,
speaking shiningly to
every passerby.”

“A torn doll
dangling aimlessly on piled ruins, staring at me.
In its gray carcass,
my soul reaches out to it.
It stares indestructibly at
the labor of mayhem and destruction visiting
us from no where, like a shrewd salesman of
Death.
I know, I know
how it will be
that I am now accessory to a
collective guilt.”