Centenarian Overload
. . . . Japan 2015

We are very well
eating simple rice
fish and seaweed
stretching in the park
we are now 100 years
poised to accept
sterling silver gifts

so well we number
twenty-nine thousand
thus no silver anymore
maybe crisp paper
letters signed
by Shinzo Abe
Congratulations

This poem published September 1, 2015 on newversenews[dot]com

Houses in Haiti

After walls shook to cracks
or fell in heaps,
blue plastic tent-towns
bloomed in open fields.

Who has now decided
tents should vanish,
“temporary homes” revert
to scarred land or naked hillsides?

Home calls them in their sleep.
A perilous walk takes them
back to those familiar walls,
still askew, plaster crumbling.

How can they bear this risk?
Who will brace the doorframe,
secure the roof? Who cares enough
to save their battered souls?

________
From book “To Remember, To Hope”
2012 Blurb.com Bookstore

At Sitka

A girl spots debris washing up
from thousands of miles away,
a floating mass drifting in
from the dark sea.

Deep blue waters hide
earth’s silent tectonic plates,
those trays of solid mass ready
to slip again, to crash with rage,

forcing the predictable sea
into a freakish spout,
that falls to smack
giant waves into nearest land:

a shore of fishing harbors,
a shore of tidy homes,
a shore of shops and schools,
stripping them of their innards:

their dishes, their beds, books,
tires, tools and boats,
clutter then rushing to sea,
a tsunami bringing its baggage

to Alaska, cluttering pristine
island coasts, stirred into a soup
of too-quickly melting glaciers.
She runs, screaming.

____________
3rd prize winner, 2012
CURRENT, Ann Arbor, MI
____________
From book “To Remember, To Hope”
2012 Blurb.com Bookstore

New Rain

Sky a mellow gray,
a train whining as it goes,
and I wonder what to write.

This will be a day of calm,
wounded coming back on planes
to questionable conditions
in Veteran’s Hospitals.
What worse than loss
of legs and eyes, but damaged
brains, hidden in the skull,
not to be examined,
overlooked by military doctors
until too late, and more troops
are sent to the endless war.

The train is gone, the sky
still gray, and passing tires
are whining in new rain.

Graffiti in Tunisia: Merci Facebook
A Pantoum

When his fruit cart was confiscated
he lit himself in gasoline,
police deprived him of a living,
no chance for work in Sidi Bouzid.

When he lit himself in gasoline:
Mohammed Bouazizi became the martyr,
no chance for work in Sidi Bouzid,
as in all towns, even Tunis.

Mohammed Bouazizi became the martyr,
sending flames through Arab lands,
through all towns, even Tunis—
their despot fled across the sands

sending flames through Arab lands.
By Facebook, word spread of liberation,
urging despots to flee across the sands
in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Yemen.

By Facebook, word spread of liberation,
tyrants had deprived them of a living
in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Yemen,
ignited when his cart was confiscated.

        This poem won first prize from CURRENT in Ann Arbor, July 2011